Good news, folks! Thanks to a new wave of donations, the pledge drive is getting back on track! Huge thanks to everyone who has donated, some of you quite generously, and to those who helped spread the word.
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David
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@ jenora
It started out that you had to appear with a tonsure and full clerical dress.
Eventually though it became a literacy test.
It was realised that lay people were taking advantage of that. But whichever king it was decided that actually promoted a literate workforce; so they changed the law to allow that.
It was a bit of a scam though. They only used a selection of bible verses. Psalm 51 was the most popular, and became known as ‘the neck verse’ as it could stop you getting hanged.
So of course there was a little cottage industry around the courts where people would teach you the relevant verses by heart before you went in.
Here in case the Feds are after you:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2051&version=KJV
I’m thinking that everyone, everywhere in the world needs to read T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon’s work. Just start somewhere and go from there. I think both of her names have won Hugos, plus she is very informative on chickens and potatoes.
Many of her hero/ines are plain-looking, average farm people who take the attitude “I don’t want to do that, but it needs to be done and it looks like I’ve got the job.”
Everything from Grandma Harken doing battle with Coyote and other Southwestern perils in
https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/jackalope-wives/
to the sheer heartbreaking beauty (and laughs) of a girl with an overprotective helicopter mother who gets whisked away by Baba Yaga into… so much adventure in
https://www.redwombatstudio.com/portfolio/summer-in-orcus/
(whole serial is online free)
And it’s all good. Just ask the gnoles or the hoopoes. On the Clocktaur guy, I vote Henry Cavill even though I like Chris Evans more. Jenora and I can also testify to her personal coolness.
Follow Vicky P’s link and you’ll be happy.
Pretty sure “someone was mean to me on the internet” is not a thing that rises to the level of needing Federal actions.
I agree with Goddess Stacey /~*
@Stacey, I’ve found my whip, my flogger, and my kinky boots! I told off an extremely entitled old SWM, calling him an asshole to his ugly face on Sunday night (see latest Tiny Mammoth Concert for details), so I’m in shape to continue wielding my crone power for good. As long as it doesn’t take heavy lifting.
@GSS ex-noob
Caliban is blond – hence my preference for Chris Evans over Henry Cavill in that particular role.
I also have a great fondness for a certain paladin who spends his spare time knitting socks. Very much in keeping with knitting tradition.
@ gss ex-noob
Seeing as we have a bit of a TOTP vibe on at the moment.
(I’d forgotten how dodgy the lyric was!)
@ Victorious Parasol, Dalillama & GSS ex-noob
Thanks for bringing up and hyping Ursula Vernon/T Kingfisher’s work. Ever since that blog entry where the shortcomings of The Wheel of Time were discussed, a series I read in my younger year, I have idlely wondered at the idea of reading something in the swords and sorcery genre more… feministy.
Hmmmm… feministy is not a word according to my spell-check, but it should be.
The fact that apparently the gnoles are good amuses me, because I once was involved in an online D&D game in which I decided to play as a Chaotic Good gnole and invented a whole backstory on how his society developed into one where gnoles could be any alignment. The GM, not being much of a world builder, took that and ran with it, later featuring parts of it in his campaign. (I didn’t get out much, so this was pretty thrilling to me at the time.)
Edit: And yes, Big Titty Demon, that threat was… well, really… threatening? I guess. Maybe a little?
Lindsey Graham gonna get me? Kind of a scary thought, though Seagull’s latest posts really devolved into Bizzaro Land. Are we supposed to believe he is that upset over not being able to find an email address? Huh?
Try Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksennarion for yet another good take on a paladin, most of Tamora Pierce’s work, and Tanya Huff’s Wizard Crystal series
@Alan
I thought it was gonna be this one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tVjk_aFdfF8
@ dali
The Cornish version is slightly less insurrectiony.
One of my favorite literary paladins-in-all-but-name has had the misfortune to inhabit A Song of Ice And Fire/Game of Thrones: Brienne of Tarth.
Finished my Swordheart re-read and once again hoped that the sequel will be out soon, but I can’t complain too much since she’s been writing other wonderful stuff since then.
Sharing the first line as a springboard for my musings:
Because having money means very little if you can’t control it and Halla, like many other women through history and fiction, doesn’t have a lot of agency at the start of the story. She’s not weak – she spent a good part of her childhood/adolescence helping to run the family farm and raise her siblings, and then she got married to a man who likely was ace and not really good at interpersonal communication, and then he died, and then she ended up working as a housekeeper to her husband’s uncle, and then she ended up as his live-in nurse for the last few years of his life, and so he named her as the sole beneficiary.
If you’ve seen Knives Out, you probably have an idea of how a family can close ranks against an outsider who gets rewarded for long and faithful service.
Halla’s options will seem familiar to readers of Western literature and Tolkeinesque fantasy: If she can control her inheritance, she can hope to negotiate a good marriage if she wants, which will give her a husband who can help protect that inheritance. If she can’t control her inheritance, she figures she can join a convent or find work scrubbing floors. But at the start of the story, she can’t even leave her room because her in-laws have other plans. (No spoilers here.)
In the course of the story, she meets Sarkis, a warrior who comes from a very different culture with different marriage customs (to pick one difference). In his culture, there’s no such thing as a dowry, and he considers the idea barbaric. Instead, a marriage negotiation is focused on the price for the bride – not that a spouse is buying another spouse, mind you. The price is his culture’s way of saying, “This is how much this person is worth in the estimate of their family of origin, and this other person is willing to pay it as a way of showing they can be a good provider.” As Sarkis admits, generally the price is in land or goods, and, oh, gosh, those things may be given to the newlyweds to start out married life together. Marriage equality is part of his culture as well. If a price cannot be agreed upon or met, there are unofficial ways of dealing with that, as long as the couple are consenting.
