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"JENKINS!"

Howell was panting in a corner, trying to collect his thoughts, holding his papers close to his chest. What could he ever have done to these people that they're chasing after him?

"Jenkins, when I find you, you won't have one whole bone in your body, d'you hear? I'll kill you for what you did to my sister!"

Oh, right. He broke up with Lizzy Hopkins. That's ought to be it. She was a great girl, really! But he was realizing that she wasn't really for him, and...

Well, and now he was being chased by her brother, apparently. Maybe he could've handled it more smoothly.

"You can't hide forever, brat!" The elder Hopkins shouted. Bloody hell, he was way too close to where Howell was hiding. Howell made a break for it, narrowly avoiding being caught by one of Hopkins' friends. "Hey!" The latter screamed, heading down after him.

And he just wanted to work on his next essay, Howell whined in his head. He was pouring over some weird medieval texts that seemed to be about a portal-opening spell. It was just his speciality! If he could just-

Another one of Hopkins' friends emerged from an alley to his right, so he dashed to the left. Hopkins seemed to have many friends for such an angry man - though considering the circumstances, maybe that wasn't the right time to judge. Howell looked back-

And run directly into Hopkins himself. Oops. Hopkins cracked his knuckles, a furious look on his face. Howell took a couple of steps backward. He turned around, but Hopkins grabbed his coat. "That'll teach you to treat my sister with respect!"

Howell quickly removed the coat and tried to run away, but Hopkins' friends were blocking the way. There was one door in the alley, but it was locked. Howell panicked. Hopkins was approaching, and he really didn't like the look on his face. He could maybe beat him alone, but he didn't really like confrontations like that - plus Hopkins had friends with him who were just as strong. He looked desperately at the photocopies of the ancient spell he held, wishing that they were real and could actually send him somewhere else.

He struggled again with the door handle. To his absolute surprise, and the surprise of the bullies after him, the door actually opened this time. He fell through it, then closed it quickly behind him and looked around. Then he shook his head in disbelief.

Wherever he was, it was not Swansea anymore.

***

First attempt at a Howl's Moving Castle fanfic, feedback appreciated.

#howl's moving castle book #hmc book #howell jenkins #hmc fanfic #I don't know much about wales or welsh people.#For the sake of this story: Howell is studying history or something like that in the university of cardiff #The hopkins are probably an english family that lives in the area or something #This isn't perfect writing #But this is the rough idea i have of how howell ended up in ingary #Based on some stuff DWJ said about it #diana wynne jones #dwj #arch writes

The real question is: which forms of investiture are permissible to use on Shabbat?

Imo:

Surgebinding is out, Stormlight Access is usually dependent on having money on hand, and far more importantly like half the surges are straight up forbidden (transformation, light manipulation, etc).

Allomancy is in (contextually): You are just eating and then using the energy you ate. In Addition none of the the allomatic abilities are straight up assur, just contextually.

Feruchemy: 50/50, tapping is clearly ok. But Filling for the purpose of using after shabbat is forbidden, BUT filling for the sake of gaining the benifit of filling on Shbbat is permissible. (E.g. Forbidden to fill cadmium/breath because there is no reason you would want to be gasping on Shabbat, but it is permissble to fill brass/heat if you are overheating).

Hemalurgy: Obviously creating a spike or spiking someone is forbidden (probably straight up, not just on shabbat), but once you are spiked, it defaults to the rules of the system in question.

Forging: Forbidden, to much of a change, even if it isn't "permanent".

Aon Dor: Literally no idea.

Awakening: Also kinda unsure.

Problem: I feel like a lot of your reasoning is more vibe-based than fully based on the laws. To be fair, I do think you're somewhat right, but let's actually look at things.

There are thirty nine primary forbidden actions during Shabbat. Outside from that, there are further prohibitions made for a variety of other reasons - preventing getting close to breaking one of the 39 or acting in un-Shabbat-like ways. Things can get vague, but we'll see.

