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

June Reading, Life

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 15:41:20 GMT

This is what I posted on tumblr on the 2nd:

So I'd just got back into writing after nearly four months and then Family Stuff happened. Which of course hasn't been great for reading either, but it's nice having a habit of doing book posts.

Recent: So I finished most of what was Current on the last post and tried but didn't continue a bunch of others. Apart from that it was mostly a month of skimming through craft books and other things that won't count for my tracking purposes.

I did want to mention that Isabel Cooper's Nightborn gave me a bunch of feelings about vocations.

That said, I went to like five used book sales this month, and am again out of shelf space.

Current: Two rereads: Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon, because if there's any time I deserve to reread a cute children's fantasy novel about being a wicked witch it's in the bus on the way to the hospital*, and Spectred Isle by K. J. Charles in audiobook in the evenings.

Also the latest the_comfortable_courtesan tie-in novella, and Patchwork: A World Tour by Catherine LeGrand. And today I read another section of Unmarriages while I was at the library. It's much less crowded there now that exam season's over.

Future: I'd like to pick up One Night in Hartswood again. Oh, and K. J. Charles has a book coming out on the 18th.

*Not the worst possible reason to be spending a lot of time in the hospital, but obviously that leaves a lot of space for things being Not Great.

--

...and then on the 3rd things got worse. Now they're slightly better again, but still:

I never know if or how to talk about personal things online, but I've known many of you guys for about a decade now so I'm not going to not talk about it.

My dad's in the hospital, and he's stable right now but matters are very uncertain. Also whatever happens, he's still 83. So it's difficult.

The Quaker request, rather than sending prayers, is to hold one in the Light. My dad and I are both nontheists, but I appreciate messages of support.

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March Reading

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:30:52 GMT

Recent: Finished various of the books in the last post.

At work this month I read Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (Thomas de Quincey was an ass), The Book of Tea (loved it, wish the 20th century had gone more like Okakura Kakuzo wanted it to), and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (which I'd never read all the way through before). I'm now onto Through the Looking-Glass, which I think I have read all of before. (My introduction to Carroll was the Collected Works, so it's all kind of mixed up together with math riddles and poetry.)

I also read eunnieboo's comic If You'll Have Me from the library, and then ordered it for consultingpiskies' birthday. (It arrived early, so I can post this.) Adorable fluffy lesbian college romance, just what I needed, also great visual storytelling.

Very little non-fanfic reading generally, mental health not doing great. However, I do now actually have a RWRB fic rec. It's not that I haven't enjoyed a lot of the fics I've read, it's that I have enjoyed them with caveats that I would want to discuss if I talk about them at all, and I'm not going to inflict that on someone who posted their work for free in fandom (even on my own public blog). But Let Loose Your Glow by athousandrooms is another adorable fluffy slowburn college romance, and I have no notes, also just what I needed, well done.

(That said, I have uncomplicatedly enjoyed a lot of RWRB fic that is not novel length, and usually also utterly filthy (laudatory), such as this and most of clottedcreamfudge's works.)

Current: I really really want to like this gay scifi Regency romance, but ... I don't. Oh well. Maybe I'll try a later one in the series.

I am enjoying T. R. Darling's Quiet Pine Trees (quietpinetrees), a collection of SFF microfiction that you may have seen on Twitter.

I'm several entries behind in my-pal-bertie (The Inimitable Jeeves by subscription, à la Dracula Daily), and I have a bunch more things I am halfway through which I'm not really picking up again.

Future: Everything is currently going very slowly so we'll see. Maybe I'll reread something.

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3SF Recs

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 18:34:37 GMT

Here are some recs for the 3 Sentence Ficathon! This is even less comprehensive than my 3SF rec posts generally are, because work. The last post of my own fills is back here.

Random order, not enough of them to bother with cuts or separating by fandom. Format is title [if any], fandom, characters, prompt.

