Possessiveness is awesome.specifically if the possessive person is kind of embarrassed and ashamed and turning inwards about it
Alpha boyfriend beats the shit out of some guy for touching his discord kitten or whatever <- unfathomably unsexy
Repressed freak has private breakdown about other people being affectionate with their favorite person on earth and has a guilt spiral about it afterwards <- awesome and sexy. To Me.
Repressed freak does all of that and then is forced for some reason to say, out loud, with their words that yeah basically I feel like you’re Mine and it’s very upsetting to me when other people touch you or make you smile or laugh sorry I try not to feel that way I know it’s wrong of me sorry sorry sorry <- REALLY AWESOME AND SEXY. TO ME.
There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don’t think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you’re writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.
For example, your travelers might know that they’re near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester’s trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they’re coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.
Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter’s yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.
They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they’re nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.
Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don’t just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced– cut and then regrown–to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.
If they’re approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.
If it’s a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).
There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don’t know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!
This is a big reason that I have always loved the Brother Cadfael novels, set in the mid 1100s. Written by Ellis Peters, each book has such a vivid sense of the place and the time period. Many different settings around Shrewsbury are described, along with the people and their various jobs.
I love that kind of world building and would add that many resources were tightly regulated that we don’t consider nowadays. Examples are the right to herd your pigs in an oak forest belonging to a specific monastery (saw an example where an altar piece had a carved pig to make sure the claim was known and advertised) or down to which farmers had the right to tree leaves in the fall (shortage of other animal bedding in certain Swiss valleys). The idea of a wilderness in a medieval setting is not what we think.
Great points! Thank you.
Forever recommending A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry as an introductory resource for this! The author is a historian of the ancient mediterranean and he has a lengthy two-part blog post on “lonely cities”: how fictional cities tend to look in pseudomedieval fantasy versus how real cities actually worked, specifically how they reshaped the land use for many miles around. Part I, part II, or available read aloud on YouTube here.
i have such a love for characters who descend into madness or villainy out of deep, deep empathy. characters who fundamentally cannot cope with the cruel realities they find themselves in and blow up about it in spectacular fashion. fallen angel type characters with tears of outrage in their eyes. characters who break before they bend, and break so badly they splatter blood all over their noble ideals. every variation on it gets me so good
the 4,000 year time span between the veil and the masked empire during which felassan could only ever have spoken to solas in dreams when at all.
the years solas spent in the lighthouse with all those fucking notes from felassan around. “don’t cause too much trouble before i get there.”
the only time anyone says felassan’s name out loud in the video games is when solas says it in an ancient arlathan memory
solas not painting felassan a mural in the lighthouse and only referring to him as “my agent,” once, but still regretting what happened with him so much that it’s one of the three big revenants powered by his regret, after the titans and mythal???? sir your repression
the ambiguity of “the betrayal of felassan” as the name of that revenant. whose betrayal of whom.
the heart of corruption/revenant dragon residing in the same place felassan used to go to get away from everything.
felassan calling it “our rebellion.”
felassan being aware that he would die if he reported back to solas, seeing a plausible way he could run instead, and reporting back anyway.
the tone he takes during his death scene being so friendly and nonchalant, “what’s the harm really” and “i suspect you’ll hate this,” like he’s still trying to talk to solas like they are friends and equals even while he is aware solas is about to kill him.
felassan isn’t even his real/original name and in one of his veilguard notes he refers to being felassan at all as being “solas’s friend felassan” like that identity is inextricably tied to his friendship with solas, he cannot be felassan without also being solas’s friend.
“and you are the slow arrow?” / “i hope so.”
in conclusion,
and another thing.
“i woke still weak a year before i joined you.”
felassan died a year before inquisition.
so solas killed him and then out of some combo of grief and rage and having his better, cooler plan that would not have involved giving his orb to anyone ruined, ripped himself out of uthenera well before he was finished cooking. and that’s fine.
YEAH… like presumably he’d been seeing fragments of the world through dreams as he’s floating around the fade, is well aware his prison failed and the blight is inexorably leaking out regardless, spirits are being literally demonized, the elves are in absolute shambles, and is fully on a “none of this stuff matters, this world is both horrible and about as fragile as a soap bubble, and needs to be remade without wasting time” mindset, as much as he can have any mindset in uthenera.
and then felassan, his bosom pal from the rebellion, and his last tether to actually Speaking To A Person, starts saying things like “hm maybe we should reconsider the plan, it’s not as bad as it looks, this short-lived mayfly being in the blight-doomed world reminds me of you-”
and so solas kills him. the unreality must’ve been wild. did he do it almost casually while sleeping, because it became about as “real” to him as any of the other random dreams he watched? and then woke up, actually felt the impact of it, and went “ooough fuck, why DID he say that-”
and presumably within a few months of waking up and talking to people, solas starts having the exact same thoughts felassan was expressing. and yet, he’s now the Sole Bearer Of The Trolley Problem Levers™, especially without felassan around. and probably acknowledging it fully would force him to reckon with the fact that his oldest friend survived centuries in a hostile world only to die at solas’ hand for no reason. so he carries on regardless.
When I say that Solas shouldn’t be at fault for every little thing in Thedas, I’m not saying it because he’s a little baby angel face who can do no wrong. I’m saying it because it’s fucking boring.
i’m peer reviewing these tags!!
also i feel like making him THE most pivotal guy in tranquilizing the titans makes it… actually ridiculous that he would be considered a lapdog of mythal afterwards? it would be the opposite, the evanuris should be falling over themselves to butter him up and ingratiate themselves with him to keep him loyal, if he’s that vital to their victory.
there is no way that elgar'nan, presumably a successful dictator for 34687 years, would be like “ah yes. my wife’s yappy second in command actually turned out to be a genius, who single-handedly made a superweapon that took out all the titans and won us the war. but, he’s kind of disaffected and doesn’t like us. let me just make fun of him in public, make sure he knows that i won’t accept any of his demands, and that he develops a personal grudge against me 🌞”. it’s like cartoon bully behaviour, not what an actually competent tyrant would do! it makes everyone involved look like a moron and lose all depth.
Question: What is the greatest magic of all? Answer: Friendship, right?
[B]: The greatest magic of all is not friendship, it’s chronomancy, the ability to control and warp time. If friendship were the greatest magic, look, it’s a pet peeve of mine (...)
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