reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way
#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)
HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")
In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.
A good boss (liege lord) is:
Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.
Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.
Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.
Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.
Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).
Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"
Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.
Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.
Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.
Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.
Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.
Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.
The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.
TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"
(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)
They say when we die, we fall
For the sky cannot have us, the garden calls
For the constant touch of hands and knees
Sinking deeper and pleading,
for in this soil lies our grief
Sunlight warmed the window, sent brightness into the room, but without the direct surety of actual rays. By design, the room's windows did not face east. They faced west.
He groaned and muttered as he forced himself into wakefulness. That had never been a problem in his past life. She had always been ready to greet each day with enthusiasm and energy. Or anger.
As he moved listlessly through each morning task, he began to recognize that something felt unusual. He stilled with his hands on the dresser, listening, waiting. There it was. There were three voices weaving amongst the echoes of his grief instead of the usual two.
Who was that? Had someone else died? Such artefacts had only surfaced before in the wake of his closest loved ones passing; to wit, his children and his mother. Yet no song had warned of any danger or loss. Or had he slept through it?
None of his children remained; Gersemi had been the last, though there were still her grandchildren about, for which he remained thankful. Gersemi's line had a tendency to die young, their kind nature turned against them and used til they were bled dry. Where might they have gotten that trait from, he thought dryly, void of amusement.
Your heart is the sun that I fall, that I follow
East to west, turning always away as you go
Till the water we are gathers in gravity
Find the earth waiting quiet for what we come to be
It had been so long since his mother's passing that the memories, the voice, that longing for what had been and no longer was, were woven into his very being. Sometimes he wondered how much of that 'voice' was her and how much was the 'her' that his grief had manufactured. Stripped of her flaws and folly, even the ones that had led to her downfall and the myriad rippling catastrophes that followed; but was that fair? Was it true? Did it matter?
But Gersemi… he knew hers to be real, too real. Sometimes he thought he might have learned to grieve her from the way she'd grieved him, her mother. She had stood vigil over her body in the earliest times; only her intervention, interposing herself between her fallen mother and their enemies on the battlefield, had allowed that fallen body to be recovered at all. (The enemies' legends around that battle liked to skim over that part.) Gersemi had cried and talked and sat in silence in turns. These days, he did much the same.
Of course, when Gersemi had faced trouble, he'd been able to do precisely nothing about it. He'd still been convalescing, too weak to move, much less fight. Hearing her song, her cry for help, how it wavered on the air until her captors finally managed to silence her, had damn near managed to finish him off as well. Hers had been the last one. His other four children had perished in similar ways. Less the torture, at least.
So from whence, then, did this new voice echo? He could think of no one living — or living until very recently — with whom he'd grown so attached that their grief would sing to him this way. Irma, perhaps? But she was an Elezen; surely she did not possess the same capacity. And he had not known her nearly long enough for him to have created some simulacrum of her to echo within his own mind.
He silenced his wandering, racing thoughts and focused on the new arrival.
Ah. It was her. Herself. The mother he had been.
Resting until in dark red sun rise
It becomes the mirage to keep us alive
A holler, a wraith, a vision of time
In language of patience and hope we are tied
Strange, to think of herself as dead. He stood here as surely as the star yet turned in the heavens, even if sometimes he caught himself wishing it was not so. And he knew by his senses that his true body remained safe where it laid in stasis, so this was not a literal mourning.
He was mourning the loss of who he had been, whom he'd shed in the process of becoming who he needed to be.
Why this body? He lifted his gaze from the dresser to the mirror that stood atop it. He'd needed to blend in with Ishgardians as best as possible. And though his identity in the past — and the one assigned to him by his enemies, who had derided him as a she-devil bent on destruction — had leaned more towards the feminine, in working towards his current goal he had shaped his myriad transformation magicks into one that would have been assigned male. Such bodies still seemed to command more authority in Ishgard, and quite universally. Whatever his opinions toward that might be, he was going to at least bend it to his benefit.