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Narnia, any, eventually, life returns to Charn by syrena_of_the_lake

Narnia/This Tumblr Post, Peregrine Falcon, clueless Pigeon, I'm so embarrassed by syrena_of_the_lake

Like a Waking Dream, Greek Mythology, Ariadne/Dionysus, drink with me by vialethe (rated E)

anthropomorphic, Yuletide & 3SF, 3SF is the chaotic crazy drunk relative by vialethe

Charming But Unsettling, 3/5 Stars, Dracula, ensemble, Dracula is convinced to give up his territorial ambitions and converts his ancestral castle into a charming B&B (anonymous)

Neko Atsume, Snowball | Shironeko, 'oh, there's a cat.' (anonymous)

Hamlet, Hamlet, liturgy of the hours by ernest

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Reading Wednesday

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:46:44 GMT

I posted this on tumblr yesterday and then realized that today is Wednesday, so here it is here too.

I was tagged by breathedout to post recent, current, and future reading. Unfortunately it is the middle of January, when winter seems eternal and focus nonexistent. However, it occurred to me as I said that that the middle of January is certainly better than the beginning of January, so there’s that!

Recent: The last thing I finished at work was a collection of E. F. Benson’s ghost stories. (I am efficient enough at work that I have the spare time to work my way through public domain literature.) I’ve been reading a lot of Edwardian ghost stories recently and it’s just so nice watching terrible things happen to near respectable academics while I wait for the printer to go off. Benson has some interesting interactions with modern technology (his modern) but an annoying tendency to try to explain the metaphysics. I prefer M. R. James.

I also read the most recent installment of the further adventures of Madame C—, which was excellent as usual. In audio there was Dead Man’s Ransom by Ellis Peters—I find her work very one-note, but it’s a note I really want to hear sometimes.

I have also been reading a bunch of RWRB fanfic. (I skimmed the novel this summer because the gifsets were hot but it really isn’t my preferred tropes.) From the outside, it appears to be good in direct proportion to its smuttiness.

Current: At work I am now going through Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, which I am enjoying as much as one can enjoy anything in January. It is kind of amusing how many of the “rules” of modern fiction writing it flat out has never heard of and doesn’t care about. I do find it somewhat stunning that Warner wrote this particular novel when she was only just over 30.

I have just started Time Was by Ian McDonald, which I hoped would be a gay version of This Is How You Lose the Time War, and it looks like it may even live up to that.

I am halfway through the audiobook of The Intrigue by Marion Chesney (aka M. C. Beaton), which is nice enough, but I don’t think I’ll feel the need to continue the series. Especially as the narrator is just okay.

Future: My hold on Paladin’s Faith by T. Kingfisher will hopefully come in by the end of the month. Other than that, I should probably see if I can focus better on nonfiction right now.

But I also have a skip-the-line copy of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher for a week. I don’t know if I’m in the best place to appreciate it but maybe it’ll be a nice counterweight.

And finally, on the way home today I read Cat Sebastian's "Bells Are Ringing," which is her free holiday epilogue to We Could Be So Good, and loved it, like I loved the novel. Also, today was already better than the last couple weeks mood-wise. Apparently next summer I'll be reading a baseball romance. Well, these things happen.

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OC-tober

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:15:21 GMT

Okay, so last year when I was taking a break from writing I got an idea for a novel set in Toronto in 1920, and that’s been brewing ever since. Here’s my various posts about it on tumblr. (That link works on desktop but may not work if it tries to open in the app, because Tumblr Is A Functioning Website.) And then this October icannotreadcursive made a list of original character prompts, so I did a few of those, and generally it was a fun thing to think about at work even for the ones that didn’t get written down. Although they are also all in the tag above, here’s the links separately:

Day 3: In a cherished memory (Josie)

Day 4: Waking up from a nightmare (Fred and Tom)

Day 10: In a different time period (Modern AU, everyone)

Day 16: Expressing or exploring their spirituality (Verry, definitely not doing that)

Day 24: Being cared for by someone they love (Verry, Tom, and Fred)

And earlier this month I also posted a ficlet for Band Sinister by K. J. Charles.

