Medieval piggyback wrestling
In truth, in any age of history, people sought to amuse themselves during whatever moments they could spare from their workdays, however brief these moments of respite might be.
The medieval times was actually rather unique in this regard. During the 13th century, people had more holidays and days off work than are granted in the modern western world.
Samuel L. Jackson starring as a racebent Nick Fury
Whenever a major media outlet posts an article about the problem of whitewashing in mainstream entertainment, there is a certain response that’s guaranteed to appear in the comments thread.
Well it’s no different than casting a person of colour in a role meant for a white person, so if they had a black James Bond, it’d be equally racist and offensive.
Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek: Into Darkness, playing the role of an important non-white character from the Star Trek universe
Among my favourites is Hua Mulan, the legendary subject of an Ancient Chinese epic poem about a young woman takes her aged father’s place in the military by disguising herself as a boy.
In the 1998 Disney cartoon, Mulan, she is shown exhibit bravery, ingenuity, and honour, and succeeds in helping save China from invaders.
This is not just a clever turn of phrase. My impatience is probably my worst personality trait – the one with the greatest effect on how I relate to the world around me, and how the world relates back as a result. But all that is a story for another blog post.
For this post, I’m instead talking about lost material items.
After all, a book is, well, a book. It is static and non-visual beyond the fact of seeing a print or e-book’s typewritten words.
To me, it made little sense trying to apply techniques used in visual arts (most notably motion pictures) to a format that most definitely isn’t a picture (this despite the fact that very good books can indeed succeed in creating vivid pictures in the reader’s mind).
Duty calls
Medieval marriages, though, as discussed in my three previous posts on this topic, were all the more difficult for the numerous challenges that arose at every stage of their formation.
Yet another difficulty of medieval marriage was hard it was to go about ending one. This was neither easily nor readily done given that, according to Eileen Power, author of Women in the Middle Ages, “Divorce in the modern sense did not exist in the Middle Ages.” (p. 33).
Over the five years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve written a number of what I consider important posts – posts that would make excellent candidates for my most popular post ever.
I should rephrase that: I’m two-thirds through the second draft of my WIP, with an as-yet-undetermined number more to go after that.
And it’s not exactly “just like that” either, for I’ve been hard at work on this draft since January. This has involved, in addition to multiple rewrites of chapters one through three, a first crack at the additional 15 chapters I’ve completed to date some of which were in much better shape than others.
They are probably right about that. I should know; over the years, I’ve rearranged my entire lifestyle to be as conducive to my writing as possible.
I’ve excised almost all extraneous disruptions, I schedule my days and weeks to within an inch of my life, and go to great efforts to minimize personal drama of the sort that annoys and hinders far more than it excites and inspires.
One may not agree with this statement, least of all as pertains to me. But I recently read an article on the popular social news and entertainment site that had all the answers I presently seek.
This an article is helpfully titled 15 Tips That Will Trick Your House Guests Into Thinking You Have Your Shit Together.
Janna G. Noelle 