But perhaps his fervor for vengeance, albeit of an atypical variety, had led him to betray more than just that aspect of his identity. He let himself settle into a chair, and he closed his moss-green eyes. How far was too far?
Sometimes he asked Gersemi's voice questions like this one. As a practicing therapist, he knew better than to think he was actually talking to her. Any answers the voice might give were purely of his own design. They were convenient, self-vindicating, and his true daughter would have laughed at him for putting words in her mouth. But Hydaelyn's shade help him, it worked. It eased the grief, the pain, and sometimes that mattered more.
If we stay long enough, they say we'll liquefy
In your place, leave a pool of desire, save your mind
There's a map in your bones of our home, I'll be there
When the sky turns me down, just behind, soon I fear
He should get out of his mind. He pushed himself to his bipedal feet, finished his morning preparations (how tedious the routine, getting dressed, brushing teeth, yet he could not deny the symbolism and repetition were also helpful), and stepped into his office.
Oh….
This was not going to be a paperwork day. The intake forms and consent forms and requisition forms neatly stacked upon his desk felt as though they loomed over him, casting shadows like mountains. Meanwhile his mother and Gersemi and Astaire chattered lively in his head. Grabbing his cane just in case, he shuffled out into the hallway instead.
You're returning, turning now
Can you hear me, hear me now?
So red, so red the sunrise
You're returning, turning now
Fall and follow, away as you go
The sky's no place for me
Further below you'll be
"Oh, good morning, doc," Red Lobster, the facility's security lead, said as soon as he arrived in the receiving room. "You sleep alright? Those bags under your eyes look extra heavy. You get visited by a ghost?"
"Three of them," he answered because he couldn't help himself, and he leaned on the reception desk. "At least you seem chipper. You can be awake enough for both of us."
Arriving from downstairs, Irma Broussard, Maison's lead chirurgeon, gave him a stern look. "If you're that tired, go back and rest some more." She was forever trying to get him to rest more. She was the only person who knew the truth of what he was, so he really did not think he needed to explain just how long he had been resting already.
"I'll be fine. There's work to be done; we have to prepare for our third client." He nodded to Irma. "But if you care to ease my burden a bit, there are some papers on my desk that need reviewing and signing."
"Ah, yes, the most fun part of the job." Irma grinned. She hated paperwork the most out of all of Maison's leadership. "Fine, Marshall. If you agree to at least take breakfast on the patio, we'll have a deal."
(A contortion of places seemingly kind,
tell me though, does the wind hold your peace
or the strands of the earth from which mother drinks?
The long winding river whose surface unmet trembles as we seek)
Somehow the people who came to surround him always wound up caring better for him than he did herself. Gersemi whispered something about attracting the same as he offered. One of the attendants — all of the staff were trained as guards as well — brought him a plate of the cafeteria's breakfast options for that morning, and he picked at it while watching the sun draw its way across the sky, behind clouds that drifted along its path. That alone should have hinted to him that too much time was passing. No one interrupted his respite.
He had only inhabited his true body a few times in the years since he'd mended enough to move around, and about a year had passed since the last time, he thought. Perhaps he should remedy that. It was risky — the Ishgardians thought her long dead, and even most of his peers still thought she was still in recovery — but it might… reassure the grief voices. Especially the newest one.
If he was the last to remain, then the least he could do was ensure that he — she — Astaire — survived. He could not lose herself in the machinations of his vengeance.
They would not have wanted that for her.
Calling, I am here, I am left
Voices carry in silence, void of air
May they remain forever in secret tow
The only place given
when we have to go
Writing Marce gave me a clearer understanding of my own sexuality and gender, as well as some perspective on other sexualities and genders.
Not going to get into the sexuality side that much. But as example, regarding genders:
I identify as nonbinary (mostly femme nonbinary). Marce can best be described as gender non-conforming.
I believe the best approach to the consideration of gender is that everyone in the world is their own gender. Marce rejects the concept of gender altogether.
The difference between those standpoints is subtle but important, and it underlines much of how Marce views his world and has caused me to stop and consider how I view mine.
