TentativeWanderer on AO3. Twitter: @TTTVWanderer. Here lie my occasional thoughts on books and a dragon hoard of reblogs 🧚♀️🧞♀️🧜🏻♀️ My Danmei Book Recommendations :) 🏯📚🔖
📚 Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014660/chapters/68624541
An AO3 glitch is screwing with me, which will likely result in less people seeing this fic on the AO3 results page, so please reblog this post if you enjoyed this fic and would like to give me a helping hand!
Thank you everyone. I hope you’ll have/you had fun reading this story. I had fun writing it.
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
"But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?" -- Ursula K. Leguin
I highly recommend watching this testimony from Aliya Rahman, the disabled woman who was dragged out of her car and kidnapped by ICE on her way to a doctor appointment in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.
Thank you members, for taking the time to be here today, and thank you staff for making this happen.
My name is Aliya Rahman, and I am a resident of South Minneapolis. I am a Bangladeshi American born in Northern Wisconsin. And I’m a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury.
Not all autistic brains do this, but mine fixates on sounds, numbers, and patterns. And while what the world saw happen to me exactly three weeks ago today on video was a terrible violation it is still nothing compared to the horrific practices I saw inside the Whipple center.
So I am here today with a duty to the people who have not had the privilege of coming home, and I offer this data because these practices must end now.
On January 13th on the way to my 39th appointment at Hennepin County’s traumatic brain injury center, I encountered a traffic jam caused by ICE vehicles and no signs indicating how to get around it. I had not wanted to pull in to a blocked, chaotic intersection, but verbally agreed to do so and rolled down my window after an agent yelled, “Move! I will break your f-ing window!”
His first instruction.
Agents on all sides of my vehicle yelled conflicting threats and instructions that I could not process while watching for pedestrians.
Then, the glass of the passenger side window flew across my face.
I yelled, “I’m disabled!” at the hands grabbing at me and an agent said, “Too late.”
I felt immersed in a pattern, and I thought of Jenoah Donald, an autistic black man killed by the police during a traffic stop in 2021.
I remembered mister Silverio Villegas González, who was killed by ICE in his vehicle last year.
An agent pulled a large combat knife in front of my face, which I thought was for cutting me, and later learned was used to cut off my seat belt. Shooting pain went through my head, neck, and wrists when I hit the ground face first and people leaned on my back.
I felt the pattern, and I thought of mister George Floyd, who was killed four blocks away.
I was carried face down through the street by my cuffed arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain injury and was disabled. I now cannot lift my arms normally.
I was never asked for ID.
Never told I was under arrest.
Never read my rights.
And never charged with a crime.
Approaching the Whipple center, I saw black and brown bodies shackled together, chained together, being marched by yelling agents outdoors. I continued to hear the word “bodies”, because that is how agents referred to us:
“We’re bringing in a body.”
“They’re bringing in bodies 7, 8 at a time, where do I put ‘em?”
“We can’t use that room, there’s already a body in there.”
You have no reason to believe you will make it out alive if you’re already being called a body.
Agents repeatedly had to stop and ask how to do tasks. I received no medical screening, phone call, or access to a lawyer. I was denied a communication navigator when my speech began to slur. Agents laughed as I tried to immobilize my own neck. I asked for my cane and was told no, pulled up by my arms and prodded forward in leg irons by agents laughing and saying, “Walk! You can do it, walk.”
Agents did not know if the facility had a wheelchair.
When I was finally placed in one to be taken to interrogation an agent taunted, “You were driving, right? So your legs do work.”
I pleaded for emergency medical care for over an hour after my vision had become blurry, my heart rate went through the roof, and the pain in my neck and head became unbearable.
It was denied.
When I became unable to speak my cellmate pleaded for me.
The last sounds I remember before I blacked out on the cell floor were my cellmate banging on the door, pleading for a medic, and a voice outside saying, “We don’t wanna step on ICE’s toes.”
When I opened my eyes at Hennepin County’s emergency room, I learned I was brought there to be treated for assault.
The impacts of DHS detention on my physical, mental and financial well-being and safety have been very severe, but I do not deserve more humane treatment than anyone else, US citizen or not. And I am here today with a strong spirit and a duty to the many people who haven’t had the privilege to tell their stories or see their loved ones come home. I am extremely distressed by the pattern that violence from law enforcement has been happening to black and indigenous communities for centuries, and to DHS survivors for over 20 years.
We call ourselves a civilized nation, but we lack rules and accountability around what a person claiming to be law enforcement is permitted to do to another human being.
I am not afraid, and I’m not afraid to keep working on this problem even after ICE is gone. Thank you for your time.
