#betweencrossedblades

[reireiart]

Wen Qing in C2 if you're still doing the outfit prompt!

she was made to be this fierce !! 🔥

outfit prompt here !

[cicelythereaper]

Sing to me, o muse, of the impossible hard in wrath of the druids

THIS

FUCKING

"HARP"

[taking a deep breath]

so i am not an expert on period instruments. i am but a simple modern harpist (lapsed) who has also seen illustrations of early medieval harps

SPOILERS: THIS SHIT AIN'T EITHER OF THOSE.

when you first look at this it looks as like it's meant to be concert-harp-shaped but tiny, which is [pause to break into hysterical laughter] FUCKING WILD, if those strings are meant to meet the soundboard (the big chonky bit they're going down towards) then she's gonna have trouble actually getting her fingers in to pluck some of them. harps do not scale down like that. SIR.

anyway, that was originally what i thought and was furious about, and then i was googling images for this post and realised i had been wrong!

as we can see here (ignore the face paint, do not think about the face paint, do not think about the cross brooches on an anachronistically-non-christian character), the strings actually come down PAST the soundboard. in fact the harp looks like this:

BRO WHAT THE FUCK.

now the thing is, the strings coming down over the soundboard to the bottom of the frame is actually pretty accurate to at least some medieval harps! here is a 1774 illustration i nicked off wikipedia of some medieval harps:

you can see that in addition to the triangle-shaped harp where the strings come down THROUGH the gap to MEET the soundboard, there is also a more lyre-like harp where the strings come down OVER the gap and are drawn together ACROSS the soundboard. and yes, this illustration is from 1774, but we do see these two varieties of harp reflected in medieval art:

that first image is from an 11th-century irish reliquary and (i believe) is thought to be the earliest extant depiction of an irish harp; the second one is from the vespasian psalter, an 8th-century english manuscript.

also both are being played by religious figures, the first by a cleric and the second by king david, no i'm not bitter about how extremely invested ac:valhalla is in depicting ahistorical levels of popular paganism in the 9th century why do you ask

so based off these images it looks like the wrath of the druids designers wanted to make a classic triangle-shaped harp (with as much curviness and celtic-looking knotwork as possible), but they also wanted to have the strings come down past the soundboard like they do on the NON-triangle-shaped harps, because..... ""historical accuracy""? I GUESS?????

and then, crucially, they forgot to ask how this harp would actually make a noise.

THE GAP IS NECESSARY YOU FUCKING FOOLS. THE GAP. IS NEEDED. FOR THE STRINGS. TO RESONATE IN. THE GAP IS WHAT SEPARATES THE PLUCKED STRINGS OF THE HARP FROM THE VIOLIN PIZZICATO SOUND. AND SOME OF YOUR STRINGS DON'T EVEN CROSS THE GAP MY GUY YOU HAVE NOT DESIGNED A MEDIEVAL HARP YOU HAVE INVENTED A SHITTY GUITAR AT BEST*

*IF the harp's frame is hollow, which i can't tell: the metalwork on the frame suggests it might... be...? if the harp's frame ISN'T hollow then the player is absolutely shit out of luck but if it is hollow then it will at least make some sort of noise. so i am told by my friend who knows more about instrument construction than i do.

also those strings look so tightly fitted to the body of the harp you're gonna bash your fuckin fingernail on the wood of the frame when you try to pluck them. IF you can even pluck them at all. YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO GET YOUR FINGER UNDER THE STRING. YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO GET YOUR HAND INTO THE GAP HOW IS THIS DIFFICULT

the shape just doesn't make any sense!!! it doesn't make any sense at all!!! the triangle-shaped harp is shaped that way because the pitch of the strings is determined by their length (and also how tightly they're wound around their pegs). on a triangle-shaped harp the soundboard is at an ANGLE so each string coming down from the top of the frame will hit it at a DIFFERENT POINT and thus be a DIFFERENT LENGTH. but that's not how they've attached the strings to this harp so why the fuck would you make it that shape!!! now you have an ASYMMETRICAL GAP with STRAIGHT STRINGS and you're going to hell!!!

actually now that i'm looking closer at the strings it REALLY looks like they have tried to make them the same shape as they would be on a concert harp, wavy at the top and diagonal at the bottom, but that doesn't actually match the shape of the harp they've made and IS ALSO NOT HOW STRINGS THAT GO OVER THE SOUNDBOARD WORK, HOW ARE YOU TUNING THIS, HOW ARE YOU CREATING PITCH WITH THIS, AMERICA CANADA EXPLAIN -

(while i was making this post i went to go look up what instrument they actually used for the song she's performing and i assume it's this one - einar selvik calls it a lyre:

- which as you can see looks NOTHING LIKE the mess we got in the game on account of it has to actually work and make sounds.)

anyway. this harp is stupid and would make a stupid noise and as a harpist (lapsed) i am embarrassed on behalf of this game that they thought this was a believable instrument. thank you for inviting me to yell about it.

