u/valonianfool

Being forced into arranged marriages by their families is often listed as a form of systemic misogyny women through history and in some parts of the world suffer from, but historically men and boys from the upper classes were often arranged to marry for political alliances or to gain wealth as well.

One example is Louis XVI, who married Marie Antoinette when he was only 15 years old.

While men are far less restricted in terms of freedom compared to women, they were free to seek out extramarital sexual relationships such as mistresses, concubines or prostitutes while womens sexuality was generally restricted to that of her husband, and men didnt have to give birth, having no choice in who you marry is a violation of consent regardless of anything else.

And it would suck if you theoretically were a sex-repulsed asexual or exclusively attracted to men.

In premodern Europe lower-ranked aristocratic women often became mistresses of the king, and their families usually approved, because despite chastity for women being held as a virtue, a sexual relationship with the king meant expensive gifts and favors for her and her family.

Did similar arrangements occur in contemporary islamic countries, or does the frequency of polygyny and concubinage among muslim elites mean that such a thing would be very unlikely to happen?

I'm aware that female seclusion was held as an ideal for the upper classes in the muslim world, but at the end of the day regardless of culture, people will be people, so if there was wealth and power to be gained, many people would betray their moral principles.

I'd like some recommendations for books that are similar in tone and worldbuilding as Hellboy, the movies or the comics. I would prefer the story to focus on an organization like the BPRD which is tasked with interacting with supernatural beings, and the setting is a fantasy-kitchen sink which features creatures from many different world mythologies, yet takes place in the "real world".

Im thinking of writing a story set in the early middle ages, around the mid 10th century. One of the main characters is of Frankish and moorish (North African) descent, plus some possible sub-saharan genes. My design for her has light skin but black features. Oh, and she's a vampire who was born a century before the story takes place, which means the mid 9th century, and I imagine her birthplace being in one of the Frankish kingdoms that existed before the kingdom of France.

Would it be possible for my character to have the ancestry she has?

Ive considered making it so she is descended from a community of moorish soldiers who stayed behind and intermarried with locals after the battle of Tours, but I dont think that is historically plausible, because didn't Charles Martel drive the moorish invasion back, and would the moors have been able to assimilate into the local culture?

I want to share my thoughts on an idea which is commonly repeated and used to perpetuate the patriarchy: that men are powerless to resist their sexual urges when aroused. But first off, I want to share an experience I had in the dnd subreddit which inspired this post, and which Im taking the opportunity to vent about.

So background: I posted about this excerpt:

https://preview.redd.it/ntlsi1okwy0h1.png?width=571&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec6ead3c509f67cae05e4810449f4390f3552e81

and expressed how it doesn't make sense because in a matriarchal society, the female body would realistically be seen as neutral while the male body is sexualized, and powerful drow women would not care about seducing men anymore than powerful men in patriarchal societies would care about seducing women.

It seems like whoever wrote that projected stereotypes from our patriarchal society where women historically were limited in power, and therefore suspected of leveraging their sexuality to gain what they want, which doesnt make much sense in a matriarchal context where women hold all the power and men are subjugated.

In response I received comments which argued that I'm "doing the same thing you're accusing the writers of doing", which is assuming that seduction is a tool used by the less powerful, when they might see seduction as an expression of power in its own right.

The comment argued that the ability to make someone lust after you is the "purest forms of asserting power", because it directly asserts control over their mind and body at a hormonal and chemical level, and it isnt possible to not find something arousing, the only thing they can do is try not to act upon their desires.

According to them, "This level of control cant be exerted through raw force alone".

And this is where we get to "men cant control their urges once aroused" part. Honestly, they sound like Beavis and Butthead when they accused a woman of sexually harassing them for making them aroused.

I think the ideas expressed in these statements are directly connected to the patriarchal forces that cause girls to be told to "cover up" in order not to distract boys at school, but boys aren't expected to be more disciplined, as well as victim-blaming culture.

Also, the idea that making someone horny gives you power over them veers into the territory of claiming people who historically were powerless, like slaves and sex workers, had power over the people who actually wielded the systemic power over their lives.

Additionally, I received comments saying that since a lot of men "would do anything to fuck a hot woman" and are a lot more gung-ho about going for their sexual desires, women naturally use sex as a tool to control and manipulate men, but rarely the reverse.

The expectation that women in particular are conniving and manipulative by leveraging their sexuality and access to their bodies is a part of patriarchal expectations we should question.