You are assuming that using Stormlight is inherently breaking Shabbat, which itself is interesting. Yes, it's forbidden to carry money on Shabbat, but the prohibition is DeRabanan, meaning it comes from the secondary set of prohibitions. I don't fully remember the reasoning, but I think buying and selling on Shabbat is somewhere around "might cause you to write" or "too much of a weekdays' thing", and it in turn led to money becoming item used for forbidden actions. Which is about as convoluted as why musical instruments are Muktze if not more so, but nobody's asking me. Stormlight itself is energy, might be considered fire by some people? But even electricity isn't actually widely considered fire, despite what people think, so maybe not. If the use of Stormlight in itself isn't forbidden on Shabbat, spheres become no longer Kli sheMela’chto le’Issur, and thus might be allowed to carry on Shabbat.

Some of the surges, such as Division, are likely prohibited due to being prohibited actions: division is known to sometimes light fires. Cohesion and Tension seem to be creative to degrees that might make them considered building. Division is also mostly destructive, which may give it some grey area, but not much. I do agree that transformation would be a problem - that would be Nolad IMO, like ice melted or frozen on Shabbat. So that's out. Regrowth is healing, which is sort of prohibited on Shabbat if it's not to save lives? However, the original reasoning isn't too applicable here IMO, so it might be allowed regardless. Teleportation and Gravity are a bit weird - there are travel limitation on Shabbat. Gravitation in itself might not be that much of a problem, but using it to make objects fly... debatable, possibly fine.

I actually disagree with you about Illumination. People tend to see light as an extention of lighting a fire, but it's actually not that much of an essential change. Shallan tends to draw to use this power, which would be prohibited, but we know she's an oddity. Abrasion and Adhesion, the final two, are opposites - one sticks, one changes friction. I can't think of a direct Melacha related to each - maybe tying with Adhesion? Maybe tanning with Abrasion? But they might be fine.

Allomantic abilities. Well. There might be some Shechikat Samemanin issue here - shaving metal bits might be problematic. If you already have reserves, though... tin and pewter seem decent enough, maybe ‘Uvdin deḤol though - it's not very Shabbat-like to enhance your strength, and sports are prohibited on Shabbat... somewhere... on the second to third tier... I don't know. Iron and steel involve moving objects, which could be a problem if there's not Eruv. Easy to forget, moving objects more than four cubits in public spaces is prohibited.

Zinc and brass should be fine, IMO - it's happening in people's heads, so nothing creative happening in the world. Copper and Bronze are more on the ‘Uvdin deḤol area, so I'm a bit vague on them. Possibly allowed, especially if there's Pikuach Nefesh. Gold and Electrum are... well, kind of useless. I don't think there's much problem. Atium is a serious problem because it's usually associated with fighting and killing. Malatium can get an edge. But we don't care about those, do we?

Cadmium and Bendalloy, now that's interesting. Personally I think Cadmium should be prohibited because it allows you to shorten your Shabbat. Well, maybe not completely prohibited, but certainly discouraged. Aluminum and Chromium are destructive, which is probably in the same grey area as Division earlier, while Nicrosil and Duralumin... IDK. Since the whole burning thing is a metaphor, it's probably fine? But Allomancy might be completely prohibited due to that metaphor.

Feruchemy... well, I don't fully agree, again. Filling for the sake of having it later isn't allowed. Filling for the sake of the effect itself, though? I think it should be fine too. Pewter is again on a problematic area, IMO. Tin should be decently fine. Steel is probably with Pewter but allowed on certain conditions, iron is likely completely fine. Zinc gets a pass, not sure about Brass. Copper, Bronze... maybe, I don't know, probably fine.

Gold and Bendalloy and likely Cadmium too are prohibited for filling because ‘Oneg Shabbat. Tapping might be allowed. Electrum and the Spiritual metals are also probably fine.

You are right on the money with hemalurgy not being allowed on Shabbat. Even if it didn't involve murder, shedding blood on Shabbat is a problem - which, funnily enough, is coded in the Simple Rules on Threnody. Fun stuff. Anyway, no stage of the spiking is allowed, but I think most uses afterwards are rather passive so no need to consider that.

Sel magics are forbidden, but not for the reason you think. It's prohibited to write on Shabbat. Both forging and the Aon Dor require writing, even if it's sort of temporary and in the air. It's also not always two letters, but the writing systems used aren't alphabetical so it might work differently. Remind me to look up how writing Chinese is treated by Halacha. Though if we're being honest, the distinction between one and two letters isn't relevant in the modern day.

