#historic child abuse | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

banyanas · 7 months

Text

Okay there is no Way this is gonna fit in the fic wordcount limit (and a lot of it is background understanding to all my other fics too lmao) so who wants to talk about fiddly somewhat mundane toad-centric worldbuilding in regards to Imperial Amphibia -> Caste System Implementation time period??? And even if you don't want to I'm showing it to you anyway.

The 4 tower lords (Cardinal Lords used as an older title when I write) as participants and vassals to the Newtopian military is... pretty new. Especially because toad clans didn't really have a formal military in the first place (and still don't- toad army we see is an arm/branch of the overall Newtopian/specifically Leviathan-ruled Amphibian military). Previously, of course everyone paid fealty (and taxes but we will get to those) to the crown, expected to follow the laws of the united empire under the Leviathan dynasty, but toad clanheads and lords acting in a formal military position in direct vassalage to another army is... definitely new. As far as 'new' goes for a place with an implied-lengthy history as Amphibia does.

Nowadays becoming a Cardinal Lord means becoming an officer- if said lord wasn't already one in the first place. It's a more concrete requirement in the modern era, but before that, hey, remember what I said about taxes? It's relevant just stick with me a bit pls.

So, with the Me-Brand toadbuilding, toads were traditionally nomadic, and likely a more pastoralist society (tarantula cheese...). This did include very few permanent communities toad caravans cycled through, usually as a place of trade/commerce and cultural significance (specifically cairns and mass gravesites) for individual and allied clans. And from there, the majority of toads split into a bunch of much smaller semi-mobile camps that joined and split, in accordance to whatever understanding or trade agreement or alliance or rivalry their clan might have with other clans. These towns are still around despite how vastly different they are, and three of them are in the territory of a Tower- South Tower is the exception to this, since the southern toad population used to be so heavily intermixed with frogs they lived pretty equally spread inside the same township. Which oof, way to show how things change for the worst in a thousand years.

Pre-Andrias, taxes could be paid in both currency and bulk goods or productions- and they could make that work, because of the seemingly-infinite power source music box battery maintaining all their tech and infrastructure. Frequently, this was how toads paid their taxes- a bit harder to do pure currency payments, as well as y'know not rlly paying property taxes due to not privately owning much land.

(It was also, I want to note, supplemented by raiding rival or enemy clans, because they’re still a martial society- they aren’t peaceful nomads before Andrias fucked up everything, they’re violent and there’s inherent problems with gatekeeping someone from community aspects on the basis of whether or not they've killed something/own a weapon. Which we will get to the owning a weapon thing Also in a bit).

Buttttt after the box was stolen, there were a few policy changes. Taxes were required as coppers- ostensibly to bolster restructuring efforts now that the Calamity tech that was the fulcrum for their ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE was burglarized. Coppers hich they don’t have much use for and thus don't have much circulating… yeah. But hey, specifically military service can be offered instead of coppers for taxes, at least for toads and some newts. Doesn't hurt that offering an out from taxes via military enlistment keeps toads and some newts from kicking up a very bloody, very messy fuss while the whole 'I invented speciesism and an oppressive caste system because I'm mad at my girlfriend and boyfriend' thing was being pushed through to law. Between breaking the law with all the severe risk of a nasty punishment/heavy fine that entails, or military service with some Perks of Power for an already highly combative culture? Yeah, no-brainer for why we barely see any non-military toads on screen. (This entire thing is a pretty damn slick move when it comes to enforcing ranks and systems. And admittedly less hamfisted than what we see in modern canon because frankly I think Andrias stopped caring about being careful with his enforcement of it once it became more self-sustaining)

The very messy, very bloody messes did happen, btw. After the last rebellion early into Andrias's reign (mostly made up of toads and frogs working together. Man this just makes it even more depressing to see the state of things in modern eras), only toads that were either in training, currently enlisted, or veterans were allowed to own and carry weapons. Which, beyond the practical problems of 'Amphibia is a dangerous place with lots of things that want to kill, eat, and/or poison you', when toad rites of passage and traditions, up to and including standards for being considered and allowed to act as a legal adult, rely on the use, ownership, or exchange of weaponry and blades... hm. Oh dear.

It's even worse for the frogs btw. Unless a frog somehow ended up actively serving a military term (which they are discouraged to), frogs were disallowed weapons at all. Because de-fanging and controlling who is allowed to be armed is kinda one of the first steps to suppressing and controlling groups of people, with one of the OTHER steps being financially suppressing and controlling (see the taxes thing, upward movement being nearly impossible for frogs and toads). Also contributes to casualties for frogs being way higher than they used to, since if they're a law-abiding citizen and get caught by a hungry predator, or bandits on the road, or any number of things they cant just drive off with pitchforks and slingshots, they're kinda screwed! It's messed up! And it's usually disregarded by newts and toads, because frogs are light on their feet, quite springy, they can just run, yeah?

Fun fact tho, this makes the Plantar basement stash SUPER illegal for some spicy revolutionary reasons. Hell yes good for them.

#bañana post #amphibia #overthinking historical/socioeconomic/infrastructural stuff in a childrens cartoon. cringe is dead and i will keep killing it #good ole combo pressure to conform via hard power and pressure to conform vis soft power wombo combo #i will rag on andrias for fatally stabbing and abusing the trust of and trapping a child to be painfully possessed #but i will rag on him even MORE for a thousand years of oppression because he was mad at his bf and his gf turned against him #for a GOOD REASON TOO

49 notes · View notes

biblicallyangry · 5 months

Text

You tell me I act insane, again, for even the littlest of things and I want to say, in a voice like the Furies: if I am acting insane, it’s because you are driving me insane. You are the one who gave me a life and then chose to break it in two, before my black eyes, again and again and again. If I seem like I don’t know what to expect from life, that would be because you never gave me any information I could trust. If I seem lost, it’s because you didn’t do your job to build me a world worth trusting. If I am acting angry, it’s because I am. I am so, so fucking angry. And I would be - and I am entirely in the right for it.

