Unrepentant Studio Rat

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

One- Your characters can be bad people, they can do bad things. There doesn't have to be a reason or a moral. You can make them bad if you want to. No other reason needed.

Two- it doesn't have to be good, it just needs to be written. On my last book i literally wrote the words "dumbest version" on the top of the page because I had seen some advice to do that. It changed everything. I stopped trying to make it perfect, I just tried to make it. Period. Full stop. You can edit bad writing. You can't edit a blank page.

"You got two choices: go to bed as dignified as possible in your current state, or I carry and throw you."

"Just let me finish this..." "Oh sure, and how long will that take? Another day? Bed, now."

"You just almost created mustard gas trying to make coffee. You're done."

"I'm worried... Please just get some rest."

"You know damn well I'm not above sedating you."

"Brought you coffee." "We both know that's decaf with sleeping pills in it." "Huh. You're learning."

*finds them slumped over on their desk* "Huh."

"Hey, what!" "I told you, one more hour, and then I am dragging you out of here. So here we are." "This is barbaric!"

I remember when there was this LiveJournal community where you could just ask about anything you needed for your novel - medicine, professions, vehicles, how things function in country X - and people who knew something about that would answer.

Like you hit your word count for the first time in a week and its like

Robert Rafaele Tapia

A wealthy widower landowner who owns an estate outside of town. 38, originally from la Puerta de la Isla de Polvo. A man with grief on his shoulders and more than a few secrets under his formal manners.

“The man you’re looking for is Robert Rafaele Tapia. He came two years ago on a land grant from Calancua and six months later watched the Demon Prince kill his sons.”

“And that matters to me why?”

She clicked her tongue in censure. “You’ll find him at the temple come sundown. In case nobody told you, tomorrow is Lightsday. Give him time to light his candles, and walk with him. Be patient, and be honest.”

- from La Mala Suerte

“You can come back tomorrow,” said Sue sharply to someone in the street. “Jean’s fine. He can wait till tomorrow or Luna’s day.”

“That kind of thinking is exactly why thirty horses have needed the touch of a demonborn bandit so badly,” said a new, masculine voice.

“Don’t hold him too close.”

“I’m not holding him anywhere. We’re closed, sir.”

“Are you the one paying Anorbress then? Thought not,” he said. His boots measured the threshold and he doffed his flat-brimmed straw hat, but did not bow.

I remained on my bench, cleaning another rasp.

“I don’t care for demonkin,” he said.

“I can see that.”

“I don’t care for charity, either.”

I raised a brow.

“We lived in San Águeda, when the boys were young. I remember the first reports of el Rey de Los Altos murdering citizens in Valleoleti.”

I shrugged. “Half true. Some were soldiers.”

He cleared his throat and spun the hat in his hands. He did not shift his weight. “I also know the character of the late unlamented Don Miguel Montoya Veratura, as he owned the shipping company my family served for three generations en la Puerta de Isla Polvo. The road the father walks forms the character of his sons.”

“You’re welcome,” I rumbled, tucking the knife into its little pocket in the tool roll.

“I also know about la charreada in Ariztipe two years later. My brother saw al vaquero pellirojo ride – y vio el tirón del ahorcado en las manganas de pie.”

“¿Y a me qué? ¿Que quieres?”

He gestured with his hat. “Jean should have his shoes reset, with a tighter trim than I dare. New shoes might be better. Five gold to see to him, and another five to make that the end of our negocio, Rey Malvado.”

I held his gaze, and he held mine.

Sue peeked around the open door, halfway vibrating out of her skin with curiosity.

“Tráelo,” I said.

- from La Mala Suerte

Many thanks to @justbecause13 and @zeldieboo for lending their expert eyes to this passage. 🖤

Unless the person is of the very lowest class, i.e. a serf or totally landless peasant, then yes, they probably would have some kind of access to a horse. As you note, we associate owning a horse with being rich, but in the premodern world, they were obviously far more important than they are now and most people would have either owned a horse or been able to hire one if they needed to go on a journey. There are different types of medieval horse, such as the destrier or charger (the very expensive warhorse that was only owned by upper-class knights and nobles), the palfrey (general riding horse, middle-upper class) and the rouncey (general riding horse, middle-lower classes). You also had packhorses, workhorses, mules, etc. If you were traveling any distance, you would be able to hire horses; otherwise, if you were a member of a lord or knight's retinue, it was his job to provide you with one. It's kind of like owning a car today -- i.e. people of all economic classes have cars of different types and values, but they do usually have one, because it's just a general necessity for getting around.

However, I find that when most people ask about the medieval era for fictional/writing purposes, they're generally picturing something roughly similar to the thirteenth/fourteenth century, and not the earlier medieval era. An early tenth-century thegn of mixed Norse/Anglo-Saxon descent definitely doesn't think of himself as an "Englishman," for one thing, but his descendants are probably doing so a few hundred years later (especially at the outset of the Hundred Years' War with France). But said Anglo-Saxon thegn still lives in a culture that is intensely horse-centric (think the Riders of Rohan) even if he doesn't have as many places to go with it, his world is generally much less centralized, he would have little reason to go to London anyway (at this time the capital of England was Winchester, the seat of power for the kingdom of Wessex), and so forth. In short, while the organization of his world and its social, political, and cultural expectations are very different, he probably still does have access to a horse, as it's an important part of his identity. So this is a good example of how while the medieval world does change drastically over half a millennium, like any human society, it still maintains certain core communalities. There was never a time when horses were not important or inaccessible (see above: they're like cars) even if that changed with the times.

Trying something new: I'm using a randomizer to give me tropes or AUs from the two lists down below and I write a prompt list for the combined themes.

"You haven't run away yet." "Neither have you."

"Hey, I'm not thrilled about getting married to you either."

"You should try to not glare at me at our engagement pictures."

"Could have been worse." "How?" "It could be someone I actually like and they don't like me back."

"Should we hold hands? You know, for like... moral support?"

"Let's just not even pretend to like each other."

"There is still time to cancel the wedding." "And disappoint your parents? That's your job."

"So, do you think they did a good job of picking me?" "I never actually trusted their taste and I was proven right."

"You're okay with all of this?" "Sure. You're not as annoying as I thought you would be."

"Why do all of your engagement pictures look like I will not survive till the wedding?"

"Did you just flirt with me?" "It's our wedding day, so yes I did."

"We should get to know each other better." "I just need to know what annoys you the most."

"You should be happy." "Why?" "Because you get to wake up to this beautiful face for the rest of your life."

Lists: Favourite Tropes + AU ideas

“wow I created something beautiful today”

and sometimes you’re like

New Part: 10 Lethal Injury Ideas

If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas: 

1. Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.

2. Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.

3. Concussions

This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.

I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.

4. Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.

5. Road Rash

Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.

6. Shoulder Dislocation

This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.

7. Deep Laceration

A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.

This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.

8. Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.

If you want to explore writing burns, read here.

9. Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.

10. Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.

This is a quick, brief list of ideas to provide writers inspiration. Since it is a shorter blog, I have not covered the injuries in detail. This is inspiration, not a thorough guide. Happy writing! :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

Writing When It Sucks: A Quickstart Guide to the Scenes That Hate You Personally

by seth-whumps / sethlost

So, you've got a thousand-word gap between the good scenes, and you've gotta fill it with something. We've all been there—that one sentence in the outline, filling you with irreversible dread—but don’t lose hope. We do have some solutions! I've got three pieces of advice for this situation:

-> Skip The Hard Parts

-> Check Your Variables

-> Change It Up

Long post ahead, folks—you’ve been warned!