#i related to it so much. but there is disparity

[mariacallous]

Is a five-year age gap in a relationship a little untoward? What about a three-year gap?

On social media, Gen Zers ― at least those who are chronically online ― are constantly debating the ethics of age gaps. Even if some relationships are perfectly legal, that doesn’t necessarily make them ethical, many say.

It’s little wonder then that age-disparate relationships are cause for so much conversation: Having grown up alongside the #MeToo movement, Generation Z is well versed in unbalanced power dynamics and the language of consent. And lately, there’s been plenty of celebrity pairings to interrogate.

There’s the obviously icky examples, like the recent, short-lived romance between Aoki Lee Simmons — Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons’ 21-year-old daughter — and restaurateur Vittorio Assaf, 65. Earlier this month, viral photos showed the pair flouncing around on vacation in St. Barts.

Yes, they’re both consenting adults, but it was still unseemly, critics said. If anything, the argument that they’re both of age is “something groomers cling to,” as one young woman on Threads put it.

“Adulthood was meant to signify voting/draft age,” she wrote. “But everyone knows your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed at this age.” (This difference between so-called brain age and chronological age ― you might be 21 but your brain is undeveloped! ― often gets brought up in these kinds of conversations.)

There are gender-swapped examples too, like actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson and filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson, a now-married couple who met while working on a 2009 John Lennon biopic called “Nowhere Boy.” At the time, he was in his late teens and she was a mother of two in her early 40s.

“I didn’t relate to anyone my age,” the actor told The Telegraph in 2019, reflecting on when they first met. “I just feel that we’re on the same wavelength.”

Some fans aren’t convinced. “We def aren’t talking about male grooming victims enough and this is literally proof,” one person wrote in a highly shared TikTok video about their coupling.

Then there’s the less expected critiques: Is four years too much of an age gap? “At 25, I wouldn’t even date a 21 year old,” reads one tweet with around 80,000 likes.

What about 10 years? Fans of Billie Eilish were up in arms in 2022 when the then-20-year-old singer revealed that she was dating fellow musician Jesse Rutherford, who was in his early 30s. One viral tweet about the 10-year age gap reads: “jesse rutherford was alive during george h w bush’s presidency . billie eilish cannot legally drink.”

Long-established relationships aren’t safe, either. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s 11-year gap has been scrutinized. And recently, Beyhive members have begun debating whether Beyoncé was “groomed” because she was 19 when she started dating Jay-Z, who was in his early 30s.

Noncelebrity couples are getting called out, too. “I was 19. My now husband was 27. My now 13yo child calls him my ‘predator,’” one woman wrote on Threads alongside laughing emoji, probably only half-joking.

Why Gen Z Seems To Have Such An Aversion To Age Gaps

Is Gen Z just more prudish on this subject than prior generations?

Not necessarily, said Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and the host of the “Sex and Psychology Podcast.” He’s been studying age-gap relationships for roughly 20 years and said the stigma around age-disparate relationships is long-standing.

In 2008 ― when terms like “cradle robber” and “cougar” were bandied around a lot more than they are now ― Lehmiller co-authored a study that found age-discrepant couples reported experiencing significantly more social disapproval than people in gay or interracial couples.

So the discomfort around these types of relationships isn’t anything new. What is new, according to Lehmiller, is how comfortable Gen Z feels about publicly and vocally disapproving of these relationships ― even on people’s personal Instagram pages. (Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson recently spoke out against the “bizarre” online judgment they’ve received. Eilish and Rutherford brushed off the criticism from overly concerned fans by dressing up as a baby and an old man one Halloween.)

“To some in Gen Z, age-gap relationships read as being inherently exploitative because they perceive age discrepancies as necessarily creating a power imbalance that favors the older partner,” Lehmiller told HuffPost.

What’s also changed is which parties tend to receive the brunt of the judgment. In the past, people were often scornful of both the younger and older partners in these relationships. Historically, the younger partners, especially when they were women, endured labels like “gold digger” ― with the implication that they were the ones doing the exploiting. That terminology doesn’t always fly with Gen Z.

“That perception seems to have largely disappeared when you look at what Gen Z is saying,” Lehmiller noted. “They seem to cast the younger partners as victims who are being preyed upon or ‘groomed.’”

Gigi Engle, a certified sex and relationship psychotherapist and resident intimacy expert for dating app 3Fun, worries that the term “grooming” is being overapplied and losing its meaning.

“The narrative is really toxic here and in many other cases,” she told HuffPost. “Trans people are groomers, gay people are groomers, older people dating younger people are groomers ― and this just isn’t accurate. It’s a really fear-mongering time we live in.”

Gen Z may be hyperfocused on this because of their age: If you’re a 35-year-old woman, you’re probably less hung up on the idea of a 50-year-old guy expressing interest in you.

“I think younger people may be more susceptible to manipulation and are therefore more afraid of it,” Engle said. “The reality is, age-gap relationships have been happening since humans have existed, and it is absolutely not some one-size-fits-all. In the vast majority of relationships like this, nothing untoward is happening.”

Here’s What Gen Z Has To Say About Age Gaps

Talking to actual Gen Zers, you’ll find that their opinions on age gaps run the gamut. As with most things, their takes on the subject are much more nuanced than those found on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, would have you believe.

That said, many are genuinely bothered by age gaps. While the #MeToo movement gave them the language to talk about power imbalances, some 20-somethings say their opinions are more colored by their own personal experiences.

Layla — a 23-year-old who asked to use her first name only for privacy reasons, like others in this story — thinks it’s better to date within your own age group, ideally within a two- or three-year range.

“When I was around 21 and 22, I tried talking to guys who were 30 and over but soon realized it wasn’t right,” she told HuffPot. “They had so much more life experiences than me, and it was awkward being from different generations.”

Layla said she’d tried to joke and laugh about certain things ― a meme or a TikTok video ― and got a lot of blank stares. She wasn’t a fan of their humor, either: A date recounting the umpteenth “Seinfeld” episode or that one “Step Brothers” scene gets a little old after a while.

“Trying to relate to one another just didn’t work out, and it felt awkward and wrong,” she said.

“I believe a relationship between an 18- and 25-year-old is problematic,” Layla said, noting that this applies regardless of gender.

“I actually wish women got called out for their predatory behavior, too,” she said. “It almost seems like no one wants to hold women accountable.”

Mona, a 21-year-old college student in Georgia, even finds her own parents’ 11-year age gap a little “predatory”: Her dad was in his late 30s and a divorced father of one when he met her mom, who was in her late 20s and didn’t have children.

Mona would date someone three years older. She wouldn’t consider going younger, though. “I do think that an 18- and 25-year-old together is unacceptable,” she said.

She is particularly weirded out when she hears people talk about how their partner basically raised them or taught them “how to be a woman,” as Beyoncé said to Jay-Z in a 2006 birthday toast that went viral recently.

Mona is also wary of anyone who almost exclusively dates young people ― the Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. Every time the 49-year-old actor gets a new girlfriend, a graph highlighting the fact that each of his ex-girlfriends has been 25 or under starts circulating again.

“Any respectable adult would have the common sense that pursuing a teenager is extremely weird, and I also believe it says a lot about the headspace of the older person,” the 21-year-old said.

Mona also thinks the COVID-19 pandemic might’ve been a factor in Gen Zers’ apprehension over age gaps. They might technically be 21, but given that weird few-year pause, they don’t feel it.

“You hear about how we’re mentally the same age that we were when the pandemic first started,” she said. “That might play a role in why some people are not settling on older people pursuing them ― you feel you’re still too young.”

Not everyone agrees. Rei, a 22-year-old who is queer, said they don’t find age-disparate relationships inherently problematic. They said there’s a lot more than age that gives people power over each other, and if you consider five years an “age-gap relationship” then Rei is currently in one.

“Though my partner is older than me, I have a college degree and she doesn’t,” they said. “So arguably I have a better financial and career outlook that would make me the ‘abusive one,’ if you’re using that language.”

Age gaps may be more common in the queer community, Rei said. “I don’t know a gay guy who hasn’t been with someone much older than him,” they said. “It’s just normal to us.”

Problematic dynamics can exist no matter the age. “People now don’t know what grooming is and just use the term as synonymous with age gaps,” Rei said.

To some extent, Rei sees the hubbub over age gaps as an overcorrection of the mores ushered in by the #MeToo movement.

“People overadjust and assume that any relationship out of the norm is abusive,” they said. “In my experience, people who feel age gaps are problematic are also the same people who argue the internet is harmful and should be censored because they had a bad experience as a kid. Your experience isn’t universal.”

For Amelia, 24, actual age matters less than the stage of life you’re in. She figures if you’re a relatively accomplished 28-year-old dating an accomplished 40-year-old, what’s the big deal? The word “grooming” really only applies when an adult is introduced to a future partner when they’re underage, Amelia said.

She cited the relationship between Dane Cook and his wife as an “egregious” example of a questionable age gap. (The now-52-year-old comedian met Kelsi Taylor at a game night he hosted when she was in her late teens.)

“Do I think it’s possible for people like that to have a healthy and happy relationship? Sure,” Amelia said. “But the older I get, my desire to talk to high schoolers grows slimmer and slimmer. I really can’t put myself in the shoes of someone who would want to befriend a high schooler.”

That said, Amelia thinks that some Gen Zers take their judgment too far. To her, the concern over age gaps seems like a weirdly “paternalistic” brand of feminism, where women feel the need to protect women from men.

“It’s similar to how Swifties treat Taylor Swift,” she said, referring to the now-34-year-old pop star.

“You have young women ‘looking out for’ a billionaire woman in her 30s. I’m a fan of Taylor Swift, but I don’t think she needs protecting from Travis Kelce because Travis Kelce got in the face of his NFL coach during the Super Bowl.”

The anti-age-gap sentiment held by many plays into the “puriteen” narrative that’s been inescapable lately. Online, there’s a lot of hand-wringing over Gen Zers’ seeming aversion to sex: Studies show that they’re having less of it than earlier generations and that they don’t want sex scenes in their movies.

Though Amelia overall disagrees with age-gap critics ― she feels like their arguments rob women of their agency, she said ― she gets where those in her peer group are coming from.

“The majority of us had unsupervised internet access from a young age. We were in chatrooms, on Tumblr, and other various corners of the internet that we probably should not have been on at that age,” she said. “It was easy for grown men on the internet to reach us if they wanted to.”

If you’ve been oversexualized at a young age ― or seen others in your age bracket be oversexualized ― that experience is understandably going to shape how you perceive these kinds of things, Amelia said.

But the reality is, there are likely just as many happy May-December unions as there are disappointing ones. “Believe it or not, we often see more ― not less ― equity in these relationships,” Lehmiller noted.

All of the Gen Zers we spoke to said that ultimately, two consenting adults can do whatever they want in their private lives, even if others find it off-putting.

“Men can like women that are younger and not be a creep,” Amelia said. “He also can be a creep, but some random person with a Twitter cartoon avatar shouldn’t necessarily be the judge of that!”

[ftmtftm]

as a brown woman, i think one of the reasons for this is the refusal to understand (in this example particularly i'll use race, but i think this could be applied to other forms of oppression) the reality of the oppression men of color face, and the insistence on viewing oppression as disparate.

my dad and brother have told me many stories about how much their emotions are policed at work. my dad raises his voice the slightest bit or doesn't come off jovial and pleasant, and people get upset and feel threatened by him. there's a post i've seen before where a black man says something similar, in response to a woman saying 'men will never know what it's like to worry about having rbf.' he was saying how he very much does, or the white people around him will make negative assumptions he's then responsible for. it is something that these two marginalized groups share, but there's backlash whenever it gets brought up because i think a lot of cis women cling to the idea that certain things are a "woman's experience" and feel threatened when marginalized men can relate to them. which men are the default? which women are the other? the default male experience has never been something the men in my family can relate to because their race precludes them from doing so. the 'othered' experience of women is often not something i can relate to, because the loudest voices about it are white women being othered by white men.

in reality, oppression often functions in similar ways, even with different groups, and bonding and forming solidarity in that is a great way to bring awareness to it. but that requires people to get over themselves and their own conceptions of victims and oppressors, which is much harder than it seems to be.

YES !!!! Yes exactly, you've hit the nail on the head.

Especially at the very end, because honestly? I think it requires a decent amount of personal healing, carefully practiced empathy, and a bit of ego death to get to that point and it's really hard to do that when you're also actively in a marginalized position yourself.

It's a big task asking people who are hurt to find solidarity with each other because we live in a culture that actively discourages that for several reasons - very systemically. Particularly with feminism it's extremely difficult because Radfem "universal female experience / female utopia" isolationism (and even going back farther, the First Wave as a whole) severed a lot of those opportunities for solidarity early on and we have to pick up the broken pieces to try and mend them now.

#asks #anon #solidarity

[molsno]

I find the notion that trans women's oppression is at least partially based on a systemic hatred of men and masculinity troubling for many reasons. the biggest reason, of course, is that misandry is not real no matter how you attempt to label or define it. but moreover, it's just flat out wrong.

it is true that many forms of transmisogyny consist of some form of misgendering. however, it's ludicrous to call it misandry just because the underlying implication is that the trans woman in question is really a man; if that were the case, then cis men and trans men would be subjected to the same oppression on the basis of their manhood. but no, the misgendering is always simply a cover for something else - something far more insidious.

if a trans woman is loud, outspoken, and argumentative, then she's accused of demonstrating her "male socialization". she's told she's guilty of "mansplaining". when a trans woman is jealous or clingy with her partner, she's accused of expressing "male entitlement" over them, and being "manipulative" and "controlling". when a trans woman is attracted to cis women and talks about her desire to have sex with them, she's accused of being "creepy" or "predatory". she's told she's being "misogynistic" by reducing women (cis women, or "real women" as is usually the implication in this scenario) to just their bodies and valuing them only for their worthiness as sex objects.

if you think about it, though, these arguments mirror regular old misogyny pretty closely! if a cis woman is loud, outspoken, and argumentative, then she's a "bitch", she's "bossy". she's told she needs to "know her place". when a cis woman is jealous or clingy with her partner, she's accused of being "crazy" and "obsessive". and indeed, when a cis woman is attracted to other cis women and talks about her desire to have sex with them, she's accused of being "creepy" or "predatory"!

so why, then, if these statements are really a form of misogyny, does the justification for them hinge on trans women's supposed "maleness"? the answer is simple: biological essentialism. this ideology, in no small part popularized in feminist and queer spaces by terfs, states that "biological males" are predestined by their very nature to prey on and dominate "biological females". and since trans women are "biologically male", it follows then that they are wolves in sheeps' clothing. any presumption of innocence or harmlessness is discarded, and trans women's actions are painted in a new light.

if you accuse a trans woman of being an infiltrator in women's spaces due to her supposed "maleness", then what you've effectively accomplished is the subjugation of an underclass of women. trans women are not considered deserving of respect, compassion, or dignity whatsoever. if you paint a trans woman as a threat to other women, then you can drum up as much outrage and violence against her as you want, and she will have no recourse. and the simple fact of the matter is that the easiest way to do this is to draw attention to her alleged proximity to "maleness".

perhaps you might be thinking that proximity to maleness being used as a justification for oppression implies that misandry actually is real. after all, aren't women of color, butch lesbians, and even black men also subjected to violence due to their perceived proximity to "maleness"?