#biblicallyangry.posts #the inner child talks back #surviving abuse #trauma survival #abuse vent #sorry for using ‘insane’ as a derogatory sort of term here — I don’t mean it in the historically harmful sense #that’s the term that’s being used against me and I am mentally ill (ofc #after all this abuse lol)#abusive parents #abusive household #angry rant #gaslighting #reminders #parental abuse #trauma #emotional abuse #psychological abuse #toxic parents #narcissistic parents

5 notes · View notes

vigilskeep · 1 year

Note

I went feral over How To Prevent Magic In It’s Earliest Stages with my Amell, it’s such a fascinating bit of worldbuilding.

Given Revka’s public grief over her first child being taken, worry for her subsequent children, and finally disappearance I like to headcanon that my Amell is her youngest, conceived after the oldest went to the circle, and that banned or not she tried to follow the book to the letter while spiraling out of fear until her husband caught her trying to leech the magic out of the baby

aughaghogh....

man. i also think abt how malcolm so much hoped his children wouldnt be mages. like not to the extent of All That but i feel like there definitely was dried embrium under the pillow and such little superstitions

#like it Is a deeply real medieval understanding of the world it feels more real from a historical perspective than the idea of the templars #banning it #tw child abuse #revka amell #warden amell

24 notes · View notes

heartofstanding · 1 year

Text

Defaming the dead and other historical fiction problems...

(cw: discussions of misogyny, homophobia, rape, ableism, slut-shaming, xenophobia, incest, abuse, child sex abuse and grooming. If a shitty histfic novel has invoked it, I'll probably mention it. also some hyperbole.)

The "Don't Defame The Dead" movement/campaign was pretty strong in the early 2010s and came as a response to some... pretty horrendous historical fiction, probably best typified by Philippa Gregory and her imitators. You know, the protagonist is a saint and anyone who opposes them is horrifically evil and the (typically female) protagonist is subjected to torture porn and forced into a Madonna/Whore, Good Girl/Bad Girl dichotomy with another woman?

Mostly, "Don't Defame The Dead" was invoked in reviews and discussions but there were also a handful of blog posts that featured memes in which the "defamed" historical figure answered back to these "accusations" via the means of an memed ecard, like so:

For a time, I was fully on board with it. I had the same frustrations with bad historical fiction. A novel would take a historical figure I was interested in and make them into the irredeemably evil baddie and I hated it. Here was a way to answer back that was used by some of the people I respected most in the histfic circles I was lurking in. And the edits framed the movement in easy terms. It was a matter of historical accuracy. It was all lies. It was also a matter of morality. The dead can't answer back and how would we feel if we were depicted like that?

But then I got off the Don't Defame The Dead train and started thinking it through and I didn't like it.

So, couple of things:

I'm probably exaggerating the size and strength of the "Don't Defame the Dead" campaign. It did have a big impact on me, though.

I certainly understand the logic and motivation behind it. I'm not by any means defending the shitty novels that inspired it or saying that they're OK and the anger/disgust/upset caused by them isn't real.

Because this is tumblr, yeah, legally speaking, you can't defame the dead. No one ever claimed it was a legal argument. It was probably the best snappy one-liner around.

Don't Defame My Favourite Dead Guy

We’ve all got historical figures we’re attached to enough that a "bad" or offensive depiction is upsetting. It's natural that there are some figures we're going to be far more sensitive about and figures that we don't like and don't care if they're beaten with the villain stick within an inch of their lives. And obviously, how well someone picks up on whether a figure is "defamed" is going to be dependent on how well they know that time period and how much they care. Someone who is in the weeds of the reign of Henry VIII is going to have a lot more opinions about what counts as "defamation" in a novel about Anne Boleyn than they would in a novel about the Roman Emperor Nero. And, depending on who their favourite wife is, what they think happened and how much they buy into the six wives stan wars, they're going to have a different idea of who is defamed, how badly they're defamed and how they're being defamed. I'm not above the feeling either: you can beat Cardinal Henry Beaufort to a second death with the villain stick and I won't even blink. But so much as raise the villain stick vaguely in the direction of Mary de Bohun and my hackles will start to rise. The point is, it's all understandable and natural to have these kind of reactions.

But it's hard to take "don't defame the dead" seriously when you see this kind of reaction in the very people promoting it. If "defaming" the dead is as immoral as they say, they should be up in arms about all "defamation", not just when it's their fave or reflects badly on their fave. And yet you could see the same bloggers basically renacting the "I can excuse (blank) but I draw the line at (blank)" meme. I can excuse misogynist vitriol against Margaret of Anjou but I draw the line at depicting Richard III being anything but a smol bean. I can excuse slut-shaming Katherine Howard but draw the line at slut-shaming Anne Boleyn. I can excuse Hugh Despenser being depicted as a rapist but I draw the line at Edward II being complicit in it.

(yes, this is a real Don't Defame The Dead card, I didn't make it.)

How does one "defame the dead"?

If it's not already clear, I'm not exactly comfortable with labelling bad depictions as "defamation". It's a term meant to induce an emotional response, a sense of this is serious but I don't think it always is serious. I'm sticking with the terminology though because that's what the campaign used and I can't think of a snappier replacement.

But if we're worried about the defaming the dead, how do we define defamation and who decides what is or is not defamation?

Period-attitudes? Because while we might not have an individual's own feelings and thoughts on the matter, we can use the general attitudes of the period to assume how they would have reacted? Um, no. It's a stupid-ass approach. Firstly, we rarely know how closely an individual hewed to societal conventions and beliefs. Secondly, period-typical attitudes usually contain masses of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, classism, homophobia and other biases. That way lies "well medieval anti-sodomy rhetoric means saying Richard II was queer is a smear!" and worse.

What about historical accuracy and most likely scenarios? Is that a good guideline? Well, yes and no (I talk about the evidence problem a lot more below). What about the author's intention, does that matter? Or is the reader the arbitrator? If so, how do we get past the problem that everyone will have a different idea of is "historically accurate" and what counts as defamatory? What if what is called "defamation" is just a way of the reader expressing their own bigotry and/or bias?