Reasons Why Fans of Color Leave/Don’t Interact with Fandom
Casual racism that is brushed off as “an innocent mistake” or “they didn’t mean it” and then everyone pretending like it didn’t happen and moving on with their day (repeat)
Speaking over fans of color about issues that pertain to them specifically
When fans of color speak out about something that makes them uncomfortable or why that don’t interact with it (usually because of the racial/ethnic bias) they are accused of being anti’s or pro-censorship
Characters of color being used as scapegoats/bashed/plot devices
Characters of color never getting happy endings/real development
Backlash against characters of color if they do anything other than be a white character’s side kick/best friend
Actors of characters of color being harassed for something their character did or didn’t do
White characters/actors getting all the attention/credit despite the fact that they are a side character to a POC or on the same level as the POC
Fanfic authors patting themselves on the back for writing a “realistic” character of color and it’s just a bunch of stereotypes
Being told that they should be happy they were even included when they call out the above people
White fans crying about persecution/exclusion because their fav character/trope/kink/ship isn’t loved by all
Fan artists re-imaging characters of color as white/lightening skin tone
Everyone rushing to a white fans defense after a well deserved call out while the fan of color receives hate
Never having a safe fandom space and always having to be on guard with new people/fandoms/chats etc because they’ve been burned before
Growing up during the Obama administration set my standards too high for how a leader ought to act.
Yeah he had a lot of issues just like any other president. I just assume that anyone willing to be president of the United States is at least slightly evil.
But at least he spoke in coherent sentences and at least pretended to have a shred of empathy. He surrounded himself with people that were so boring and competent that you didn’t need to hear about them most of the time.
A lot of people seem to mix up ‘community’ with ‘friend group’ so when they read ‘no one should be abandoned by the community. No matter what they did’ they think it means ‘you have to be friends with abusers’. When in reality it means ‘no matter what someone does they shouldnt be left to go homeless and be denied financial, housing, medical, etc aid’
You don’t have to be friends with these people, no one is saying that. It’s just saying that you should support rehabilitative justice, support programs that help homeless people, support funding for free medical services, and make sure they don’t turn away anyone who needs help.
I feel like it would be useful if people conceived of causing emotional harm to others more through the lens of being the emotional equivalent to stepping on someone’s foot. Like obviously you can step on someone’s foot deliberately and maliciously, but most of the time if someone tells you you stepped on their foot you’re going to go “oh sorry I didn’t realise!” and stop doing it and try not to do it again. Getting caught up in how it makes you feel to be Someone Capable of Stepping on Others’ Feet would be a transparently self indulgent distraction from the other person’s pain, but also like… that’s just a status you hold by virtue of being human. Never ever ever stepping on someone’s foot is not really achievable, and therefore is not necessary to being a Good Person: what matters is that you do not step on others’ feet deliberately, and – most importantly – that you react kindly and calmly to any inadvertent foot-stepping you have been doing being brought to your attention, so that you can make best use of it as something that will help you reduce the amount of foot-stepping you will do in the future.
So far, I've only determined an Ancient for Marce. I'll have to think about the others sometime.
Marce's ancient was Anteros. He was known for being severe and calculating, and due to a remarkable affinity for dimensional magicks, he was often called upon to fix what others had broken, in one way or another.
He was a guard at Pandaemonium until an encounter where he saved the facility from a rampaging test subject entitled him to early retirement.
He was also extremely sex-positive and, depending on who you asked about it, might let you in on some of his Exploratory Group Nights.
As the Final Days unfolded, he stood in opposition to both proposed solutions. His belief was that the cause was the overuse of creation magicks, and for that, nature should take its course, even if that course led to complete destruction.
Everything ends, and the time of Etheirys had come.
For those who have missed it, a tourist in Hawaii decided it would be fun to chuck a rock (a BIG rock) at a monk seal. He missed, but he was captured on video, and when told it was illegal to interfere with them, said "I'm rich, I can pay the fine."