I am also in trickortreatex, but I haven't opened my gifts yet so I will post about that after the anon period.

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Dimension 20 Meta

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 21:36:44 GMT

So here are all the Ravening War meta bits I've posted on tumblr. I'm not cross-posting most of the liveblogging, though. Assume they all have spoilers.

( On Karna after episode 2 )

( On Amangeaux after episode 3 )

( On Fructera and Vegetania )

( On Karna post-season )

( Short meta in liveblogging posts )

And my tag on tumblr has a bunch of other people's meta and fic recs and art.

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Mon, 29 May 2023 23:47:00 GMT

One of my few superstitions is that I don't want to talk about anything good until it has already happened, in case I jinx it, but today was my first day at work and everything is good, so I think I can say: DW, I have a job! A full time job! With benefits! Yay!

Apart from that, I have been liveblogging and writing various meta about Dimension 20: The Ravening War on Tumblr: Calorum, Amangeaux, Karna

I also wrote a poem which contains massive spoilers for A Court of Fey and Flowers.

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Triumphant Return

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 19:15:57 GMT

So this year threesentenceficathon has its own community and we've already filled up the first post. Second post open over here!

( The Little Mermaid )

( Marvel (2) )

( The Old Guard (2) )

( Goncharov (1973) (2) )

( Narnia (2) )

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Essays I Won't Write

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 00:53:45 GMT

A continuing series that I might as well collect in one place.

It Is Always 1984: The BBC’s Sherlock and the Normalization of the Surveillance State

Vehement or Excited Mental State: Divinity, Disturbance, and Disapproval in Euripides’ Bacchae and The Rocky Horror Picture Show

That’s Not Awesome, That’s Child Labour: Problems with Pop-Feminist Understandings of History

Beautified With Our Feathers: An Optimistic View of the Future of Fanfiction

“I’m Here to Talk to You About the Avengers Initiative”: The Fantasy of the Perfect Job Offer in Modern Media
Alternatively, “Yer a Wizard, Harry”: Same Subtitle

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Wed, 14 Jul 2021 21:28:53 GMT

So on Tumblr there was a Tiktok video going around, about Pride and whether gay people face discrimination anymore, which I don't want to hunt down the link for. But the video was a response by one queer man to another video by a much younger gay man, and it got me thinking about differences in campus queer communities in the past fifteen years.

( Read more... )

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Last two months on other social media

Wed, 12 May 2021 18:49:11 GMT

I was going to post a link to quilt pictures here and then I thought I should post pictures of the other quilts I've done and then I realized I didn't really have any good pictures of them and then it was two months later.

So here are pictures of a quilt I finished in March! (Tumblr) (Twitter)

And here are some of the other things I did in the past two months that didn't make it here:

Learned more programming

A bunch of unrelated thoughts about The Old Guard on Tumblr: one, two, three

Listened to some French podcasts

Signed up for my local city councillor's mailing list, which I recommend if you are that kind of person and have a decent city councillor

Had meta-thoughts on omegaverse (Tumblr) (Twitter)

Provided a blood sample for the Ontario Health Study's COVID antibody study (Tumblr) (Twitter)

Was moderately snide about "accessible design" by non-disabled people (Tumblr) (Twitter)

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Sat, 03 Aug 2019 17:13:52 GMT

So I don't know if it's the phrasing or that I'm finally ready to hear it or what; I suspect the latter.

But all of that "face your fears" "do one thing every day that scares you" "the only way to conquer fear is to face it" etc. never made any sense to me.

And then today I saw this tumblr post (ETA) and suddenly it did.

tbh a lot of my advice boils down to “hey you know that terrible horrible looming thing you’re doing your best to avoid and distract and escape as much as possible but no matter what you do it just keeps looming and looming and ruining your life”

“just, fuckign, run straight at it screaming.”