Suddenly woke up around 4PM with a vivid idea for a DnD-style fantasy anime, about a generic fantasy hero having to save the world with a representative member of each of the other four major allied races: gnoll, dryad, naga, nurikabe. (No, I don't know why my brain decided on those.) This has been a recurring event through history to repel an ancient evil, but it's been centuries since the last time.
There's a major gulf of cultural understanding because the human kingdom has since moved far from the others, but it's still traditionally the human hero's role to translate. So, the human kingdom's court mage casts a spell on him so he can see them the usual way with one eye, but as humanized versions showing what they seem like to their *own* races with the other; he has to swap around an eye patch to go between them or he gets dizzy from the overlay.
Character descriptions and more worldbuilding under the cut (sorry, they're rambling notes I just hammered out quickly before I forgot anything; no names yet because I thought of it literally hours ago):
gnoll, female (cleric, general, war hero)
normal: sounds like a man talking like a yakuza, seems to belittle the hero and mockingly call him princess
- as it turns out, "princess" is how she translates a standard term of respect for gnolls (since they're matriarchal)
- just as he thinks she seems like a man at first, she has trouble seeing him as anything other than a fresh-faced young woman (when in fact he's a fresh-faced young man)
humanized: calm MILF that talks politely and intelligently about strategy, is very sympathetic and motherly
- gnoll would also like to actually act more like this, and puts on a little bit of an act for the other gnolls to be an encouraging leader they can look up to
- once he sees her like this, the hero realizes that her apparent insults and threats were just her way of being an encouraging parental figure he could confide in
- even though she tries to be more of a maternal figure to him, he has the hots for her
dryad, female (champion, guardian)
normal: cool, mysterious green elf maiden with long pink hair, butterfly wings and black insectoid eyes (evokes the way Tezuka and Cyborg 009's creator sometimes drew women with solid, shiny black eyes)
- has wings and eyes because of the caterpillars that nest in her tree's branches; is incredibly strong because she can tap into the weight and strength of her tree, despite looking like a waif
- speaks like a cultured princess
humanized: more orc/gobliny bruiser type, very buff, though still has wings; has a face like a Titmouse female character, e.g. the washed-up star in Ballmastrz: 9009
- talks in a very rude, slangy way; other dryads always speak in haiku-like metaphors, so her direct speech feels this way to them
- since she looks so human begin with, the magic doesn't alter her much, so her green skin and sharp teeth make her look less human than the others this way
- apart from style (scruffy, puffy 80s hair instead of long, neat locks; tattered Tinkerbell dress instead of elf gown) and buffness, the only major way she's different is having wide, crazy eyes with tiny pupils instead of insectoid black eyes
naga, male (accomplished wizard)
regular: big, scary, buff anthro snake guy, lower body is completely snake; face doesn't emote, speaks only in short, terse sentences, hisses constantly
- is actually about half the size of most nagas
- early on they see a pillar sculpted in the shape of a naga, and he sheepishly has to explain to the hero that that's how big nagas normally are
- keeps a fanny pack with his spell components and a magical heating rock for regulating his body temperature in it
- race is known for being highly religious, devoted to their goddess; the reason for this is their species doesn't normally have childcare, so instead every naga is raised by a manifestation of their goddess directly, though their connection to her fades to almost nothing by adulthood
humanized: little scrawny guy with long black hair that covers half his face; kind of evokes the main character of WataMote, only genderswapped and with flat hair more like Sadako
- whiny, scared nerd; kind of evokes Kobeni, but without the badassery to compensate, apart from being a talented wizard
- the human hero was scared of him but also thought he was really cool before; now, pretty underwhelmed by him but still grows to like him as a friend
- he gets bullied by the dryad, and before the magic vision kicks in the hero thinks there's serious racial tension between them; it turns out it's just kind of playful bullying, though, and they're each relieved to have a member of a familiar race there
- though the naga is big and burly next to the dryad in reality (but she's still super-strong and can easily physically overpower him), he's a little skinny guy next to the more orc-like humanized version of her
- the hero thought he was intensely religious at first, always invoking the blessing of his goddess; after the sight kicks in, he realizes the naga is just always crying for mommy
- the hero thought the naga was cold for usually hissing in his own language and refusing to translate for him; turns out it's because he's just mumbling to himself constantly, and it's usually pretty lame and embarrassing stuff
- the hero can also use the magic vision to look back on memories; he realizes that at one point he commented on how the naga didn't talk much and he had trouble understanding him (very hissy voice, of course); he realizes then that when he was hissing to himself, the naga was bragging to himself about how he's at least confident in his ability to speak the common language, which is very difficult for nagas with their snake-like mouths; the hero saying that actually crushed him