This one of the cards made by Edward II historian Kathryn Warner, referring to the trope first popularised by Braveheart in which Edward III is a ~secret bastard~ of an affair Isabella of France had, though who the "real father" is varies. It's a stupid trope, based in homophobia (because a gay king couldn't possibly father a warrior king) and sometimes misogyny (Isabella is reduced to the vehicle through which Wallace avenges himself on England in Braveheart or depicted as a slut). But most often, it seems to be intended to show Isabella acting with agency, forging her own path in attempt to find happiness despite an unloving husband and, in some measure, triumphing over the Patriarchy™ because her son by choice ends up as the next king. If intention matters, then it's not meant to be "defamatory" to Isabella. It's still grossly homophobic, dumb and defamatory to Edward II. But Isabella? No.

The same logic that Warner argues makes it defamatory to Isabella could also be applied to some of Warner’s own arguments to other women. She speculates that Edward II had an incestuous affair with his own niece but doesn't seem to be upset about the possibility of Eleanor de Clare's adultery (it's also interesting to compare her neutrality on uncle-niece incest with her her older posts where she declares how disgusting Philippa Gregory's depiction of Anne Boleyn committing incest with her brother is). Elsewhere, Warner argues that Joan of Kent did not marry Thomas Holland before she married William Montagu but fell in "love or lust" with Holland during her Montagu marriage, had an affair with him and together cooked up an plan where they would both untruthfully claim to have married earlier so her marriage to Montagu would be annulled and she could safely hook up with Holland. Therefore, the annulment was never legitimate, she was never legally married to Holland or to the Black Prince and her children with both these men were all bastards, including Richard II.

Therefore Warner’s Joan is an lying adulteress who foists a bastard onto the throne. The evidence for such a claim is lacking and seems largely based on the confused anecdote that Holland may or may not have served Montagu as a steward at a time Joan may or may not have been living with Montagu and that it’s “odd” that neither Joan or Holland spoke up about their marriage before her Montagu marriage. Warner’s intention with this is ostensibly to show Joan as a strong woman acting with agency to get what she wants – the same intention that seems to be at the core of depicting Isabella as an adulteress. Why is one defamatory and one not? Yes, the traditional view of Joan is disturbing for its depiction of a love story between a 13 year old girl and a 26 year old man but it’s a bizarre choice to “correct” this fucked up over-romanticism by arguing instead that the woman who would otherwise be the victim of CSA just lied about her experiences and was actually an adulteress who foisted a bastard on the throne. Because it's "odd" she didn't speak up by her Holland marriage earlier or that Holland not speaking up is out of character from a man who was the "furtherest thing" from a coward. All of this could be explained by the fairly well-known dynamics of child-grooming and abuse but apparently it makes more "sense" for Joan to be an lying adulteress.

And that's not defamatory to Joan at all. Right? But making Isabella an adulteress is defamatory. Right?

Right?

R-E-S-P-E-CT.

"Don't Defame The Dead" frames “defamation” as first and foremost disrespectful to the dead people involved and that alone makes the depiction irredeemably offensive and immoral. But to me the real issue with bad depictions is not whether they're "disrespectful" to the person or that it treats them "offensively" but the way they often perpetuate narratives of misogyny, racism, classism, xenophobia, antisemitism, fatphobia, transphobia, body shaming, ableism, slut-shaming and so on. Or that they use rape and abuse as a cheap plot device and/or titillation, or that they use past tragedies and oppression as a cheap points-scoring device.

And of course all these things can intersect: Depictions of Margaret of Anjou usually heavily emphasise her identity as a Frenchwoman (xenophobia), the way she is a subversive woman who doesn't know her place (misogyny), and her dangerous sexuality (slut-shaming). Depictions of Eleanor Cobham keep the misogyny and slut-shaming but swap out the xenophobia for classism (she's a gold-digging slut who won't stay in her rightful place, which is typically defined as Catherine de Valois's vast social inferior).

The most offensive and harmful thing about the idea that Edward II ‘let’ Hugh Despenser rape Isabella of France is not that it’s disrespectful to any of the parties involved but the homophobia in depicting a queer man as a sexually depraved rapist and the salacious, cheap use of rape. By a similar token, what is most offensive and harmful today about the idea that Margaret of Anjou’s alleged adultery and Edward of Lancaster’s alleged bastardy is not what it says about Margaret, Edward or Henry VI but the misogyny involved in depicting Margaret as a sex-hungry and power-hungry slut and hypocrite and the ableism involved in presenting Henry VI as being incapable of fathering a child and lacking in awareness to realise what Margaret has done (it is possible to write this scenario in a "good" way (i.e. a choice made by Margaret and Henry together) but afaik no one has ever written it). Edward II, Despenser, Isabella, Margaret, Henry and Edward of Lancaster are all long dead. But issues like ableism, misogyny, homophobia and the salacious use of rape still cause massive harm today to living people and these depictions reinforce these ideas.

The “don’t defame the dead” campaign also frequently framed the defamations as bad by asking how “you” would feel if these things were said about you. Well, yeah, it would be incredibly hurtful for myself and my loved ones to be the subject of these defamations. But the comparison is inherently a false equivalency. The campaign was primarily about individuals in the medieval and early modern periods. Everyone is long dead. Everyone who ever knew them to care about their feelings have been dead for centuries. What does it matter how they would feel about how they're depicted or what's said about them and the people they knew? They're beyond knowing or caring.

To frame bad depictions as a matter of respect requires a question: why should we respect the dead? I’m not saying that there are not historical figures worthy of respect because there absolutely are but instead querying the basic idea that being dead makes you automatically worthy of respect. The campaign argues that the dead should not be disrespected or “defamed” because that every single one of them was human, that we should think about how we would feel if that was us and that they’re dead and unable to answer back.

Sure, we should remember when we’re writing historical fiction that everyone was human, not cartoon caricatures and cardboard cut-outs, but the idea that being human or dead makes someone deserving of respect is... nope. There are people who deserve exactly zero respect, whether living or dead, and I'm fucked if I'm going to give it to them.

Don't Do That.

I realise by framing this as "it doesn't matter what's said about the dead, what matters is the harmful ideas behind it", I am inviting a never-ending piss-contest about which "defamation" actually perpetuates the most harm. Don't do that. That's fucking stupid. It only makes the Ricardians vs Tudorite wars worse to make it about ableism vs xenophobia. I don't even belong to the Tudor fandom but I've seen it descend into this shitfuckery.

