may death treat us fairly

My fan comics on the winter fandom battle (๑˘︶˘๑) Alternative 6x05!!!

Hi I’m a fantasy writer and now I need to know what potatoes do to a society

They drastically increase peasant food security and social autonomy.

The main staple of medieval agriculture was grain–wheat, barley, oats, or rye. All that grain has to be harvested in a relatively short window, about a week or two. It has to be cut down (scythed), and stored in the field in a safe and effective way (stooked); then it has to be brought to a barn and vigorously beaten (threshed) to separate the grain from the stalks and the seed husks. It can be stored for a few weeks or months in this form before it spoils or loses nutritional value. 

Then it has to be ground into flour. In the earlier middle ages, peasants could grind their own flour by hand using small querns, but landlords had realized that if they wanted to get more money out of their peasants, it was more effective for the entire village to have one large mill that everyone used. Peasants had to pay a fee to have their flour ground–and it might say something that there are practically no depictions of millers in medieval English literature in which the miller is not a corrupt thief. 

Then the flour has to be processed to make most of its nutrients edible to humans, which ideally involves yeast–either it’s made into bread which takes hours to make every time (and often involves paying to use the village’s communal bread oven) and spoils within a few days, or it’s made into weak ale, which takes several weeks to make, but can keep for several months. 

Potatoes, in comparison…

Potatoes have considerably more nutrients and calories than any similar crop available in medieval Europe–they beat turnips, carrots, parsnips, beets, or anything else all to heck. I don’t know if they beat wheat out for calories per acre, but practically…

When you dig a potato out of the ground (which you can do at any time within a span of several months), you can bury it in the ashes of a fire for an hour, or you can boil it in water for 20 minutes.

Then you eat it. Boom. Done. (I mean, if you’re not fussy, you could even eat them raw.)

You store the ones you don’t want right now in a root cellar and plant some of them in the spring to get between a fivefold and tenfold return on your crop.

Potatoes don’t just feed you–they free you. Grain-based agriculture relies on lots of people working together to get the work done in a very short length of time. It relies on common infrastructure that is outside the individual peasant’s control. The grain has to be brought to several different locations to be processed, and it can be seized or taxed at any of those points. It’s very open to exploitation.

TW: Genocide The Irish Potato Famine happened because the English colonizers of Ireland demanded rents and taxes that were paid in grain, and it ended up that you didn’t really get to keep much of the grain you grew. So the Irish farmed wheat in fields to pay the English, and then went home and ate potatoes from their gardens. And then, because they were eating only one specific breed of potatoes, a blight came through and wiped all their potatoes out, and then they starved. So English narratives about the potato famine tended to say “Oh yes, potato blight, very tragic,” and ignore the whole “The English were taking all the grain” aspect, but the subtext here is: Potatoes are much harder to tax or steal than grain.

Faster causes of of grain spoilage are visibly “something has ruined this grain”–insects, molds, or vermin get in at the grain, so your grain is much more likely to be eaten, pooped on, or rotten when you take it out of storage. 

If you can get grain to survive those quicker methods, eventually grain can spoil simply by being exposed to air. After a few months the oil inside it oxidizes, which destroys a lot of its nutrients. You might get it to sprout six months later, but it’s a lot less nutritious if you eat it, and if you grow it the plants will get less of a head start before they have to rely on their root system to bring in nutrients from the soil.

If a plant isn’t actively growing it is, in fact, decomposing - the speed at which it’s doing that depends on things like external temperature, moisture, etc and can be anywhere from very slow to very fast.

Stuff that is decomposing produces heat.

Grain is an amazing insulator, so all of that heat gets trapped in the middle of the bin.

High heat encourages more decomp. Which produces more heat. Which produces more decomp. Which, eventually, can lead to a thermal runaway, in which the grain passes its ignition point and begins to smolder. (And if you’re really unlucky, that can spark a dust explosion.)

