We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

fandomtrumpshate is open for creator signups until January 31st (one more week).

fandomforoz is open for creator signups until February 8th (two more weeks).

What does it say about me that when I saw the name "Dion" I immediately associated it with Stéphane and not Céline (who was the actual referent)?

(probably that I'm still bitter about him not becoming Prime Minister 12 years ago)

Okay, Christmas was good in the "too busy to actually post about it" kind of way. Mostly because I had Pixies for two weeks and <3<3<3. I technically had time for a yearly wrap-up post on the first, but I would have had to do it on my phone, so no. I got in Saturday night and spent most of yesterday knitting and catching up on Dreamwidth, because the next while is going to be busy.

I start class tomorrow. I was not actually intending to start college in January. I was intending to start in May, and then they were like "you can still sign up for January!" and I was like "...okay." (Not doing Yuletide this year was a very good idea. Oof.) So that's happening. In a month or so I will have a better idea of how this is going to work and whether I will have any writing time.

(Also, I am keeping an eye on my spelling but I am rather drunk at the moment, because warehouse shift today. So.)

The problem with thinking about writing at work is that if I figure out how to finish a chapter I don't want to have to count another box of brand name hoodies, I want to go home and finish the chapter. Oh well.

In the last couple weeks I finished This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which is spectacular and amazing and omg, the language, omg. And also Proper English by K. J. Charles (normally I can't get into her books, but this one worked, so maybe they just start slow for me. Or maybe I like lesbians better.) (also breathedout if you ever feel the need for a light romance/murder mystery, this one is set at a hilariously terrible house party and I feel you will appreciate that) and Hither Page by Cat Sebastian, who I usually mostly like and did here as well. I am all for this thing where queer romance authors are doing Agatha Christie, that is great and can keep going forever.

Who knows if I will have reading time in the near future, but I do have You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place by Janelle Shane, which looks good.

What else? I have a new piercing (because the one Pixies got me several years ago grew into the one next to it, so I needed to get it redone), yay new piercing!

Onwards!

After a working a full time week from Thursday to Monday, I have now caught up with my reading page up to yesterday. They told us December would be really quiet and now they keep giving me last-minute shifts.

But I had the last two days off and Knumpify is back from Mexico and I have seen him. I have also applied for college.

Title: So Foul and Fair a Day
Rating: T
Universe: Marvel
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Bucky Barnes, Steve's around here somewhere
Summary: Badly injured on a mission, Clint is rescued by the local laird. But other people are looking for him, and Clint isn’t the only one with secrets.
Warnings/Enticements: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Pre-Slash, Hurt/Comfort, Concussions, Secrets, Spies, Canon-Typical Violent Backstories
Word Count: Probably over 7000
Author's Note: For mandatoryfunday two months ago.

On AO3

Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered, by Peter S. Wells

There wasn't much from this that I wanted to quote, until I got to about chapter 9, and then there was loads.

Measurements taken on skeletal remains in cemeteries in southern Germany indicate that the average height for men was about five feet eight inches, for women about five feet four inches, statures well above those of late medieval and early modern times. Measurements taken on skeletons in other regions are comparable. In Denmark, for example, the average height for men was about five feet nine inches--just above those for southwestern Germany--and for women about five feet four inches. These average heights were not achieved again until the twentieth century. Compared with earlier and later populations in the same regions, these average measurements show that most people had adequate nutrition during most of their lives and their living conditions were generally good. (p. 139-140)

A similar conclusion emerges from a grave in a small cemetery at Kunszentmárton, in Hungary, but here we see something more. This man was buried, around 610, with weapons and horse harness gear as well as tools and models for making metal ornaments. In this case, the ornaments were not fibulae but sheet metal relief objects that could be made of gold, silver, or bronze. These ornaments were for decorating horse harness equipment, belt attachments, or sword scabbards. The striking thing about them is that they represent styles that are associated with different regional traditions. If any one of these was found alone in the grave, the man would be linked to the stylistic tradition of the region in which that style was common. These models representing different regional traditions show that this craftsman could make ornaments suiting the fashions of several different groups of people. Apparently, he crafted objects according to the tastes of his customers rather than his own home tradition. (p. 147)

On an important carved stone found at Niederdollendorf, on the Rhine, one side bears a representation believed to be the earliest picture of Christ in the Rhineland (dating to the sixth century). On the other side is an image of a warrior, with sword and canteen, shown combing his hair. (p. 151)

Hair had various magic symbolism, but basically, gender norms are socially constructed.

Before the Industrial Revolution, moving goods by water was vastly cheaper than moving them overland. Estimates suggest that a given quantity of goods costs twenty-five times as much to send by land as by sea. (p. 157)

Unique manufactured objects demonstrate connections over great distances. The bronze Buddha figurine found at the manufacturing and commericial centre at Helgö, in central Sweden, was made during the sixth century in the Swat Valley, in north-western India, some six thousand miles from the spot where archaeologists found it in 1956. (p. 162)

European elites also used Indian garnet, ivory, and seashells.

The animal style [of ornamentation] that emerged in northern Europe has been understood as reflecting "different modes of representation" from those of early Christianity. The proliferation of the animal style at this time may have been in deliberate reaction to the representations that were being created in the late Roman world in the imperial provinces. Whereas Roman representation tended to be narrative--to tell stories--the animal style of ornament was instead symbolic and, it is important to add, difficult for outsiders to read. ... This line of argument would be consistent with the idea that many communities in Europe, especially those north of the old Roman frontier line at the Rhine and Danube, did not begin to seriously adopt the new religion until much later than some of the areas within the Roman lands, and many actively resisted to symbols of the new religion as well as the substance and practices. In resisting, they reached back into earlier times, even to the prehistoric Iron Age, to adapt and recreate iconography that would serve their purposes. (p. 175-176)

Humans: always basically the same.