It's entirely possible to recognise the harmful rhetoric at play in "bad depictions" without making it a pissing competition about which historical figure has it worse and which prejudice is worse and that prejudice is worst than the other which means the other doesn't really matter. It is possible to hate both the xenophobia underlying depictions of Margaret of Anjou and the classism in bad depictions of the Woodvilles without wanking over which one is worse.

And for love of god, we need to stop conflating "I don't like/agree with this thing" as "and therefore it is morally wrong" or "and therefore it is more morally wrong than the things I do like/agree with".

The Get Out Of Defamation Jail Free Card

Do you have evidence for your depiction of that person? No? Go to Defamation Jail. Go directly to Defamation Jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Now think about how you would feel if that had been you depicted like that.

Oh, you do have evidence? Well, let's see, I care about the person you defamed so I'm going to go over it with a fine-toothed comb. I'll hit the archives if I must.

Actually, I don't care and I don't know much about the person, I just need to see a citation and you're good to go.

So, if evidence gets you out of Defamation Jail, what counts as evidence and who decides if it counts as evidence or not?

Is it enough to have the work of a historian as the basis behind your depiction? That can be evidence. But what if the work is outdated or not widely accepted or written by a crank? Does someone writing a novel about Elizabeth Woodville based on John Ashdown-Hill's biography of her, dripping in virulent misogyny and bizarre and unevidenced claims as it is, get a pass for defaming the dead? After all, a historian wrote the book they're working from. The answer, btw, is "oh my god, no". But that supposes I know enough to know how vile the biography is. Suppose I don't and I assume he's a reliable, non-biased historian? I'd probably go "ok, well, I guess that's what she was really like".

And what if the evidence that a historian's work can provide is in an entirely different context? If someone is consistently described as violent and vindictive in his role as a landowner but there's no evidence of his relationship with his family, is it defamatory to depict him as abusive to his wife and children? I don't have evidence that he was... but I also don't have evidence that he wasn't... and do we really expect to have evidence of this? ...the evidence does suggests he was a quite a nasty man... but I can't defame the dead...

Well, what about historical records? Is that enough to clear an author of a charge of defamation? Again, it really depends on whether the reviewer has enough knowledge to judge whether the record has issues or not: is it a sceptical report that's treated as 10000% legitimate? Hagiography? Propaganda or counter-propaganda? Do we contend with the fact that a lot of historical records were written by educated, religious white men, that women's own writings were a comparative rarity and (until relatively recently) often filtered through a man (i.e. a transcriber, a publisher, an editor), that marginalised identities are often treated as a curiosity or moral lesson?

And is OK to depict women like Alice Perrers, Eleanor Cobham and Margaret of Anjou as evil bitches because chroniclers universally dunked on them, never mind the misogynist, classist, xenophobic and/or factional bias in the records, and only a few historians - often in academic circles - have been interested in trying to challenge these interpretations while many, many more have uncritically regurgitated them up and ladled on more misogyny, classism and xenophobia?

What about the reviewer/blogger's own biases? The Don't Defame The Dead crowd were big on historical accuracy. Things had to be "accurate" or, failing that, the most likely scenario, which typically meant Occam's Razor and statistical likelihoods were to be used. But the thing is, while useful tools, history and individuals are never just what statistics and Occam's Razor would tell us they were. It also means marginalised lives or marginalised parts of life tend to stay in the margins because we lack "proof" that they existed. Statistics are also not as infallible as they might seem. Are we applying them or an individualistic or population basis? And modern population statistics are based on modern ways of categorising and identifying people. To project it back at the past means we assume that the past had the same categories and identities that we do and that's not always the case.

New discoveries and research can undercover things that utterly destroy what is considered the "most likely scenario". The histography of Tutankhamun is full of this but perhaps the most dramatic is this: until his tomb and mummy were discovered in the 1920s, it was believed he was an older politician who came to the throne after the main dynasty had gone extinct. It was not considered likely he was the son of one of the preceding pharaohs. A novel written about him pre-1922 according to what was "most likely" would now be considered laughably inaccurate. A novel written today based on what's viewed as "most likely" would be considered laughably inaccurate back then.

Murder at the Defamation Court

Let's say I want to write a novel about the murder in the Princes of the Tower. I already hear some Ricardians hissing because I said they were murdered, not they escaped or were spirited away somewhere safe and that's defamation enough. But I need to decide who murdered them. Even I don't end up revealing whodunnit in the novel, I should probably know for the sake of writing a good mystery novel.

I first circle over to Richard III as the culprit. I've got a few historians who say he did it, a few more that say he is the most probable murderer and a few more that say he must have been complicit in the murders, whether or not he did it or not. I've got some contemporary-ish writers who report that it was widely believed that Richard was behind it. Ricardians would say, despite it all, I've bought into Tudor Propaganda™ and I'm defaming Richard III. It might make a good story (just ask Shakespeare) but the defamation makes it a no-go (just ask the Shakespeare professionals getting hate mail from Ricardians).

I discard him as a culprit and start examining the other suspects, put forward by Ricardians (some of them good historians, some of them cranks, but, whatever, a citation is a citation). I examine Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII, the Duke of Buckingham, Jane Shore and a bunch more. But the historical evidence just isn't there. All the theories are just based on evidence that basically requires you to build a castle in the air out of speculation. One of the alternatives might make a good story but there's no evidence for it.

In short, there's not enough evidence to convict Richard III, Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII or Buckingham etc. etc. for murder but there is enough to convict me of defaming the dead.

In desperation, I ponder whether it's possible to write this novel without accusing anyone of murder. I hit upon the solution. What if the Princes aren't murdered after all? Maybe rocks fall and they die. Or what if I create an entirely fictional character to commit the murders though? The dead won't be defamed and with a fictional character, I can make up whatever motivation I want.

But isn't that kind of a bad story telling choice? If you read a good novel about a historical murder mystery and you believed the solution, wouldn't you feel absolutely cheated if you came to the author's note and found out a large part of the book - a vital part, some would say - were entirely fictional because the author couldn't dare to defame the dead?