I understand how one could make that mistake, but that notion fails to engage with the actual material reasoning behind the forms of oppression these groups face: they pose a threat to the cishet white man's absolute dominion. the root of these disparate but related forms of oppression, biological essentialism, is inherently a white supremacist, misogynistic, and conservative ideology. its purpose, much like its ilk, eugenics and phrenology, is to establish a hierarchy in society that places cishet white christian men at the top by asserting that they are inherently biologically superior to all others in every respect.

if you observe people's behavior, you can see that this ideology permeates almost every level of society. cishet white men are elevated to positions of authority without question; their motives are never scrutinized and criticized in the same way that trans women's are, or any of the other oppressed groups mentioned above. if one of these men is misogynistic, if he views women as mere sex objects to be controlled to suit his liking, he will not be punished for it; he is exercising the right that has been given to him by the society people like him have created through centuries of colonialism. even in queer spaces, men are regularly coddled, their misdeeds forgiven or excused for no real reason other than that many queer people have not questioned the assumptions they've internalized.

the notion that trans women are oppressed by misandry is laughable, really, because we are constantly made aware that, due to biological essentialism, TME people will always trust a man over us.

#my writing #transmisogyny

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Why You Shouldn't Care About Theme (as a writer)

"Theme" is another word like "worldbuilding" and "plot hole" that writers put way too much stock into without clear definition. It's often thought to be one of the most important things in your story, one of the defining traits of creative writing, but it can be hard to pin down, and some pervasive definitions are actively harmful to the writing process. Let's talk about that.

A common misconception about theme is that it's the story's "message." Under this definition, a theme of The Great Gatsby would be that generation wealth is a hollow substitute for genuine human enrichment, love, etc. A theme of Hamlet would be to not kill yourself. But this idea of a book's message misses the point of why we read at all. Reading is a relationship between the author and the reader; to interpret text, the author puts their experiences in writing, and you bring your experiences to its reading. In other words, you as the reader create meaning from a story. You give the story its messages. The author's only purpose is to transcribe their worldview and experiences, and the best authors can sway the empathy of the reader towards those experiences. Anything greater than this, any book that moralizes, preaches, dictates, is gaudy, emotional propaganda. Imagine a novel where throughout the book, the author is telling you about the toxic environmental effects of unwalkable cities. While true, narrative fiction is a realm of characters and story, not essays. Readers pull meaning from a novel because they think and feel about a character's struggle and relate it to their own. So a message about The Great Gatsby is that generation wealth is hollow because we as readers live in an age of unprecedented wealth disparity; a message about Hamlet is to not kill yourself because we as readers have felt pretty down in the dumps sometimes and have maybe thought about suicide. But our experiences could be different: if we're generationally wealthy, we might read Gatsby as a celebration; if we have an awful stepfather, we might read Hamlet first as a story of revenge than of introspection. Strong authors make you sympathize with the experiences they've gone through--Fitzgerald himself was a wealthy, popular man and saw firsthand the effects of wealth, and Shakespeare probably felt rough around the emotional edges at times--but ultimately, deciding a text's "messages" is up to the reader.

So if we can't control the messages of our writing, what is theme? I like to think of it as "whatever a text is about," and that about word carries some ambiguity. Is Gatsby about money? Yes, but there's more to that. You can think right now about a plot element your WIP is about, but as authors, we want to find that greater depth. That's what we call theme.

Common writing advice tells you to plot out your theme, that greater depth, before drafting the novel. Figure out that Gatsby is a story about generational wealth being a hollow substitute for romance before anything else. But when you think about it, this is crazy advice. Themes like this can only come from our characters and how they interact with the world, and how our characters act is always going to stray in some way away from our plans for them. Writing that deeper theme, then, is impossible to plan (unless you're the most extreme plotter and have found success like that, then keep doing what you're doing. But you reading this almost certainly are not in that camp, let's be honest). So how do we get there?

Before you start drafting, think about the surface-level "abouts." Don't go deep yet. Just think about what's pressing on your mind. If you want to take a very slight moralistic bent here, do so, but be sure not to go into specifics (that's for the characters to do). For my first novel, I wanted to write about friendship responsibilities, family responsibilities, and friendship; for my second novel, church camp, romance, and evangelical culture; for my current novel, the role of story in culture, honor, familial trauma, and cultural perceptions of gender. Some of these took on moral detail--evangelical culture is bad--but most didn't. As you're writing, your characters will discover that deeper meaning. Again, your characters have to and will by nature of being part of the narrative. Your readers interact with the story, not with you.

In my first novel, I came to the thematic conclusion that too many responsibilities degrade individual identity, but too few leave someone empty; in the second novel, I concluded that evangelical culture places restrictive boxes on what romance looks like, and on how to interact with and resolve traumatic events. But I didn't come up with these--my characters did, and I learned from them in the exact same way any reader would. Similarly, a reader might interact with my characters and come to completely different conclusions. This is normal, okay, and encouraged.

You may also find other themes popping up as you write. In my second novel, popularity and social capital became a huge cog in the machine. Let these fresh themes surprise you, and run with them.

Ultimately, you can't control what your readers take away from your story. Your goal as a writer is to create characters so rich and deep and intimate (not in the romantic sense, unless you're into that) that the reader can bring their experiences to the text and find meaning. We cannot worry about this before starting a writing project, because we can't control it, and thinking too much about it will muddy the waters of what actually matters, what we can affect. And when you start to sense those deeper meanings emerging in your story, run with them, flesh them out, and embody them in the struggles of characters.

#writeblr #writing #writing advice #writing questions #fanfic #creative writing #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writer #bookblr #booklr #reading

[asha-mage]

WoT Meta: Feudalism, Class, And The Politics of The Wheel of Time

One of my long standing personal annoyances with the fantasy genre is that it often falls into the trap of simplifying feudal class systems, stripping out the interesting parts and the nuance to make something that’s either a lot more cardboard cut-out, or has our modern ideas about class imposed onto it.

Ironically the principal exception is also the series that set the bar for me. As is so often the case, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time is unique in how much it works to understand and convey a realistic approach to power, politics, government, rulership, and the world in general–colored neither by cynicism or idealism. How Jordan works the feudal system into his world building is no exception–weaving in the weaknesses, the strengths, and the banal realities of what it means to have a Lord or Lady, a sovereign Queen or King, and to exist in a state held together by interpersonal relationships between them–while still conveying themes and ideas that are, at their heart, relevant to our modern world.

So, I thought I’d talk a little bit about how he does that.

Defining the Structure

First, since we’re talking about feudal class systems, let's define what that means– what classes actually existed, how they related to each other, and how that is represented in Jordan’s world. 

But before that, a quick disclaimer. To avoid getting too deep into the historical weeds, I am going to be making some pretty wide generalizations. The phrases ‘most often’, ‘usually’, and ‘in general’ are going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting. While the strata I’m describing is broadly true across the majority medieval and early Renaissance feudal states these things were obviously heavily influenced by the culture, religion, geography, and economics of their country–all of which varied widely and could shift dramatically over a surprisingly small amount of time (sometimes less than a single generation). Almost nothing I am going to say is universally applicable to all feudal states, but all states will have large swathes of it true for them, and it will be widely applicable. The other thing I would ask you to keep in mind is that a lot of our conceptions of class have been heavily changed by industrialization. It’s impossible to overstate how completely the steam engine altered the landscape of socio-politics the world over, in ways both good and bad. This is already one of those things that Jordan is incredibly good at remembering, and that most fantasy authors are very good at forgetting. 

The disparity between your average medieval monarch’s standard of living and their peasants was pretty wide, but it was nothing compared to the distance between your average minimum wage worker and any billionaire; the monarch and the peasant had far more in common with each other than you or I do with Jeff Bezos or Mike Zuckerberg. The disparity between most people’s local country lord and their peasants was even smaller. It was only when the steam engine made the mass production of consumer goods possible that the wealth gap started to become a chasm–and that was in fact one of the forces that lead to the end of the feudal system and the collapse of many (though by no means all) of the ruling monarchies in Europe. I bring this up because the idea of a class system not predicated on the accumulation of capital seems pretty alien to our modern sensibilities, but it was the norm for most of history. Descent and birth mattered far more than the riches you could acquire–and the act of accumulating wealth was itself often seen as something vulgar and in many countries actively sinful. So with that in mind, what exactly were the classes of feudalism, and how do they connect to the Wheel of Time?

The Monarch and their immediate family unsurprisingly occupied the top of the societal pyramid (at least, in feudal states that had a monarch and royal family- which wasn’t all of them). The Monarch was head of the government and was responsible for administering the nation: collecting taxes, seeing them spent, enforcing law, defending the country’s borders and vassals in the event of war, etc. Contrary to popular belief, relatively few monarchs had absolute power during the medieval period. But how much power the monarch did have varied widely- some monarchs were little more than figureheads, others were able to centralize enough power on themselves to dictate the majority of state business- and that balance could shift back and forth over a single generation, or even a single reign depending on the competence of the monarch. 

The royal family usually held power in relation to their monarch, but also at the monarch’s discretion. The more power a monarch had, the more likely they were to delegate it to trusted family members in order to aid with the administration of the realm. This was in both official and unofficial capacities: princes were often required to do military service as a right of passage, and to act as diplomats or officials, and princesses (especially those married into foreign powers) were often used as spies for their home state, or played roles in managing court affairs and business on behalf of the ruler.

Beneath the monarch and their family you get the noble aristocracy, and I could write a whole separate essay just on the delineations and strata within this group, but suffice to say the aristocracy covers individuals and families with a wide range of power and wealth. Again, starting from that country lord whose power and wealth in the grand scheme of things is not much bigger than his peasants, all the way to people as powerful, or sometimes more powerful, than the monarch. 

Nobles in a feudal system ruled over sections of land (the size and quality usually related sharply to their power) setting taxes, enforcing laws, providing protection to the peasants, hearing petitions, etc. within their domains. These nobles were sometimes independent, but more often would swear fealty to more powerful nobles (or monarchs) in exchange for greater protection and membership in a nation state. Doing so meant agreeing to pay taxes, obey (and enforce) the laws of the kingdom, and to provide soldiers to their liege in the event of war. The amount of actual power and autonomy nobles had varied pretty widely, and the general rule of thumb is that the more powerful the monarch is, the less power and autonomy the nobles have, and vice versa. Nobles generally were expected to be well educated (or at least to be able to pretend they were) and usually provided the pool from which important government officials were drawn–generals, council members, envoys, etc–with some kingdoms having laws that prevented anyone not of noble descent from occupying these positions.

Beneath the nobles you get the wealthy financial class–major merchants, bankers, and the heads of large trade guilds. Those Marx referred to generally as the bourgeoisie because they either own means of production or manage capital. In a feudal system this class tended to have a good bit of soft power, since their fortunes could buy them access to circles of the powerful, but very little institutional power, since the accumulation and pursuit of riches, if anything, was seen to have negative moral worth. An underlying presumption of greediness was attached to this class, and with it the sense that they should be kept out of direct power.

That was possible, in part, because there weren't that many means of production to actually own, or that much capital to manage, in a pre-industrial society. Most goods were produced without the aid of equipment that required significant capital investment (a weaver owned their own loom, a blacksmith owned their own tools, etc), and most citizens did not have enough wealth to make use of banking services. This is the class of merchants who owned, but generally didn’t directly operate, multiple trading ships or caravans, guild leaders for craftsfolk who required large scale equipment to do their work (copper and iron foundries for the making of bells, for example), and bankers who mainly served the nobility and other wealthy individuals through the loaning and borrowing of money. This usually (but not always) represented the ceiling of what those not born aristocrats could achieve in society.

After that you get middling merchants, master craftsfolk and specialty artisans, in particular of luxury goods. Merchants in this class usually still directly manage their expeditions and operations, while the craftsfolk and artisans are those with specialty skill sets that can not be easily replicated without a lifetime of training. Master silversmiths, dressmakers, lacquer workers, hairdressers, and clockmakers are all found in this class. How much social clout individuals in this class have usually relates strongly to how much value is placed on their skill or product by their society (think how the Seanchan have an insatiable appetite for lacquer work and how Seanchan nobles make several Ebou Dari lacquer workers very rich) as well as the actual quality of the product. But even an unskilled artisan is still probably comfortable (as Thom says, even a bad clockmaker is still a wealthy man). Apprenticeships, where children are taught these crafts, are thus highly desired by those in lower classes,as it guaranteed at least some level of financial security in life.

Bellow that class you find minor merchants (single ship or wagon types), the owners of small businesses (inns, taverns, millers etc), some educated posts (clerks, scribes, accountants, tutors) and most craftsfolk (blacksmiths, carpenters, bootmakers, etc). These are people who can usually support themselves and their families through their own labor, or who, in the words of Jin Di, ‘work with their hands’. Most of those who occupy this class are found in cities and larger towns, where the flow of trade allows so many non-food producers to congregate and still (mostly) make ends meet. This is why there is only one inn, one miller, one blacksmith (with a single apprentice) in places like Emond’s Field: most smaller villages can not sustain more than a handful of non-food producers. This is also where you start to get the possibility of serious financial instability; in times of chaos it is people at this tier (and below) that are the first to be forced into poverty, flight, or other desperate actions to survive.

Finally, there is the group often collectively called ‘peasants’ (though that term is also sometimes used to mean anyone not noble born). Farmers, manual laborers, peddlers, fishers- anyone who is unlikely to be able to support more than themselves with their labor, and often had to depend on the combined labor of their spouse and families to get by. Servants also generally fit into this tier socially, but it’s important to understand that a servant in say, a palace, is going to be significantly better paid and respected than a maid in a merchant's house. This class is the largest, making up the majority of the population in a given country, and with a majority of its own number being food-producers specifically. Without the aid of the steam engine, most of a country’s populace needs to be producing food, and a great deal of it, in order to remain a functional nation. Most of the population as a result live in smaller spread out agrarian communities, loosely organized around single towns and villages. Since these communities will almost always lack access to certain goods or amenities (Emond’s Field has a bootmaker, but no candlemaker, for example) they depend on smalltime traders, called peddlers, to provide them with everyday things, who might travel from town to town with no more than a single wagon, or even just a large pack.