Also: the practice of tossing coins into fountains (make a wish!) dates back to pre-Roman times in Europe.

So there's still technically time to change my mind, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to sign up for Yuletide this year. I'm pretty sure it's a good decision and I seem to be in a mental state where I'm not castigating myself for it, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

I just ... have a lot of things to do this fall and I want signing up for a challenge to seem fun rather than another obligation.

Instead I am going to finish at least four of these lingering WiPs and work and apply for college. And do math. With Jean Claude's help.



Anyway, I wrote lots of (mostly) Clint/Natasha snippets here.

Ladies and gentlefans, today we are talking about ancient Greek orthography.

In modern Greek textbooks, the texts look something like this:


Homer, Iliad, Oxford Classical Text, late 20th century CE

Note the useful features of this text:
- mixed case
- accent and breathing marks
- spacing between words
- punctuation
- paragraph breaks and line breaks in poetry

All of these are very helpful for readers! Especially readers used to modern English orthography. But they are about as modern as the footnotes. This is not how the original (or "original", since this is Homer and he composed orally) text looked.

Sometimes you learn this in class! My Old English textbook has a section on reading manuscripts, with photographs for you to practice on. Sometimes you don't.

Here's a Byzantine manuscript:


Maximus Planudes, Anthologia Gracae, 14th century CE

Most of the features in the modern text above were introduced during the Byzantine empire!
This text has:
- accent marks
- punctuation
- paragraph and line breaks
All of which make things much easier if you're reading a text in an archaic form of your language that no one actually speaks anymore.

But it's mostly in single case, and there are no spaces between words.

Here's a late classical codex:


New Testament, Codex Sinaiticus, 4th century CE

Note:
- single case
- occasional accents
- no word spacing
- a little punctuation
- paragraph breaks

If you're writing in the vernacular this is all you really need to understand a text.

But this is a giant formal church text most people would never see. And while it is an ancient Greek text, 4th century Christian Greece is not what most people think of when they hear "ancient Greek".

Here's a papyrus fragment:


Callimachus, Aetia, Oxyrhynchus papyri, 2nd century CE

Again:
- single case
- no accents
- no word spacing
- a little punctuation, maybe
- no paragraph breaks

Papyrus is time consuming to make! Parchment is ridiculously expensive! You want to save space. And at this point in time, you're writing in a language everyone understands! You don't need to provide all the extra help a student one or two thousand years later will need!

If you were writing a letter or a legal document, you might write it like this. Or you might write a letter on a wax tablet, and the recipient would erase it, reuse the tablet, and send it back to you with their reply. Informal texts don't survive both because they were written on fragile materials, and because no one thought they were worth preserving, the same way you don't carefully copy down and file your text messages.

But the kind of longfom text your typical ancient citizen would see most often looked more like this:


Rosetta Stone, 196 BCE

This is part of the Rosetta Stone, which was a decree put on display in a temple. Note:
- single case
- no accents
- no word spacing
- no punctuation
- no paragraph breaks

You're carving this into stone! You are not wasting any space on that stone. And you're not putting in any extra marks you don't have to.

This text does have one modern convention that isn't a guarantee, though: the lines all go in the same direction.


Gortyn Code, 5th century BCE

This is the actual law code of Gortyn in 5th century Crete, which was on public display in the agora. It's carved in boustrophedon, which is one of my favourite words. Boustrophedon means "as the ox turns" - that is, the same way you plow a field. The lines alternate which direction they go in: left to right, and then the next line is right to left, and then it switches again. This is most obvious for English speakers if you look at the direction of the epsilons (E, Ǝ).

Why would you do this? Well, it's a long walk to the other end of the stele for both reader and writer, so why not just start the next line where you already are anyway?

What we think of as normal formatting in a text showed up entirely within the last 2000 years. Because none of it is actually necessary! youcanunderstandtextwithoutitevenifyouareusedtohavingitthereitsjustabitharderandconveysfewerconnotationsandshadesofmeaningwhichyoudontneedinalawcodeanyway

Someday I will learn that the time shown on the TTC website bears no relationship whatsoever to the time the buses actually show up, but apparently that day has not yet come.

1. The Antique Pattern Library is a thing that exists! OMG!

2. My twitter rule still applies ... except in the case of theJagmeetSingh, which may be the only twitter that makes me feel better about humanity.

3. Most accurate AO3 tag yet: #idiots to lovers.

4. Titles and summaries are the most annoying parts of fic writing, so it's very weird to get that but literally nothing else about the fic - no prose, no plot, not even theme or mood. But:

It's Not That I'm Sentimental
Natasha Romanov is not a matchmaker. Maybe if she says that often enough eventually someone will believe it.

5. The latest in the continuing series of essays I won't write: Beautified With Our Feathers: An Optimistic View of the Future of Fanfiction.

So my MFDE fic was Plans, which is Peggy/Dottie dubcon smut, and which was lots of fun. There was a lot of building and tearing apart and reassembling in the editing process, which was pretty neat in this form but oh god, how do people do that for longer works? It would take years.

I was working on something for this prompt and I was really really close to having a scene I could post independently (because of course the thing grew a plot) and then RL whacked me upside the head. I knew this week was going to be busy but, oof.

So now I have yet another half-done historical AU sitting around waiting for me to get a more settled schedule. However, there is actual writing happening again now which is pretty great.

consultingpiskies was here, which was great, and now she has just left, which is extremely not great.

I have Elections Canada training this afternoon and then work this evening and then more work tomorrow morning in feckin' Markham. Also I think I am coming down with a cold. But it could be worse, I could have come down with it last Friday.