nurikabe, male (not especially esteemed among his race, but they're now a very scattered diaspora, and he is known for being a deadly assassin by the other races)
regular: to the hero he just seems like a big, cute, fluffy mascot kind of design that's lazy and flops over on him constantly to snooze
- in this POV, the hero can't understand what he's saying it all, it just seems like cute animal noises that only the gnoll understands
- the naga and dryad can't understand him either, but still think he's a scary monster
- this is also the impression the hero gets just because he has no idea what a nurikabe is; to people who know better (humans included), he's a terrifying man-eating beast
- the hero does see him eat monsters, but it seems like a cute little thing where he just gulps them down instantly, Kirby style
- obviously, based more on the traditional nurikabe design than Shigeru Mizuki's
- nurikabes are chameleons that can blend in with any wall, ceiling, or floor (like many obscure old DnD monsters), or even (like in myth) just turn into a totally invisible barricade
humanized: a grizzled old DILF with a rough past full of regrets, shows great remorse for the things he's done
- kind of evokes Solid Snake
- he slumps against the hero because of an old injury that makes it painful to stand or walk for long periods
- he and the gnoll get along, talk about the old days sometimes
- hero realizes that the cute animal noises he made with a placid face were actually his traumatized accounts of events from his past--people he mugged, kidnapped, murdered
More wordbuilding and plot notes:
he's only bound to the other members of his party to be able to see them like this, other races (and even others members of these races) still seem the same to him
though it's symbolically his eye, he can also hear them differently and understand them speaking other languages when that eye is uncovered
they spend the series exploring a dungeon that is all bizarrely spatially distorted, kind of like M.C. Escher's art or House of Leaves, with huge empty areas that go off into a bizarre void; the building itself twists off in strange formations, some plant-like, some fractal or otherwise mathematical
once a week they can teleport back to a major city to restock on supplies
humans once lived in a kingdom that was central to the other races, and served as the go-between, which is why the human hero was traditionally the translator; however, in the intervening centuries the human kingdom has moved far out, and many humans (the hero included) have never even met another non-human
the hero can't read, so he also has no access to information about the other races, and can only go by what the officials of the court try to cram in at the last minute before he goes to represent them; in a way this is a boon, though, since he has no pre-formed prejudices other than those based on what they look and act like
it takes a while for the eye magic to kick in, so for the first day or so he gets to know the others as they seem from a human perspective
as the series goes on, he comes to see how the others actually do act like the humanized view of them
- well, kinda--the way other people even of your own race see you isn't necessarily the real you, or how you see yourself; he helps the other characters realize things about themselves
the other races are also distant from each other, which is why they need a "translator" (even sharing a common language); the dryads and nagas live close to each other and are on friendly terms, same with the gnolls and the nurikabe, but each finds the other two races strange and difficult to understand
- until the hero gets his magic sight, the gnoll is the only one who understands the nurikabe
each race sent a letter or ambassador ahead of time to tell the human kingdom what to expect from their champion; the hero was given these descriptions, but has trouble placing who is who because they're so different from his impression of them (of course matching what he sees with the magic eye)
In the intelligent mature MILF perspective, the gnoll tells them that she is going to set up "a protective perimeter to keep enemies at bay." The hero swaps his eyepatch and sees that she's lifting a leg to mark their territory
The dryad stops her at the last minute. In the maiden view she seems to be reasonably saying that would be a bad idea, in the bruiser view she's screaming "IF YOU TAKE A LEAK EVERY MONSTER WILL KNOW WE'RE HERE YOU MANGY MUTT"
Previously, the hero had the impression that the naga was even more religious than the gnoll, even though she's a cleric. He then realizes that the naga's devout prayers are actually him screaming "Mommy, I'm scared! Mommy, help me!! MOOOOMMMYYYYY"
At some point, the hero sees how he looks to the others (in each representation flipped to be a member of that character's race, except for the nurikabe, who has lived among humans more than his own race). The gnoll sees him as a girl, though an optimistic and likable one, and a strong warrior; the naga thinks it's kind of weird he looks like a plant, but likes that he's figuratively and literally warm; the nurikabe sees him as tragically naive and vulnerable; and the dryad sees him as this oblivious little squishy thing that stumbles around and accidentally starts fires, but is still funny and fun to be around.
More under the cut:
The hero does eventually describe for the others how he sees them. The naga is extremely flattered to hear how cool he seems from the human perspective.