The only groups lower than peasants on the social hierarchy are beggars, the destitute, and (in societies that practice slavery) slaves. People who can not (or are not allowed to) support themselves, and instead must either eke out a day to day existence from scraps, or must be supported by others. Slaves can perform labor of any kind, but they are regarded legally as a means of production rather than a laborer, and the value is awarded to their owner instead. 

It’s also worth noting that slavery has varied wildly across history in how exactly it was carried out and ran the gamut from the trans-Atlantic chattel slavery to more caste or punitive-based slavery systems where slaves could achieve freedom, social mobility, or even some degree of power within their societies. But those realities (as with servants) had more to do with who their owners were than the slave’s own merit, and the majority of slaves (who are almost always seen as less than a freedman even when they are doing the same work) were performing the same common labor as the ‘peasant’ class, and so viewed as inferior.

Viewing The Wheel of Time Through This Lens

So what does all this have to do with Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time? A lot actually, especially compared to his contemporaries in fantasy writing. Whereas most fantasy taking place in feudal systems succumbs to the urge to simplify matters (sometimes as far down to their only being two classes, ‘peasant’ and ‘royalty’) Jordan much more closely models real feudalism in his world. 

The majority of the nations we encounter are feudal monarchies, and a majority of each of their populations are agrarian farming communities overseen by a local lord or other official. How large a nation’s other classes are is directly tied to how prosperous the kingdom is, which is strongly connected to how much food and how many goods the kingdom can produce on the available land within it. This in turn, is tightly interdependent on how stable the kingdom is and how effective its government is.

Andor is the prime example: a very large, very prosperous kingdom, which is both self-sufficient in feeding itself via its large swathes of farmland (so much so that they can afford to feed Cairhien through selling their surplus almost certainly at next to no profit) and rich in mineral wealth from mines in the west. It is capable of supporting several fairly large cities even on its outskirts, as well as the very well-developed and cosmopolitan Caemlyn as its capital. This allows Andor to maintain a pretty robust class of educated workers, craftsfolk, artisans, etc, which in turn furthers the realm’s prosperity. At the top of things, the Queen presides over the entire realm with largely centralized power to set laws and taxes. Beneath her are the ‘great houses’–the only Houses in Andor besides the royal house who are strong enough that other nobles ‘follow where they lead’ making them the equivalent of Duchesses and Dukes, with any minor nobles not sworn directly to the Queen being sworn to these ten.

And that ties into something very important about the feudal system and the impact it had on our world and the impact it has on Jordan's. To quote Youtuber Jack Rackham, feudalism is what those in the science biz would call an unstable equilibrium. The monarch and their vassals are constantly in conflict with each other; the vassals desiring more power and autonomy, as the monarch works to centralize power on themselves. In feudalism there isn’t really a state army. Instead the monarch and the nobles all have personal armies, and while the monarch’s might be stronger than anyone else’s army, it’s never going to be stronger than everybody else’s. 

To maintain peace and stability in this situation everyone has to essentially play Game of Thrones (or as Jordan called it years before Martin wrote GoT, Daes Dae’mar) using political maneuvering, alliances, and scheming in order to pursue their goals without the swords coming out, and depending on the relative skill of those involved, this can go on for centuries at a time….or break apart completely over the course of a single bad summer, and plunge the country into civil war.

Cairhien is a great example of this problem. After losing the Aiel War and being left in ruins, the monarch who ultimately secured the throne of Cairhien, Galldrian Riatin, started from a place of profound weakness. He inherited a bankrupt, war torn and starving country, parts of which were still actively on fire at the time. As Thom discusses in the Great Hunt, Galddrian's failure to resettle the farmers displaced by the war left Cairhien dependent on foreign powers to feed the populace (the grain exports from Tear and Andor) and in order to prevent riots in his own capital, Galldrian choose bread and circuses to keep the people pacified rather then trying to substantially improve their situation. Meanwhile, the nobles, with no effective check on them, began to flex their power, seeing how much strength they could take away from each other and the King, further limiting the throne’s options in how to deal with the crisis, and forcing the King to compete with his most powerful vassals in order to just stay on the throne. This state of affairs ultimately resulted, unsurprisingly, in one of Galladrin’s schemes backfiring, him ending up dead, and the country plunging into civil war, every aristocrat fighting to replace him and more concerned with securing their own power then with restoring the country that was now fully plunged into ruin.

When Dyelin is supporting Elayne in the Andoran Succession, it is this outcome (or one very much like it) that she is attempting to prevent. She says as much outright to Elayne in Knife of Dreams–a direct succession is more stable, and should only be prevented in a situation where the Daughter Heir is unfit–through either incompetence or malice–to become Queen. On the flip side, Arymilla and her lot are trying to push their own agendas, using the war as an excuse to further enrich their Houses or empower themselves and their allies. Rhavin’s machinations had very neatly destabilized Andor, emboldening nobles such as Arymilla (who normally would never dream of putting forward a serious claim for the throne) by making them believe Morgase and Trakand were weak and thus easy to take advantage of. 

We also see this conflict crop up as a central reason Murandy and Altara are in their current state as well. Both are countries where their noble classes have almost complete autonomy, and the monarch is a figurehead without significantly more power than their vassals (Tylin can only keep order in Ebou Dar and its immediate surrounding area, and from what she says her father started with an even worse deal,with parts of the capital more under the control of his vassals than him). Their main unifying force is that they wish to avoid invasion and domination by another larger power (Andor for Murandy, Illian and Amadica for Altara) and the threat of that is the only thing capable of bringing either country into anything close to unity.

Meanwhile a lack of centralization has its trade offs; people enjoy more relative freedoms and social mobility (both depend heavily on trade, which means more wealth flowing into their countries but not necessarily accumulating at the top, due to the lack of stability), and Altara specifically has a very robust ‘middle class’ (or as near as you can get pre-industrialization) of middling to minor merchants, business and craftsfolk, etc. Mat’s time in Ebou Dar (and his friendship with Satelle Anan) gets into a lot of this. Think of the many many guilds that call Altara home, and how the husband of an inn owner can do a successful enough business fishing that he comes to own several crafts by his own merit. 

On the flip side both countries have problems with violence and lawlessness due to the lack of any enforced uniformity in terms of justice. You might ride a day and end up in land ruled by a Lord or Lady with a completely different idea of what constitutes, say, a capital offense, than the Lord or Lady you were under yesterday. This is also probably why Altara has such an ingrained culture of duels to resolve disputes, among both nobles and common folk. Why appeal to a higher authority when that authority can barely keep the streets clean? Instead you and the person you are in conflict with, on anything from the last cup of wine to who cheated who in a business deal, can just settle it with your knives and not have to bother with a hearing or a petition. It’s not like you could trust it anyways; as Mat informs us, most of the magistrates in Altara do the bidding of whoever is paying their bribes.

But neither Altara nor Murandy represents the extreme of how much power and autonomy nobles can manage to wrangle for themselves. That honor goes to Tear, where the nobles have done away with the monarch entirely to instead establish what amounts to an aristocratic confederacy. Their ruling council (The High Lords of Tear) share power roughly equally among themselves, and rule via compromise and consensus. This approach also has its tradeoffs: unlike Murandy and Altara, Tear is still able to effectively administer the realm and create uniformity even without a monarch, and they are able to be remarkably flexible in terms of their politics and foreign policy, maintaining trade relationships even with bitter enemies like Tar Valon or Illian.  On the flipside, the interests of individual nobles are able to shape policy and law to a much greater extent, with no monarch to play arbiter or hold them accountable. This is the source of many of the social problems in Tear: a higher sense of justice, good, or even just plain fairness all take a back seat to the whims and interest of nobles. Tear is the only country where Jordan goes out of his way, repeatedly, to point out wealth inequality and injustice. They are present in other countries, but Jordan drives home that it is much worse in Tear, and much more obscene. 

This is at least in part because there is no one to serve as a check to the nobles, not even each other. A monarch is (at least in theory) beholden to the country as a whole, but each High Lord is beholden only to their specific people, house and interests, and there is no force present that can even attempt to keep the ambitions and desires of the High Lords from dictating everything. So while Satelle Anan's husband can work his way up from a single fishing boat to the owner of multiple vessels, most fisherman and farmers in Tear scrape by on subsistence, as taxes are used to siphon off their wealth and enrich the High Lords. While in Andor ‘even the Queen most obey the law she makes or there is no law’ (to quote Morgase), Tairen Lords can commit murder, rape, or theft without any expectation of consequences, because the law dosen’t treat those acts as crimes when done to their ‘lessers’, and any chance someone might get their own justice back (as they would in Altara) is quashed, since the common folk are not even allowed to own weapons in Tear. As we’re told in the Dragon Reborn, when an innkeeper is troubled by a Lord cheating at dice in the common room, the Civil Watch will do nothing about it and citizens in Tear are banned from owning weapons so there is nothing he can do about it. The best that can be hoped for is that he will ‘get bored and go away’.

On the opposite end, you have the very very centralized Seanchan Empire as a counter example to Tear, so centralized it’s almost (though not quite) managed to transcend feudalism. In Seanchan the aristocratic class has largely been neutered by the monarchy, their ambitions and plots kept in check by a secret police (the Seekers of Truth) and their private armies dwarfed by a state army that is rigorously kept and maintained. It’s likely that the levies of the noble houses, if they all united together, would still be enough to topple the Empress, but the Crystal Throne expends a great deal of effort to ensure that doesn't happen,playing the nobles against each other and taking advantage of natural divisions in order to keep them from uniting.

Again, this has pros and cons. The Seanchan Empire is unquestionably prosperous; able to support a ridiculous food surplus and the accompanying flow of wealth throughout its society, and it has a level of equity in its legal administration that we don’t see anywhere else in Randland. Mat spots the heads of at least two Seanchan nobles decorating the gates over Ebou Dar when he enters, their crimes being rape and theft, which is a far cry from the consequence-free lives of the Tairen nobles. Meanwhile a vast state-sponsored bureaucracy works to oversee the distribution of resources and effective governance in the Empress’s name. No one, Tuon tells us proudly, has to beg or go hungry in the Empire. But that is not without cost. 

Because for all its prosperity, Seanchan society is also incredibly rigid and controlling. One of the guiding philosophies of the Seanchan is ‘the pattern has a place for everything and everything’s place should be obvious on sight’. The classes are more distinct and more regimented than anywhere else we see in Randland. The freedoms and rights of everyone from High Lords to common folk are curtailed–and what you can say or do is sharply limited by both social convention and law. The Throne (and its proxies) are also permitted to deprive you of those rights on nothing more than suspicion. To paraphrase Egeanin from TSR: Disobeying a Seeker (and presumably any other proxy of the Empress) is a crime. Flight from a Seeker is a crime. Failure to cooperate fully with a Seeker is a crime. A Seeker could order a suspected criminal to go fetch the rope for their own binding, and the suspected criminal would be expected to do it–and likely would because failure to do anything else would make them a criminal anyway, whatever their guilt or innocence in any other matter.

Meanwhile that food surplus and the resulting wealth of the Empire is built on its imperialism and its caste-based slavery system, and both of those are inherently unsustainable engines. What social mobility there is, is tied to the Empire’s constant cycle of expand, consolidate, assimilate, repeat–Egeanin raises that very point early on, that the Corenne would mean ‘new names given and the chance to rise high’. But that cycle also creates an endless slew of problems and burning resentments, as conquered populations resist assimilation, the resistance explodes into violence that the Seanchan must constantly deal with–the ‘near constant rebellions since the Conquest finished’ that Mat mentions when musing on how the Seanchan army has stayed sharp.

The Seanchan also practice a form of punitive and caste-based slavery for non-channelers, and chattel slavery for channelers. As with the real-life Ottoman Empire, some da’covale enjoy incredible power and privilege in their society, but they (the Deathwatch Guard, the so’jhin, the Seekers) are the exception, not the rule. The majority of the slaves we encounter are nameless servants, laborers, or damane. While non-channelers have some enshrined legal protections in how they can be treated by their masters and society as a whole, we are told that emancipation is incredibly rare, and the slave status is inherited from parent to child as well as used as a legal punishment–which of course would have the natural effect of discouraging most da’covale from reproducing by choice until after (or if) they are emancipated–so the primary source for most of the laborers and servants in Seanchan society is going to be either people who are being punished or who choose to sell themselves into slavery rather then beg or face other desperate circumstances. 

This keeps the enslaved population in proportion with the rest of society only because of the Empire’s imperialism- that same cycle of expand, consolidate, assimilate, repeat, has the side effect of breeding instability, which breeds desperation and thus provides a wide pool to draw on of both those willing to go into slavery to avoid starvation, and those who are being punished with slavery for wronging the state in some manner. It’s likely the only reason the Empire’s production can keep pace with its constant war efforts: conquered nations (and subdued rebellions) eventually yield up not just the necessary resources, but also the necessary laborers to cultivate them in the name of the state, and if that engine stalls for any sustained length of time (like say a three hundred year peace enforced by a treaty), it would mean a labor collapse the likes of which the Empire has never seen before.

A note on damane here: the damane system is undoubtedly one of chattel slavery, where human beings are deprived of basic rights and person hood under the law for the enrichment of those that claim ownership over them. Like in real life this state of affairs is maintained by a set of ingrained cultural prejudices, carefully constructed lies, and simple ignorance of the truly horrific state of affairs that the masses enjoy. The longevity of channelers insulates the damane from some of the problems of how slavery can be unsustainable, but in the long run it also suffers from the same structural problem: when the endless expansion stops, so too will the flow of new damane, and the resulting cratering of power the Empire will face will put it in jeopardy like nothing has before. There is also the problem that, as with real life chattel slavery, if any one piece of the combination of ignorance, lies, and prejudice starts to fall apart, an abolition movement becomes inevitable–and several characters are setting the stage for just that via the careful spreading of the truth about the sul’dam. Even if the Seanchan successfully put down an abolition movement, doing so will profoundly weaken them in a way that will necessitate fundamental transformation, or ensure collapse.

How Jordan Depicts The Relationships Between Classes

As someone who is very conscious in how he depicts class in his works, it makes sense that Jordan frequently focuses on characters interacting through the barriers of their various classes in different ways. New Spring in particular is a gold mine for this kind of insight.

