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in the garden I did no crime

@linusmir

The Tenth House Necromancer stalked warily through the decaying lower levels of the abandoned facility. He was cautious, both of the vengeful spirits that were said to inhabit this place, and of his fellows, who were all a bunch of idiotic nincompoops.

'Ungrateful, too,' he thought, as he stalked. Luckily the one person he trusted most in all the universe was by his side, and...

"Calvin, dinner's ready! Come get it before it gets cold!"

"I do not require food," the Necromancer muttered darkly, "this is a place of death, and all who have perished over uncounted millennia sustain me here."

"You'd be a lot more convincing if your tummy wasn't rumbling," said the tiger in the skull mask next to him.

Before Pride Month really hits, here's a quick reminder that it's completely normal to pick up or shed different labels over the years. You learn new things about yourself and the queer community, you're probably not the same person you were when you started your queer journey. Maybe you cut your hair or got that tattoo you always wanted or listen to other music. A lot might've changed, so why should labels be exempt from that?

Or maybe you're not yet sure which label fits you - the same way you haven't made up your mind which clothing style you like best. Maybe you're hoarding a whole bunch of labels or maybe you don't care much about labels at all and are just vibing. Either way, I hope you all enjoy the pride festivities whichever way you prefer.

Sincerely, your friendly neighbourhood queer (who used to identify as straight, then pan, now bi and as of now is still questioning my position on the ace spectrum and has given up on labeling their gender).

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always thinking about the HtN AU where John can also see the Body. POV you are God and you are being haunted, baby

But what about. POV you are God and have been haunted for ten thousand years by the thing that is both your Death and your victim and the love of your life

Except she’s been gone for 7 years and you’re not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved or worried

and then some lobotomized teenager shows up with a sheet on her head and your Death your Maiden your Cavalier is walking a half-step behind her, is telling her to lie to your hands and gestures, is having late-night dream dinner dates with her and is completely ignoring you

no but (among the 1424356 other things on my list) i so need to write a book about medieval history for a popular audience, just because the reality would blow people’s minds

there are so many things you can learn from it, so many misconceptions to destroy, and such an interesting social and cultural study of people learning to do things in different ways after rome fell. they had a period of almost 1000 years where classical culture was NOT the automatic standard. that is why we have gothic architecture and script. why they invented new literary and artistic genres, why they developed new laws. where, unlike in the ancient world, women and slaves were not relegated to a position of utter inferiority – in fact, slavery was abolished throughout most of the middle ages, and only began returning in the 16th-17th century when people were determined to replicate the criteria and legal systems of antiquity. same with women. you can find records of women doctors, bookbinders, copyists, shopkeepers, traders etc throughout the high middle ages. women religious were HUGELY influential; the abbey of fontevrault in france was required to have an abbess, not an abbot, in charge. queens regularly ruled whenever the king wasn’t around. it was only in 1593 that france, for example, decided to outlaw them from public/professional life. the salic law, made by philip iv in the early 14th century, barred them from inheriting the throne and later spread throughout europe, but that was not the case beforehand.

don’t talk to me about how “feudal anarchy” was a thing. feudalism was the last thing from anarchy, and it wasn’t about a lord mistreating or killing his peasants however he pleased. it was a highly structured and regulated system of mutual obligations – not a desirable condition for the serf, but still the bedrock on which society functioned. serfs were not slaves. they had personhood, social mobility, could own property, marry, form families, and often obtain freedom once they were no longer in an economic condition to make serfhood a necessity. abbot suger of france (late 11th-early 12th century) was most likely a son of serfs. he was educated at the same monastery school as the later king louis vi, ran the kingdom while louis vii was on crusade, and became the foremost historian of the period and partially responsible for establishing the tradition of ecclesiastical chronicles.

don’t talk to me about how everyone was a fervent and uncritical religious fanatic. church attendance on the parish level was so low that in 1215, pope innocent III had to issue a bull ordering people to take communion at least once a year. the content of clerical grievances tells us that people behaved and thought exactly as we do today – they wanted to sleep in on sunday, they wanted to have sex when they pleased, they didn’t believe the guy mumbling bad latin at them, they openly questioned the institutional church’s legitimacy (especially in the 13th century – it was taking assaults on every side as splinter and spinoff sects of every nature grew, along with literacy and the ability of common people to access books and learning for themselves). in the 14th century, john wycliffe and the lollards blasted the rigidly hierarchical nature of medieval society (“when adam delved and eve span, who then was the gentleman?”) partly as a result, wat tyler, a fellow englishman, led the peasants’ revolt in 1381. yes, the catholic church had a social and institutional power which we can’t imagine, but it was fought and questioned and spoken back to every step of the way.

don’t talk to me about how they were scientifically ignorant. isidore of seville, in the frickin 7th century, wrote books and books on science and reason from his home at the center of the andalusian “golden age” in muslim spain. toledo in the 9th century was a hotbed of theology, mathematics, and writing; admiring western european observers called multicultural, educated iberia “the ornament of the world.” in the 8th century in the monastery of jarrow in northumbria (aka in the middle of FRICKING NOWHERE) the venerable bede was able to open his “ecclesiastical history of the english people” with a discussion on cultural, linguistic, demographic, historical, geographical, and astronomical details, and refers to britain’s location near the north pole as a reason for its days being long in summer and short in winter (“for the sun has then departed to the region of Africa”). while bede’s information is obviously imperfect by virtue of his social and chronological location, he is a trained scholar with a strong critical sensibility and the ability to turn a memorable phrase; discussing an attempted imperial coup by an illiterate roman soldier, he sniffs, “As soon as he had seized power he crossed over to Gaul. There he was often deluded by the barbarians into making doubtful treaties, and so inflicted great harm on the body politic.”