In general, the naga's cool arms crossed pose as the snake man shifts in the humanized view to crossing his arms more like he's hugging himself and tapping his foot nervously (the hero realizing that the tip of his tail was always wiggling)
There would be a point where the dryad gives an opponent a serious verbal teardown before kicking their ass, showing what values are important to her and what she's spent her life striving for; in that moment, the hero's two images of the way she's acting unify
The hero starts to see the others as emoting appropriately even when they're not in the humanized view, realizing now how they express what they're feeling
At some point, the others learn that the hero can't read. He is the only one that can't read. They all take turns helping him learn.
The hero saved his kingdom once before this with a human band of adventurers, which is why he was the champion the human kingdom chose. He was the leader then, though, and is disheartened to hear that the gnoll will be the leader, and he will be the "cultural translator." He has no idea how he's supposed to act in just the role of "cultural translator," especially knowing nothing about the cultures he's translating for. As a result, he's initially resentful of the gnoll, but eventually comes to like her the most (as well as develop a huge crush on her).
Of course, because of the magic eye, he ends up actually taking on the role of cultural translator. There are many instances where one character is being misunderstood by the others, and he has to step in for them. As a result, he develops close relationships with all of them.
The history of the dungeon is just a take on the Tower of Babel. In this version of the story, however, the gods' punishment not only separates the races, but also completely inverts the tower into a dungeon that extends deep into the earth, and is still growing downwards to this day. The tower/dungeon is itself alive from the magic of the curse, and in a constant state of pain and fear. Because of the intensity of how the gods cursed it, the more it grows, the more it tears apart the nature of reality around it. It takes members of the five races that built the tower to venture down to its "head" and give it peace by coming together and understanding one another once more. It used to be that this needed to be done every fifty years; the last heroes were so successful that the tower/dungeon slept a few centuries before waking to its nightmares again. However, this means that the tower/dungeon is now deeper than ever.
In fact, all of the dungeon monsters are manifestations of these waking nightmares. There's even an idea that the tower/dungeon's nightmares retroactively created everything in existence, even the races that built it and the gods that unintentionally brought it to life.
Male Scifi and Fantasy writers: Look at this !Strong! female character! She can fight and solve puzzles, and ends up with the sidekick not the hero! Isn’t she a great character?
Everyone:No, she’s one-dimensional and still only exists to please the hero’s ego
Male scifi and fantasy writers:You’re never happy! This is how characters are written! Besides, it’s much harder for us to write women because we are men!
Terry Pratchett: *creates a female character who is literally the embodyment of a dog, sets her up to be the love interest of Protagonist Hero Man.* *writes her as clever, emotionally tortured, lonely and powerful* *uses her to explore difficulties of bisexuality and masculine dominated workforces*
Terry Pratchett: *Creates a pair of old witches, one of whom is a virgin and the other who has slept with lots of men.* *makes them best friends, never dismisses one lifestyle of the other, explains lifestyle choices based on characters history and personality, uses this to develop each character as the books progress*
Terry Pratchett: *Writes Sybil Rankin* *makes the powerful rich lady heavy set but beautiful, never plays her by her looks, develops her as she ages, acknowledges the way society views such people and then spits on their attitudes* *does it again with Agnes*
Terry Pratchett: *Writes a book about an entire army secretly being women, creates complex female relationships, introduces same sex relationships completely naturally*
Terry Pratchett: *takes old joke about female dwarves and uses it to explore gender identity without making it seem forced or unnatural, carefully discusses some of the issues and complextities whilst still making funny and witty observasions and maintaining genuine fantasy tropes*
Terry Pratchett: *DOES THIS ALL OVER AND OVER AGAIN, DEVELOPING CHARACTERS AS HIS VIEW OF THE WORLD DEVELOPS AND CAREFULLY APOLOGIZES FOR EARLY MISTAKES*
Terry Pratchett: *takes young woman determined to be a respectable domestic housewife sort complete with busybody tendencies, gives her financial stability, she becomes the greatest journalist of her generation*
Terry Pratchett: *follows the development of young country girl who with the help and support of many allies grows into the most powerful witch on the Disc while staying true to her core beliefs and principles*
Terry Pratchett: *finds and demonstrates the value of unpleasant and antagonistic women because really no one is wholly bad and even unlikable people have a lot to offer*
Say what you will about Van Helsing 2004; hate it, love it, be indifferent, But the All-Hallow's masquerade ball went sooooo hard and it had zero right to do so! It's a fun, campy, monster mash movie with wonderfully dated ( and expensive) cgi and non-stop action meant to be a popcorn flick one takes out to watch around spooky season. And it has this* chef's kiss* GORGEOUS 6 minute sequence plopped arbitrarily in the second act, which unexpectedly surpasses nearly every other ball in the last 30+ years of film( notable exception being the Cinderella 2015 ball) for literally no reason other than to be dramatic af.