Take, for example, Moiraine and Siuan’s visit to the master seamstress. A lesser writer would not think more deeply on the matter than ‘Moiraine is nobly born so obviously she’s going to be snobby and demanding, while down-to-earth Siuan is likely to be build a natural rapport and have better relationship her fellow commoner, the seamstress Tamore Alkohima’. But Jordan correctly writes it as the reverse: Tamore Alkohima might not be nobly born, but she is not really a peasant either–rather she belongs to that class of speciality artisans, who via the value placed on her labor and skill, is able to live quite comfortably. Moiraine is much more adept at maneuvering this kind of possibly fraught relationship than Siuan is. Yes, she is at the top of the social structure (all the more so since becoming Aes Sedai) but that does not release her from a need to observe formalities and courtesies with someone who, afterall, is doing something for Moiraine that she can not do for herself, even with the Power. If Moiraine wants the services of a master dressmaker, the finest in Tar Valon, she must show respect for both Tamore Alkohima and her craft, which means submitting to her artistic decisions, as well as paying whatever price, without complaint.

Siuan, who comes from the poor Maule district in Tear, is not used to navigating this kind of situation. Most of those she has dealt with before coming to the Tower were either her equals or only slightly above her in terms of class. She tries to treat Tamore Alkohima initially like she most likely treated vendors in the Maule where everyone is concerned with price, since so many are constantly on the edge of poverty, and she wants to know exactly what she is buying and have complete say over the final product, which is the practical mentality of someone to whom those factors had a huge impact on her survival. Coin wasted on fish a day from going bad, or netting that isn’t the right kind, might have meant the difference between eating that week or not, for a young Siuan and her father. 

Yet this this reads as an insult to Tamore Alkohima, who takes it as being treated with mockery, and leads to Moiraine needing to step in to try and smooth things over, and explain to Siuan-

“Listen to me, Siuan and do not argue.” she whispered in a rush. “We must not keep Tamore waiting long. Do not ask after prices: she will tell us after we make our selections. Nothing you buy here will be cheap, but the dresses Tamore sews for you will make you look Aes Sedai as much as the shawl does. And it is Tamore, not Mistress Alkohima. You must observe the properties or she will believe you are mocking her. But try thinking of her as a sister who stands just a little above you. A touch of deference is necessary. Just a touch, but she will tell you what to wear as much as she asks.” “And will the bloody shoe maker tell us what kind of slippers to buy and charge us enough to buy fifty new sets of nets?” “No.” Moiraine said impatiently. Tamore was only arching one eyebrow but her face may as well have been a thunderhead. The meaning of that eyebrow was clear as the finest crystal. They had already made the seamstress wait too long, and there was going to be a price for it. And that scowl! She hurried on, whispering as fast as she could. “The shoemaker will make us what we want and we will bargain the price with him, but not too hard if we want his best work. The same with the glovemaker, the stockingmaker, the shiftmaker, and all the rest. Just be glad neither of us needs a hairdresser. The best hairdressers are true tyrants, and nearly as bad as perfumers.”

-New Spring, Chapter 13: Business in the City.

Navigating the relationship between characters of a different class is something a of a running theme throughout New Spring–from Moiraine’s dealing with the discretion of her banker (‘Another woman who knew well her place in the world’ as Moiraine puts it), to having to meet with peasants during her search for the Dragon Reborn (and bungling several of those interactions), to wading through the roughest criminal parts of Chachin in search of an inn, and frequently needing to resort to the Power to avoid or resolve conflict. Moiraine’s ability to handle these situations is tightly tied to her experience with the people involved prior to her time as a Novice, but all hold up and give color to the class system Jordan presents. It also serves as set up so that when Moraine breaks the properties with a different seamstress near the end of the book, it can be a sign of the rising tension and the complex machinations she and Siuan find themselves in.

Notably, Moiraine and Siuan’s relative skill with working with people is strongly related to their backgrounds: the more Moiraine encounters people outside her lived experience as a noble daughter in Cairhien, the more she struggles to navigate those situations while Siuan is much more effective at dealing with the soldiers during the name-taking sequence (who are drawn mostly from the same class as her–common laborers, farmers, etc), and the people in Chachin, where she secures an lodging and local contacts to help in the search with relative ease.

Trying to navigate these waters is also something that frequently trips up characters in the main series as well, especially with the Two Rivers folk who are, ultimately, from a relatively classless society that does not subscribe to feudal norms (more on that below). All of them react to both moving through a society that does follow those norms, and later, being incorporated into its power structures in different, frequently disastrous ways.

Rand, who is not used to the complicated balance between vassal and monarch (which is all the more complicated as he is constantly adding more and more realms under his banner) finds imposing his will and leading the aristocrats who swear fealty to him incredibly difficult. While his reforms are undoubtedly good for the common folk and the general welfare of the nations he takes over, he is most often left to enforce them with threats and violence, which ultimately fuel resistance, rebellion, and more opposition to him throughout the nations he rules, and has down-the-line bad ripple effects on how he treats others, both noble and not, who disagree with him. 

Rand also struggles even with those who sincerely wish to serve and aid him in this context: he is awkward with servants, distant with the soldiers and warriors who swear their lives to him, and even struggles with many of his advisors and allies. Part of that is distrust that plagues him in general, but a big element to it is also his own outsider perspective. The Aiel frequently complain that Rand tries to lead them like a King, but that’s because they assume a wetlander King always leads by edict and command. Yet Rand’s efforts to do that with the Westland nations he takes over almost always backfire or have lasting consequences. Rand is frequently trying to frequently play act at what he thinks a King is and does–and when he succeeds it’s almost always a result of Moiraine or Elayne’s advice on the subject, not his own instincts or preconceptions.

Perrin, meanwhile, is unable to hide his contempt for aristocracy and those that willingly follow them, which leads to him both being frequently derelict in his duties as a Lord, and not treating his followers with a great deal of respect. Nynaeve has a similar problem, where she often tries to ‘instill backbone’ into those lower in the class system then her, then comes to regret it when that backbone ends up turned on her, and her leadership rejected or her position disrespected by those she had encouraged to reject leadership or not show respect to people in higher positions.

Interestingly, it’s Mat that most effectively manages to navigate various inter-class relationships, and who via the Band of the Red Hand builds a pretty equitable, merit-based army. He does this by following a simple rule: treating people how they wish to be treated. He accepts deference when it’s offered, but never demands it. He pushes back on the notion he’s a Lord often, but only makes it a serious bone with people who hold the aristocracy in contempt. He’s earnest in his dealings, fair minded, and good at reading social situations to adapt to how folks expect him to act, and when he breaches those expectations it’s usually a deliberate tactical choice. 

This lets him maintain strong friendships with people of all backgrounds and classes– from Princes like Beslan to horse thieves like Chel Vanin. More importantly, it makes everyone under his command feel included, respected, and valued for what they are. Mat has Strong Ideas About Class (and about most things really), but he’s the only Two Rivers character who doesn't seem to be working from an assumption that everyone else ought to live by his ideals. He thinks anyone that buys into the feudal system is mad, but he doesn't actually let that impact how he treats anyone–probably from the knowledge that they think he’s just as mad.

Getting Creative With the Structure

The other thing I want to dig into is the ways in which Jordan, via his understanding of the feudal system, is able to play with it in creative and interesting ways that match his world. Succession is the big one; who rules after the current monarch dies is a massively important matter since it determines the flow of power in a country from one leader to the next. The reason so many European monarchies had primogeniture (eldest child inherits all titles) succession is not because everyone just hated second children, it’s because primogeniture is remarkably stable. Being able to point to the eldest child of the monarch and say them, that one, and their younger sibling if they're not around, and so on is very good for the transition of power, since it establishes a framework that is both easy to understand and very very hard to subvert. Pretty much the only way, historically, to subvert a primogeniture succession is for either the heir’s blood relationship to the monarch or the legitimacy of their parent’s marriage to be called into question.

And yet despite that, few of the countries in Jordan's world actually use primogeniture succession. Andor does, as do some of the Borderlands, but the majority of  monarchies in Randland use elective succession, where the monarch is elected from among the aristocratic class by some kind of deliberative body. This is the way things are in Tarabon, Arad Doman,Ghealdan, Illian, and Malkier, who all elect the monarchs (or diarchs in the case of Tarabon- where two rulers, the Panarch and the King, share power) via either special council or some other assembly of aristocrats. 

There are three countries where we don’t know the succession type (Arafel, Murandy, and Amadicia) but also one we know for sure doesn't use primogeniture succession: Cairhien. We know this because Moiraine’s claim to the Sun Throne as a member of House Damodred is seen as as legitimate enough for the White Tower to view putting her on the Sun Throne as a viable possibility, despite the fact that she has two older sisters whose claims would be considered superior to her own under primogeniture succession. We never find out for sure in the books what the succession law actually is (the country never stabilizes for a long enough period that it becomes important), but if I had to guess I would guess that it’s designated,where the monarch chooses their successor prior to their death, and that the civil war that followed the Aiel War was the result of both Laman and his designated heir(s) dying at the Bloodsnows (we are told by Moiraine that Laman and both his brothers are killed; likely one of them was the next in line).

One country that we know for sure uses designated succession is Seanchan, where the prospective heir is still chosen from among the children of the Empress, but they are made to compete with each other (usually via murder and plotting) for the monarch’s favor, the ‘best’ being then chosen to become the heir. This very closely models how the Ottoman Empire did succession (state sanctioned fratricide) and while it has the potential to ensure competence (by certain metrics, anyways) it also sows the seeds of potential instability by ensuring that the monarch is surrounded by a whole lot of people with bad will to them and feelings of being cheated or snubbed in the succession, or else out for vengeance for their favored and felled candidate. Of course, from the Seanchan’s point of view this is a feature not a bug: if you can’t win a civil war or prevent yourself from being assassinated, then you shouldn’t have the throne anyways.

Succession is far from the only way that Jordan plays with the feudal structure either. Population is something else that is very present in the world building, even though it’s only drawn attention to a handful of times. In our world, the global population steadily and consistently rose throughout the middle ages and the Renaissance (with only small dips for things like the plague and the Mongol Invasion), then exploded with the Industrial Revolution and has seen been on a meteoric climb year over year (something that may just now be stabilizing into an equilibrium again, only time will tell). This is one of the pressures that led to the collapse of feudalism in the real world, as a growing aristocratic class was confronted with finite land and titles, while at the same time the growing (and increasingly powerful) wealthy financial class of various countries were beginning to challenge the traditions and laws that kept them out of direct power. If you’ve ever read a Jane Austen novel (or really anything from the Georgian/Regency/Victorian eras) this tension is on display. The aristocratic class had never been as secure as people think, but the potential to fall into poverty and ruin had never been a greater threat, which had ripple effects for the stability of a nation, and in particular a monarch who derived much of their power from the fealty of their now-destabilized vassals.

In Jordan’s world however, we are told as early as The Great Hunt that the global population is steadily falling, and has been since the Hundred Years’ War (at least). No kingdom is able to actually control all the territory it has on a map, the size of armies have in particular shrunk consistently (to the point where it’s repeatedly commented on that the armies Rand puts together, some of no more than a few thousand, are larger than any ‘since Artur Hawkwing's day’), large swathes of land lay ungoverned and even more uninhabited or settled. Entire kingdoms have collapsed due to the inability of their increasingly small populations to hold together. This is the fate of many of the kingdoms Ingtar talks about in the Great Hunt: Almoth, Gabon, Hardan, Moredo, Caralain, to name just a few. They came apart due to a combination of ineffective leadership, low population, and a lack of strong neighbors willing or able to extend their power and stability over the area.

All of this means that there is actually more land than there are aristocrats to govern it; so much so that in places like Baerlon power is held by a crown-appointed governor because no noble house has been able to effectively entrench in the area. This has several interesting effects on the society and politics of Randland: people in general are far more aware of the fragility of the nation state as a idea then they would be otherwise, and institutions (even the intractable and mysterious White Tower) are not viewed by even their biggest partisans as invulnerable or perpetual. Even the most powerful leaders are aware, gazing out constantly, as they do, at the ruins of the hundreds of kingdoms that have risen and fallen since the Breaking of the World (itself nothing more, to their understanding, then the death of the ultimate kingdom) that there are no guarantees, no promises that it all won’t fall apart. 

This conflict reflects on different characters in different ways, drawing out selfishness and cowardice from some, courage and strength from others. This is a factor in Andor’s surprisingly egalitarian social climate: Elayne and Morgase both boast that Andorans are able to speak their minds freely to their leaders about the state of things, and be listened to, and even the most selfish of leaders like Elenia Sarand are painfully aware that they stand on a tower built from ‘the bricks of the common folk’, and make a concentrated effort to ensure their followers feel included and heard. Conversely it also reflects on the extremely regimented culture of the Borderlands, were dereliction of duty can mean not just the loss of your life, but the loss of a village, a town, a city, to Trolloc raids (another pressure likely responsible for slow and steady decline of the global population). 

The Borderlanders value duty, honor, and responsibility above all else, because those are the cornerstones holding their various nations together against both the march of time and the Blight. All classes place a high value on the social contract; the idea that everyone must fulfill their duty to keep society safe is a lot less abstract when the stakes are made obvious every winter through monsters raiding your towns. This is most obvious in both Hurin and Ingtar’s behavior throughout The Great Hunt: Hurin (and the rest of the non-noble class) lean on the assurance that the noble class will be responsible for the greater scale problems and issues in order to endure otherwise unendurable realities, and that Rand, Ingtar, Aglemar, Lan (all of whom he believes to be nobly born) have been raised with the necessary training and tools to take charge and lead others through impossible situations and are giving over their entire lives in service to the people. In exchange Hurin pays in respect, obedience, and (presumably) taxes. This frees Hurin up to focus on the things that are decidedly within his ken: tracking, thief taking, sword breaking, etc, trusting that Ingtar, and later Rand, will take care of everything else.

When Hurin comes up against the feudal system in Cairhien, where the failures of everyone involved have lead to a culture of endless backstabbing and scheming, forced deference, entitlement, and mutual contempt between the parties, he at first attempts to show the Cairhienin ‘proper’ behavior through example, in the hopes of drawing out some shame in them. But upon realizing that no one in Cairhien truly believes in the system any longer after it has failed the country so thoroughly (hence the willingness of vassals to betray their masters, and nobles to abandon their oaths–something unthinkable in the Borderlands) he reverts to his more normal shows of deference to Rand and Ingtar, abandoning excessive courtesy in favor of true fealty.