This is one of the reasons that grain farmers are Very Concerned about moisture content - high moisture content means faster decomposition, and thus faster spoilage but also the risk of your grain bin blowing up. Modern farmers carefully control the moisture content and air circulation of their stored grain to maximize quality and shelf life, while avoiding inconvenient explosions.

was-in-the-trilogy book canon

contradicting from a different book canon

movie-verse canon

Tolkien mentioned it in a letter once canon

Christopher Tolkien speculated canon

fanon

wikipedia accepts it as canon even though it’s not 100% sure canon

Tolkien changed his mind but you’re not sure which version you like better canon

Early ‘mythology for England’ canon

Tolkien implied it in a letter once canon

Fan movie canon

Christopher Tolkien changed his mind canon

Omissions even from the HoMe that are only found in obscure linguistic journals or tertiary literature canon

Changing language concepts canon

only mentioned in the Parma Eldalamberon

half-indecipherable scribble on the back of a scrap of paper in a pile of Tolkien’s notes that suggests a major lore change but Christopher just couldn’t figure out that last word

 Well it’s not not canon

the difference in interpretation of a significant interaction due to the changing of a single word between drafts B and C

so. all of us here have one or two defining pieces of childhood media that turned us gay, right? and what type of gay we are today is dependent upon those pieces of media. i’m trying to catalogue us– i have three categories so far, with a few different things that fit, and there’s a sort of axis going, but i can’t work out the last category and i need y’all’s help what’s the fourth quadrant

The clams are just better at measuring the water quality than any man-made sensors.

How is Madam Jin dealing with fact that her husband's illegitimate kid by prostitute is far more sought after than her son and heir? Is Meng Yao receiving well-meaning but absolutely horrible advice from Zixuan, who is awkwardly wanting to make up to both him and Yanli for being rude, and Xue Yang who may be totally honest ooor just think it is hilarious, but also has same understanding of romance as particularly bloodthirsty feral cat? Again, thank you so much for this idea, it is genius 2/2

First of all, ending up finding a cute trophy husband to marry in is a great accompaniment for Sect Leader Yanli, so jot that down. And if Qin Su is also trying to compete - it’s better for her in the long run if she drops out of the running sooner rather than later, but - one could suppose she might conclude that she must aim to become the Qin sect leader, which sounds fantastic.

An incomplete list of Embarrassing Scenes JYL has been involved in:

Impromptu poetry recitation competition with Lan Xichen; onlookers cannot explain why, but are positive they were moments from pulling each others’ hair when it was broken up.

Later that same evening, a covert drinking contest with Lan Xichen and Qin Su - Qin Su ends up drunkenly making out with Luo Qingyang and chooses to drop out of the running 

Lan Xichen, however, is a terror when drunk -- Yanli is visibly smug at the very public chaos right up until Jin Guangyao takes it upon himself to babysit him until he sobers up. 

After Jin Guangyao was publicly berated by his father for some event planning slip-up that wasn’t his fault, slipped laxatives into Jin Guangshan’s tea. Nobody knows how she accomplished this.

Madam Jin is not a problem: Yanli has thoroughly converted her by commenting, absently, that if she can win over Jin Guangyao, wouldn’t that make his father’s wife her mother-in-law? She’s so looking forward to such a happy day, she says. Of course, if she’s going to be the Jiang sect leader, she’ll have to invite her beloved mother-in-law to be her guest instead of visiting Koi Tower... (Madam Jin was the one who helped her sabotage the tea.)

Jiang Cheng is highly embarrassed by all of this commotion, and has decided he probably despises Jin Guangyao much more than he ever did Jin Zixuan. This is made worse by the fact that Wei Wuxian has betrayed him. Wei Wuxian thinks he’s pretty cool, actually? What’s the fuss, Jiang Cheng? 

Wei Wuxian has already scooped Jin Guangyao into private Yunmeng Jiang swordsmanship lessons a half-dozen times and wow, he picks stuff up quick! And he doesn’t even press about Wei Wuxian demonstrating with a stick instead of with Suibian, and he has intelligent commentary when Wei Wuxian starts rambling about demonic cultivation theory. It’s great. Plus, he hasn’t stuck his foot in his mouth about shijie even once! He’s clearly an improvement. 

(Wei Wuxian is a terror, and Jin Guangyao half wants to orchestrate Wei Wuxian’s untimely accidental death.) 

Yanli is the one who’s rescued him from each of these training sessions with tea and snacks; her didi is the best wingman ever.

Xue Yang may not be a factor here - if we’re going by the novel timeline (and we usually are), I would assume he was brought to Koi Tower sometime after Yanli’s marriage, or even after Zixuan’s death. We’re not quite there, yet. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Yanli has lasered in on all of Jin Guangyao’s weak or sore points, and uses this knowledge shamelessly. 