Like feast your eyes on this Gothic masterpiece!!! Who doesn't want to immediately live in this picture?!??
They used those candles with oil in them so that they would have real candles, real string orchestra( I believe), probably around 100 real life extras( something which is tragically absent in modern film), said extras are all in beautiful fully decked-out costumes( which are in luxuriously dark colours, but nearly no fully black, another thing you cannot say for much modern cinema), REAL CIRQUE DU SOLEIL PERFORMERS for all the acrobatics!!!! Hell, instead of filming in a sound stage, where they could control the reverb and the acoustics and the size of the set and the bloody lighting ( they apparently had a heck of a time emulating the firelight for this sequence) and the temperature( it's very cold in stone churches!) better, they filmed in a Baroque church in Prague! As I said, peak dramatic splendour, jfc...
Think about that a second...They filmed a vampire masquerade in a Baroque Catholic Church( St. Nicholas' in Lesser Town, if you were curious) with amazing over-the-top acoustics and marble statues and real, tiled floors and marble pillars and a choir loft which they very much utilized, covered the pipe organ and the altar with a grand brocade curtain so it wouldn't be so obviously a, you know, a church! And there's a gold gilt elevated and canopied pulpit into which they put two vampire kiddies for, again, the sake of being dramatic.
And the costumes! They remind me of the 25th anniversary Phantom of the Opera Masquerade costumes. Same quality, like they're old, well-cared-for costumes pulled out of a warehouse, instead of fast industry churn-outs. With lots of trim and colour and masks and lace and feathers and..just...ugh.. they are all perfect! Just look at all the head pieces on the ladies and the hats on all the gentleman ( save Dracula of course) and the powdered wigs on the musicians. ANNNNDD! The dresses are historically correct!!!!!! It's the 80's bustle era! Nobody does the 80's bustle era in film anymore and it's a bummer. Oh and one other thing! Anna's ( and other women's) hair, at least here in the ball, is also historically accurate because it's all pinned up! None of those fucken modern beachwaves at a ball! Everybody's got updo's!
Gah, I swear, Dracula in his gold cloak really does things to me in this scene!
By the way, the acrobatics are bonkers in here for just background stuff!! Especially the random guys on unicycles and the dude playing the violin whilst standing on a ball...Like....WHAT?
Anyways, all this to say, that this masquerade ball feels sooo real and tangible and because of that it blows every other film out of the water, and no, I will not change my mind!!!!!
Here's a few more gifs, bcuz, why the hell not, this scene is sexy as fuu*ck?
Today I was listening to Jane Goodall being interviewed and she said something I knew about but had forgotten. The whole reason she went off to Africa to study chimps in the wild was because she was madly in love with Tarzan. Huge fangirl!
"He married the wrong Jane!" she laughed.
But she was so caught up in the romance of it all that she literally went off to live with chimps at a time when field studies of wild animals simply did not exist, and women were not taken very seriously as scientists. And basically invented a whole approach to studying wild animals that is standard today, changed everything we know about chimps, and became one of nature's biggest champions.
Because she loved real animals and one fictional man.
Not everyone has been around a horse to realize just how large and powerful (and fickle) animals they are. Even fewer have seen a few, let alone one, horse charge at them.
You are pressed to find a soul alive today that can testify to the experience of several hundred horses charging at your direction and you know they intend to charge past, over, and through you. The realization is alone enough to shake your will.
But then there is the sound. Imagine the space in your mind that 5 horses take up, then expand that to get close to what a charge might be sized at. 10 horses isn't enough. not 50 horses. 200 horses? That is not enough either. Imagine 1,000 horses coming your way with 4,000 steel hooves thundering, and you know nothing can change their minds heading your way - and the one thing that is expected to stop them are your and your friend's bodies.
This is a gap in recorded/presented/easy-to-imagine history in which you can imagine the shape of a role of the “Irish” Hobelar as a fighting unit.
Hobelars were mounted on small gaited native pony-horses called hobbies; carrying no gear and wearing no armour and riding practically bareback, a feat made possible by the fast smooth pace of the hobby (whose gait would presumably resemble the Icelandic pony’s tölt or the Mongolian war pony’s joroo.) the Irish Hobby is now extinct, but the name is where we get the word “hobby” from - an activity done for pleasure. This sounds made-up, doesn’t it? You can read a long post by myself and contributors here, which includes this poem from someone describing their fighting style and how annoying it was:
And one amang, an lyrysch man, Uppone his hoby swyftly ran; Hyt was a sportfulle sygthe, How hys darttes he did schak ; And when him lyst to leve or tak, They had fulle gret dispite.