What we require evidence of.

A decent amount of the cards focused on depictions of historical figures as rapists and abusers. To be perfectly clear, I’m not defending those depictions, I haven't read them all but I suspect most of them have as much sensitivity as a sledgehammer. I've talked about the depiction of rape in historical fiction in-depth before here so I'm not going to make this post even longer by summarising that post. The point is: historical fiction has a massive problem with depicting rape. And of course no one wants to see their favourite dead person depicted as unforgivable rapist or abuser.

But I don't think the right solution to this problem is to demand that an author either has evidence (and clear, definitive evidence - if it's speculative, we must give the dead "the benefit of the doubt") or else never depict rape or abuse in their historical fiction novels.

Look, we know the issues about "proving" rape and abuse in our own modern society with all the benefits of progressive social movements and modern medicine. We know that the stricter gender and/or class roles, the commonality of violence and concepts like "the marital debt" in historical times would have further stifled discussion of rape and abuse. We also know that very few in society had the means or ability to record their story. So we shouldn't necessarily expect to have evidence of rape, much less clear and definitive evidence.

And we need only look to to the appalling ways some Chaucer scholars have talked about Cecily Chaumpaigne or Warner's treatment of Joan of Kent or the Gille de Rais apologists to see the ways in which evidence of rape and abuse is challenged and dismissed, even by historians presenting themselves as progressive (the Chaucer-Chaumpaigne case turned out not to have been about rape at all but is a very, very recent discovery).

There is also important work being done by scholars on rape and abuse in history (for the medieval period, see Carissa M. Harris, Caroline Dunn and Dyan Elliott) and no doubt what they uncover is just the tip of the iceberg. Some recent work on medieval mistresses takes the time and care to point out the massive power differentials between a mistress and her noble lover and how, while we can sometimes have a good idea at how her lover felt about her, we have no idea at all how she felt about him or her situation.

It's absolutely important to talk about the way histfic uses rape and abuse in cheap, ugly ways and it's absolutely justified to be upset by it. But I don't think the answer is to demand an author either has perfect evidence or never write about rape or abuse. There are plenty of novels that do depict rape and abuse sensitively and I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. If someone wants to write a sensitive, thoughtful depiction of what it would be like for a person - even a real medieval monarch or noble - to be the victim of abuse or rape, I don't think we should demand they bring "proof" of their depiction or not write it all. And I say that meaning: yes, even if it makes one of my faves a rapist or abuser. I don't have to read that book. I might be mad about it but I don't have to read it.

Writing While Not Defaming The Dead

The whole “don’t defame the dead” campaign is understandable and was an attempt to address an issue with bad historical fiction. But it doesn't really work. I don't know if I respect any medieval king - I can feel sympathy for them, I can get annoyed by bad depictions of them, I can be fascinated by them. But I don't know if I respect them and I don't know if "respect" is a good thing for an author or historian to have if it means they hold their subject in awe and try to find a sympathetic explanation for everything they do, especially if it negatively affects how they see their subject's contemporaries.

It gives a seemingly rigid rule for storytelling when things are much more shakier than it seems. What counts as defamation? What counts as evidence? What sort of evidence is enough? Who gets to decide what is accurate and what is defamation? And the thing is: sometimes the stories we want to tell are bigger than what the historical record gives us evidence for. Sometimes the stories we want to tell are more important than the reputation of a dead person.

And using it as a guide for writing, some of it is good advice (a reminder that they were all human and real - fairly basic but then historical fiction fails this one fairly often) and some is not necessarily good advice.

No, I don't know what Edward II and Isabella of France's sex life was like. No one does. I know this is referring to various homophobic, misogynist and grotesque depictions of their sex life and it's fair to be upset about that. But it's weird to see a post primarily about historical fiction frame it "don't pretend you know" about their sex life. I'm a fiction writer, my job is pretending to know.

Sure, authors shouldn't publish a sex scene they've written with their hand down their pants* and they should be careful about how they approach depicting sex. Sure some sex scenes can be "disrespectful" (i.e. written with hands down pants) or bad but they're not all horrific. And no, I don't count rape scenes as sex scenes. But it's kinda their job as an author of fiction to work out their characters' sex lives (if their characters are having sex), even if they're based on real historical people. It's their job to work out the bits of their characters for which there is no evidence to tell. Sex is a normal, everyday part of life for a lot of people, past and present. It shouldn't be scrubbed out of historical fiction because it might lack "evidence" and we can't "know" what happened or it be construed as "disrespectful" to dead.

But despite all the words I've written criticising the concept of Don't Defame the Dead, I can't quite let go of it. There are times where I've read a shitty histfic novel and wanted to stamp the words all over the book. I don't want to be an author that causes a reader to have that reaction. I also know it's inevitable I will.

As a writer myself, I think about things. I find myself going in directions that would be considered "defamatory". Wouldn't it be cathartic if I wrote a novel about Eleanor Cobham as a good, perfect, sweet woman who is mercilessly menaced by Catherine de Valois in revenge for so many Catherine novels that demonised Eleanor? What if I depict a character's father as abusive when I don't have evidence he was? What if I decide to explore the issues around consent that a mistress might face even though we have no idea whether she consented freely or not? And apart from the first one (it's kinda baked into the concept - "write a shitty histfic novel in revenge for other shitty histfic novels" and anyway I've abandoned that impulse), I know I would handle these subjects sensitively, that I wouldn't make it a case of bogeymans and perfect victims. But in the back of my head, I hear DON'T DEFAME THE DEAD. And I wonder if I should and ultimately suppress the urge.

*unless it's on AO3.

Postscript.

Where we encounter historical fiction also primes us for how we react to it. I react very differently to someone writing whump or smut fic and posting it on AO3 or tumblr than I do encountering something that is basically whump fic or smut in a historical novel. So I feel like it needs to be said that it's absolutely okay to write whump and/or smut. They can be fun and cathartic or just plain hot. It's absolutely OK to share it on tumblr or AO3. But it's another thing to publish them in a "serious" historical fiction novel and go around talking about how the novel is based on serious research and absolutely what happened and also they're empowering feminist stories that are oh so important.