Awakening is creating life. G-d has rested on Shabbat from creation. That, admittedly, isn't too well-based on the halachic reasoning, but there's precedent to Golem creation and usage being disallowed on Shabbat so I'm going to stand on a firm no.

Personally, I think on some of the things I voiced an opinion here there could be deeper reasoning either way. It's actually all very complicated. So I think some Invested arts would be allowed and some not, but I don't think it's as straightforward as you listed it. However, it was a fun question to discuss! There's more to touch there too.

In addition to that, things like surgebinding might be a problem because of oaths. Judaism isn't big on swearing oaths in G-d's name too much, and is big on not swearing to foreign gods. So the Radiant oaths might be a problem. Now, of course, with how Roshar treats oaths swearing them to G-d might be fine. However, I'm not sure I won't to know how this clashes with Hatarat Nedarim.

On another note, anonymous asker, if you're not someone I know who's already involved in it, maybe you'd like helping with working on the Inexplicable Cosmere Judaism in general? Maybe if we have enough people involved I'll start a new discord server for that, actually. Right now it's mostly me and @springstarfangirl, and we're working on a thread in a shared server as well as in DMs and other random places, but I'm open to other people making contributions!

Well, since I've already arrived at the conclusion my PJO posts tend to get more traffic (even though that's very clearly not a hard-and-fast rule - I'm pretty sure my post about Minos stands at 4 notes or something), I've decided to be tricky and write a crossover post. Now, you've already seen my attempt at Reverse dæmorphing (if you've been following things; if you haven't, it's here). This is something I started thinking of a little before writing this post. So, some similar thought processes were applied - though the post you're currently reading is a little more of a "shitpost", as they are called.

So, without further ado: who I think would be the godly parent of every Animorphs member, what I think would be the battle morph of major PJO characters, and possible added bonus of theoretical dæmon forms for the PJO cast. Vague ideas about each direction of the crossover type discussed in said reverse Dæmorphing post (setting and characters of one franchise with overarching elements of the other interwoven in) might appear by the end.

First, godly parents of the Animorphs cast below the cut:

Cassie, now, is a bit of a problem. Possibly because I go too much with surface characterization. Cassie is the animal lover, "tree hugger" as Marco calls her, with the two veterinarian parents. This is, the only greek godess associated with the safety of wild animals I can currently remember is Artemis. The goddess with explicitly no children of her own. Of course, Cassie could be a follower of Artemis, but I don't really think it's a good idea. Beyond the standard point of the virginity oath clashing with her relationship with Jake - which I could ignore like I did with Tom, Jordan and Sarah - I don't actually think it fits her that well. She could be the daughter of Demeter, as this is another nature associated goddess, but Demeter is more concerned with plants, and cultivated ones at that. So I don't really think it's a good idea. A good alternative would be being a Satyr, as they love nature and are not restricted to plants. However... all satyrs are men. That's a hard and fast rule. You'll notice that there's never a mention of a female Satyr - when Coach Hedge talks about his mother, it's clear she's a cloud nymph. No other female relative of a Satyr is ever mentioned. At all. Neither are there female Centaurs, for that matter - and I believe ToA was the first to introduce a male driad, making most nymphs female. Same with Harpies, inasmuch as we've seen them as a species. I could probably research and find out the mythical reason for that. Or I could do the same as everyone inventing a demititan or halfblood children of Echidna/Nix/other beings that only had either divine or monsterous children and make up a female descendant of Pan. Is she a Satyr? shrugs. She's a Thing. That exists. For some unfathomable reason. In theory I could've made her a Poseidon legacy like Frank, but I don't think it's a good idea with how it breaks Morphing. I mean, if Frank's barrier initially was lack of familiarity with the animals he thought of, Cassie... well, Cassie will hack this ability and will be way better than Frank with it, very quickly. Sure, she might be unable to do dragons at first, but any animal that was treated in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is an immediate go at the very least. On that note, the interaction between godly powers and the morphing technology needs to be considered... but that's a topic for the end.

