âAuthors canât use it in fantasy fiction, eh? Weâll see about thatâŚâ
âTerry Pratchett, probably
Try to implement anything but a conservativeâs sixth grade education level of medieval or Victorian times and you will butt into this. all. the. time.Â
There was a literaly fad in the 1890â˛s for nipple rings for all genders(and NO, it was NOT under the mistaken belief that it would help breastfeedingâthereâs LOTS of doctorsâ writing at the time telling people to STOP and that they thought it would ruin the breastâs ability to breastfeed well, etc). It was straight up because the Victorians were freaks, okay Imagine trying to make a Victorian character with nipple rings. IMAGINE THE ACCUSATIONS OF GROSS HISTORICAL INACCURACY
people just really, REALLY have entrenched ideas of what people in the past were like
tell them the vikings were clean, had a complex democratic legal system, respected women, had freeform rap battles, and had child support payments? theyd call you a liar
tell them that chopsticks became popular in china during the bronze age because street food vendors were all the rage and they wanted to have disposable eating utensils? theyll say youre making that up
tell them native americans had a trade network stretching from canada to peru and built sacred mounds bigger then the pyramids of giza? you are some SJW twisting facts
ancient egypt had circular saws, debt cards, and eye surgery? are you high?
our misconception of medieval peasants being illiterate and living in poverty in one room mud huts being their own creation as part of a century long tax aversion scam? you stole that from the game of thrones reject bin
iron age india had stone telescopes, air conditioning, and the number 0 along with all âarabicâ numbers including algebra and calculus? i understand some of those words.
romans had accurate maps detailing vacation travel times along with a star rating for hotels along the way, fast food restaurants, swiss army knives, black soldiers in brittany, traded with china, and that soldiers wrote thank-you notes when their parents sent them underwear in the mail? but they thought the earth was flat!
ancient bronze age mesopotamia had pedantic complaints sent to merchants about crappy goods, comedic performances, and transgender/nobinary representation? what are you smoking?
Truth is stranger than fiction, and history is weirder than you think.
this post gets better every time it comes across my dash. To provide some more: those Romans also had vending machines, automated puppet plays, doors that opened to the sound of horns when you lit a fire in front of them, and working steam engines. All invented by one dude, Hero of Alexandria.
People generally want to think that the Dark Ages is the sum of the entire history of the world.
Charlemagne had a frigging PET ELEPHANT, sent as a present by the Caliph over in Bahgdad.
Emperor Frederick II. (around 1200) crossed the Alps with his own private zoo, including giraffes, in order to impress and dazzle his Germanic subjects, and it frigging worked. He also introduced legislation that a doctor was not allowed to also sell medicine (to prevent obvious charlatanery), but had to write a recipe for an apothecary to then redeem, which is a system STILL IN USE in Germany and other countries. He spoke several language, was tolerant towards his Muslim subjects in southern Italy (you read that correctly) and was opposed to trial by combat on reasons of it being unfair and irrational. Oh, and he wrote a book on ornithology.Â
Ancient Persians knew how to make frozen desserts even in summer, thus basically being the inventors of ice cream.
Medieval monks had an efficient way of testing for pregnacy (by pouring the urine of a woman on a toad, which, if the woman was pregnant, would change colourâŚ).
It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.
It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you donât want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that youâre not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.
A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.
True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you donât need to regularly escape from.
And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.
It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people wonât, so maybe you can live in a way that other people canât.
It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isnât going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.
If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, itâs because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with âtreating yourselfâ and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.
It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to âfix yourselfâ and start trying to take care of yourself⌠and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.
It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isnât something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you arenât universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you arenât anxious and dependent on other people.
It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life â not escape from it.â