Ingtar (and later Rand) feel the reverse side of this: the pressure to be the one with the answers, to hold it all together, to be as much icon and object as living person, a figure who people can believe in and draw strength from when they have none of their own remaining, and knowing at the same time that their choices will decide the fates and lives of others. It’s no mistake that Rand first meets Hurin and begins this arc in the remains of Hardan, one of those swept-away nations that Ingtar talks about having been left nothing more than ‘the greatest stone quarry for a hundred miles’. The stakes of what can happen if they fail in this duty are made painfully clear from the start, and for Rand the stakes will only grow ever higher throughout the course of the series, as number of those ‘under his charge’ slides to become ‘a nation’ then ‘several nations’ and finally ‘all the world’. And that leads into one of the problems at the heart of Rand’s character arc.

This emphasis on the feudal contract and duty helps the Borderlands survive the impossible, but almost all of them (with the exception of Saldaea) practice cultures of emotional repression and control,spurning displays of emotion as a lack of self-control, and viewing it as weakness to address the pains and psychological traumas of their day to day lives. ‘Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather’, ‘There will be time to sleep when you’re dead’, ‘You can care for the living or mourn the dead, you cannot do both’: all common sayings in the Borderlands. On the one hand, all of these emphasize the importance of fulfilling your duty and obligations…but on the other, all also  implicitly imply the only true release from the sorrows and wounds taken in the course of that duty is death. It is this, in part, that breaks Ingtar: the belief that only the Borderlands truly understand the existential threat, and that he and those like him are suffering and dying for ‘soft southlanders’ whose kingdoms are destined to go to ruin anyways. It’s also why he reveals his suffering to Rand only after he has decided to die in a last stand–he is putting down the mountain of his trauma at last. This is also one of those moments in the books that is a particular building block on the road to Rand’s own problems with not expressing his feelings or being willing to work through his trauma, that will swing back around to endanger the same world he is duty-bound to protect.

I also suspect strongly that this is the source of the otherwise baffling Saldean practice of….what we will call dedicated emotional release. One of the core cultural Saldean traits (and something that is constantly tripping up Perrin in his interactions with Faile) is that Saldeans are the only Borderlanders to reject the notion that showing emotion is weakness. In fact, Saldeans in general believe that shows of anger, passion, sorrow, ardor–you name it–are a sign of both strength and respect. Your feelings are strong and they matter, and being willing to inflict them on another person is not a burden or a betrayal of duty, it’s knowing that they will be strong enough to bear whatever you are feeling. I would hesitate to call even the Saldaens well-adjusted (I don’t know that there is a way to be well-adjusted in a society at constant war), but I do think there is merit to their apparent belief in catharsis, and their resistance to emotional repression as a sign of strength. Of course, that doesn't make their culture naturally better at communication (as Faile and Perrin’s relationship problems prove) but I do think it plays a part in why Bashere is such a good influence on Rand, helping push him away from a lot of the stoic restraint Rand has internalized from Lan, Ingtar, Moiraine, et al.

It also demonstrates that a functioning feudal society is not dependent on absolute emotional repression, or perfect obedience.  Only mutual respect and trust between the parties are necessary–trust that the noble (or monarch) will do their best in the execution of their duties, and trust that the common folk in society will in turn fulfill their roles to the best of their ability. Faile’s effectiveness as Perrin’s co-leader/second in command is never hindered or even implied to be hindered by her temperament or her refusal to hide/repress her emotions. She is arguably the one who is doing most of the actual work of governing the Two Rivers after she and Perrin are acclaimed their lord and lady: seeing to public works projects, settling disputes, maintaining relationships with various official groups of their subjects.

The prologue from Lord of Chaos (a favorite scene of mine of the books) where Faile is holding public audience while Perrin is off sulking ‘again’ is a great great example of this; Faile is the quintessential Borderland noble heir, raised all her life in the skills necessary to run a feudal domain, and those skills are on prime display as she holds court. But that is not hindered by her willingness to show her true feelings, from contempt of those she thinks are wasting her time, to compassion and empathy to the Wisdoms who come to her for reassurance about the weather. This is one of those things that Perrin has to learn from her over the course of the series–that simply burying his emotions for fear they might hurt others is not a healthy way to go about life, and it isn’t necessary to rule or lead either. His prejudices about what constitutes a ‘good’ Lord (Lan, Agelmar, Ingtar) and a ‘bad’ one (literally everyone else) are blinding him, showing his lack of understanding of the system that his people are adopting, and his role in it.

Which is a nice dovetail with my next bit–

Outsiders And the Non-Feudal State

Another way Jordan effectively depicts the Feudal system is by having groups who decidedly do not practice it be prominent throughout the series–which is again accurate to real life history, where feudalism was the mode of government for much of (but by no means all) of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, but even in Europe their were always societies doing their own thing, and outside of it, different systems of government flourished in response to their environments and cultures; some with parallels to Feudalism, many completely distinct.

The obvious here are the Aiel who draw on several different non-feudal societies (the Scottish Highland Clans, the Iroquois Confederation, the Mongols, and the Zulu to name just a few) and the Seafolk (whose are a combination of the Maori and the Republic of Piracy of all things), but also firmly in these categories are groups like the communities in the Black Hills, Almoth Plain, and the Two Rivers.

Even though it’s an agrarian farming community made up primarily of small villages, the Two Rivers is not a feudal state or system. We tend to forget this because it looks a lot like our notion of a classic medieval European village, which our biases inherently equate to feudal, but Jordan is very good at remembering this is not the case, and that the Two Rivers folk are just as much outsiders to these systems as the Aiel, or the Seafolk. 

Consider how often the refrain of ‘don’t even know they’re part of the Kingdom of Andor’ is repeated in regards to the Two Rivers, and how much the knowledge of Our Heroes about how things like Kingdoms, courts, war, etc, are little more than fairy tales to the likes of those Two Rivers, while even places unaffected directly by things like the Trakand Succession or the Aiel War are still strongly culturally, economically, and politically impacted. 

Instead of deriving power and justice from a noble or even a code of law, power is maintained by two distinct groups of village elders (The Village Council and the Women’s Circle) who are awarded seats based on their standing within the community. These groups provide the day-to-day ordering of business and resolving of conflicts, aiding those in need and doing what they can for problems that impact the entire community. The Wisdom serves as the community physician, spiritual advisor, and judge (in a role that resembles what we know of pre-Christian celtic druids), and the Women’s Circle manages most social ceremonies from marriages to betrothals to funerals, as well as presiding over criminal trials (insofar as they even have them). The Mayor manages the village economics, maintaining relationships and arbitrating deals with outsider merchants and peddlers, collecting and spending public funds (through a volunteer collection when necessary, which is how we’re told the new sick house was built and presumably was how the village paid for things like fireworks and gleeman for public festivals), while the Council oversees civil matters like property disputes. 

On the surface this seems like an ideal community: idyllic, agrarian, decentralized, where everyone cares more about good food and good company and good harvests than matters of power, politics, or wealth, and without the need for any broader power-structure beyond the local town leaders. It’s the kind of place that luddites Tolkien and Thomas Jefferson envisioned as a utopia (and indeed the Two Rivers it the most Tolkien-y place in Randland after the Ogier stedding, of which we see relatively little), but I think Jordan does an excellent job of not romanticizing this way of life the way Tolkien often did. Because while the Two Rivers has many virtues and a great deal to recommend it, it also has many flaws.

The people in the Two Rivers are largely narrow minded and bigoted, especially to outsiders; The day after Moiraine saves the lives of the entire village from a Trolloc attack, a mob turns up to try and burn her out, driven by their own xenophobia and fear of that which they don’t understand. Their society is also heavily repressed and regressive in its sex norms and gender relations: the personal lives of everyone are considered public business, and anyone living in a fashion the Women’s Circle deems unsuitable (such as widower and single father Tam al’Thor) is subject to intense pressure to ‘correct’ their ways (remarry and find a mother for Rand). There is also no uniformity in terms of law or government, no codified legal code, and no real public infrastructure (largely the result of the region’s lack of taxes). This is made possible by the geographic isolation and food stability–two factors that insulate the Two Rivers from many of the problems that cause the formation or joining of a nation state. It’s only after the repeated emergence of problems that their existing systems can not handle (Trolloc raids, martial law under the White Cloaks, the Endless Summer, etc) that the Two Rivers folk begin adopting feudalism, and even then it’s not an instantaneous process, as everyone involved must navigate not just how they are going to adopt this alien form of government, but how they are going to make it match to their culture and history as well.

This plays neatly with the societies that, very pointedly, do not adopt feudalism over the course of the series. The Aiel reject the notion entirely, thinking it as barbaric and backward as the Westerlanders think their culture is–and Jordan is very good at showing neither as really right. The Aiel as a society have many strengths the fandom likes to focus on (a commitment to community care, a strong sense of collective responsibility, a flexible social order that is more capable of accounting for non-traditional platonic and romantic relationships, as well as a general lack of repressive sex norms) but this comes at a serious cost as well. The Aiel broadly share the Borderlander’s response of emotional suppression as a way of dealing with the violence of their daily life, as well as serious problems with institutionalized violence, xenophobia, and a lack of respect for individual rights and agency. Of these, the xenophobia is probably the most outright destructive, and is one of the major factors Rand has to account for when leading the Aiel into Cairhien, as well a huge motivating factor in the Shaido going renegade, and many Aiel breaking clan to join them–and even before Rand’s arrival it manifested as killing all outsiders who entered their land, except for Cairhienin, whom they sold as slaves in Shara.

And yet, despite these problems Jordan never really suggests that the Aiel would be better off as town-or-castle dwelling society, and several characters (most notably the Maidens) explicitly reject the idea that they should abandon their culture, values, and history as a response to the revelations at Rhuidean. Charting a unique course forward for the Aiel is one of the most persistent problems that weighs on the Wise Ones throughout the second half of the series, and Aviendha in particular. Unlike many of the feudal states faced with Tarmon Gai’don, the Aiel when confronted with the end of days and the sure knowledge of the destruction of their way of life are mostly disinterested in ignoring, running from, or rejecting that revelation (those that do, defect to the Shaido). Their unique government and cultural structure gives them the necessary flexibility to pivot quickly to facing the reality of the Last Battle, and to focus on both helping the world defeat the Shadow, and what will become of them afterwards. This ironically, leaves them in one of the best positions post-series, as the keepers of the Dragon’s Peace, which will allow them to hold on to many of their core cultural values even as they make the transition to a new way of life, without having to succumb to the pressures to either assimilate into Westlands, or return to their xenophobic isolationism.

The Seafolk provide the other contrast, being a maritime society where the majority of the people spend their time shipboard. Their culture is one of strong self-discipline and control, where rank, experience, and rules are valued heavily, agreements are considered the next thing to sacred, and material prosperity is valued. Though we don’t spend quite as much time with them as the Aiel, we get a good sense of their culture throughout the mid-series. They share the Aiel’s contempt for the feudal ‘shorebound’, but don’t share their xenophobia, instead maintaining strong trade relationships with every nation on navigable water, though outside of the context of those trade relationships, they are at best frosty to non-Seafolk. 

They are not society without problems–the implication of their strong anti-corruption and anti-nepotism policies is that it’s a serious issue in their culture, and their lack of a centralized power structure outside of their handful of island homes means that they suffer a similar problem to the likes of Murandy and Altara, where life on one ship might be radically different then life on another, in terms of the justice or treatment you might face, especially as an outsider. But the trade off is that they have more social mobility then basically any other society we see in Randland. Even the Aiel tend to have strongly entrenched and managed circles of power, with little mobility not managed by the Wise Ones or the chiefs. But anyone can rise high in Sea Folk society, to become a leader in their clan, or even Mistress of the Ships or Master of the Blades– and they can fall just as easily, for shows of incompetence, or failures to execute their duties. 

They are also another society who is able to adapt to circumstances of Tamon Gai’don relatively painlessly, having a very effective plan in place to deal with the fallout and realities of the Last Battle. The execution gets tripped up frequently by various factors, but again, I don’t think it’s a mistake that they are one of the groups that comes out the other side of the Last Battle in a strong position, especially given the need that will now exist to move supplies and personnel for rebuilding post-Last Battle. The Seafolk have already begun working out embassies in every nation on navigable water, an important step to modernizing national relationships.

How does all this relate to feudalism and class? It’s Jordan digging into a fundamental truth about the world and people–at no point in our own history have we ever found a truly ‘perfect’ model for society. That’s something he’s constantly trying to show with feudalism–it is neither an ideal nor an abomination, it just is. Conversely, the Two Rivers, Aiel, Seafolk, and Ogier (who I don’t get into to much here for space, but who also have their own big problems with suffrage and independence, and their virtues in terms of environmental stability and social harmony) all exist in largely classes societies, but that doesn't exempt them from having problems or make them a utopia, and it certainly doesn't make them lesser or backwards either–Jordan expends a lot of energy to show them as complex, nuanced and flawed, in the same way he does for his pseudo-Europe.

Conclusion

To restate my premise: one of Jordan’s profound gifts as a writer is his capacity to set aside his own biases and write anything from his villains to his world with an honest, empathetic cast that defies simplification. Feudalism and monarchy more generally have a bad rep in our society, for good reasons. But I think either whitewashing or vilifying the feudal system is a mistake, which Jordan’s writing naturally reflects. Jordan is good at asking complicating questions of simple premises. He presents you with the Kingdom of Andor, prosperous and vast and under the rule of a regal much loved Queen and he asks ‘where does its wealth come from? How does it maintain law and order? How does the Queen exert influence and maintain her rule even in far-flung corners of the realm? How did she come to power in the first place and does that have an impact on the politics surrounding her current reign?’. And he does this with every country, every corner of his world–shining interesting lights on familiar tropes, and exploring the humanity of these grand ideas in a way that feels very real as a result.

The question of, is this an inherently just system is never really raised because it’s a simplifying question, not a complicating one. Whatever you answer–yes or no–does not add to the depiction of these systems or the people within them, it takes away. You make someone flat–be it a glorious just revolutionary opposing a cackling wicked King, or a virtuous and dutiful King suppressing dangerous radical dissidents, and you make the world flatter as a result. 

