Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Misfit Angel]

I only have one bookmark, something I intended to buy but never did.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I used to have a lot of bookmarks like that. Clothes I liked the look of only to realise were far too stylish for the likes of me

 

[Ereshkigal]

I have a lot of clothing reference bookmarks. I mean, a lot. I have to store that list of bookmarks on a flash drive to save space on my hard drive.

 

[Instrutilus]

I just wear clothes until they get holes in, then replace them. Never got the point of trying to look nice or stylish, people will mock you anyway.

 

[Ereshkigal]

That's why you practice a Russian accent and wear a nice suit.

Man, woman, any skin color you can imagine... People hear you say "You have problem, comrade?" in a menacing tone and most soil themselves and find an excuse to leave.

Now, some people may have a problem with this... I don't blame them. But, stereotypes exist, and no amount of education in the world is going to prevent people from relying on them. They are the most basic communicated information about other groups. So, to a certain degree, knowing the stereotype and understanding how people react to it can give you an advantage, and allow you to use that stereotype to your own benefit.

A lot of real-word politicians do that for both positive and negative effects. I see no reason why characters and real people can't as well.

 

[Arkadelphiak]

Board related question: is there any way to 'favorite' a post, so I can easily find it later? There are a few questions I've asked in the general writing questions thread that have been buried over time, and I'd like to easily get back to them without having to maintain a megalithic list of links in a text file.

Have you tried using Pocket? I don't use it for saving forum posts, but it's excellent and works on multiple devices. not a pocket shill i promise

 

[Instrutilus]

That's why you practice a Russian accent and wear a nice suit.

Man, woman, any skin color you can imagine... People hear you say "You have problem, comrade?" in a menacing tone and most soil themselves and find an excuse to leave.

Alternately, you just don't bother. You can't care if you just don't.

 

[Ereshkigal]

Ironically, you added that while I was editing in a thought I had XD

And that is full of win.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Have you tried using Pocket? I don't use it for saving forum posts, but it's excellent and works on multiple devices. not a pocket shill i promise

I'll look into it.

I just wear clothes until they get holes in, then replace them. Never got the point of trying to look nice or stylish, people will mock you anyway.

May as well look stylish while you're being mocked. Joke's on them!

 

[diamondpearl876]

People have always told me I should get clothes that specifically make me look more 'feminine' but I definitely prefer just wearing my Zelda and Pokemon t-shirts most of the time. A lot of people are totally willing to strike up a conversation with me if they also play Zelda and Pokemon. Once, someone even told me that his and his wife's house decorations are literally all Zelda-themed. me = jealous af

 

[Ereshkigal]

Feminine by what standards would be my question. Viking women used to put on armor and go on raids. Do they really want you busting into their home late at night with a group of armed warriors and stealing everything of value before burning the place down? And it really would be their fault for not specifying.

I really, really hate that bit about "needs to look more feminine." Doesn't matter if it's people or characters, I hate it just the same.

"Oh, no, your character is not feminine enough!" She's a space warrior dual-wielding miniguns and wearing powered armor! What do you expect? A frilly dress?

Actually, now that I think about it, that would be awesome if captioned with, "Do I look feminine enough NOW?"

Anyway, I'm stopping here. I have quite the rant about this. But, really, it's not their business to determine if you're feminine enough. Your's and your's alone.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Feminine by what standards would be my question. Viking women used to put on armor and go on raids. Do they really want you busting into their home late at night with a group of armed warriors and stealing everything of value before burning the place down? And it really would be their fault for not specifying.

I really, really hate that bit about "needs to look more feminine." Doesn't matter if it's people or characters, I hate it just the same.

"Oh, no, your character is not feminine enough!" She's a space warrior dual-wielding miniguns and wearing powered armor! What do you expect? A frilly dress?

Actually, now that I think about it, that would be awesome if captioned with, "Do I look feminine enough NOW?"

Anyway, I'm stopping here. I have quite the rant about this. But, really, it's not their business to determine if you're feminine enough. Your's and your's alone.

Feminine by the standards of "I'm entitled to know if you're a boy or girl and you're obligated to give me hints," I guess. It was frustrating, growing up. >_> I've always thought I have a rather androgynous face (and I've not had long hair in 10+ years), though most people who spend time with me a lot think otherwise. I'm not crazy, though. I was always being asked if I was a boy or girl by kids at school, and even one of my cousins used to refer to me as 'he' all the time on accident. At any rate, I wore a lot of oversized, boy-ish clothing because I wanted to, but I stopped because I was tired of the strange looks and the anxiety that came with them. It's not really something I'm self-conscious about anymore, and I'm fine with whatever people want to refer to me as, but... you're right, it was/isn't people's business, anyway.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Viking women used to put on armor and go on raids.