#tw rape #tw csa mention #tw abuse #tw child grooming #text posts #historical fiction venting #historical fiction

18 notes · View notes

hussyknee · 1 year

Text

The fact is that an unscrupulous tyrant mobilizes the suppressed fears and anxieties of those who were beaten as children but have never been able to accuse their own fathers of doing so. Their loyalty to these fathers is unswerving, despite the torments suffered at their hands. Every tyrant symbolizes such a father, the figure whom the abused children remain attached to with every fiber of their being, hoping that one day they will be able to transform him into a loving parent by remaining blind.

This hope may have been what prompted the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church to demonstrate their compassion for Hussein. In 2002, I turned to a number of cardinals for support when I presented the Vatican with material on the delayed effects of spanking and asked the authorities there to do what they could to enlighten young parents on this subject. As I have said, not one of the cardinals I approached with this request showed the slightest interest in the universally ignored but crucially important issue of physically abused children. Nor did I come across the slightest indication of Christian charity or compassion in connection with this issue. Today, however, those same representatives are eager to show that they are indeed capable of compassion. Significantly, however, this compassion is lavished not on maltreated children or on Saddam’s victims but on Saddam himself, on the unscrupulous father figure that the feared despot symbolizes.

As a rule, beaten, tormented, and humiliated children who have never received support from a helping witness later develop a high degree of tolerance for the cruelties perpetrated by parent figures and a remarkable indifference to the sufferings borne by children exposed to inhumane treatment. The last thing they wish to be told is that they themselves once belonged to the same group. Indifference is a way of preserving them from opening their eyes to reality. In this way they become advocates of evil, however convinced they may be of their humane intentions. From an early age they were forced to suppress and ignore their true feelings. They were forced to put their trust not in those feelings but solely in the regulations imposed on them by their parents, their teachers, and the church authorities. Now the tasks facing them in their adult lives leave them no time to perceive their own feelings, unless those feelings happen to fit in precisely with the patriarchal value system in which they live and which prescribes compassion for the father, however destructive and dangerous he may be. The more comprehensive a tyrant’s catalogue of crimes is, the more he can count on tolerance, provided his admirers are hermetically closed off from access to the sufferings of their own childhood.

(Source: The Body Never Lies by Alice Miller)

#parts of this book are frustrating because she pronounces these sweeping psychoanalytic theories as fact #much in the same way as Freud‚ ironically‚ considering she broke with his school of thought‚ and later psychoanalysis itself #and sometimes the way she ascribes the illnesses and character of historical public figures feels invasive #and more confirmation bias than anything #but it's a highly fascinating read because 1) she's one of first public figures in mental health to reject the need to forgive abusers #and 2) she was an abusive mother herself and formulated these theories only after her children were grown #3) her son's own healing journey involved understanding his mother's violence by studying the effects of the Shoah on its survivors #intergenerational abuse is so real y'all #when they say ‘those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” they def also mean your own life and family history #abuse #child abuse #parental abuse #corporal punishment #violence #authoritarianism #fascism #xtianity #patriarchy #psychology #cycles of abuse #intergenerational trauma #intergenerational abuse #colonialism #alice miller #knee of huss

6 notes · View notes

noxthesleepymoodyoverthinker · 9 months

Link

There is no point in looking only at the bare bones of a story or just one aspect of a story without context. Cinderella is a strong female character. She fought her situation as best as she could. Or rather, she adapted and did what she needed to survive. To condemn her as a weak female character or a poor role model is neither fair nor accurate. Show the movie to a person who grew up in a neglectful or abusive home whose parents/guardians were the perpetrators, and they would likely look at this movie very differently.

#cinderella #disney #strong female #character development #psychology #historical romance #romance #strong female characters #cinderella is a story about a girl romance is secondary #child abuse #cptsd #complex ptsd #abuse survivor #abuse survival #stories #storytelling #fairy tales #animation #movie

2 notes · View notes

paceypeternathanslawyer · 2 years

Text

I really need to stop seeing people sexualize Millie Bobby Brown under every fucking picture of her.... like can people just stop saying that she looks like she’s 30 and/or 60 years old? People do realize that how old someone looks like is somewhat subjective. Also people have been looking older than their age or younger than their age since the dawn of time. Why is it that now with Millie that somehow matters. I know why it matters for those people, cause when she was 14 people used that as an excuse to sexualize her and the sexualization will never end even when she’s 60 probably!!!! 👿👿👿

#it really makes me wanna cry #this poor girl can not live her life without being bullied and sexualized #also people saying....#how much would you like to bet that millie has been used and abused since she was a child #fuck you straight to hell #yes child actors have been sexually abused and used historically #but it is not our place to make fucking assumptions about a child... a real person!!!#stranger things cast #millie bobby brown

28 notes · View notes

abushelandablog · 2 years

Text

“It’s child abuse” sorry but when both actors are 28 and 36 i really could give less of a fuck also I’m a survivor myself gotta love people assuming shit! Anyways you like what you like and thats that. It’s a fictional representation of history I mean movies like Pocahontas, Mulan and even Tumblr’s favorite Anastasia are far from historically accurate - but it’s crickets on thems . I like the show representation of Thomas and Elizabeth- it is far more interesting to me than the beyond predictable plot of Robert and Elizabeth. Thas it it ain’t that deep . Peace and love 🤟🏽💋

#becoming elizabeth #pro ship #thomas seymour #elizabeth #thomas x elizabeth #cw: child abuse mention #obviously pocahontas has its issues but still #yall cant read the fiction in historical fiction and it shows 😘#anyways #otp: keep an eye on you

23 notes · View notes

sins-of-the-sea · 1 year

Text

//I’ve read somewhere that in Jewish law, pre-marital fornication isn’t exactly frowned upon?? It’s mostly when an married wife fucks someone who isn’t her husband that gets everyone really pissy. And some homophobia there, but Phi is bisexual, he’s not shaming his brother for sleeping with men on principle. It’s how easy he is and how often he’ll go through partners like tissue paper.