I often think about how, when I began studying European history, I was shocked to learn that the majority of the royalists who rose up against the Jacobins were provincial peasants, marching against what they perceived to be disgruntled, greedy academic and financial elites. These were, after all, the same people that the Jacobins’ revolution claimed to serve and be doing the will of. Many of the French aristocrats were undeniably corrupt, indolent, and detached from their subjects, but when you look closer at the motives of many of the Jacobins you discover that motives were frequently more complex then history tends to remember or their propaganda tried to claim, and many were bitterly divided against each other on matters of tactics, or ideals, or simple personality difference. The simple version of the French Revolution assigns all the blame to the likes of Robespierre going mad with power, and losing sight of the revolutions’ higher ideals, but the truth was the Jacobins could never properly agree on many of their supposed core ideals, and Robespierre, while powerful, was still one voice in a Republic–and every person executed by guillotine was decreed guilty by a majority vote.

This is the sort of nuance lost so often in fantasy stories, but not in Jordan’s books. The story could be simpler–Morgase could just be a just and good high Queen archetype who is driven by love of her people, but Jordan depicts her from the beginning as human–with virtues and flaws, doing the best she can in the word she has found herself. Trying to be a just and good Queen and often succeeding, and sometimes falling short of the mark. The Tairen and Cairhienin nobility could just all be greedy, corrupt, out-of-touch monsters who cannot care for anything beyond their own pleasures–but for every Laman, Weairamon, or Colavaere, you have Dobraine, Moiraine, or Darlin. And that is one of the core tenets of Jordan’s storytelling: that there is no system wholly without merit or completely without flaw, and no group of people is ever wholly good or evil.

By taking this approach, Jordan’s story feels real. None of his characters or world come across like caricature or parody. The heinous acts are sharper and more distinct, the heroic choices more earned and powerful. Nothing is assumed–not the divine right of kings, or the glorious virtue of the common man. This, combined with a willingness to draw on the real complex histories of our own world, and work through how the unique quirks of fantasy impact them, is what renders The Wheel Of Time such a standout as a fantasy series, past even more classic seminal examples of the genre, and why its themes of class, duty, power, and politics resonate with its modern audiences.

#Wheel of Time #WoT #WoT Meta #Wheel of time Meta #Feudalism #Class Politics #Worldbuilding #Wot Book Spoilers #AMOL Spoilers #No one has ever done it like Robert Jordan and no one may ever do it like him again #Their is no earthly way I can tag all the characters refrenced in this #so I'll hit those I talk about more then three times #Rand al'Thor #Moiraine Damodred #Elayne Trakand #Mat Cauthon #Perrin Aybara #faile bashere #Morgase Trakand #ingtar shinowa #Hurin #tuon athaem kore paendrag #I invite pepole to discuss/respond if they want #but a reminder that I assume good faith whenever possible #and ignore bad faith when apparent

[snapscube]

What are you most looking forward to about the Final Sonic tonight?

(Also, optional bonus question, I remember back in the day you would talk about your ideas for an open world sonic game. Would you say frontiers adequately scratched that itch? I haven't played it myself and I was shrimply curious)

(HI PEACH!!)

I HONESTLY THINK i’m mostly looking forward to the NEW CHARACTER WRITING and getting to PLAY AS AMY most of all!!!! plus i’m also just rlly excited about the prospect of getting to return to such a HIT STREAM PLAYTHROUGH for one last hurrah!!!

as for ur second question i can definitely say that while Frontiers does a lot to get CLOSE to that “dream open world sonic game” i always used to rattle on about, its not 100% of the way there. the design philosophy is very different, its more of an open-area collectathon whereas my dream game would be closer to like… platformer RPG? basically the primary changes they’d have to make would be:

- an open world environment that is more seamlessly integrated with platforming challenges, so not as many disparate floating rails and boxes just In The Sky Forever. make the same structures out of like… branches, caves, the sides of full buildings, phone lines, etc

- connect the zones together into a larger, singular map. add a lot more points of interest and FULL TOWNS. NPCs, shops, secrets, the whole nine yards

- a more expansive quest system with like, Yakuza-style substories where u learn about the world as well as Sonic’s relation to these communities through small vignettes and hijinks

- hide the chaos emeralds and put them behind like, Assassins’s Creed Catacomb style dungeons throughout the world that are not marked on the map and test ur platforming and combat abilities to earn all 7 emeralds.

I would just want a lot more story, a lot more character, and a bit more of a cohesive world design. BUT this would also result in a very different game overall! I can definitely see why they went in the direction they did, they very much want Sonic to be an ACTION GAME first and foremost, which is super fair.

[damianbugs]

Honestly I would love a Jason Todd comic that focused on confronting his world view, like yes it's easy to put a bullet through the head of every criminal but, the world isn't so black and white, sometimes criminals either have no choice/it goes deeper than that. Similar to how utrh questions Bruce's morality (nothing really came of it) I want a comic where Jason's world view is also questioned.

He really has a lot of potential but idk DC keeps fumbling. I'd like to know your thoughts on how you would handle a Jason storyline, I love your metas.

oh how i mourn the disappointing horror of everything under the red hood could have been... for both bruce and jason!

if i were to handle a jason comic, i would disregard everything ever written after under the red hood and related stories. as much as i enjoy jason joining the batfam and rebuilding bridges in fanon works, i much prefer jason becoming a permanent member of the gotham rouge gallery and staying batman's kind-of-enemy in canon.

what i think utrh was setting up was Jason Todd, Ultimate Foe of Bruce Wayne. jason is a incredibly smart and cunning character, who planned to the smallest detail in order to get his desired outcome. nothing he did was by accident. but more importantly, his unwavering and concrete code can only be rivalled by batman, and so, they will constantly be at odds. if utrh taught us anything, it is that jason and bruce are always going to be plagued by what they lost in each other, and as a result, will never find their way back to what they once were.

they will now forever exist as consequences of each other, no matter what.

by doing this to his story, jason finally has the chance to grow as his own character, independent from the batfam;

one of the biggest problems with how dc is handling jason is that they want him to be this angry, violent and unsociable person while also trying to convince everyone that he is not angry and not violent and very sociable with the batfam. this causes the disparity in his writing, either with inconsistencies or just downright character assassination.

if he was kept as gotham's anti-hero, then this gives him the freedom to find his own code that is no longer dependent on batman's overarching one. utrh jason kills indiscriminately because it's what solves the problem that batman's never been able to fix: crime. jason, who is young, and betrayed, and for all that he is intelligent, he is naive and claims he's the long term solution to batman's short term one. unfortunately, killing criminals to stop criminals from existing works until, like you said, comes a situation where the world isn't so black and white.

jason knows this, probably better than anyone. he comes from poverty and homelessness, lost his parents to drugs and sickness and violence. many of his stories as robin highlight how, unlike batman, jason is able to see people for who they are and not just their actions, offering a empathetic insight that batman, for all he is kind, can never truly grasp.

as red hood, i think a combination of the lazarus pit, his training, and his murderer, batman's seemingly disregard for him, how the world moves on while jason is stuck, has made him forget this kindness he had in him. that he still has. so we need a story where it is pulled out of him and he is forced to battle what he's always known.

i think this question of jason's morality was what zdarsky was TRYING to do with Cheer (Batman Urban Legends #1-#6), but it fell flat due to the terrible portrayal of Robin Jason. The story itself of jason killing someone and bruce reacting to it left a lot to be desired (as always). not to mention how out of all the criminals jason could've been shown to kill, having it be a dealer who is also an addict is rather... tone deaf on jason's own moral code. the killing was also not calculated or "for the greater good" and was instead a rage-filled thoughtless killing which, again, is a gross misunderstanding of jason's moral code and intelligence.

so we almost had it, a story where jason has to fight someone more stubborn than batman — himself. as a character in batman's rouge gallery, this horrifying realisation of who he shares that title with, the determination to be better not because of batman, but because jason himself has realised he can do more by doing less of what he's been doing.

i don't know if i would rule out jason killing people entirely, since it is such an integral deconstruction of who he was as robin and who he is now as red hood, but i would like to think he changes how he holds his weapons. less of "i kill because it's the only way to fix this" and more "i kill because sometimes it's the best thing i can do to fix this". a very subtle but still problematic change that isolates him from ever joining the batfam.

it might seem sort of cruel, that my ideal jason story makes him lonely and more of a villian, but i think that is the sort of tragic path his character is forced to adopt. he made this bed when he returned to gotham with retribution in his plans and hurt in his heart, and now he must lie in.

there is always the potential for him to be happy, to have his family and friends and be the sort of hero he was as a teenager — but to get there, it needs to get worse before it can get better. that's what dc failed with jason, skipping the internal turmoil and drama and harsh reality checks and skipping straight to the part where he has a family again.

plus, batman's rouge gallery teach lessons to batman. poison ivy, harley, two face, strange, riddler and (annoyingly) even the joker play crucial roles to who batman is as a hero and constantly force him to challenge his code.

jason teaches the biggest lesson of all — that batman is bruce wayne. he had the potential to be the driving force that changed bruce's character forever, because red hood is a reflection that batman created all on his own, not by being batman, but by being bruce wayne. and this fact would have given jason the chance to be more than just that.

#sorry for rambling #and for bringing it back to bruce and jason #unfortunately i am insane about them #one day we will get a writer who truly values jason #and all that he was as robin and all he can be as red hood #one day... #jason todd #bruce wayne #saki comic talks #saki anons #dc meta

[goblincow]

Been thinking about this & putting it into practice when writing The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick for a while: thanks to the ever excellent @babblegumsam (who you are probably already following and if not now is your chance to rectify that) for the final straw that made me write this up today. I truly believe if you have any interest in TTRPGs, play, or design you'll get something out of it, it's a further 5.4 mins read from here on out.

--------------------

Play is interaction.

Reading is interaction.

Below I will argue the necessity & usefulness of thinking the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs as (almost) the exact same thing to unlock a wide & deep potential as reader/player/designer.

--------------------

Reading & play don't have to be the same thing. But you can't play without reading (in the sense of reading representations, images, ideas, concepts, interactions, etc, not just written text), because then there could be no interaction.

Reading and play can both accurately describe a given act or process. For instance: I read a table or piece of prose in a TTRPG book.

I say this because this is an idea that people struggle with, and while I encourage debate around the concept, we first have to agree on some basic building blocks that I hope I'm able to communicate here. For instance, there exists a potential reality in which tabletop roleplaying games are called tabletop reading games and nothing else about them changes (except for the consequential ability to think of reading in ttrpgs as play, and the potential this tool unlocks), because the prerequisite role for all other roles being played in a role-playing game is that of the reader.

This is true for much more than TTRPGs, but if we simply focus on acknowledging that reading & play in ttrpgs can and often are the same thing, then we are able to make informed design choices on this basis that we otherwise lack the agency to make – and which are nonetheless choices that are being made while we miss the opportunity to observe, read & ultimately interact and/or change and/or play with them.

To not think of the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs in this way is to limit your agency as a designer, reader, player, and ultimately to cause yourself to be unable to synthesise these roles which are deeply inter-related, perhaps more so than they are disparate.

However you define it, Good Design necessitates the application of the right tool for the job. This requires making, maintaining & improving the tools that you have access to. The reader/player relationship is not only one of these, but an integral one that precedes a great many (if not all) of the other tools that you can & do employ as designer/player/reader.

If you allow this tool to remain blunt and imprecise (and especially if you don't acknowledge that it exists and that you use it in every choice you make), what you are doing is making a choice to blunt all of your other tools, even if you aren't aware of it.

This is poor design, poor play, and poor reading,* and I believe that this is true regardless of how you define each of those terms.

*though of course we could - and I think should - argue over the semantics & limitations of my imprecise use of the word "poor" there and the further ideas it smuggles in unacknowledged, but I trust that you will be able to infer what I'm trying to communicate in my use of it and I further hope that by leaving this imprecise application of a tool here in the way that I have used it, it might serve as a good example of the consequences, limitations & potential dangers of applying tools/terms/ideas that might be best described as "too blunt for the job", which is the very thing I'm attempting to highlight & address here.

It would not seem very sensible to choose to limit yourself in this way unless it allowed you access to new tools, which is a choice that you could only make once you are familiar with the central idea I'm presenting here – in other words, if you break the rules without understanding them you are very unlikely to be taking a step forward and much more likely to just be shuffling in place or even stepping backwards.

I hope that this short interaction has unlocked or reinforced your access to a useful tool that will allow you to sharpen your understanding of the play/reading relationship in TTRPGs and in turn refine & maintain your existing tools and your ability to synthesise new ones.

I look forward to discovering with you what new agencies this allows us to unlock, and I hope you take what you have read here and play with it to design new realities that you & I have yet to imagine.

#reading #play #ttrpg #indie ttrpg #ttrpg design #indie ttrpg design #tabletop roleplaying #games #game design #design theory #theory #design blog #ttrpg blog #ttrpg ideas #ttrpg resources #ttrpg mechanics #ttrpg dev #indie ttrpg dev #rpg design #ttrpgs for everyone #dialectics #communication design #communication theory #design philosophy #ttrpg community #ttrpg family #《 not a fan of that as a tool btw it is incredibly limiting and we could all do without it. why not be more precise & why not start now #any other useful tags you can think to add please do so. i think this deserves to reach far and wide & is very useful if i do say so myself! #Finally: take it and run with it. play/change/sharpen/blunt this tool. it's yours. make it your own (or dont). dont do what i say (or do) 🤡 #respect & solidarity and thanks for reading. I hope you have found value in my contribution 🤝

[tastesoftamriel]

The issue I see with the ESO Dark Heart of Skyrim depiction of Reachfolk is primarily the division between "ethnic/indigenous" stereotypes, e.g. living in "tribes" in the middle of buttfuck nowhere and being hostile to outsiders, and the "civilised" Reachfolk who are depicted as far smarter because they live within the relatively safe confines of Markarth with taverns and banking services and other city crap that are the benchmarks of modernity and Tamrielic civility.

There is no reason beyond blind ethnocentrism that this is a division that exists, either in real life or in fantasy (if we allow the latter to truly break the bonds of fiction into something *better*). So-called "primitive" peoples, be that the Azande or Trobrianders, have been subject to ridicule due to their indigenous knowledge, myths, and beliefs as unaligned with our post-enlightenment, postmodernist, scientific worldview. In the eyes of many writers, projecting what is deemed within their worldview to be "good" for their characters is really a detriment when it comes to original worldbuilding.

At the risk of sounding like yet another unhinged Marxist, my final comment concerns the structures of Reach society. The hierarchical structure of Reach clans is not something I'm super familiar with so I may come off as sounding like an idiot here, but bear with me. Why are Reachfolk, with supposedly primitive and unchangeable belief systems, upheld to the societal structures of mainstream Tamrielic groups? Why would they trade with gold, if they traded at all; and if they didn't, someone needs to do some research on the historical basis of global trade, which cough cough involves cooperation and amicable relations between disparate groups over huge distances and periods of time. Why are the Reachfolk exempt from this cycle of amicability? Is it more thrilling to write them as hostile savages, ready to attack anyone who supposedly threatens their way of life?