[aboutiroh]

green tea, green tea, and more green tea...I have tea from Hangzhou in China that got squashed in my suitcase and manga tea from Dehradun in India that spilled everywhere and I picked it up and put it back in the box and it'll be fine, probably...I love tea so much

^^^^ This is the last tea related ask I have in my inbox at the moment and I kept it for last so we could end this conversation with some green tea appreciation.

[lilolilyrae]

(answering asks here bc I reached post limit on @lilolilyr)

WIP guessing game

@betweencrossedblades thank you for the ask! I've no idea what my WIPs were when you sent this xD from my current ones, none seem to have the word 'red', but when I search for it, some other words show up that have the letters... So, have a quick excerpt of an Andromaquynh college AU story including the word 'scared'!

From chapter 9 or 10 of "I Can't Think Straight" (1-8 already on ao3, link to my ao3 in the blog description of @lilolilyr)

There's a knock on her door.

"Quynh?" she can hear Andy's voice in the hallway, sounding so careful and timid, almost scared in a way that is very uncharacteristical of her, that it makes Quynh want to get up, open the door and hug her close, but she doesn't move.

"Quynh, are we still on to watch the next episode later?"

Quynh holds her breath and pretends that she can't hear her, that she isn't there. That's futile of course, Andy must know that she hasn't left her room since they ran into each other, but she still hopes that she will go away and leave her alone.

Thank you so much for the ask!

[finnlongman]

Heh, thank you. I'm in my fifth (non-consecutive) year of studying Old Irish, because apparently I'm a masochist, and I'm still not convinced I'm any better at it than I was in, say, my second year. But ah well.

Fortunately, I'm not (currently) translating this text, just transcribing it and analysing the manuscript itself, so I am spared trying to make sense of Lugh's rambling. But I do have to translate some of it later this year, for my thesis, so... RIP me in advance, I suppose.

[lilolilyr]

Thank you for tagging me @smittyjaws !!! <3

I tag @bettylove @cryhardanddanceharder, @bookerandy @thegalaxyonherlips @pers-books @taiahmaire @kayivy @nomi--sunrider @betweencrossedblades & everyone else who sees this and want to do it!

Do yours here!

[lilolilyr]

3 things ask: 37, 9? :D

9. 3 things you like doing on a rainy day

Drink hot chocolate & read a good book while listening to the rain! Also sometimes I just run outside into the rain for a mo', but only if I can dry & warm up immediately after lmao

37. 3 languages you would love to learn

I'm absolutely terrible at learning languages and hate the thought of trying to learn another one (already fluent in German and English and able to mostly understand French and Spanish and some Dutch but not rly making any progress in the latter three for years now), so this is more of a languages I would like to magically know than learn... ok it's hard to pick bc there are so many but I think I'd like to know Japanese, Dutch and Russian. (If I did have a magic language geenie I would have to stop myself from asking for Elvish Vulcan and Klingon tho. Like, I know fantasy languages aren't helpful in the real world, but- elvish! comeon!)

Thanks so much for the questions!!!

3 thinks ask | fanfic ask | do I ship it?

[talesofsorrowandofruin]

why armenian? 0.0. why so many types of armenian? 0.0. are you secretely my 45 year old ex linguistics professor who fell in love with an armenian girl, became obsessed with the language, and then made it his career (and I always wonder what his wife thinks about that)???

(Important question, was the Armenian girl his wife or did he fall in love with someone while married? 0_0)

I'm interested in Armenian in general because I plan to teach English there (fun fact: I first became interested in Armenia when I created an Armenian OC, started to do research, and thought "Oh, this is a really cool place"). I want to learn Eastern Armenian because it's the dialect spoken in Armenia, Western Armenian because it's the dialect spoken by the diaspora and is classified as an endangered language, and Classical Armenian because most of Armenian literature from the 5th to 18th centuries is written in it.