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Shitpost Cushion

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 18:43:29 GMT

I said I was going to and I did!

Based on this and inspired by shitpostsampler. Alphabet by Liz Turner Diehl, layout, pattern, and shitty photography by me.

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Griping about fandom culture

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 20:48:31 GMT

( Actually let's cut this. ) It's been so much nicer inside my head since I drifted away from Tumblr.

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Header

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:58:58 GMT

I am kind of holding off on commenting on Tumblr while it's in the process of tumbling, but here's a header post:

Yes, I am the author known as Violsva elsewhere (see sidebar). (Violsva is pronounced with a long i and the accent on the first syllable as in violin; Vi is pronounced like the letter V.) I've never really kept it a secret that I preferred journalling sites; as I've used Tumblr less and less over the past year (can't knit and scroll at the same time) it turns out that Dreamwidth is the only social media site I've checked consistently for five or six years now. So for me, nothing is actually going to change except that I anticipate my reading page getting busier.

Here is a linkspam of useful Dreamwidth information for those of you who aren't in that position.

Posts on this blog these days have two privacy settings: completely public, and completely private talking to myself. So if I don't grant you access, that's nothing to do with you; it's because there's not actually anything there to read. Feel free to subscribe and unsubscribe at will, and I will do the same. As with tumblr, if I don't follow you back it's about dash-curating and not your personality.

I will say that it's lovely that people are remembering me and subscribing to me here. Possibly I may even post things that aren't fic announcements sometime.

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Originally posted on Tumblr

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 00:01:08 GMT

Title: Scribblings of the Fifth City
Rating: T
Universe: Fallen London
Summary: I cannot promise that everything here happened in Fallen London, but it wouldn't have happened without Fallen London.
Warnings/Enticements: Vignettes
Word Count: 1938
Author's Note: Originally posted at vortigraine.tumblr.com.

On AO3

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Thu, 14 Sep 2017 21:30:42 GMT

So I’ve been sketching a lot recently.

And one of the things I’ve noticed, and that I remember, is an extreme reluctance to keep going sometimes. When you’ve drawn something that looks perfect to you, you start getting worried that anything else you do is going to ruin what you have so far. This leg is perfect, what if I can’t get the body right. Or even worse, this arm is perfect except that it’s too small for the rest of the body, and it needs to be done again. Now what?

It’s a disbelief in one’s ability to replicate one’s own work. You can’t just erase it and draw another one, or flip the page and try again, because that one won’t be as good.

Ursula Vernon talks about giving yourself permission to make bad art, because that’s the only way you learn. That applies to writing as well, and I have practice with letting myself write badly. But this doesn’t apply, quite, because there’s no way you’ll ruin already-written prose. You might end up with nowhere to put it in your story, but you’re not going to make it worse. Everything is fixable after the fact. Drawing, even in pencil, feels a lot more immutable.

But the thing about drawing, which helps, is that there is no way to get better except to practice. (And reading art books and looking at other art, sure. But that doesn’t actually improve, for example, your fine motor skills.) And that half-done sketch where I eventually gave up because her shoulders looked wrong is still practice, and the one that looks perfect except that the head is way too small is still practice, and my utter and repeated failure to draw cats is still practice. And if I had kept going and erased the shoulders and redrawn them, that would just have been more practice. More practice is good.

The other thing for me, though, is that I don’t actually want to be sketching. I want to paint. But (until the bank actually does their job) I don’t have paints. I have pencils and notebooks, so dammit, I’m doing this instead. So that makes it easier to accept that it’s not going to be perfect.

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Tue, 06 Jun 2017 20:17:13 GMT

The problem with the worst forms of prescriptivism applied to media is that they are trying to find a way to make people write media that absolutely no one will be offended or upset by.

