#fuck I didn’t talk about Adaryc

[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

[adozentothedawn]

Saint Waidwen The Musical The Justification

This is an explanation for something I wrote in this fanfiction. Go read it maybe if you haven’t? :) But if you don’t have the time or interest, the relevant thing for this is that I mention a controversial musical adaption of the story of Saint Waidwen in Readceras.

Yeah, so first of all, I just really wanted this to be a thing because musicals about weird things are just my jam. I can however justify why this could totally be a thing! I’m aware that I don’t have to, but I just really want to write this, so I will. Now sit down and listen.

(Also you might know a lot of these things already, but I don’t know what they teach in your countries so I’ll just explain the basics.)

Let’s start off with why anyone would ever do this anyway. 

First of all, people make musicals about weird shit all the time in reality, so why not in Eora. Like look at Les Mis. Does that scream “musical” to you? And, yet it’s pretty cool! 

Second of all, Art moves in cycles. To explain this, I’ll use german literature, because that’s what I learnt in school and therefore know a few things about. Let’s begin at the era of the “Aufklärung” (enlightenment I guess? It’s an era of literature from about 1720 to 1790. Note also that eras can’t be distinctly seperated, they do go on simultaniously for a while). This was the time of logic and reason first and foremost. Art had to be practical, without actually having to serve a purpose. So after a while of this going on, there were a bunch of young people who decided, fuck that. We want emotion to be important again! Among those people were for example Ghoete and Schiller, two names you might know, because they’re kind of famous. So there were these young men (and they were almost exclusively men unfortunately) who started writing plays and poems which are based on extreme emotion and the idea of the natural genius (genius is a relative term here, the characters were still kinda dumb, but they were very poetic about it), instead of sticking nicely to the idea of reason. This era is called “Sturm und Drang” (roughly: storm and urge, these are really hard to translate. Also they’re names, so they’re not really supposed to be translated anyway). Now these young people weren’t young forever though, so they grew up at some point (or died, but you get the point). Both Goethe and Schiller decided at some point that that stuff they wrote was kinda cringy and started writing other things, more focused on harmony, beauty and (as in the Aufklärung) tolerance, as opposed to the more forceful and often tragic Sturm und Drang. This was then called the “Weimarer Klassik” (Weimar being the cultural centre of germany at the time and Klassik as in classic). And then after a while, a new generation of young people decided that that was dumb and started someting called the “Romantik” (romance, not necessarily as in love, but more as in romantifying things). In this time, people wrote about magic, myths and fairy tales, the less realism the better. So you see what’s happening here. One generation says: This is great! The next one says: Fuck that, I’ll make it as different as I can. That generation grows up and decides: eh, maybe let’s tune it down a bit. Then the next generation comes and says: Fuck no! again. Of course there are always some that stick to their style, but that’s the general idea.

Now, how does that apply to my musical idea? For that let’s look at Readceras for minute. Readceras was founded by a bunch of farmers, though there was a tiny elite, as we know because Waidwen managed to win some of them over, most people were pretty poor. Poor people usually don’t have the time or recourses for literature or painting, with music, especially singing, being the most accessable form of art. That’s not to say that farmers don’t make art, weaving and the painting of furniture was a thing for example, but the poorer the people, the less they have to use, even when it’s winter and they’d have time, and Readceras was just pisspoor. Singing doesn’t really need anything, and instruments are reusable if they somehow managed to get one. So chances are, Waidwen and his generation grew up with music as their main form of art. Then the Godhammer happened, which sucked big time for them, and they probably wanted to distance themselves as much as possible from the time before Waidwen and idealize him, which in all likelihood lead to art changing a lot as well. 

Because here’s the thing, art doesn’t just move in cycles, it is also heavily influenced be societal and political happenings (but you probably knew that). For example: the literature era that followed (roughly, it began a bit before the other one ended) the Romatik was the “Biedermaier” (which is a surname and not translatable, you might now it from a furniture style though, that’s pretty big in Austria, not sure how it is where you live), which is a style that was heavily aimed inwards. It was mostly, look how happy my little family is, everything is great, nothing is happening, nothing at all, and could be mostly described as idyllic and quiant. That was, because it was a time of political regression, with the empire getting more authoritarian again and literature being heavily censored. So when Waidwen took the throne art probably already started changing, though he likely didn’t notice much of that as he was kind of busy being king and GOD, and with another traumatic event it would’ve changed even more. So it’s completely feasible that 20 years later the youth would decide to fuck all of that over and go back to find their roots, while changing what they find to fit their style. Admittedly the existance of elves mucks up the timeline a bit, but since the largest group of people there are human anyway, I’ll ignore that. Also, in context with the fanifc I’m writing this for, the timeline is helped by the fact that my Watcher is an Eothas priestess. Might sound weird, but hear me out. Favaen came to the Dyrwood as a missionary, and though she got sidetracked a bit, that was still her end goal. So after everything was over and she was well established as Taynu of Caed Nua, she made it into a sanctuary for Eothasians started to spread the faith there again. Of course she didn’t achieve too much in 5 years, but she set a trend. With Adaryc spreading word about her in Readceras, that would’ve had an effect there too, at least insofar that the Dyrwood wasn’t completely off limits anymore and leading especially young people who hadn’t lived through the war to be more curious about it.

Now, why would the older people not like that? Well for one, it’s different, and different is bad in Readceras. Also, it reminds them of a time both worse and better. Worse, as in the Aedyran colonial times (because I refuse to belive that Waidwen didn’t change the economy at least a little for the better), and better when their god literally walked among them, which he doesn’t anymore, so it rubs salt into that wound.