Not that I disagree with the general thrust of the post - because ideas about gender change between cultures and time periods - but I'm sceptical about this one. As far as I know the evidence for this comes from the grave goods of a minority of socially high-ranking women. A sword in a grave does not a warrior make. Besides that, if it was even so much as an uncommon occurrence, I would expect it to show up in the written historical record. The Norse raids were a huge shock to the cultures of northern Europe. They were already being characterised as feral, ungodly barbarians that came from nowhere and left woe in their wake. Wouldn't a Christianised culture (Be it Anglo-Saxon or Frankish) with very well-established gender norms seize upon reports of women armed for war as more shocking evidence of the barbarity of these northmen?

I think there really needs to be more evidence of women as warriors in Norse culture to nail it down. A woman buried with a sword and displaying battle injuries would be much more like it (Again, so far as I'm aware this hasn't been found)

 

[Ereshkigal]

Not that I disagree with the general thrust of the post - because ideas about gender change between cultures and time periods - but I'm sceptical about this one. As far as I know the evidence for this comes from the grave goods of a minority of socially high-ranking women. A sword in a grave does not a warrior make. Besides that, if it was even so much as an uncommon occurrence, I would expect it to show up in the written historical record. The Norse raids were a huge shock to the cultures of northern Europe. They were already being characterised as feral, ungodly barbarians that came from nowhere and left woe in their wake. Wouldn't a Christianised culture (Be it Anglo-Saxon or Frankish) with very well-established gender norms seize upon reports of women armed for war as more shocking evidence of the barbarity of these northmen?

I think there really needs to be more evidence of women as warriors in Norse culture to nail it down. A woman buried with a sword and displaying battle injuries would be much more like it (Again, so far as I'm aware this hasn't been found)

There's a couple of historical accounts. In particular, the Byzantines note in a few of their records of battles with Vikings that they were stunned to discover women among the fallen warriors. That's around 971.

But, then again, most evidence of Viking raids has turned out to be legends anyway; I know some recent summaries of scholarly papers have suggests that the very idea Vikings did as much raiding as the public memory says was mostly slander. If that is true and most of the raids were simply outright invented by jealous competitors, then it stands to reason there wouldn't be many accounts of women warriors because the people making the stories up wouldn't think to include that detail.

 

[Beth Pavell]

The Byzantines, huh. Hm. That would suggest that it wasn't something universal to Norse culture. I'd speculate that it might have had something to do with wealth, in that case. The routes to the East were among the most lucrative in terms of opportunities to take slaves and trade for the goods of the Middle East, as I recall.

I think in general it's good to keep a sceptical outlook when it comes to the Vikings. I won't go so far as to call it revisionism, but I think the "peaceful" activities of the Norse have been exaggerated, in part as a response to the old stereotype of them as being little more than rapacious barbarians. For example - yes, Vikings did tend to eventually settle in the places they raided and become farmers. But in this context "settle" is synonymous with "conquer". And the life of a farmer in this period, though easier and with less opportunities to die than raiding, was not necessarily peaceful.

It ought to be said (Even as I've argued for the use of written records as evidence), that a lot of what we know about the Vikings comes from suspect sources, be it hysterical Christian monks or sagas transcribed centuries later. I don't think it entirely defeats the question of why Viking women are so sparse in the written record, though it goes some way towards explain it. As far as Norse records are concerned, well, theirs was not a literate culture, so that would explain it on that side of the fence.

 

[Ereshkigal]

It also doesn't help the violent periods that followed. Even if there was once accurate written accounts of the Vikings, the sheer churn of human warfare could have easily destroyed it. There's quite a few cultures from history where most of what we know about them now is pretty much pure guesswork. That's part of why discovering things like the Egyptians having already had advanced construction techniques before settling Egypt have been such shocks.

 

[Instrutilus]

Never got the whole gender discrimination thing. Just do what you want, so long as you don't hurt someone else, and that's pretty much the most I care about people I don't know.

 

[Beth Pavell]

There's quite a few cultures from history where most of what we know about them now is pretty much pure guesswork.

The "Celts" are another good one. The whole Wicker Man thing comes entirely from Tacitus, I think, and since when were Romans ever trustworthy when it came to writing about the barbarians?

 

[Misfit Angel]

since when were Romans ever trustworthy when it came to writing

I feel that your point could have been made more astutely.

Romans: gods among the unwashed masses... well, maybe that's accurate >.>

 

[Ereshkigal]

The Romans couldn't even be trusted to write about themselves. Just ask Nero.