There are a few reasons why you haven’t heard of hobelars (god forbid people have hobbies). It is important to the imperial construction of the myths of the British Isles (and the French) that Celtic people be negligible and subjugated in any narrative of medieval warfare. They did not correspond to a social class outside of warfare: you can spin so MANY sexy aristocracy-reinforcing tales of chivalry around knights that we’re still doing so today. Sexy tormented superhero with his ARMOUR and his SWORD and his big HORSE - let’s roleplay this 5 million times, and for political comfort, rather than trampling the peasants he now rules, we shall enshrine and repeat the safe metaphorical image of the “dragon” for him to fight as well…
Guy Who Just Caught A Wild Hobby From A Bog And Doesn’t Wear Armour (and runs around bareback, throwing stuff and being incredibly fast and annoying, and vanishing when you tried to kill them back) is just… less sexy. They literally weren’t superheroes. There is discomfort as well - if we kept their imagery, we couldn’t give them fictions to fight; hobelars were not romantic, they had no fixed honour; they were always a scrambling skirmishing fighting unit for killing people. As an academic puts it:
The hobelar is very much the poor relation in the study of the English armies of the fourteenth century, eclipsed by both the man-at-arms and the archer. Our understanding of his origins and role has been wholly based on only two major studies of this troop type: J. E. Morris’ ‘Mounted Infantry Warfare’ in 1914 and J. Lydon's ‘The Hobelar: An Irish Contribution to Medieval Warfare’ in 1954. The lack of interest might be considered surprising, given that Morris saw him as the precursor to the mounted longbowman, while Lydon called him ‘the most effective fighting man of the age’, referring to the hobelar as ‘an entirely different type of mounted soldier’. Yet other historians have been happy to accept the conclusions of Morris and Lydon, considering the hobelar only in passing. Perhaps the reason that so little work has been done on him is that he is always considered in comparison to the man-at-arms – the elite warrior, in his shining harness, doyen of chivalry and a core element of the medieval political and social elite – and the longbowman – the almost super-heroic, Hundred Years’ War-winning, nationalistic symbol of medieval English, and Welsh, martial prowess. By contrast, there is little if any mention of the hobelar in the battle narratives of the middle ages; they have no great role to play in the successes of the English over the French. They do not form a political and social class within medieval society and there is no way, therefore, to discuss their impact outside of the military sphere. It is also almost certain that their Irish origins have counted against them too. Medieval Ireland has been considered militarily backwards by most historians of warfare, who seem to have inherited something of the dismissive tone of their English sources…
Right. 
You’ve read the posts above. You have dutifully pictured the mental image of being a pikeman, Just Some Guy with a big pointy stick, while thousands of pounds of steel-armoured horseflesh ridden by braying Tories comes at you. You have understood that this is inherently alarming, even if you understand the military theories involved, and are prepared to make horse-kebabs.
Now picture being that pikeman when hobelars turn up. First off, the hobbies are WEIRD. They’re fast and tiny, and they move Wrong:
Rather than lining up to be kebabs, as you expect, they feint - dance up to you like weirdos and turn away. They show off how - unencumbered and in good control of their hobbies - they can pretend to do the scary charge thing, breaking your will, but not get kebabed. They are not wearing armour; they’re not using saddles or stirrups, but some of them appear to be archers (?!) sometimes the hobelars get off and wind you up a bit and then jump back on their stupid hobbies. Psychologically they seem more like YOU, but then there’s the horses. They throw spears, or arrow-spears called “darts.” They laugh at you. They have amazing control of their hobbies, who turn away from pikeheads on a dime. The sight of hobbies skirmishing was described (above) as “a sportful sight” - presumably if they weren’t doing it at you, when it would be SO annoying.
There is zero expectation that Celtic mounted skirmishers will break a wall of pikemen. The hobelars have been sent to annoy you. What if this is part of their function, a natural activity in their wheelhouse, and they have perfected it. What if it’s working. What if, by the time the big shiny horses with their big shiny nobles come, you’re already a bit shaken…
Not saying this scene ever happened in history, but you can see from this a bit of how these histories are constructed: here is a unit that was effective and influential in its time and gave its name to “hobbies.” Here are the places where it would seem logical to use them. We have lost much of what would have been known about how they fought at all. The primary source for the quote of the “iyrysch man upon his hoby” is preserved in one single corrupted document in a corner of the internet that took me a morning to find. We will never forget knights, but with a strategically placed EMP, we would probably lose our ability to remember and connect over hobelars (why would anyone care.)
but care when you find yourself thinking that the entire system is pikeman vs knight, one vs the other, an armchair system that plays out like an RPG, rock-paper-scissors: care because so much of history is a spectrum of forgotten people.