He is half a head shorter than her, so she is constantly finding excuses to take a seat and look up through her eyelashes.

“Sprained her ankle” on some steps and had to be carried.

Constantly comments on his being a war hero, and oh, what inner strength it must have taken--!

Compliments his event planning.

Talks about wanting like five kids that take after an admirable father. (Says this in front of Lan Xichen, looks especially smug.)

5. Jiang Yanli

A rumour made all the more delicious for the layers of scandal packed in. Sect-brother-who-might-a-bastard-brother-who might-be-secret-lover, known for violent fits of rage on her behalf and unchaperoned visits with her alone. Three servants at Koi Tower have been caned for gossiping about it, which has only given the story new wings (though now no one speaks of it within earshot of Jin or Jiang allies). Poor Jiang Yanli is more aware of it than her mother-in-law or brother would like and she channels her fury into periodic spells of violent bread making.

4. Luo Qingyang

Mostly mad because the story of her ruinous association with the Yiling Patriarch is being used to defang her speech to the sect leaders. No one trusts a bewitched woman. When she shows up at her parents’ door they’ve already heard that’s she’s run away to marry a demon. She takes a second to be angry, though she’s not sure at who. Maybe Sect Leader Yao.

3. Wen Qing

Was pretty much resigned to this as soon as the reality of their living situation sunk in. He’s an abomination, she’s a witch, of course people think they’re doing unholy magic together. She tries to have a good sense of humor about it, it’s not like these sorts of insinuations haven’t been a part of her life for years, but it does irk. If she was going to turn to a demon to slake her cruel Wen lusts she’d pick someone less obnoxiously tall.

2. Wen Ning

Honestly, not super aware that the crueler half of the cultivation world thinks his Ghost Generalling extends past the Blood Pool and into the Inner Sanctum. Girls get taught a keener sense of reputation awareness! He is very busy with radishes and his family. Nevertheless, thinks it would be chill? He’s still got a baby crush and puts his trust in Wei Wuxian’s hands for a reason. Most of what he does hear is ridiculous, which helps. Overall, neutral to intrigued by the salacious whispers that crop up. Some of them seem very anatomically unlikely.

1. Lan Wangji

The real tragedy is that, while Nie Huaisang got to attend Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan’s wedding, and of course it was lovely and everything it could have been, he had to miss the subsequent banquet, which was the event of the century. A week later he’s already heard a song about it; two weeks and he’s heard four, and more rumors than usually circulate in a year, and even they mostly pale to the reality as reported from the horse’s mouth

“ - I was just going to run around dodging until some ghosts got through, but then Lan Zhan leapt to my defense, catching Sandu with Bichen!” Wei Wuxian grinned at Lan Wangji and Nie Huaisang with equal glee, though his smile for the former was much softer. “Jiang Cheng struck back, of course, and they were off - two of the greatest cultivators of our generation, leaping from table to table right there in Glamour Hall, fighting blade to blade - and whip to guqin!”

He gestured dramatically, recreating the moment and nearly smacking Lan Wangji, seated beside him, in the face. Lan Wangji simply ducked, expressionless except maybe for the faintest crinkle of his eyes. Nie Huaisang sipped his wine and watched in delight

they’d come under cover of darkness, sneaking up old side-stairs they’d all used during the Sunshot Campaign. Perhaps excessive, but a little caution never hurt anyone

drinking together in Nie Huaisang’s bedroom when everyone was supposed to be asleep felt ridiculously nostalgic, though

“But Jiang Cheng - don’t tell him I said this - is just the tiniest bit much less impressive than Lan Zhan, so I had to leap in in turn - Lan Zhan didn’t realize we were just play-acting, nobody had thought to bring him in on it, he just defended me because it was the honorable thing to do.”

The stars in his eyes put the clear night sky to shame.

“I will not allow harm to come to Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said calmly

holy shit. Holy shit. How had Nie Huaisang missed this one, when he prided himself on keeping up with all the juiciest gossip about his friends.

He refilled Wei Wuxian’s cup. “And that’s when you started the food fight? I heard there was a food fight.”

Appetitus rationi pareat ("Let your desires be ruled by reason").