Problem one: This is impossible. There is nothing that anyone finds appealing that someone else won’t really really dislike. And I don’t mean “be indifferent to”, I mean “be actively repulsed by”. And yes, I’m including fluffy happy fantasies of people taking care of each other: some people cannot read those without going into depressive spirals. Some people just get so bored they can’t finish them.

Problem two: No one ever loved a book just because it didn’t offend them.

No one ever loved a book just because it wasn’t terrible. It has to actually be good - by their definition of good. And that’s where Problem One comes in - as soon as a book is doing something a reader will love, it’s doing something that another reader will hate.

Some people want ass-kicking female characters who will protect their friends and conquer their enemies. Some people hate violence.

Some people want to read about gay male couples getting together and living happily ever after. Some people hate romance. Some people don’t want to read about men.

Some people love complicated deep beautiful prose and pages of exposition about a character’s inner state; some people want to get to the fucking point.

And all of this gets intensified when it comes to sex. Anything that anyone finds hot - urophilia, say, or anal play, or penises - someone else is going to find absolutely disgusting and an immediate turnoff.

The solution is insight, and self awareness. The solution is the ability to recognize that your own upset, or your own joy, is not universal.

Nothing is universal. Nothing will apply to everyone. That is the fundamental point of diversity - people are different. People want different things, and that’s good.

If you write something that makes at least one person happy, it will make someone else furious. Someone else will be bored. Someone else will be grossed out. Someone else will think it was okay but forgettable. Someone else will think it was lifesaving.

If you want to write something good, you need to be prepared to write something upsetting.

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Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:42:44 GMT

Okay, self. The reason we do not get into discussions of the thing is because it triggers perseveration which makes us unhappy. If we do get in a discussion of the thing, even if it’s because we have something important to say, the reblogs etc. will probably add to that. (Also, the vast majority of my followers: do not, thankfully, care about the thing at all.) You came up with a whole bunch of fic ideas during July. It is probably better to focus on those. If that means staying away from anywhere that is not highly curated, by me, then we will have to do that.

I don’t seek out posts about how Gifted kids are all spoiled brats, and I’m not going to seek out posts about this. It can go on without my involvement. If other people aren’t saying what I think should be said, I’ll live, and so will they.

(oh, fandom)

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Maintenance

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 19:20:07 GMT

[I am currently copying over posts I like from tumblr; my apologies for any weirdnesses on your reading page]

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Tue, 24 May 2016 19:34:16 GMT

So I’ve just finished rereading The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer, and it is an excellent story and I love it, but it did remind me of something.

Because it has a swordfight on the roof of a moving train. And Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes by Loren D. Estleman has a high speed hansom cab chase through London. These are not isolated examples. (And in BBC Sherlock, of course, Dr. Watson commits more murders in the first two episodes than he does in all of the canonical stories combined.)

And a claim I see a lot is that fangirls make everything about romance. Which is not completely inaccurate.

But fanboys tend to make everything about ridiculous action movie scenes. Which isn’t any more in the spirit of the originals, really.

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My apologies for the capitalization

Wed, 11 Nov 2015 03:27:35 GMT

today has not been great (for no particular external reason (except that it’s raining)) but on the other hand there is fiction and it is wonderful

i picked up Travelling with the Dead by Barbara Hambly because I liked the first in the series and Lydia the wonderful impractical impulsive scientific girl, I like her a lot (although the central library nearest mom’s house has a terrible new remodel) (also i took out another book which probably won’t have lesbians but the blurb has the perfect set up for lesbians and apparently i am incurably optimistic about these things)

i am rereading Winter in London by Waid because I wanted comforting Holmesfic and apparently i find explicit trauma recovery comforting, and I’m almost at the part! with kissing! the nice kissing, not that other time. And it’s so lovely and introspective and poor everyone, oh god. And Mycroft is excellent

(note to self - reread GREE and BRUC for the thing. and that bit of So4 for the other thing with the actual deadline)

I just reread Matches by janeturenne and rabidsamfan - i really should link, it just feels like work, but it’s at janeturenne.livejournal - and … yes. boys. sex. in a haystack. and still emotions <3

the Comfortable Courtesan continues wonderful and sweet and darlings! and also I am rereading earlier parts because it consistently makes me happy and !!Sandy!! !!Mr. F-!! <3Docket and Tibby!<3

Also the “oh god these wonderful characters” feeling is quite close to the “oh god i have a crush” feeling, though a bit distanced. Huh.