One of my favorite things about this post is how it makes history come alive in a way that is spectacular. By showcasing that these things that we are disconnected from were INDEED real experiences people had to go through.
Also, @elodieunderglass addition of the Hobelars made me realize that this sort of tactic - small horsemen whose sole function is to annoy the crap out of the enemy - was still effective centuries later, during the Napoleonic Era.
Essentially, during and after Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Tsar Alexander I requested certain Mounted Archers from the Far East (Cossacks, Bashkirs, and Kalmyks) to support their military campaign to push Napoleon back. Records show that, while not majorly effective in the way their ancestors were, the archers filled the role of Hobelars - agile horsemen on tiny horses that dart between enemies lines and shoot arrows at them mid-riding, not causing enough damage to significantly decrease their numbers, but just enough to be a significant PAIN for the entire duration of the battle.
Once French general - Baron de Marbot - wrote about them, calling them "the world's least dangerous troops." What makes this hilarious, however, is that de Marbot would later get shot in the leg by one of their arrows, and then witness the Archers occupy Paris in 1814. So, the entire passage is just bleeding with seethe and annoyance.
OP: The current Chinese palace interactive games be like we have a mode where scenes are performed by real actors. Like ALL characters are portrayed by real actors, but it is still a game. You play as the female lead, and at plot nodes, you can choose different options.
[ID copied from alt: A two panel meme. First panel: Three people sitting one behind the other in church pews. The man at the front is labelled ‘Friedrich Nietzsche’. The woman behind him, labelled ‘Leo Tolstoy’, is pointing a gun at him. The woman behind her, labelled ‘Henry James’, is pointing a gun at her. Second panel: A different view of the church, showing a sniper aiming a gun at ‘Henry James’. The sniper is labelled 'Oscar Wilde’. End ID]
This is actually not a book I picked up, it was a book a friend who is very into baking loaned me. And let me just tell you, it was a DELIGHT from start to finish. There were baked goods, an aggressive sourdough starter, and so, so many gingerbread cookies. There were also excellent questions about what it is to be a hero, the limitations and failures of authority, and under what precise circumstances climbing up a garderobe becomes a viable option (spoiler alert: it's when there are literally no other options). Let's talk A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.
There will Be SPOILERS below the break! Be warned!
Fourteen-year-old Mona is a baker first and foremost. If she sometimes can save overworked dough with magic or make a like of gingerbread men can-can, well thats just a thing she can do. She is a baker. Until, of course, a dead body shows up on the kitchen floor.
Dead bodies showing up randomly is just never, ever a good thing.
Its even less a good thing when a bougie, dickheaded wizard from the castle decides you did it, and because a whole lot of people at a whole lot of levels failed catastrophically in their job, you end up in the position of having to climb a garderrobe to galvanize a weak leader into not doing a magical racism. And then because EVEN MORE PEOPLE FAILED TO DO THEIR JOBS, you at 14 are the last wizard left to defend the city (which is currently sans army) against a bunch of mercenary raiders. Oh, and your magic is entirely bread-based.
I, much like Mona was, would have been royally pissed that I had to be a city-saving hero at 14 because the system and a bunch of key individuals failed that hard and it somehow got left to me. And that is possibly one of the best parts of this book, is that discussion that heroes rarely feel heroic, and then asks WHY. And the answer is almost always some variation on "because a bunch of other adults fucked up." And that sucks, and it's hard, and it's unfair, and all of that is acknowledged in story. But Mona still has to step up and BE that hero.
Thankfully, however, the book at least acknowledges that the 14-year-old should never have to make the sacrifice play. Knackering Molly, a deadass (pun fully intended) horse necromancer who was heavily implied to have been forcibly employed by and subsequently deeply traumatized by the army in her youth, steps up to make the sacrifice play to save the city that did her so dirty. And she does it not because it's heroic or even because it's the right thing to do, no. She does it because if she doesn't, then another wizard kid--of whom she is rather fond--would have to. It's not fair that Molly has to take that hit either, but she was a grown-ass adult who was capable of making that choice, and I love that she did it for Mona. If Mona hadn't been in the picture, I think Molly would have let the city fall without a second thought. And that might even have been the right choice.