Renaissance Venice was famous for its high-ranking courtesans who were educated in arts such as poetry, music and dance, and were expected to be able to intellectually keep up with their noble patrons, the most famous example is Veronica Franco. How did one become a "Honest Courtesan"?

Were most of the girls trained to become "honest courtesans" from impoverished and lower-class families who sold their daughters out of desperation for money, or could they come from the upper classes as well?

In the vast majority of monarchies, especially in the old world, female consorts are expected to be chaste, which effectively means have no sex with any man other than the king, because otherwise that would cause questioning the paternity of the heirs, and therefore threaten the ruling family's legitimacy.

In Ancient Egypt the pharao's main consort, the great royal wife, was often his blood-relative in order to maintain power within the family. And since the royal consort is the pharao's full sister, does that mean it doesnt matter if she has children from a different man, because the child would still be related to him?

In medieval Japan the emperor was also said to be of divine descent, and during the 13th-14th century it was accepted for royal consorts to produce children from the emperor's brothers because they were of the same blood.

Would the same logic have flown in Egypt around the New Kingdom era?

In my opinion, the demons in ToH is one part of the worldbuilding that leaves a lot to be desired.

To clarify: there's no reason to call the beings in ToH "demons"; it seems like all non-witch lifeforms in the demon realm are called demons while the human-like beings who can interbreed with humans are called witches, the category of demons include non-sapient animals too.

There is no explanation for this classification, and it seems weird for witches to be considered something else other than demons when humanoid demons exist as well.

Nothing would change if the demons were called other things, like "goblins" or "monsters", and the only reason they are called that is to tie in with witches and the demon realm being seen as "evil" and damned from the perspective of Belos, and therefore subvert the expectations of "demon" being synonymous with evil in traditional expectations.

But the show doesn't just leave it at calling the creatures in the demon realm "demons", it mentions Malphas from the ars goetia.

Malphas, a demon from the ars goetia shows up in one episode for a few seconds and never appears again. The ars goetia is a grimoire, or a spellbook which contains the names of various demons that can be summoned for the purposes of teaching the summoner knowledge or providing various types of services.

There isnt any reason for this demon to be Malphas, who is said to grant his conjurer buildings and the destruction of their enemies. It feels like the writers didnt have any deeper reasons for including him other than saying "Oh arent we clever for name-dropping a demon from a centuries old grimoire in a kids show".

In short, I think that the worldbuilding around the demons in ToH, and especially the use of goetic demons feels thoughtless, for no reason other than giving the show a spooky halloween aesthetic, which feels a bit disrespectful when that involves a demon people irl pray to.

In contrast, the Bartimaeus trilogy is a fantasy series where the magic system is based around summoning and enslaving spirits-derisively called "demons" by the magicians-to do their bidding. Spirits including djinn are entities from another dimension, and when someone knows their true name they are able to summon them to Earth using the right rituals.

Demons in Bartimaeus are very unlike humans and other lifeforms on Earth: they aren't necessarily physical entities, instead of matter their forms are composed of magical energy called "essence". Being on Earth causes demons harm as their essence dissipates, and they are harmed by silver and iron.

To sum my thoughts: The flaw with ToH's worldbuilding is that the demons feel incidental to the worldbuilding, their inclusion in the world feels "shallow". Whereas in Bartimaeus they are the entire basis for the magic system, are clearly distinct from humans and follow folkloric banes.

While ToH have witches being associated with demons to subvert the depiction of witchcraft as satanic--the accusation that witches consorted with demons, the show doesnt really do anything interesting with the folklore behind demons or explore it in detail, unlike Bartimaeus which clearly takes from mythology and folklore.

For this reason I think Bartimaeus take on demons is superior to ToH's, even if you cant compare those two media.

In Norse mythology, the "mead of poetry" is a mythical beverage which bestows knowledge and poetic inspiration to anyone who drinks it. It was made from the blood of the god Kvasir mixed with wine. Kvasir, the wisest of the gods, was created using the combined spit of the aesir and vanir when they spat into a vat to seal a truce after the aesir-vanir war.

Naturally, the concept of a beverage made from blood with magical properties is going to invoke vampirism, so I wondered how to incorporate the blood of kvasir in VtM, probably as some kind of magical blood-magic ritual.

Ive got an idea for dark ages early medieval norse/germanic tzimisce incorporating the blood of kvasir into their koldunism rituals and belief systems, and I would like some input to develop my ideas here.

I just switched from xiaomi to motorola, and found that unlike xiaomi I wasnt able to change the album cover of my photo gallery. Is there a way for me to do that on motorola?