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So I came up with a metaphor

Wed, 06 May 2015 01:57:44 GMT

Let's say that Group A eats kittens.

They're terrible people, right? But if I say to you, "Stay away from Grace, she's a kitten-eating monster," you're going to assume I'm joking. That's hyperbole. That's actually a terrible thing to say about someone.

So everyone in Group A doesn't have to worry about rumours that they eat kittens, because seriously? Who does that? You must be joking.

But if anyone does say, loudly, "Hey, these people seem to be eating kittens," they can say "Well, you eat BABIES!"

Because then people who don't know them are going to go, "Right, these people are throwing hugely exaggerated insults at each other, got it." Because these look like the same insult, if you don't know the history. And even if you try to show them the history, well, you must be blowing it out of proportion, right? No one eats kittens. Not in our society.

The fact that one of these insults is in fact true - people have actually been eating kittens - and one is false - no one has eaten a baby - may be ignored.

And the second person now has to fight against accusations of baby-eating - which they do care about, because they don't want to be seen as a horrible person. They don't eat babies, and they're probably really upset that someone said they did. And a few people are going to be saying "Well, they must have a reason for saying you eat babies, and you did start it by saying that they eat kittens..."

So no one wants to accuse actual kitten eaters of eating kittens, and if you do, the first thing that does is cast suspicion on the one doing the accusing.

Anyway, if you're wondering where this is all coming from, someone in the Sherlock fandom ate a kitten in public and then tried to distract everyone by going "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" If you really want more information, it's here.

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Wed, 25 Mar 2015 18:34:26 GMT

Putting this on Dreamwidth as well as Tumblr:

So I’ve been thinking about soulmate AUs. The kind where your soulmate’s name is written on your skin. How would that start? When would that start?

Not with the beginning of writing. For centuries, in China, in Sumer, in Egypt, in Mesoamerica, writing was used for accounting or religion, and nothing else. Most people would never be able write their names or recognize them if they were written. Only royalty, gods, and perhaps some property owners would.

Individual scribes might have had signatures. For that matter, for all we know individual Paleolithic artists might have had signatures. But most people wouldn’t. What would happen the first time someone was born with an unknown symbol on their hand?

Probably it would be an isolated mystery. Remember, in most of these scenarios there’s no actual guarantee that you’ll ever meet your soulmate (although most people seem to end up with one from the same general area. Which is statistically unlikely). No one would know what it meant. Maybe people with symbols would be seen as special, or divine, or demonic.

And then it might start happening more often - or stop happening, if writing stopped being used (like in Greece after 1200 BCE). But most of the time still no one would know what the symbol meant. And most people wouldn’t have symbols, because most people’s soulmates wouldn’t know how to write.

(Sometimes I think the theory is that people would have a thumbprint instead of a soulmate mark? But this would be basically useless for matching purposes - you would have no idea where to start. So from that point of view the first people with actual names would just have them instead of the thumbprints that everyone else had and didn’t know the meaning of.

Incidentally, using thumbprints for recognition isn’t universal in non-literate societies either. European society didn’t realize that fingerprints were unique until the late 19th century. In a lot of places, they weren’t used until people were already using signatures, and needed an option for illiterate people. Also, while they are an identifying mark, they really have no relation at all to your name. For most of human existence, having a physical marker of your identity really wasn’t that important.)

Only somewhere with at least moderately widespread literacy would someone be able to look at a mark and go “Oh, that’s my friend Imhotep’s name. What a coincidence!” And only somewhere with widespread literacy would Imhotep’s soulmate also be able to write their name. Most early languages were logographic, and in cuneiform names specifically were almost always logographic, so you wouldn’t even be able to sound it out.