#animorphs #percy jackson #pjo #heroes of olympus #crossover thoughts #fantasy #science fiction #arch writes #arch's unfinished stories #hope not for anything #for nothing is likely to come

what if

Well, then...

What if is actually a fascinating question. It stands on the basis of imagination, and pretty much every fictional story can be framed around a "what if?" question. But since I'm a fantasy guy, I'll focus on this genre.

A what if question in the basis of a story can vary between a relatively simple "what if seven nigh-omnipotent wizards secretly ruled your city and were obsessed with your family specifically?" (Archer's Goon) to "what if the promised hero of a prophecy failed and you lived in a world where the villain won centuries ago?" (Mistborn, but also the Beyonders trilogy? Sort of? Each has some additional points in the premise that you could lust as a part of a what if question, but at this point it's more like "what if these three different what ifs were one and the same?" than anything else). Or, my recent attempt at exploring "what if Moav, Ammon, Edom and Phoenicia didn't lose their ancient language and culture following the multiple conquests of the Levant 2500 years ago?", which is admittedly a bit complex, and would need to get into why those nations disappeared while the Jewish nation survived two millennia of exile. And I'm sort of working on it right now.

Anyway, yeah. Don't know what else to say. I considered trying to take the famous tumblr meme "what if the world was made of pudding" and explore it to its full extent, but honestly I'm not sure I can. I mean, what if the world was made of pudding? Would physics have to be completely different so that the pudding world would still be able to hold the weight of solid matter? Would life evolve to swim in and eat the nutrients of the pudding sea? Would the intelligent life surfacing invent new recipes we'd never dream of that are based entirely on pudding? Would pudding be an element of its own in such a world? Will there be pudding benders? Will Glossarryck finally be satisfied?

Yeah, sorry, I just have no idea.

#asks #trutharchivist #arch writes #(kind of)#what if #archer's goon #mistborn #beyonders brandon mull #svtfoe #what if the world was made of pudding #that's probably some tags i should not have touched.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Human Character(s) Additional Tags: Judaism, Inexplicable judaism, jews in the cosmere, jews on roshar Series: Part 1 of Cosmere Jewish Diaspora Summary:

The Jewish community of Roshar responding to the Everstorm.

Thanks @springstarfangirl for the help

#jumblr #jewish fantasy #stormlight archive #arch writes #cosmere #Cosmere jewish diaspora #Inexplicable judaism #Only there's lore #because of course there is #fanfic #quick fiction #ao3 #up next: a Singer Passover

So, once upon a time I tried to think, hey. I know I want to be a Fantasy writer. So what kind of book do I want to write?

I mean, I had a couple of ideas I've tried to explore, but now I'm talking about the point I stopped and asked myself, hey. What kind of book do I want there to exist? One that I would like to read?

The thing is, I don't have a final answer, not yet. I do have a couple of ideas for things I like in books and that I'd want more of, and those will probably get there. But back then, one of my prominent ideas was the following: I really like Anne of Green Gables. And I really like fantasy. So what if I make an Anne of Green Gables-like story, but fantasy? With how imaginative Anne is the idea is provably workable, though that wasn't my primary direction originally. My basic idea was trying to take the plot of Anne of Green Gables and set it in a fantasy world. Is that self indulgent? Doesn't really add anything to the story? Maybe. But the purpose was self indulgent to begin with, so I don't really see a problem with this.

So I set out to try and write this. And I... didn't really manage to get anywhere with the idea. Maybe it's just that I get stuck on worldbuilding too often. Maybe it's the fact I barely actually write stuff, which may put my "writer" claim to doubt. But I kind of assumed it was the former, so I went and thought, which of the books I've read would lend itself best to an Anne of Green Gables type of story? And one of my weirdest realizations from that, which is the entire point of the post, was that the most AoGG fantasy book I ever read was Howl's Moving Castle.

You're unlikely to get that if you only watched the movie, I think. And it might be more alike than I imagined, or way less so. But here's my point: a ginger-headed girl with a temper and a lot of curiosity is completely oblivious to the feelings she has to her live interest until the end of the book, and due to that spends the entire book in an antagonistic relationship with him. Which isn't that much, I suppose. It didn't even sound better in my head. The original point was more about how HMC is very low stakes, quite a bit romantic (though not in the way modern romantasy books seem to be), possibly the fact both of them get to live in a new house and get its denizens to warm up to them. I don't really know. They feel alike to me, and I don't know how to explain it.

