#I think Waenglith brings it up obliquely

[stylishanachronism]

Okay, but when will we talk about the Readcerans? 👀 (and maybe a certain book....?👀👀)

It’s Late, I’m Exhausted, I’ve thought of nothing else for two days, let’s go.

So I already talked about Readceras and marriage, elsewhere, much more coherently, and it took me a hot minute to realize you were talking about the hysterical Eothas/Waidwen porn, so let’s talk about theater and the Ideal Romantic Partner. And hysterical porn.

So we’ve got an extant canonical morality play (which, like, somebody read extant irl morality plays because it’s really well done), which means I’m not just spitballing this. (I mean I am but) Readcerans are weird Calvinists, which means everything is Extremely Dour All The Time, but probably in practice if you’re not right in front of the Dawn Council you’re spicing it up. Virtue and Charity get into a fistfight. The Dawnstars get stuck on a roof and can’t come down to talk about the penitent, and instead yell rude things whenever he messes up a line. Somebody throws a brick. Y’know, normal stuff.

Probably not a lot of secular plays? Definitely nothing borrowed from Aedyr. Pre-everything, you’ve definitely got acting troupes crossing the border, so on a broader scale there’s still probably a lot of similarity between Readceras and the Dyrwood’s theater scene post-everything.

Your Ideal Romantic Partner (not necessarily romantic, Good Readcerans Get Married, whether they want to or not, and the social shunning for noncompliance is brutal enough you’d better have a damn good reason not to, and even then you might be better off booking it out of town) is pious, dutiful, and a little somber, but with a brightly optimistic attitude, serious about everything they do and thorough about whatever duty they’re given, a good listener, strongly community minded, did I mention the piety?, ambitious without being grasping or cruel, and vigilant both within their home, for things that could be improved, and outside it, for threats or weaknesses to be strengthened.

Divorce is even more of a Thing That Does Not Happen, more for social reasons than expense, it would be deeply ugly not only for the adults but also any children that might be about, but on the other hand everybody’s having a Really Bad Time, so an early death wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Certainly no need to go to the lengths our canonical spousal murders go to.

Eothas is obviously Best God for everything, including marriage, but tbh you’re also probably invoking Waidwen himself, which must get pretty weird for anyone who knew him!

Speaking of, let’s talk about the porn. (I mean, let’s actually talk about the implications of the porn. Y’all can go read the book if you need context. Also yes I know the excerpt is not actually porn but that is definitely where the text is headed.)

There’s two major directions your inferences can go(1), both about equally likely, and they both lead to the same next step so in this context it doesn’t even matter. Either:

-Somebody Expensive with too much time on their hands, who tbh probably knew the dude, or at least knew someone who knew the dude, those last few doomed months, wrote a highly deviant(2) work and were lucky if the Hand Occult got to it before the rest of the Council did

Or

-Paper is cheap enough and labor light enough that somebody who never even met someone who met someone who knew Waidwen had enough time on their hands to write a highly deviant work, and required less luck for the Hand to get there before their neighbors did.

Either way, we’ve got a strong cultural push for literacy and more importantly, public libraries, and also a, well, grand is the wrong word but, tradition of extremely Romantic (as in the literary movement) novels, probably roughly as smutty as modern romance novels but with even purpler prose. And like, morals.(3) Actually, thinking about it, it points to novels even being a thing in the first place, because accessible widespread printing presses do not a literary tradition make!

Anyway.

I do sort of wonder what freaked Hand out so badly about it, as BoW makes it pretty clear it wasn’t actually possible, much less on the table, and since this is the first we hear about it we can presume the author was not caught by their neighbors (this does not preclude their murder), because it’s the sort of piece that, being so incredibly awful and deviant and nobody should ever read ever, everybody has to read it immediately. Which obviously the Hand did not want. (I have so many questions??? Why did the Hand give a shit? I mean, why did the Hand give a shit about a lot of things, really, someday I should like.... chart out what we’re told/shown them to have messed with and see if anything interesting turns up, but why blasphemous porn in particular?)

Anyways I really wish you could get your companions opinions on things because I would actually die to know what Xoti and Edér think about it, among other people.

1: technically three but ‘actually it’s au fanfic and Not Relevant to Eora as is’ is much less fun to consider, so we aren’t.

2: the porn is not the deviance, that’s the blasphemy

3: morals as in ‘good Readcerans get married’ and ‘good Readcerans embody the virtues of grace and charity’, maybe even emphasized with a nonsensical rhyming couplet at the end. This is not a judgement call about irl romance novels!

#pillars of eternity #thanks for memeing me!! #look I’m not saying everybody who knew and loved Xoti breathed a huge sigh of relief #when she and her highly visible deeply ugly crush tore off after the Watcher and/or Edér #but that is exactly what I’m saying she wasn’t being shunned just for the lantern thing #I think Waenglith brings it up obliquely? but yeah it’s a thing #also I really wish I were joking about the rhyming couplets but I am not #tbh if it wasn’t canon I would not have guessed how badly divorce was taken on Eora #like it’s definitely Obsidian not thinking it through but it’s a weird trend #ALSO I FORGOT HOW FUCKING INTO WAEL THE READCERANS ARE???? #I did not cite this but I did attempt to confirm a detail #and got fucking blindsided with that fact #*bangs fists on table* obsidian what’s Readceran literary canon look like inquiring minds want to know #fuck I didn’t talk about Adaryc #is Adaryc almost word perfect the Ideal Romantic Partner? yes yes he is #but he’s not enough of an optimist and he feels things too strongly in a way the Dawn council doesn’t like but can’t argue with #which is why it’s a toss up if he himself is married #if you would like a terrible bulletpoint essag of your very own hit me up