Wrapped up in Mona's hard lesson in adults fucking up is a hard lesson about the fact that authority can be weak and corrupt, and it can and will use state actors (the "all cops are bad" energy of a couple of scenes in this book is legendary) to oppress and murder people without power or authority. It encourages questioning and holding authority figures accountable. And once the fight is over, it acknowledges that being given a butt-ton of awards and recognition doesn't make any of it ok. Mona is still angry at the Duchess after all is said and done, and that is very much framed as perfectly understandable and acceptable.
Now, while the politics and power brokering and coming into an adult understanding of how systems of authority work are really excellent parts of this book, they're not the only excellent bits. We have got to talk about the magic system.
People who hate soft magic systems should leave now, because the magic system in this book is softer than raw dough. There is no Sandersonian breath counting here. But I have always thought that magic systems shouldn't get in the way of a good story, and I like a good soft magic system. This one also goes back to basics with what they call sympathetic magic--basically, if you have a bit if a thing, you can command the rest of the thing (you might recognize this as thaumaturgy).
This works beautifully for baking magic, because you can do a LOT of this with dough. And Mona does, from little magics like saving overworked dough or stopping biscuits from burning to full on bad gingerbread men who sabotage the enemy and GIANT BREAD GOLEMS. Seriously, the magic and the baking works together with a natural synergy that just happens effortlessly. The gingerbread men are sassy and wonderful.
But of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention Bob the Sourdough Starter. Bob is...an accident, more or less, from when Mona panicked that she had killed her aunt's sourdough starter and threw magic at it. Bob was the result. Bob eats flour, sugar, odds and ends of baking, and the odd dead fish when nobody's looking. He also has definite opinions about people. Mona is the center of his world, and Spindle and Aunt Tabitha are acceptable. Uncle Albert gets growled at, and when Mona yeets Bob at the Spring Green Man during his attempted assassination of her, Bob burns the Spring Green Man like acid. Needless to say, when the city is besieged, they yeet chunks of Bob at the oncoming hordes and it is...disturbingly effective.
In this house, we stan Bob. From a safe distance and with a haddock I hand, if at all possible.
Overall, this book was a delight to read, and I'm a little sad I have to return it to one of my book buddies. Mona was a treat as a protagonist, the supporting cast was colorful and fun, and the stakes were realistically high. I highly recommend this treat of a book.
I love asking friends, without context, "what are you really into this week?" I'll go first. this week I'm really into mouthwash and sudoku. Last week I was into peaches.
there is so much joy in the notes here, thank you. we're out here cooking whole hams! getting a library card! drinking beverages and going on long walks!! eating specific apple and pear varietals! there's always joy and you can find it too!!!
Terry Pratchett Discworld (aggressively recommending them to family and friends! Happily discussing with bestie!), books of SFF or otherwise surrounding my favourite authors, and to look into moreeeee solarpunk books aaaa [(1) to-do thing]
AURORA live performances/any new songs again, Genshin orchestra (specifically the Genshin x AURORA Nod-Krai main theme aaaaaaaaaaa it gives me chillsssss),
Which got me into wanting to look (briefly) into Latin songs (and language learning, it has been a long wish but no time...)
borrowed 2 books from the library of my queer community! Finished one really quickly - I Who Have Never Known Men Jacqueline Harman, and Birdy William Wharton! (In progress). Very into reading now
doodled lichens on my name card (for an attachment styles workshop), still very much in love with them and wanting to study them more
I'm into cold drinks nowadays. Nursing a cold milo in fridge <3 And I'm longing for desserts more since this month began (stress), noodles (kolomee) and pasta. Had a craqueline profiterole last night. Ate matcha babka and a cream cheese (I'm pretty sure) cinnamon roll for late breakfast with cold milk!!
Back into feeling like talking to people again too, slowly slowly
back into writing, sprinting with a fellow writer helps
Media analysis and good/philosophical open questions after realising I am capable of contributing, and queer media! I want to look more into the recs Dr Joseph gave us on gender sexuality and such (Your Name Engraved Herein)
Last week there was also learning strength workout (I'm not super into it but it was fun to learn)
Specifically sharing tabikaeru frog photos with Kyuu fren as if exchanging froggie postcards xD this brings a very specific nostalgic joy as if comparing the cards you get from candy
Been craving Pao so much, teh c and kopitiam
learnt I have wavy hair! Braids (the very princess style one inspired by What Happens to The Villainness webtoon) and hair care (also something to look into more :o). I very much enjoyed how I learnt more about myself last week.
Oh and uquizzes!!
@rapidpaw @ves-ljubi-junij @tentative-wanderer @daisyyly @cherryoblossom and anyone else who'd like to join you're very welcome!!!