Then how can they get away with putting it on at all? That I can answer with absolute certainty, because it is entirely rooted in canon. The Ladies of the Aviary. Worshippers of Hylea which work explicitly to help artists portray their art and avoid censoring. They convince higher up people, or if they cannot be convinced, help the artists avoid detection. They don’t discriminate between good and bad art, and only seek to spread it unchanged and as the artist intended.

And while we’re on worshippers of Hylea, the church of Hylea is known to comission plays and poems about Eothas and Waidwen, specifically as a way to mourn their dissapearance, which certainly had a hand in the musicals creation.

For the last point: why does Waidwen like it? Now, aside from a personal preference I just made up, we established that Waidwen grew up with music. While the rest of his generation may have distanced themselves from that sort of art, Waidwen never had the chance to grow up so to speak. His death was one of the factors in the changing of art and so he never got to experience that. Yes I had to end this post on a sad note.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk that I basically just did because I wanted to rant about literature for a bit.

Here the Soundtrack It’s on Youtube cause I don’t have Spotify. The last song was added after the events of Deadfire btw

#Pillars of Eternity #Waidwen #essay #kinda #Saint Waidwen The Musical #tl:dr young people be doing new shit #also i just love the idea

[adozentothedawn]

3, 11, 27 and 35 from the Character Development Questions for Favaen please!

My whole original answer for this was deleted. Fuck me. But goddamnit I will not bow down, I’ll do this whole thing again! So here we go! Questions here, some more explanation to her childhood here.

3.  What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Since Favaen hasn’t had any contact with her birth family since she was little, she doesn’t really have a distinct father figure. Though she doesn’t resent her birth parents anymore, she doesn’t consider them her parents. If she had to pick someone to call father though, it would be Waylon, her master in the five years she spent at an Abydon temple. Though he was never as affectionate as Ydona, her adoptive mother and subprioress at the Eothas temple she grew up in, he was always patient with her, never pressuring her and only pushing her enough to help her with her education. He taught her the value of patience and self-control, while being the centre of stability she desperately needed at that point in her life. He was essentially the epitome of “slow and steady wins the race”, and though Favaen herself is much more brash and passionate, she did take his lessons to heart and knows that sometimes it’s better to just take a step back and stand your ground instead of rushing forward. Even when she left his tutelage to become a priestess of Eothas, she kept contact with him with the occasional letter. It’s not really a very loving relationship, but one built on respect and understanding.

In a very abstract way, Eothas could be considered her father, but that is an interpretation of their relationship that Favaen never agreed with.

11. In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

This had me thinking for a while, because the thing is, Favaen doesn’t get scared easily. Upset, sure. Angry, definitely. But fear is based on uncertainty, which is something she has made the very deliberate choice to never feel again. Of course that doesn’t always work, but for the most part she’s pretty good at pushing any sense of doubt away.

So with that in mind, there are two times when she was truly, utterly afraid. One was when she was a teenager and just returned to the abbey after leaving her fourth apprenticeship. After spending literally weeks completely alone on the road with only her failures and hopelessness to keep her company, she utterly terrified of being rejected by the only place and people she had to return to. Of course that didn’t happen, and even though she left her fifth apprenticeship at the Abydon temple as well, she returned home that time with an actual success and for the first time with certainty that it was truly home she was returning to.

The second time was the destruction of Caed Nua. At first it was only the actual crumbling of the keep, something she had no power to stop. The actual terror came with the realization who was responsible, and even more importantly, feeling His own anguish and regret at it, something she had now idea how to handle. She wasn’t afraid of death, her own at least, but the though that it could be meaningless and cause even more suffering, that He himself did things he regretted, and deep, deep down, there was a teeny tiny spark of fear that she might have been wrong about Him.

27. How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

Depending on the situation she will either stand her ground relatively quietly, or just verbally steamroll the other party into submission. Adaryc for example just got talked into the ground. That is because Favaen felt she knew enough about the situation to correctly interpret it, though the whole watcher thing certainly surprised her. Because he is Readceran and Eothasian, she assumed that he couldn’t possibly be that bad and just needed a stern talking to to be made aware of his actions. That doesn’t always work of course, but it worked well enough in that situation. If she doesn’t feel well enough informed, like with Raedric, she will stand back a bit and let the other party explain themselves first before holding her speech. But the most important part for her is conviction. If you don’t believe what you’re saying, no one else will either.

With more physical confrontations it’s simply the rule of “you punch me, I punch you”. She won’t throw the first punch, unless absolutely necessary for the safety of others, but she also won’t just take. She’ll give you every opportunity to back out, but if you’re asking for a thrashing that’s what you’ll get. And then she’ll explain to you in detail why that was a terribly idea and you should really better yourself.

35. How does your character behave around people they like?

Favaen is very aware of her responsibilities as a leader. As a priest she is supposed to a role model, and she does her duties proudly and meticulously, but no one can be perfect all the time. So that means basically, the more she trusts you, the sillier she will behave around you, as long as the situation doesn’t demand otherwise, because she trusts you not to take everything at face value. She likes joking around and does so regularly, but the better she likes you, the dumber the jokes get. She also has no problem being the butt of a joke, as long as it’s actually funny. Additionally, Favaen is a fan of physical shows of affection. Hugs are the basics of course, but she also likes jumping people, as long they’re physically able to catch her. She’s spent quite some time being carried around by Edér and Kana for some clearly bullshit reason.

#Pillars of Eternity #asks and tags #response #Watcher Favaen #character development