Maybe one can blame his prudishness on the fact he was abused by his stepfather in an attempt to get him to convert to Catholicism, so at some earlier points of Phoebus’ life, he was raised under a bit of Catholic mentality despite trying to be faithful to his Jewish roots.

I don’t know if Pierre was particularly horrible to Guy was because of latent homophobia, as Guy is the one with a more traditionally masculine personality of the two brothers. Or maybe despite Phoebus’ more compliant disposition in childhood, he’s seen as the more feminine of the two. I don’t know. I don’t know what are French Catholic attitudes of the time and it probably shouldn’t matter anyway because Pierre left when the boys were six. It’s too soon to say if he left the family behind because of toxic masculinity or homophobia, especially considering the attitudes of both are not the same in 1500s France.

#homophobia tw #religion tw #toxic masculinity tw #I have to REALLY remember that historical France (or even modern France) is NOT at all culturally the same #when it comes to Christianity in the United States #[Atz'lut v' Ta'avah]#[About Phoebus]#[About Guy]#abuse tw #child abuse tw #antisemitism tw

3 notes · View notes

nikkilbook · 21 hours

Text

Where's the Line?

Prev || Next

Isabol passed him his plate from where she’d finished filling it, and he joined her at the table. Breakfast wasn’t anything too fancy, but it was nice enough. The newlywed cottages were always stocked with enough staples to get the couples started, though most would also have some extras, like a chicken or goat, covered by the dowries.

Though usually, the families of the couples had a few days beforehand to finish stocking the cottage. No one but he and Isabel had been up to theirs in the five days since the handfasting. All they had was a basic root cellar with what excess could be spared since the last young couple had been married. Some grain, since the last growing season had gone uncommonly well. Dried spices and herbs, though more of those could be found in the forest without too much trouble. Some preserves and other canned fruit. Sugar, salt, though not too much. Those were usually shipped in from towns in the mountains, and it wasn’t often that someone would just buy extras unless it was specifically meant for a young relative’s dowry.

So they’d made do with porridge’s and stews for the last few days, along with some apples they’d been able to gather from the forest on their visit to their tree. Isabel had done her best to make some biscuits the other day, and they tasted all right even if they looked a bit unappetizing. She’d talked it over a bit, and she seemed pretty sure she knew what to change for the next batch.

“What are you thinking about?”

Tristan blinked, and realized he’d been staring blankly at the cabinets for however long it took for his eyes to start feeling this itchy. He had half a biscuit in his hand, and a mouthful of food he’d stopped chewing. He jerked his head back to center, fixed his eyes on his plate, and swallowed as fast as he could around a noticeably dry throat.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, trying very hard not to end up with a fistful of crumbs. “Didn’t mean to get distracted.”

“You don’t have to—you didn’t do anything wrong? We were just eating?” Isabol’s voice which he’d always associated with a sense of firmness, of steadiness, and a kind of knowing he’d never felt anywhere else in his life, felt brittle around the edges. “You just seemed like you... went away, in your head, just a bit. Like you were thinking really hard about something, and you stopped eating. Should I not—do you not want me to do that in the future?” Her voice was smaller than he’d ever wanted to hear it. “Am I supposed to let you come back on your own time, and not interrupt?”

Tristan had never been asked that before, and both the asking and the question were entirely too much to deal with. So he decided not to.

“It’s market day,” he said.

Isabel blinked.

“I was thinking. About market day.” He hadn’t, exactly. He’d been very carefully thinking around it, but it was where his thoughts were always going to end up. “So we can get different food. And the dowries.”

“Oh, um.” Isabel looked over at the cabinets he’d been staring through, and nodded. “That’s a good idea. Since nobody’s come up yet, they probably aren’t... going to....” Her brow drew down, a single furrow forming directly in the middle of her forehead, and the line of her mouth distorted as she bit the inside of her lip. She’d just started doing that back before they’d stopped seeing each other, back when they were kids. “Do you think we’d need to talk to someone from the family directly, or do you think we could get away with going to the counting house and talking to one of the clerks? That would be faster, I think, but it would mean having someone else know our business, as well as know that our families didn’t stock things.” Her nose wrinkled. “Half the town would know by the end of the day, and the other half would learn about it over the dinner table. Which I cant say I’d enjoy, and it’d surely aggravate my uncles.”

Tristan very carefully didn’t say that he suspected most of them already knew. The town had always loved any gossip that painted his family in a bad light, for all they were still willing to do business with his father and uncles. He looked at the frustration on Isabol’s face, and the knot of very-carefully-unsaid things grew a little larger in his throat. If he said he’d prefer the counting house, would that frustration swallow him? Last night, when she’d convinced him to sleep in the bed with her, she’d been softer and kinder than anyone he’d spoken to in a long time, and she’d said they were a team. That she believed what he’d said back when they were kids, even if she’d stormed off as a child.

It was one thing to believe what he’d said; it was another to expect her to sit through it with him.

This was where he should offer to go by himself to their families and collect the dowry gifts. Let her give him a list of what to pick up as well as any personal effects to collect from her parents’ home. This was where he should be an adult and represent his new household to the community. That was how this was supposed to go.

Tristan hooked one thumb over the other and squeezed hard, twisting and pinching until the skin darkened to a dull red and he idly wondered if he’d break his own thumb. He did not want to try and walk up to her father’s door, especially not alone and especially not trying to pretend like he had a right to be there. He knew what they thought of him, he was beginning to understand why they thought it of him, and for all that the legal debs had all been squared, now he, the son of a liar and a cheat, had effectively stolen one of their best and brightest. He could see no reason why they would hate him any less than they had 5 days ago.

He didn’t want to face her father and uncles; what did it make him that he wanted her to be there to see it when he ultimately would?

She had been kind to him, and seemed not to mind living and working together. She’d invited him into the bed. She had apologized. And yet a part of him, one that had burrowed deep where grabbing hands and stomping feet couldn’t reach, one that had gnawed is way out of a trap and knew who had set it, wanted her to see. To really understand what it was to be him.

Another part, backed into the burrow of his skull and blocked from sight by the other, hoped that maybe if she were there, nothing would happen.