Phoenician (starting 1050 BCE) was the first widespread writing system, and was simple enough and common enough that sailors could write in it. It was also the first phoenetic script which would allow you to easily approximate the pronounciation of the writing on your skin.

But still, most people wouldn’t have symbols. Most people would never meet anyone with their name on their skin.

This would be a problem in AUs where you never feel sexual attraction to anyone who isn’t your soulmate. Imagine religion and culture in a world where almost everyone is functionally asexual.

How long would it take, until someone realized that if people’s names matched up, they had some kind of bond? How long would it take before this was a generally accepted theory?

Also, how long before this was seen as at all important, given that most people with the status to know how to read would also have arranged marriages?

But once it was generally accepted, suddenly literacy would become a lot more important. People would demand to learn how to write. (Some people would learn that their soulmate’s name wasn’t in the local writing system. What happens then?) People would want to give their children more unique names (ancient Rome had about thirty given names for men total, and they named their daughters “first Julia” and “second Julia.”)

Anyway, around ancient Rome or so, when there would not only be a lot of literate people but also a lot of people able to recognize foreign alphabets, suddenly there would be a huge drive for 1) more literacy and 2) better long distance communication, so you could find the Caius or Ξανθίππη or שָׂרָה who had your name on their skin. And as this idea became more and more widespread, so would this desire. The same thing would be happening in China and Ethiopia and India.

This would revolutionize world history. There would be strong motivations both for exploration and for making peace with foreign cultures. Everyone in Rome with a Jewish soulmate would want to make sure they wouldn’t be killed before they could meet them. Everyone with a soulmate in a strange language would want to know at least what language it was.

Come to think of it, these are also all good reasons for why people wouldn’t believe in soulmates. Your soulmate can’t be one of the hated barbarians, so that symbol doesn’t mean anything!

And that’s leaving out the fact that lots of people still wouldn’t have a soulmate who could write, and completely ignoring the existence of polyamory.

So getting to a modern society with everyone just knowing that that was your soulmate’s name would involve a really complicated history, probably nothing at all like ours. And there would be huge pressure to ignore the existence of soulmates at all.

No conclusions here, just taking an illogical premise way too logically.

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Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:56:52 GMT

In my head, somewhere, there’s this muggleborn Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, who loves history. And she’s so excited about History of Magic, she reads all the books she can find, she looks for how it fits in with muggle history…

And then she gets to Hogwarts and realizes that wizards don’t care about history. At all. Class is taught by a ghost who doesn’t care about anything modern and seems surprised when he realizes students actually exist, no one cares if they fall asleep in class, everyone has been assigned the same essay topics every year for the last five hundred years. It’s all about rebellions and wars and treaties, and there’s no social history at all.

And her first couple years she just deals with it, because, hey, new fascinating world she’s learning all about, she can deal with one poorly taught class.

But what made me think about this was the title of Harry’s essay in third year. “Witch-Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless - discuss.” Because look at that from the point of view of someone who knows something about the motives behind witch-hunts.

So that’s when she loses it and spends the whole summer researching and writing an essay on the historical effects of magical existence on muggles. How wizards let people scapegoat other muggles and especially women for things muggles wouldn’t believe in if there weren’t real wizards everywhere. How pureblood wizards were happy to screw up the lives of the muggles living near them and then avoided all consequences because hey, they had Flame-Freezing Charms if the worst happened, what did they care if someone else was caught and died horribly instead of them. How even today muggles were falsely diagnosed with mental illnesses because wizards weren’t careful enough with their Disillusionment Charms, or because wizards thought Memory Charms were the solution to everything no matter how they affected the victim.

And she hands it in at the start of the year and a week later she gets summoned to the Headmistress’s office.

And Professor McGonagall smiles at her and says “This is a bit unusual, but would you be interested in a TA position?”

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