don’t talk to me about how they were uneducated and illiterate. they were well versed in antiquity and classical authors through the high middle ages. they didn’t just suddenly discover them again when the 15th century started. the renaissance wasn’t about finding the texts, it was about deciding to apply them in a systematic way. beforehand, the 13th century saw the rediscovery of aristotle and the development of a new philosophical system to compete with the long-entrenched and studied works of plato. thomas aquinas and the dominicans were writing in this century. dante wrote the inferno in this century. i could go on.

don’t talk to me about the stereotype of the silent and oppressed woman – we already discussed that a bit above. i should also add, women usually had voting rights on the level of their community and this wasn’t regarded as odd. i already wrote a ranty post earlier on the myth that “it was just medieval times” and thus a rapey free-for-all.

we should also talk about how a form of gay marriage was legal for hundreds of years – two men could take wedding vows in a church and live together like any other married couple (though they called them “spiritual brotherhoods”). we should also talk about the cult of male bonds between knights in the 12th/13th century, and how it was idealized as the highest form of love. i also wrote a post a while ago about richard the lionheart and how sexuality worked. so.

we should talk about how all of this was happening in the time period that routinely gets written off as basically a wash between the fall of rome and the renaissance. we should remember that the renaissance was what led to modern structures of oppression for women, slaves, etc – everyone who had been worth nothing in antiquity. we should tear into the myth of historical progress and how it was invented to justify massive, wholesale colonization, genocide, and “civilization” in the supposedly enlightened 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries – because nothing we do now, apparently, can be as bad as what those bad ol’ bloodthirsty ignoramuses did back then.

we shouldn’t idealize the medieval era as a golden age either. that is never the right way to approach history. but we should take a long, long look at why we are so insistent on our simplistic, erroneous concepts of this time period, and how exactly they serve to justify our behaviors, mindsets, and practices today.

further reading to support any of these topics available on request.

Obviously Velma sucks but if we do ever make a more adult Scooby Doo I want a semi realistic period piece from the late 60s where the Scooby Gang are draft dodgers and hippies that just happen to stumble into the crime fighting business because there is just a fresh stream of con artists when you’re drifting town to town in a van.

Freddie and Daphne start it all. Instead of showing up at boot camp when drafted, Fred Jones got the van he bought with his summer job and ran off. Daphne, his girlfriend (who frankly has the least strong feelings about Vietnam but for gods sake are they not taking Freddie there) runs along to be supportive and to get away from her strict, stuffy family.

Velma catches wind of Fred and Daphne’s plan a few days before it happens. They invite her along but she has to consider it. A staunch feminist and the brightest girl in school, she has the most to lose if she leaves. However, she grows embittered by the fact she’s never gonna get into her dream college since it doesn’t admit women, and decides to go along. Besides, if Fred and Daphne leave without her, there won’t be anyone like minded in their hometown for Velma to be friends with.

Shaggy wasn’t originally part of the group, but they find him and Scooby hitchhiking and pick him up. The gang learn he has similar circumstances to Fred for running away from home, being a conscientious objector who ran off when they tried to put him in a non combative position instead. He opposed even this as it still meant he would be part of the war machine. He comes bearing plenty of 8 track tapes and some real good pot, so he’s welcomed along happily.

Along the way they become friends and use their combined skills to solve cases of supposed hauntings. Every single one is shown to be some kind of capitalist fraud.

I only have one critique and it's that Scooby-Doo should also be dodging the draft.

Supposed himbo Gideon: Wields a devastating variety of multisyllabic nicknames for the purpose of irritating Harrow. She envisions a new glorious nickname every scene. Merriam-Webster is envious, awed, inspired. Dickens wishes he could be reanimated to shake her hand.

Supposed genius Harrow: couldn't pronounce "Gi-de-on" when she was three and hasn't come up with anything since then

I've seen multiple locked tomb posts about Gideon's vocabulary and how many hyper-specific or uncommon descriptors she uses and such tracing this trait to her rivalry with Supreme Nerd Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Which is very fair, but I think it's ignoring the real explanation for why they are both Like That in terms of vocab, which is that they were raised in critical proximity to Ortus.

Did you know that AO3 allows fics with homicide in them? There’s a whole tag for Major Character Death and even more tags so you can find exactly what kind of character death you want to read. 

Don’t they know that murder is illegal? You just know there are a bunch of homicidal maniacs out there who love to read those stories. They write them, too, in between killing people. 

Anyone can read the stories on AO3! Kids can read them! They’re getting exposed to stabbing, poisoning, even guns! And they’re writing the heroes doing the killing, too! That’s basically telling kids it’s okay to go out and murder their families. It’s promoting violence and encouraging homicide and if we don’t do something about it soon, you’ll be murdered next!

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The devil came to my house and tried to burn it down, which is why this post exists in the first place.

I saw Goody OP writing darkfic with the devil.

Sorry I applied a modern lens of analysis to your boyfriend. Yeah I've completely stripped him of historical and semantic context so that I could fit his story and tropes into my own moralistic view of the world. Yeah he's practically flavourless now. In fact this was the original boyfriend and you're a problematic historian for thinking otherwise.

Can women be twinks? Can men be butch? Instead of asking these incredibly niche questions ask yourself this, if they weren't allowed to do so, who would you have enforcing that ruling? and then, I hope this kind of re-framing opens your eyes about how silly that would be, to enforce as such. But really, this is what they mean when they say "kill the cop in your head." What good does it do you to try and police people more?