Yes, they would be thoroughly aware of the dangers of colonisation. But why have city Reachfolk been portrayed as sensible citizens of Tamriel while their brethren in the wilderness are presented as wild, IGNOBLE savages? Where is the justice in portraying indigenous peoples as they truly are and are capable of, rather than re-used Western tropes surrounding the division of self and savage Other?

Once again, this ties into the prominent Western tradition of Othering those who don't follow the tenets of a monotheistic, hegemonic, organised religion, or similarly prescribed worldview. By not including Aedra worship in Reachfolk culture, they are seen as savages and people who should be civilised and brought into the fold of the Divines. There is a pervasive undertone of violence linked to so-called "primitive" groups in TES, and this may just be to make convenient NPC bandits, but also perpetuates a stereotype that deeply harms real-life indigenous and culturally marginalised groups.

This is why careful worldbuilding is so so so important because we can project the world WE want, free from the socionormative biases that taint fantasy writing. Yes it's necessary to draw inspiration from real life, I do it all the time, but there's a point where you say "what if real life isn't that great of an idea to project here?"

I'd like to conclude by saying that I'd like to see this decolonisation of fantasy writing extended to other socially marginalised and misunderstood groups in TES, such as Bosmer, Argonians, giants, minotaurs, and the Bandaari (I could rant about them all day but I have other writing to attend to). We can do so much better not only with our ability to create some truly original fantasy worldbuilding, but also by showing others that by decolonising our own writing, we are becoming more sensitive to the worldview of others and incorporating that in an insightful and respectful manner.

#Rant #Reachfolk #reachmen #The Reach #Tes #The Elder Scrolls #Writing #decolonisation

[artsyhamster]

And we've reached the end! I cannot believe we made it but here are the final four. :)

You know the drill by now, explanations and ramblings underneath the cut :D

(1) THE FOOL / THE MAGICIAN / THE HIGH PRIESTESS |

(2) THE EMPRESS / THE EMPEROR / THE HIEROPHANT |

(3) THE LOVERS / THE CHARIOT / STRENGTH |

(4) THE HERMIT / WHEEL OF FORTUNE / JUSTICE |

(5) THE HANGED MAND | DEATH | TEMPERANCE |

(6) THE DEVIL / THE TOWER / THE STAR |

(7) THE MOON / THE SUN / JUDGEMENT / THE WORLD

THE MOON - As I mentioned in the previous set, I had The Star and The Moon exchanged at first. Colorwise I found the Balcony Smoker to be more fitting but descriptionwise.... "[The fool's] bliss (...) makes him vulnerable to the illusions of the Moon" fit Klaasje more. I feel like Harry related to her on a level and of course was drawn to her beauty, and fell for her deception. Or well at least I did lol. Although I don't even want to call it deception, more like...obfuscation in self-defense. Klaasje on the rooftop staring at a moon seemed like a nice visual image too.

THE SUN - I had. So much trouble. Filling this role. Since The sun stands for everything warm and joyous. "It enlightens, so the Fool both feels and understands the goodness of the world." And it's pretty hard to find something joyous in Revachol. I almost chose Ruby just for the orange aesthetics and the sort of... enlightenment. But considering she might shoot herself in the head, I refused to put her in the role of the sun. I wanted to save the Insulidan phasmid for THE WORLD at first, but I am damn happy I let go of that thought. Especially since the story starts and begins with the fool anyway. SO YEAH. I love this stick bug.... I cannot describe it. After you go through this whole bleak game, filled with death, misery, failure and coldness you find this...walking wonder. And the soundtrack to this encapsulates it so well, too. The phasmid scene always fills me with so much happiness T_T

JUDGEMENT - Also one of the the cards that were pretty clear to me from the beginning. Trant looks pretty menacing here but I love it lol. I added a small Harry, because under the judging eyes of his colleagues, everyone would feel small. "The Fool has been reborn. His false, ego-self has been shed, allowing his radiant, true self to manifest." The radiance is debatable, but Harry definitely went through a lot of development in the past few days and hopefully he came out a better person. He isn't absolved of his past mistakes and further judged on those, rather he is judged on the things he did right. And I don't know, what I like about Harry in general is that he is an absolute fuckup but if you give a person the right support and faith in them to be better, they can. If you keep reminding people only of the things they've done wrong, you are taking their room to grow, by defining them as an irredeemable failure.

THE WORLD - "The Fool reenters the World, but this time with a more complete understanding. He has integrated all the disparate parts of himself and achieved wholeness. He has reached a new level of happiness and fulfillment." Well, what can I say. Our fool Harry started this journey full of ignorance but he opened his eyes to the mistakes of the past and learned from them, and is now hopefully ready to tackle life anew. And I love the last sentence of The Fool's story: This cycle is over, but, the Fool will never stop growing. Soon he will be ready to begin a new journey that will lead him to ever greater levels of understanding. While this chapter of his life is over, there'll be new stories to be told. Setbacks and more opportunities to grow, and only time will tell where his journey will lead him this time.

Thanks to everyone who followed me and Harry on this journey and read through my ramblings. Also thanks for all the lovely tags & comments, it was an absolute pleasure reading through these. <3 Much Love!

#disco elysium #klaasje amandou #trant heidelstam #insulidan phasmid #disco elysium fanart #harry dubois #tarot #tarot cards

[brights-place]

Hello!! I read some of your Trolls stuff and I really really like them! May I request Trollex, Branch, and Floyd with a super supportive s/o who’s experienced in a lot of genres of music and dance? They have a TON of instruments and they know how to play every last one like girl where did you get these???

Sheet music and music theory knowledge is through the roof like you’d think they teach it as a profession, and if they give them physical affection and compliments and actually just normal relationship stuff??? They are a puddle on the ground they are NOT used to someone close actively caring so much about them besides like family they love that shit, giving AND receiving 😎 (they can be shy about it sometimes tho it’s adorable)

Uhhh tldr local music nerd is smitten with their amazing s/o, they down bad tbh /j

If this is too much in a single request, don’t hesitate to message me in case this is too long!

Them Dating an Music Theory! Troll

Pairing: Trollex X S/O, Floyd X S/O, and Branch X S/O

Warnings: Lots of Fluff, Mild cursing

A/N: OOOOH I LOVE THIS REQUEST! this is so good okay okay! plus I do music theory myself so this is fun! >:D

Trollex

- Trollex loves the way you explain music theory in a way that is easy to understand and engaging

- He enjoys listening to them talk passionately about music.

- He enjoys watching you play music for you and analyze the pieces in depth

- He listens when you rant and explain Music theory to him explaining that music theory covers things such as pitches and scales, intervals, clefs, rhythm, form, meter and time signatures, phrases and cadences, and basic harmony for music which he nods his head listening to you - Trollex loves how you play many instruments and stares at how you play it with ease - Trollex listens to you rant about it and is very patient with you even with his short attention span and endless energy.

- loves the way you light up when you talks about things that are about music

- He asks so many questions and forgets since his brain is re-setting sometimes - He can't help but admire your dedication to studying and refining your endless knowledge of music - He loves that they challenge your preconceived ideas about music and open you up to new perspectives of different musical styles and genres.

- He loves your creative ideas and imagination for how to explore and experiment with music.

- He values your willingness to share your knowledge and experience with you.

- He loves the way you express yourself through music and many genres not sticking to one and enjoys how you dance with him to techno music

Floyd

- Floyd loves to encourage you to express yourself creatively and explore your musical side more around him which you obviously do

- He appreciates how you share music tastes with him and discover new songs to listen to together

- He finds your knowledge of music history fascinating and enjoy learning new facts about the origins of different musical styles.

- Floyd is fascinated by your ability to deconstruct a piece of music and understand how the different elements interact to create a cohesive whole

- Floyd can’t help be impressed by the way you can find common threads between seemingly disparate pieces of music and make connections that he had never noticed before and would ask more

- You love the way your shy emo partner aka Floyd opens up to you and shares his emotions through music with you

-You two enjoy discussing the deeper meanings of songs and analysing the lyrics together though he mainly stared at your face to see your focused face

- He loves to play you a song that relates to your current emotional state and makes you feel understood and comforted.

- He can’t help but be drawn to how your musical knowledge and understanding of music theory can shed light on your personality in ways that you may not have been aware of but he was aware of it

- He finds it amazing how you can deconstruct your emotions using music theory and communicate with you on a deeper level which he also does I mean he is the sensitive one and knows about emotions

- He can’t help but be amazed by how much you can learn through many genres of music and their musical knowledge… I mean he’s Pop Rock but he can’t help but be shocked how you know ALL the genres

- He can’t help but be charmed by the way you approach music with pure enthusiasm and wonder as he stared at you lovingly.

Branch

- You both feel a strong connection with each other through music and can tell that you're both on the same wavelength even though he doesn't show it much,

- He can't help but admire the way you are fine with how branch can effortlessly switch between serious discussion and playful banter

- He finds it adorable when you become shy and blushes after realizing you have been rambling on about music for too long.

- He loves when you start sharing your favorite songs and artists with each other and discovering new music together

- He loves to support your creativity and encourages you to express yourself through music. - Branch can’t help be impressed by the way you can find common threads between seemingly disparate pieces of music and make connections that he had never noticed before and would ask more about it towards you

- He's impressed by your intelligence and knowledge of music theory.

- He finds himself admiring at your musical skills and wishing he could play or compose music the way you do.

reblogs + comments are appreciated ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

©brights-place 2023 — do not repost on another platform, copy, translate or edit my works! if you fit my DNI list please don't interact!

#©brights-place 2023 — do not repost on another platform #translate or edit my works! if you fit my DNI list please don't interact #copy #trollex x reader #trolls trollex #trolls band together #trolls x reader #dreamworks trolls #trolls #trolls 3 #trolls dreamworks #trolls fandom #king trollex #trolls world tour #queen barb #poppy #branch #delta trolls #synth trolls #trollstopia #trollex #king trollex x reader #reblogs + comments are appreciated ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡ #fluff #headcannons #x reader #trolls art #band together #trolls movie #trolls Floyd

[linghxr]

10 traditional characters that I didn't know existed

In 2023 I started learning to write traditional characters by hand, so I've been paying extra attention to differences between traditional and simplified forms. In some cases, I didn't even realize the traditional and simplified forms were different!

Here are 10 sets of simplified and traditional characters with subtle differences, 8 of which I only discovered recently. Definitions are adapted from MDBG.

（1）抛 | 拋 pāo

The difference is SO subtle with this one. I have to hold the screen 3 inches from my face to see it. The simplified version has 7 strokes, but the traditional version has 8.

抛 | 拋 pāo - to throw / to toss / to fling / to cast / to abandon

抛弃 | 拋棄 pāoqì - to abandon / to discard / to renounce / to dump (sb) 抛开 | 拋開 pāokāi - to throw out / to get rid of 抛物线 | 拋物線 pāowùxiàn - parabola

（2）滚 | 滾 gǔn

I actually prefer the traditional version, particularly when I'm writing by hand. When I write the simplified version, the 衣 strokes on the bottom always looks awkward under 公 to me.

滚 | 滾 gǔn - to boil / to roll / to take a hike / get lost!

摇滚 | 搖滾 yáogǔn - rock 'n' roll (music) / to rock / to fall off 滚开 | 滾開 gǔnkāi - to boil (of liquid) / boiling hot / Get out! / Go away! 滚烫 | 滾燙 gǔntàng - boiling / scalding 打滚 | 打滾 dǎgǔn - to roll about

（3）匀 | 勻 yún

I think these look pretty much the same when handwritten, but on the computer they are distinct. I definitely prefer how the simplified one looks.

匀 | 勻 yún - even / well-distributed / uniform / to distribute evenly / to share

均匀 | 均勻 jūnyún - even / well-distributed / homogeneous / well-proportioned (figure, body etc)

（4）叙 | 敘 xù

叙 | 敘 xù - to narrate / to chat

叙述 | 敘述 xùshù - to relate (a story or information) / to tell or talk about / to recount / narration / telling / narrative / account 叙事 | 敘事 xùshì - narrative

（5）奥 | 奧 ào

奥 | 奧 ào - obscure / mysterious

It really bugs me that 奥 has a different traditional form, but 澳 (as in 澳门 Macao) does not!

深奥 | 深奧 shēn'ào - profound / abstruse / recondite / profoundly 奥运会 | 奧運會 Àoyùnhuì - Olympic Games; the Olympics (abbr. for 奥林匹克运动会 | 奧林匹克運動會) 奥利给 | 奧利給 àolìgěi - come on, you can do it!

（6）厨 | 廚 chú

厨 | 廚 chú - kitchen

厨房 | 廚房 chúfáng - kitchen 厨师 | 廚師 chúshī - cook / chef 厨艺 | 廚藝 chúyì - cooking skills / culinary talent

Other similar cases: 厮 | 廝 sī - (bound form) together; each other / (bound form) male servant / (bound form) dude; so-and-so 厢 | 廂 xiāng - box (in theater) / side room / side 厦 | 廈 shà - tall building / mansion / rear annex / lean-to / also pr. xià

（7）刹 | 剎 chà/shā

Whether the bottom looks like 朩 or 木 seems to be somewhat stylistic and can vary by font. But the little 点 is a consistent difference.

刹 | 剎 chà - used to transcribe several words originally from Sanskrit

刹那 | 剎那 chànà - an instant (Sanskrit: ksana); split second; the twinkling of an eye

刹 | 剎 shā - to brake

刹车 | 剎車 shāchē - to brake (when driving) / to stop / to switch off / to check (bad habits) / a brake

（8）侣 | 侶 lǚ

侣 | 侶 lǚ - companion

伴侣 | 伴侶 bànlǚ - companion / mate / partner 情侣 | 情侶 qínglǚ - sweethearts / lovers

Other similar cases: 宫 | 宮 gōng - palace / temple / castration (as corporal punishment) / first note in pentatonic scale 吕 | 呂 lǚ - pitchpipe, pitch standard, one of the twelve semitones in the traditional tone system / surname Lǚ

（9）别 | 別 bié

I've known about the traditional form of this character for a while now, but to be honest, it still looks like 别 written incorrectly to me...sorry.