This likeness is not one to one, of course. And the structure of HMC is very different from AoGG, which gets to have a little more slice of life because it occurs during a ling period. Both books are very much slice of life, but HMC takes place over 8 weeks in total. AoGG takes place over 4 to 5 years, I believe, and that only accounting for the first book. And no, you can't compare them series to series, because the other books in the Howl trilogy aren't Howl and Sophie's story, not really. But I'm digressing. AoGG gets to give Anne a coming of age story, in a way, and includes many random incidents that happen throughout the span of these 5 years; in HMC, Sophie is 18 by the time the book starts and the short timespan means everything is condensed into it. So that's were my idea of Katie in the House of Mirrors came from - based on one passage from AoGG, I thought of attempting to place a new character in the Howl universe. That didn't go anywhere either, and by now I'm not sure it would. But at the time it seemed like a good idea. And there are no crossover fics between the two I could find. If you look them both up on Google you only get the anime of Anne and the Ghibli HMC movie, and Last I checked there was no crossover on AO3 - or maybe there was one that wasn't really a crossover.

Maybe writing that will drove me to try again something new. Maybe not, I don't really know. This was just me, putting random thoughts to words and posting them on the Internet.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

#hmc book #hmc #howl's moving castle #howl's moving castle book #anne of green gables #Trutharchivist #Arch writes #Arch's unfinished stories

The Jewsade

So, this isn't the first time I write about it. That honour belongs to the post I've made about Judaism in the world of His Dark Materials. However, that particular post was always meant to serve two branches - the one about history and the other about the Jewish outlook on dæmons. So I don't think it's a good post to introduce the idea. Thus, I'm honoured to present to you the new introduction to the Jewsade.

Firstly, I would like to tell you about a fascinating event from our world, the one that offers the basis to this story.

Imagine this: you are a Venetian Jew, living in the ghetto. Not too long ago, about two to three decades, there has been a wave of Sefaradi immigrants, escaping their banishment from their land. They don't have much hope anymore for things to get better, with friends and family suffering under the Spanish Inquisition.

Then, one day, an odd man comes to town. He's Jewish, relatively dark skin, on the shorter side, and wears exotic clothings. He speaks odd Hebrew, and claims to come from a Jewish kingdom far away to talk to the Pope. He needs some degree of financing from you so that he could go to Rome.

The community eventually finances him and he heads to Rome, riding a fine horse. He is accepted by the Jewish community there, and using the ties of one of their members, he manages to get an audieance with the Pope. To him, he explains: as he's the general of said Jewish kingdom (and the king's brother), he wants cannons and artillery from Europe to help him fight the Ottomans and take the Holy Land. He simply wants the Pope to give him recommendation letters to the kings of Europe, to persuade them to lend him their aid - in the form of weaponry, as he already has the people.

All that is real, historical events. Which, I really don't know how otherworldly it sounds, but it's not exactly normal. The story doesn't end here, but since the story of this Jewish (supposed) general is later intertwined with that of another person, and it would probably lengthen this post a little too much if I told it. And so, I prefer pausing here - especially since this is very close to the point of divergence.

The Pope geve this man - David Reubeni - recommendation letters to the kings of Portugal and Ethiopia. Reubeni got stuck in Italy for a while because the Portuguese ambassador didn't like or believe him, but he eventually went to Portugal where the Inquisition stopped for the duration of his visit. This sparked excitement among the conversos, the Jews of Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity just about two and a half decades earlier - which kind of annoyed king João I of Portugal, who asked David if he came to make the conversos go back to Judaism, which the latter denied. However, when one converso by the name of Diogo Pires came to David repeatedly, trying to talk to him about returning to Judaism and later circumcising himself of his own accord - well, that was the last straw. Diogo, who renamed himself Shəlomoh Molcho, was forced to flee Portugal and David had to leave later as well. Molcho went on to study much Torah and became something of a mystic. He prophecied an overflowing of the Tiber and an earthquake in Portugal, and even received official letters of protection from the Pope despite being a Christian who abandoned Catholicism to become a Jew. David went through some stuff, including being arrested in Spain and later freed, and the two of them eventually met and went to emperor Charles V of Germany (who was also Carlos I of Spain), hoping to... cpnvince him to help them, or convert to Judaism, or both. It doesn't matter, because they were arrested, tortured and executed (on separate occasions).