“If,” he whispered, his voice pitched a little higher and riding on the sigh escaping his lungs, “if we go to. The counting house. We can pick what we want instead of taking what they give us.” Could make sure things were quality, and that they got their full dowries’ worth.

Isabel nodded slowly, her eyes focused on whatever was going through her head. “I think—yeah. That’s probably best. I’d like to go by my family’s place at some point, just to pick up some of my own things, but for the dowries, the counting house is our best bet.” She got up and went over to the door to the cottage, moving things around a bit before returning with a slate and a bit of chalk. Nudging her breakfast to the side, she sat backdown and started making notes, her head resting on her off-hand. Most of her mouth was covered, but he could still hear her muttering fairly clearly.

“...enough to last the season, or...? Need tools as well, for… depends on how… subsistence or trade?”

Tristan felt kind of floaty, like the edges of himself that touched the chair, the table, the floor, were starting to dissolve, leaving him suspended. He should be participating, right? He should have answers to the questions she was asking. Or did she want to do it by herself? Did she want to take the lead when it came to interacting with the village? That would probably make things easier. Would give her a chance to keep some of her reputation intact, too.

The back of the slate scrape a bit on the tabletop as Isabol spun it around to face him. “What do you think?”

The spark that lit up the back of his neck didn’t even have time to catch before he got a good look at what she’d written. Tick marks, clusters of letters that didn’t spell anything, curved lines that crossed over one another in what seemed like nonsense, but that he knew neatly represented entire words or sentences.

He knew what merchant shorthand looked like.

He looked down at the table, closing his eyes just enough to turn the slate blurry. There was a pain in his chest, just behind his ribs, that felt like something was pulling his bones out of alignment, collapsing them inward into his lungs. “It looks good,” he whispered, hoping it wouldn’t seem like he didn’t care.

“Is there anything else you want to look for? And did I guess your dowry amount right?”

Tristan bit his lip, not able to hide it this time. “It’s probably fine. We can check it again at the counting house.”

“But if—” Isabol’s voice cut off, but Tristan still didn’t look up. It was getting difficult to concentrate, because his mind was playing back the expressions of every person who’d ever handed him something in shorthand, or who’d snatched it from his hand from across a counter. Superimposing those faces over Isabol’s felt uncomfortable and surreal, but he couldn’t make himself look up. He didn’t want to know what her face looked like when she finally got disgusted with him.

A hand slowly pushed into his vision, stopping just shy of where Tristan was white-knuckling his sleeves. It bent up at the wrist a bit, like it was getting ready to touch him, but it just stayed there.

The memory of the night before, of her hands on his face and the tight hug she’d wrapped him up in, joined the other echoes in his head, and he slumped a little, letting her hand come in contact with his.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t read what you wrote down. I never—I’m sure the list is good, I just don’t—I can’t read it.”

Her hand felt tighter where it gripped his wrist. Not uncomfortable, not tight enough to bruise, but enough to be noticeable. Her thumb moved across the heel of his palm, leaving little static-like tingles on the surface of the skin that sunk deep into the muscle.

“Did… I use the wrong script?” She asked, but her voice sounded like she didn’t believe it. “Does your family use a different version?”

Tristan shook his head. They both knew there was only one version—the whole point was to be able to communicate almost universally with other merchants, regardless of origin. None of the variations that did exist would have rendered a message incomprehensible.m”I recognize the shapes and some of the patterns, but I don’t —I can’t read. Shorthand, I mean. I can read regular books or lists, just not… not that.”

She was confuse. Or maybe frustrated? She was something, he could tell by the way her hand tightened around his, going stiff but keeping her thumb moving across his palm in an attempt to seem casual. He was just adding fuel to the fire—there was a breaking point, there had to be, but he didn’t want to find it, no matter how stressful it was to never know how close he was cutting it. He shoved the words out past his teeth and hoped they made enough sense when they landed to pull everything away from the edge.

“No one ever taught me how to read it. I tried figuring it out myself from the lists and what people gave me, but eventually I figured out that the orders didn’t always match no matter what kind of list it was, so I couldn’t find the patterns. I don’t know whose idea it was, my father or my uncles or somebody else, if they didn’t think I was fit to join the company, or if they wanted me to be a bad m-match for you, but I can’t read it, I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s a good list, I promise I tried, I just can’t read it.”

“Do you want me to show you how?”

Tristan held his breath.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to, or—or don’t want me to, I guess. I can rewrite the list in script, that’s fine, I only wrote it like this to save space and work out my thoughts. Or I could go by myself, if you want? I just thought it would make the most sense to do it together, but I didn’t know—I can tell you what’s on the list? So you’re still part of the decision. I didn’t want to leave you out—but I guess I already did, I should have talked it out while I was writing. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to cut you out or anything.”

He missed some of what she said as just noise, his brain following certain threads a few stops further before realizing she was still talking, but even if he didn’t catch every word, her voice was still… comforting. She sounded a little stressed, and her words were quicker than normal, but she kept doing this—trying so hard to reassure him even if she didn’t think she knew how. Even last night, when he’d started panicking, he’d eventually been able to see what she’d been trying to do.

She hadn’t tried to hurt him yet.

He really wanted it to stay that way.

“Maybe you could just point things out as we pick them up for now? If you still want me to come with you?”

“Okay. Okay, okay.” Isabol nodded, repeating the word under her breath and setting the flats of her hands solidly on the table in front of her. “Is there anything you want to do before we go, or should we just get this over with so we can have the rest of the day to ourselves?”

Tristan breathed in and let it out as deliberately as he could, furrowing his brow and staring down at the table as he piled his utensils onto his plate. “Let’s go.” He focused very, very hard on the image of he and Isabol under their tree spending their evening away from everyone and everything, and not the next several hours. It didn’t matter what happened in the market, because the tree was on the other side.

Isabol joined him in standing, tis late in the one hand and the remains of her breakfast in the other. She brushed past his shoulder and looked up at him as she scraped the rest of her food into the compost pail. “Let’s go. Together, okay?”

Dishes on the counter, he took the hand she’d reached out to him, and nodded. The tree’s on the other side. “Okay.”

Leave a tip! My Other Writing

0 notes