别 | 別 bié - to leave; to part (from) / (literary) to differentiate; to distinguish / (bound form) other; another; different / don't …! / to fasten with a pin or clip / to stick in; to insert (in order to hinder movement) / (noun suffix) category

差别 | 差別 chābié - difference; distinction; disparity 分别 | 分別 fēnbié - to part; to leave each other / to distinguish; to tell apart / difference; distinction / in different ways; differently / separately; individually 区别 | 區別 qūbié - difference / to distinguish / to discriminate / to make a distinction 性别 | 性別 xìngbié - gender / sex 个别 | 個別 gèbié - individually; one by one / just one or two; exceptional; rare

（10）丢 | 丟 diū

OK, I literally just realized there are separate simplified and traditional forms for this character while working on this post 😭 I feel utterly betrayed.

丢 | 丟 diū - to lose / to put aside / to throw

丢脸 | 丟臉 diūliǎn - to lose face / humiliation 丢人 | 丟人 diūrén - to lose face 丢掉 | 丟掉 diūdiào - to lose / to throw away / to discard / to cast away 丢失 | 丟失 diūshī - to lose; to misplace 跟丢 | 跟丟 gēndiū - to lose track of

See similar posts: Characters I used to write incorrectly Characters that look TOO similar Traditional characters that haunt me

#my learning #traditional characters #chinese characters #hanzi #chinese #mandarin #mandarin chinese #chinese language #studyblr #langblr #learning languages #language learning #chinese langblr #mandarin langblr #languageblr

[chocolatepot]

One thing I tend to see really disparate takes on is how much of Stede's presentation is masculine or feminine, and I keep thinking about it. The tricky thing is that of course standards of masculinity have changed between the early eighteenth century and now, and at the same time this production is very much not one that's going to be historically accurate in such a way that it confuses the audience!

So, 1717 masculinity first.

There's a stereotype that prior to Beau Brummell, there was no sense that men should be restrained in dress, but it's not true at all. Even in the 1710s and 1720s, English gentlemen were expected to have a certain soberness in their clothing - portraits show a preponderance of browns, as well as darker blues, greys, and occasionally reds; there's not that much trim, either, beyond buttons and occasionally a line of gold or silver braid. John Blathwayt is among the flashier, with a waistcoat and massive cuffs made out of a silvery damask - but attached to a brown silk (and really, grey-on-grey isn't that flamboyant). To a modern eye, the flowing wigs and stockinged calves relate to women's fashion, but both were symbols of masculinity in the period - women's hairstyles were more contained and natural, and their legs were covered with skirts.

The clothes Stede wears in the scenes set before he goes to sea generally reflect these norms. They're in darker tones, and cut fairly loose and not showing off his body. The orangey-brown anniversary outfit has the lightest colors and the closest fit, and it's still shades of brown and a pretty boxy shape. His cravat is often lacy, which really isn't very masculine for the period, but it's partially covered with a colored tie/secondary cravat - along with his lacy shirt cuffs, that's definitely something that can be read as a small expression of his style/queerness, which he's also half-concealing. In the betrothal scene, his cravat is actually a strangely rough fabric in a light grey, and I think it's tucked into his waistcoat so we can't actually see the ends.

I also want to note that the suit fabric really matches the upholstery in Stede's father's carriage. It's hard for me to not read this outfit as being chosen by Bonnet the elder to repress anything non-masculine about Stede, and also to show him as a possession, just like the carriage. On the other hand, the anniversary suit seems to be the brightest and most fitted, with a contrasting and I think floral-patterned waistcoat, and that was the scene where Stede tries to be more open than he's ever been with Mary about what he likes and wants.

There's a similar thing in the scene where Mary tells Stede to play with Alma and Louis. He starts off reading and ignoring Mary in a plain dark green coat, the ends of his cravat hidden behind his book and the top of it largely covered with a green tie. Then we jump cut to him playing with the kids and he has taken off the plain coat to reveal a patterned, light blue waistcoat (short and fitted), and he's tied the green tie around his head to uncover the white cravat, which is also revealed to have intricate lacy ends. Likewise, when he runs away to sea, he wears a fairly yellow waistcoat, embroidered with flowers - the only embroidery we see on him in the flashbacks apart from a little bit on his nightshirt right before he runs away.

So, how does this compare to what he wears as Captain Bonnet? (Part II)

#ofmd #ofmd costuming #our flag means death #ofmd meta #our flag means death costuming #stede bonnet #18th century english masculinity

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Thoughts on Last Twilight Ep. 5

Okay so a tell tale sign of a really good show for me is when I am rendered incapable of talking about it, which is why you’ve never seen a single analysis of I Told Sunset About You or I Promised You the Moon out of me, because if I think about that show too hard the bees return to my brain. And I’m having that problem with Last Twilight too where my chest feels absolutely bursting with feelings but I do not know that I am capable of writing anything about this show that is structured or coherent without prompting. So, here’s some incoherent ramblings I guess. 

First off, Aof is fucking brilliant and I am really desperately in love with the way that Mhok and Day just so beautifully complement each other/round each other out. I love that they have two completely disparate backgrounds and yet they can relate to one another so well. 

Mhok was literally imprisoned, and with the ankle monitor and very likely under some form of house arrest or curfew. Mhok walked through the world after his release from prison completely branded as a criminal, and unable to maintain his career because people always took him at face value. Day lost his career because of his blindness, and then willfully imprisoned himself in his own room because of how heavily he was grieving. 

Mhok knows what it is like to be looked at and judged, and I really loved earlier on in the show how confused he was at why Day would be bothered by that, presumably because he got used to being stared at himself. And I love that Mhok learned his lesson about that by trying to understand Day in a way no one has really taken the time to do for Mhok himself. I love that Mhok is able to take his own experiences of being stared at as a comparison for what it is like to not know if you are being looked at and judged. 

Rung lost her life, and that has fundamentally impacted Mhok and Mhok’s relationship to his sister. Similarly, Day lost (or at least thought he lost) the life he had which has fundamentally impacted himself and his relationship to Night. I don’t know that I have enough information yet to definitively declare how Rung’s death has impacted Mhok’s behavior and approach to life, but I do like to think that Mhok’s experience around Rung’s death, the fact he wasn’t there for her, the fact that he had to go through his first year of life without her imprisoned, may have been a contributing factor to how and why Mhok is so determined to get Day to live his life again. 

I don’t know, I was just thinking about Mhok’s suggestion that Day does his normal thing and goes to Gee’s game immediately following a conversation about Rung’s death and how he thought he would be able to make her False Rice again some day, just felt so clarifying to me as to how and why Mhok approaches Day the way he does. Because Day and Mhok both understand the meaning of “I thought I had more time” so well, for such fundamentally different reasons. 

gif by @casualavocados

I love that Mhok is starting to open up more to Day. Which, when you think about it, Mhok has been pretty private about his life despite knowing so much about Day’s life right out of the gate. I personally read this as a strong indicator for Mhok’s feelings for Day and how he is making a concerted effort to move from caretaker to lover. And there are so many fun layers to that relationship because their current relationship is not balanced. There is a bidirectional imbalance in the caretaker and client relationship. Mhok has power over Day’s daily life and if he wanted to he could have radically more control over Day’s autonomy. As Day’s caregiver, Mhok inherently has access to much more personal information about Day than Day would have for Mhok. Yet Day is still his employer, still his boss, working for Day is still what pays Mhok’s bills. So in order to sort of bridge that divide, Mhok needs to start working to shift their balance. Mhok already balances the physical caretaking elements of his relationship to Day rather well, and has let Day determine what he can do on his own and what he needs help with, so he isn’t stripping Day of his autonomy. 

If Mhok really wants a chance with Day, then the needs to reciprocate the personal information, and I love how smoothly everyone handled the scene. I think Sea did a phenomenal job with how he had Day react to Mhok’s story, as if some things started clicking in to place for him. Day and Mhok have never talked about Mhok’s background, at most Day has brushed aside the information about Mhok having assault charges. I don’t know yet that Day understands just how much Mhok is capable of relating to Day’s feelings and experiences, because he’s been so busy in the past few episodes focusing on how much Mhok is incapable of relating to Day’s feelings and experiences. 

I am not the first, nor will I be the last person to say that I loved the allusions to Day and Mhok’s relationships to their siblings. Once again there is some commonality between them there, in that their relationships are complex. We currently have a very limited view of Rung. As far as we know she was ambitious and hopeful, and then she hit a really bad low after her nail salon failed and ultimately completed suicide. We haven’t seen any indication from flashbacks or the like of Rung’s flaws, we haven’t actually seen her fail Mhok, or be heartless to Mhok. Yet Mhok agrees with Day’s initial comment that the hydrangeas means heartless. Because Mhok is still mad at Rung for leaving him, he is still stuck in his grief. We haven’t seen him put in any time or effort to process his own pain, instead Mhok is doing what grieving people do, and helping someone else instead. 

I am sure Rung was not a perfect person, I am hoping we get more flashbacks of her and get to see more of her flaws, more of the relationship she and Mhok actually had. I am hoping we get a change for Day to help Mhok navigate his own pain, just like Mhok has been helping Day. But it was certainly interesting to see the parallels between Day saying that Mhok has fallen for Night’s act, thinking him nice while Mhok has associated his sister with heartlessness. 

gif by @casualavocados

And I don’t know that I have the energy to get in to it right now in any further detail (hey look at me, trying to keep things short), but I do just want to acknowledge the fact that Mhok has really committed to giving Day as much of a sensory experience as he can. When Mhok took Day out on the practice date, he wore perfume so Day could smell him (and as an aside I love that Mhok puts effort in to making himself look good even though Day can’t see him). When Mhok took Day out on the walk to cheer him up, he brought him to a bridge on a public road, where there are sounds, and there is a fence that Day can feel; he brought him to a flower shop where Day can smell and feel the flowers and where there are bright colors that might register within Day’s limited vision. 

Mhok was constantly touching Day in so many different ways. Casual/platonic touch when he’s performing his duties as caregiver; quickly and playfully when he’s trying to get Day to chase him; heavily and intentionally when he’s both comforting Day and when he’s turning up the charm. One of my favorites is honestly the moment that Day lets his fingers curl around Mhok’s hand when Day switches to using August as a guide. 

Anyway, I love this show so much, it is quickly climbing the ranks to become one of my favorites of 2023.

#last twilight #last twilight meta #last twilight analysis #last twilight the series #mhok x day #jimmysea

[galedekarios]

idk if u posted anything about this before but im really curious what you think about an elf tav with gale.

specifically, what ive been rotation in my mind is what romanced gale says if you use speak with dead on him: that he'll be waiting for you.

but what about an elf tav who still has centuries left to live, who expresses their worry that long after gale's death, whenever that may be, they might find someone to love just as much as they love gale now? would he still wait for them? would it instead motivate him even more to ascend to godhood? would he search for a different method to become immortal/ extend his life span in his good ending so they could grow old together? or would he tell tav that they deserve to live life to the fullest and find love again? and if so would he actually mean it?

i can't really tell what would be more in character for him towards the end of the game so here i am asking you, dear gale expert :)))

thank you for your message, anon. <3

i haven't talked about it on my blog yet, no, but i have thought a lot about it since my main oc altonaufein is a drow, who could live to be several centuries old.

i think what's important to keep in mind with gale is that while he may be human - humans, who of course have a general life expectancy that's considerably less than a drow's might be - he is also a wizard and a powerful one at that. he was an archwizard.

not only are there several spells that extend life in the dnd universe (clone, for instance), but there also endings in which gale regains mystra's favour by returning the crown, either as her chosen, or as someone who carries her blessing.

that status too is something that would extend his lifespan to far longer than what a normal human's lifespan is.

i think we have a good example of that in the game itself with elminster, also a human, who the game tells us is 1300 years old at the time we meet him in the game.

so i'm happy to say that lifespan angst is something that doesn't necessarily need to be an issue with gale and a drow or elf protag, and i think it's likely something that gale would do.

(sort of related: in a conversation with elminster (act ii when he delivers mystra's instructions), there's a devnote saying that gale doesn't expect to grow quite as old as elminster, and the only reason for that is the dangerous life he leads right now. so i do think if the danger had passed, it might be a different topic.)

however, if you are asking me on the principle of the thing if gale would mean it if he said that it's alright for the protag to move on if there was an extreme lifespan disparity with no way to overcome it, my answer would always be yes.

gale never once holds it against the protag in any shape, way or form if they have turned him down respectfully and found a new love, even within the timespan of the events of the game. that is even further reiterated by the devnotes to these specific lines you get from him in this case, which are variations of "sincere/heartfelt/happy for you/etc."

the same wish is reflected in the variations of his epilogues in which he dies. gale's spectre, his letters, all tell the protag one thing: that he wants them to be happy.

also while gale is romantic, he's also pragmatic. if there truly was no way to overcome this, he wouldn't want the protag to grieve for him for centuries/never move on.

so yes. he would mean it.

but like i said, thankfully, the lifespan issue isn't really an issue in this case.

#gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #gale x tav #tav x gale #otp: a soul that steels my own #ch: gale dekarios #ch: altonaufein #vg: baldur's gate 3 #series: baldur's gate #text: asks #meta: mybg3

[marquezian]

Another thing re: Dovi that adds a little pizazz a little je ne sais quoi is that he has been a dad for really long. I don't think any other rider has children of the age that Dovi's daughter is, casey being the only exception but his daughters were raised after he was done with his career. Like Dovi was actively a father while also riding, and seems to be close to his daughter in a trademark dad to Teenage girl way. It's compelling to me that this is an active family man with a child at home that wasn't a baby and was still participating in scary death sport spectacle. I want to hear what you think about that.

YEAH.. became a dad at 23.. and separated from her mom shortly after her birth right. my thoughts on this are more along the lines of that specifically bc i find it fascinating that hes managed to stay involved with her despite that, like by all accounts its already hard to be an involved parent when you're that busy as an athlete and traveling so much. then you of course also have the gender disparity there, some current on grid dads are Not shy about talking about how proud they are to offload all the childcare to their partners LOL nasty asses. but it seems dovi had her with him so much and like you said was actively parenting as much as he could while riding which is bonkers!! he couldve just..not. like many others do. i love this quote its so dovi. immediately talking about the planning and logistical side of it all

yknow its funny bc ive Been in the dovi mines just by extension of trying to gobble up as much about marc and related to marc as possible. but he didnt Click for me until i watched him buy groceries and go for the stuff on sale and do the dishes and cook for himself and his friends and clean and tidy up lol i agree w u i think hes so compelling bc hes really the anti-thesis to the usual male athlete

#asks <3 #topnotchquark #the virgin marc who burnt his arm bc he had to make pizza during lockdown and didnt have his chef there vs dovi whipping up a meal #for 10 people on dingy camping equipment in front of his RV