As I mentioned in another comment, Sarkis’ culture also has socioreligious obligations regarding the marriage bed. If the sex is lousy (ranging from “meh” to actual crimes, one assumes), it’s considered valid grounds for divorce.
I second Dalillama’s recommendation of Paksennarion by Elizabeeth Moon. Apart from the inital duo there are (I think) another seven books in the same world five of which involve some of the same characters as time goes on. There will hopefully be more, Moon unfortunate suffered two concussions which messed u her “writer’s brain”, but it seems to be working again and she has just sent another book in that world to her agent with more to come.
It’s not about a paladin, but if anyone is looking for old heroines I highly recommend Moon’s Remnant Population, stand alone science fiction with an old woman as it’s main character.
@Vicki P
This also the case under the old Irish Brehon law. That’s also the only mention of homosexuality/bisexuality in the legal code: if a man spends all his time with his boyfriend (s) and not enough in the sheets with his wife, she can divorce him.
@Dalillama
That doesn’t really surprise me. The Brehon laws are fascinating, though I only know about a few things here and there. Thank you!
@ Dalillama
I am somewhat familiar with Tamora Pierce’s work, first reading the Lioness Quartet and the Circle of Magic/The Circle Opens series, but I have heard good things about her other work.
Also, concerning Irish Brehon law: I’m not familiar with it, but it is always interesting to find out how many “primative” and “backwards” cultures throughout history often seem to be better than the ones judging them as inferior.
@Jazzlet:
It’s not about a paladin, but if anyone is looking for old heroines I highly recommend Moon’s Remnant Population, stand alone science fiction with an old woman as it’s main character.
There’s also The Last Unicorn, in which the foremost human female character is—in defiance of the conventional wisdom about who qualifies to adventure with unicorns—a middle-aged, sexually experienced, and disillusioned bandit’s mistress who proves integral to saving the day.
@Jazzlet
The Brehon code also doesn’t allow the death penalty except for killing a member of your immediate family (although that rule doesn’t account for the blood feuds that might happen if the Brehon (more or less means magistrate when applied to a person) couldn’t get everyone to agree on appropriate restitution). Brehons who were familiar with English law had a pretty low opinion of it.
Has anyone ever been scared by being threatened with Lindsay Graham (aside from his voting pattern)?
I’m pretty sure he DGAF about a histrionic “man” shrieking about how people on a small website are “mean” to him. I abhor LG, but even he doesn’t deserve that particular hassle, and I’m sure he’s got much better things to do with his time, like sleep or have a cup of coffee or something.
The blurb on Vernon’s website says it all:
“Vernon is the right thing to read in times of woe, in times of joy, and when you are considering planting an invasive nonnative and know you probably need a stern talking to.” ~Elizabeth Bear
Oh, and don’t miss the podcast “Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap”, where she and her husband eat disgusting things from the Dollar Store.
If you want actually GOOD retellings of fairy tales, do NOT miss “The Raven and the Reindeer” (The Snow Queen) and “Bryony and Roses” (Beauty and the Beast). Mushy stuff and wimpy girls not allowed in these.
As far as fairy tale adaptations go, Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is adapted from Rumpelstiltskin, and Uprooted from I think a Kotschei story, but I’m not sure. The aforementioned Olivia Atwater’s first series is the Regency Fairy Tales trilogy, which is exactly what it says on the tin: society balls and fairy bargains, plus social commentary and heartwarming romance.
Does this count as a fairy tale adaptation? It’s one of my fave films anyway. And topically enough has the wonderful Angela Landsbury in it.
The only rewritten fairy tales I can recall in any real detail are James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Fairy Tales series. I recall thinking at the time they were a great demonstration on how changing certain underlying cultural expectations can wildly change the way the fairy tale plays out, which was cool to younger-me, anyway.
Older-me has not re-read those stories in years though, and don’t know if they’ve held up well at all. Or if Garner just switched out one set of stereotypes for another (I seem to recall at least a few of the reimagined characters were given what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder to explain certain of their actions in the original stories).
@Alan Robertshaw:
Well, as the son of someone who taught Sunday School in the Anglican church here in Canada, I could run a few of those off, yes…
As for the scam, well, no surprise. As a lawyer you of all people should know that there has never been a set of rules or laws drawn up where somebody hasn’t eventually figured out a way to take advantage of the details and corner cases; whether it’s by slipping through a crack themselves or by figuring out a way to get their opponents caught by overly-broad definitions. Dealing with that is one of the advantages of the Common Law system in that it’s easier for judges to adjudicate corner cases based on the spirit rather than the letter of the law, and have those finer definitions move on later without having to go back and rewrite the original law. (Of course, the disadvantage is that it’s also easier for politically-motivated judges to actively abuse and destroy the law, which we’re seeing a lot of in the U.S. at the moment.)
@Full Metal Ox:
And whose response on seeing the unicorn (and immediately recognizing her as a unicorn, unlike most of the people who saw her as just a horse because they didn’t have enough magic in their lives) was basically to yell “Where were you twenty years ago?!”
And yeah, integral to saving the day, at least in part because she was the one most able to walk in two worlds, being able to recognize magic but also being rather practical in her outlook.