Is the best part that he got doxxed? No.
Is the best part that he got tracked down by a local and beaten? No.
Arrested on state at federal charges, looking at up to 5 years and 50K? Nope.
The best part is the local city council's reaction.
And the best part of that is the look on the attorney's face.
After the incident, another video went viral showing what appeared to be that man getting a beating. The Maui Police Department said they had no record of any reports of disorderly conduct or assault related to the monk seal incident.
Current twitter drama is Europeans confidently declaring that they don't need to drive or use overpriced public transport to get to the MetLife stadium for the World Cup; they will simply walk down the highway to get there. Girl it's New Jersey. They're gonna splatter you for fun.
I think a lot of Europeans think that the stadium is in the middle of a city and surrounded by infrastructure, which is why they keep insisting that they can just walk from point A to point B. It's not! It's in the fucking Meadowlands!!!! You have multi lane highways and a literal toxic swamp and that's it!
"Well if there are a LOT of football fans they'll stop for us!"
There's a video online of a trucker who accidentally hits a flock of sheep in the middle of the highway at full speed and splatters them. Has to turn the windshield wipers on to wipe away the blood. This is what every Jersey driver yearns to do once they get on the turnpike.
girl help they're now demanding NJ build a bridge over the highway (???? from where???) or shut down the fucking I-95 (one of the busiest highways in the country that everyone commutes on) for their little soccer game.
I live close enough to the Meadowlands to regularly curse the hubris of the American Dream mall and this is the funniest shit I have read in YEARS. A lot of the European twitter people seem to think we are DEFENDING the Meadowlands and the general layout of the area like we think it was good urban planning. Girl no! It is a shithole, we know it is a shithole! (Although the actual swamp is kinda pretty from the window of a train heading to Secaucus Junction.) We are not trying to express pride, we are trying to save your life!!!!
I MEAN. I know people talk a lot of shit about American arrogance and they're not wrong to do so, but look at this, my fucking god.
Right like, no no. We KNOW it is horrible. We KNOW it should not exist like that. MetLife stadium shouldn't have been built in a swamp like that. Everything about its existence is bullshit. This is probably the WORST stadium to try and get to, considering that it is illegal to try and walk there.
FIFA has also intentionally MADE it worse. Because they're closing the parking lot. They're also preventing ride shares from what I can tell??
Meanwhile the governor of New Jersey is saying this is going to cost NJ $48 million to deal with the ridership, and wanted money to offset that, which FIFA doesn't ever do. So they decided to massively inflate train fares to offset the cost.
Again, while trying to prevent rideshare services from occurring.
Oh, ALSO people in New Jersey and New York City are all being told to "work from home" on days of the world cup matches because the public transit congestion is expected to be that bad, coincides with rush hour, and because for some of it, they're full closing off public transit to anyone who doesn't have FIFA tickets.
And then there are people complaining about our "shitty national stadium" and I don't even know how to begin to explain that MetLife isn't even the biggest capacity stadium in the US. It's not even in the top ten. (It is #15).
I genuinely do hope everyone is just being a bit of a troll when they say they're going to walk on the 95 or some shit because people will 1000% die. I don't even know what a comparable metaphor for this is.
#europeans owning the yanks by walking through the areas where the mafia dumped bodies#that twitter post that was like “just put it on pay per view and let americans watch europeans walk through new jersey”#that european gene that makes them refuse to listen to ~the colonists~
Probably better to say that, the more densely populated:
- the more likely that the area was built around car transport
- the harder it will be to walk because those “roads” are multi-lane interstates with speed limits of 50 mph+ and no sidewalks
- the more likely you are to get mugged bc walking those interstates and service roads makes it obvious you’re a fucking tourist
Listen. I know y’all love your futból. But I. Would not have bought tickets to travel to the US. World Cup or no. Shit I wouldn’t even be here if I could get out. Permanently. Even ignoring our capitalism-flavored architecture. We’re kinda having a bad time at the moment. Especially regarding guests to this country. idk if you’re heard.
