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adozentothedawn · 4 years

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Saint Waidwen The Musical The Justification

This is an explanation for something I wrote in this fanfiction. Go read it maybe if you haven’t? :) But if you don’t have the time or interest, the relevant thing for this is that I mention a controversial musical adaption of the story of Saint Waidwen in Readceras.

Yeah, so first of all, I just really wanted this to be a thing because musicals about weird things are just my jam. I can however justify why this could totally be a thing! I’m aware that I don’t have to, but I just really want to write this, so I will. Now sit down and listen.

(Also you might know a lot of these things already, but I don’t know what they teach in your countries so I’ll just explain the basics.)

Let’s start off with why anyone would ever do this anyway.

First of all, people make musicals about weird shit all the time in reality, so why not in Eora. Like look at Les Mis. Does that scream “musical” to you? And, yet it’s pretty cool!

Second of all, Art moves in cycles. To explain this, I’ll use german literature, because that’s what I learnt in school and therefore know a few things about. Let’s begin at the era of the “Aufklärung” (enlightenment I guess? It’s an era of literature from about 1720 to 1790. Note also that eras can’t be distinctly seperated, they do go on simultaniously for a while). This was the time of logic and reason first and foremost. Art had to be practical, without actually having to serve a purpose. So after a while of this going on, there were a bunch of young people who decided, fuck that. We want emotion to be important again! Among those people were for example Ghoete and Schiller, two names you might know, because they’re kind of famous. So there were these young men (and they were almost exclusively men unfortunately) who started writing plays and poems which are based on extreme emotion and the idea of the natural genius (genius is a relative term here, the characters were still kinda dumb, but they were very poetic about it), instead of sticking nicely to the idea of reason. This era is called “Sturm und Drang” (roughly: storm and urge, these are really hard to translate. Also they’re names, so they’re not really supposed to be translated anyway). Now these young people weren’t young forever though, so they grew up at some point (or died, but you get the point). Both Goethe and Schiller decided at some point that that stuff they wrote was kinda cringy and started writing other things, more focused on harmony, beauty and (as in the Aufklärung) tolerance, as opposed to the more forceful and often tragic Sturm und Drang. This was then called the “Weimarer Klassik” (Weimar being the cultural centre of germany at the time and Klassik as in classic). And then after a while, a new generation of young people decided that that was dumb and started someting called the “Romantik” (romance, not necessarily as in love, but more as in romantifying things). In this time, people wrote about magic, myths and fairy tales, the less realism the better. So you see what’s happening here. One generation says: This is great! The next one says: Fuck that, I’ll make it as different as I can. That generation grows up and decides: eh, maybe let’s tune it down a bit. Then the next generation comes and says: Fuck no! again. Of course there are always some that stick to their style, but that’s the general idea.

Now, how does that apply to my musical idea? For that let’s look at Readceras for minute. Readceras was founded by a bunch of farmers, though there was a tiny elite, as we know because Waidwen managed to win some of them over, most people were pretty poor. Poor people usually don’t have the time or recourses for literature or painting, with music, especially singing, being the most accessable form of art. That’s not to say that farmers don’t make art, weaving and the painting of furniture was a thing for example, but the poorer the people, the less they have to use, even when it’s winter and they’d have time, and Readceras was just pisspoor. Singing doesn’t really need anything, and instruments are reusable if they somehow managed to get one. So chances are, Waidwen and his generation grew up with music as their main form of art. Then the Godhammer happened, which sucked big time for them, and they probably wanted to distance themselves as much as possible from the time before Waidwen and idealize him, which in all likelihood lead to art changing a lot as well.

Because here’s the thing, art doesn’t just move in cycles, it is also heavily influenced be societal and political happenings (but you probably knew that). For example: the literature era that followed (roughly, it began a bit before the other one ended) the Romatik was the “Biedermaier” (which is a surname and not translatable, you might now it from a furniture style though, that’s pretty big in Austria, not sure how it is where you live), which is a style that was heavily aimed inwards. It was mostly, look how happy my little family is, everything is great, nothing is happening, nothing at all, and could be mostly described as idyllic and quiant. That was, because it was a time of political regression, with the empire getting more authoritarian again and literature being heavily censored. So when Waidwen took the throne art probably already started changing, though he likely didn’t notice much of that as he was kind of busy being king and GOD, and with another traumatic event it would’ve changed even more. So it’s completely feasible that 20 years later the youth would decide to fuck all of that over and go back to find their roots, while changing what they find to fit their style. Admittedly the existance of elves mucks up the timeline a bit, but since the largest group of people there are human anyway, I’ll ignore that. Also, in context with the fanifc I’m writing this for, the timeline is helped by the fact that my Watcher is an Eothas priestess. Might sound weird, but hear me out. Favaen came to the Dyrwood as a missionary, and though she got sidetracked a bit, that was still her end goal. So after everything was over and she was well established as Taynu of Caed Nua, she made it into a sanctuary for Eothasians started to spread the faith there again. Of course she didn’t achieve too much in 5 years, but she set a trend. With Adaryc spreading word about her in Readceras, that would’ve had an effect there too, at least insofar that the Dyrwood wasn’t completely off limits anymore and leading especially young people who hadn’t lived through the war to be more curious about it.

Now, why would the older people not like that? Well for one, it’s different, and different is bad in Readceras. Also, it reminds them of a time both worse and better. Worse, as in the Aedyran colonial times (because I refuse to belive that Waidwen didn’t change the economy at least a little for the better), and better when their god literally walked among them, which he doesn’t anymore, so it rubs salt into that wound.

Then how can they get away with putting it on at all? That I can answer with absolute certainty, because it is entirely rooted in canon. The Ladies of the Aviary. Worshippers of Hylea which work explicitly to help artists portray their art and avoid censoring. They convince higher up people, or if they cannot be convinced, help the artists avoid detection. They don’t discriminate between good and bad art, and only seek to spread it unchanged and as the artist intended.

And while we’re on worshippers of Hylea, the church of Hylea is known to comission plays and poems about Eothas and Waidwen, specifically as a way to mourn their dissapearance, which certainly had a hand in the musicals creation.

For the last point: why does Waidwen like it? Now, aside from a personal preference I just made up, we established that Waidwen grew up with music. While the rest of his generation may have distanced themselves from that sort of art, Waidwen never had the chance to grow up so to speak. His death was one of the factors in the changing of art and so he never got to experience that. Yes I had to end this post on a sad note.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk that I basically just did because I wanted to rant about literature for a bit.

Here the Soundtrack It’s on Youtube cause I don’t have Spotify. The last song was added after the events of Deadfire btw

#Pillars of Eternity #Waidwen #essay #kinda #Saint Waidwen The Musical #tl:dr young people be doing new shit #also i just love the idea

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