The world of the Jewsade tries exploring the question: but what if they did obtain the weaponry David Reubeni wanted so much? What if they managed conquering the Holy Land? Well, the first problem with that is David's claims about a Jewish kingdom, which he claims was located "in the desert of Ḥabor". To be more accurate, the problem is this kingdom being fake.

As far as modern historians know, there has not been any independent Jewish kingdom anywhere ever since Khazar, which is itself a debated topic. The likelihood of an actual Jewish kingdom existing around the 16th century is slim at best. The historians also don't really know where David came from exactly - was he from the Arabian peninsula? Ethiopia? India? Was he, perhaps, an Ashkenazi Jew who spent a lot of times around southern or eastern areas? All those are theories that were raised.

For the sake of my story, I'm considering having it be that he told the full truth: somewhere in the Arabian peninsula, in areas not fully controlled by the Ottomans, there's a Jewish kingdom of people from the tribes of Re'uven and Gad, ruled over by a king of the Davidic line and a council of 70 elders. Another option is David managing to bluff his way through to the king of Portugal while simultaneously recruiting Jewish men from across Europe to serve as his army. Though I'm considering doing both - maybe the Jewish kingdom exists, but it's way smaller than David made it out to be and they don't really have enough soldiers to man many cannons and weaponry alone isn't really enough.

In this continuity, maybe the Pope gives David more recommendation letters. Maybe Shəlomoh Molcho manages to hide his return to Judaism and helps convince the king of Portugal to lend David the weapons and ships, then joins him with a bunch of conversos to escape Portugal and return to Judaism. I don't really know yet what happened, and the way I'm trying to tell the story right now doesn't really require me to know much outside the final outcome: an independent Jewish kingdom in Israel, in spite of both the Ottoman empire and European rising colonial powers wanting to control it.

This kingdom might be in a precarious situation. It might be destroyed by the Ottomans in any minute, or have to bow down before Christian rulers. However, for the time being, there's a Jewish kingdom in Eretz Yisra'el. The Temple might be rebuilt, Jews might flood the newly established kingdom... and we'll have to see.

As mentioned in a different post, the format I'm currently trying is telling the story through various documents, so far including the preface and Hascamot on a halachic book and a letter from this kingdom's king to Jews in diaspora. Since this is supposedly in the world of His Dark Materials, there should probably be dæmons, and by the time the kingdom is founded the Pope will be replaced by John Calvin. Depending how long the kingdom will stand, it might get a chance to put its hands on an Alethiometer as well. The likelihood of that, though, is low.

#jumblr #judaism #jewblr #jewish fantasy #jewish history #alternate jewish history #the jewsade #david reubeni #shəlomoh molcho #depending on how thing happen #this might affect the colonization of the americas #hdm #his dark materials #(kind of)#alternate history #arch writes

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Daemon Character(s), Original Characters Additional Tags: Book: La Belle Sauvage, Historical jewish publication, hebrew antiquarian society, jews in lyra's world, sorry that it's in Hebrew, will translate in the future Series: Part 1 of Jews and His Dark Materials Summary:

In Lyra's world, it's not only Oakley Street and Lord Asriel that have to deal with the ever-tightening grasp of the Magisterium. The Jewish people of this world just as well have to deal with persecutions, pogroms and prohibitions. But still they live on to practice their faith and publish their books. In Edinburgh in Scotland there's a publishing house that tries to deal with the trouble. This is its story.

That's my attempt at a fic. Oxford technically features, but the fic is currently in Hebrew. G-d willing I will translate it soon. I'll also try writing for today's prompt for @hdmweek. Also, tagging @jewsinfandoms. Despite this not being exactly for the latest prompt, I hope it'll be fine. I'll be sure to notify you if I have something worth adding to the collection.