Cliches you can't stand

[Fernandel]

I kind of want to read a story where the immortal is macking on the teenager and justifies it with "Look, from my perspective, the difference between 15-year-old stupidity and 45-year-old stupidity is really, really small, and this way, I've got a great chance to stop my partner from falling into bad habits early. Plus, you know, they're hotter, and since it's been perfectly legitimate to mack on teenagers for 95% of my centuries-long life, I'm not going to stop now.", and keeps with all of the designed-to-appeal-to-teen-romance cliches as a nakedly cold-blooded tactic, treating the whole thing simply as steps in a dance they know very, very well.

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If I want to see an adult grooming an impressionable child to be their future sex partner and trying to justify it as making them better people and some la-la ideas of a few years not making a difference to the person doing the grooming instead of, you know, the child, I can just as well read Twilight.

But why would I want to?

 

[SpeckofStardust]

If I want to see someone grooming an impressionable child to be their future sex partner, I can just as well read Twilight.

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Or more realistically any one of the many stories were the young girl is married to the old man due to politically reasons of nobility.... which would be one way to handle it.

 

[DocSpooky]

Or more realistically any one of the many stories were the young girl is married to the old man due to politically reasons of nobility.... which would be one way to handle it.

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Most of those marriages were mostly sexless marriages of convenience. No one would have expected love, and very few would have expected sex since the old man probably would have already had heirs. They mostly would have been expected to be polite to each other 'til the old guy croaked and that's about it.

 

[Robert Liguori]

If I want to see an adult grooming an impressionable child to be their future sex partner and trying to justify it as making them better people and some la-la ideas of a few years not making a difference to the person doing the grooming instead of, you know, the child, I can just as well read Twilight.

But why would I want to?

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Hey, different people have different preferences. But, as you point out, quite a lot of people really like that kind of story, and so it would be interesting to see a story which both embraced the elements and looked at them squarely.

I mean, if you're going to be telling stories about immortals as anything other than code for Cool Adults from a YA teen lit perspective, I think you should stare squarely at the 985-year age gap, and reflect on how much better it really becomes when it's a 980-year gap or a 975-year gap instead.

The point would not be to say that macking on teenagers is laudable; it would be to ask, if the differential in power and experience between 25 and 15 is such to render any relationship inherently predatory, what that means given the power and experience differential you get between 1000 and 25, or really 1000 and any non-immortal.

 

[Susano]

Most of those marriages were mostly sexless marriages of convenience. No one would have expected love, and very few would have expected sex since the old man probably would have already had heirs. They mostly would have been expected to be polite to each other 'til the old guy croaked and that's about it.

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Err... no. That's not how it worked. The entire point of political marriages was in fact offspring. How else do you think the union between two houses thing would work? The hope was always that the next generation of House X would feel some connection to House Y because their mother was from there. And yes, the age differences were often large, but that is because men often married at a very much older age then women. So the man would often be very much older than the woman, and yet still have no official heirs (he may have fathered illegitimate children, but those don't count), because that is his first marriage.

 

[Hykal94]

 

[Fernandel]

Or more realistically any one of the many stories were the young girl is married to the old man due to politically reasons of nobility.... which would be one way to handle it.

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Fun fact: that happened far less than popular fiction would like you to believe, and these marriages often may have not involved consummation. Engagements of children were certainly common, but many families deliberately waited for their children to grow up.

Church records during the Midles Ages and Renaissance generally indicate that people married young, and yes, the men were generally older, but it was uncommon for young girls to be married. Religious law generally prohibited or impeded marriages between children, even.

TD;LR: child marriages are generally bullshit and shitty writers use them to justify their weird nonsense.

 

[Hykal94]

Fun fact: that happened far less than popular fiction would like you to believe, and these marriages often may have not involved consummation. Engagements of children were certainly common, but many families deliberately waited for their children to grow up.

Church records during the Midles Ages and Renaissance generally indicate that people married young, and yes, the men were generally older, but it was uncommon for young girls to be married. Religious law generally prohibited or impeded marriages between children, even.

TD;LR: child marriages are generally bullshit and shitty writers use them to justify their weird nonsense.

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Wait, Fern - you're telling me ... that writers don't do historical research?!??!?!?

 

[Omicron]

Also, the number of children born out of wedlock outside the nobility is rather impressive given the popular image we have of women's condition at the time, but perhaps funnier and even more statistically significant are those children born after marriage... But within less than nine months.

 

[Reveen]

One thing about immortal characters is that I don't really buy that an immortal would be necessarily wiser or more intelligent than the average person, because while sure such a person would probably have more experience in whatever they choose to pursue intelligence itself isn't something that you build up over time, and it can be seen pretty clearly from, like... uh... Trump how age doesn't necessarily make you wiser. And living for hundreds of years in a society not built for it would lead to some pretty serious psychological issue I would think.

I would imagine an immortal to be far closer to being a highly skilled, highly experienced, total basket case.

 

[Fernandel]

Wait, Fern - you're telling me ... that writers don't do historical research?!??!?!?

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Yes, and people keep unironically repeating Enlightenment-era propaganda about the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era written to make themselves feel better and look good.

It's fucking ridiculous.

Ironically, the Early Modern Era was in many ways more brutal about women's rights than the Middle Ages and even some European pre-medieval societies.

 

[SpeckofStardust]

Ironically, the Early Modern Era was in many ways more brutal about women's rights than the Middle Ages and even some European pre-medieval societies.

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Well of course, women are people and people work in factories and treated horribly cause in the grand of things they arnt important.

 

[Reveen]

One thing I wonder is how many young marriages happened after one of them got pregnant as a way to keep the family tree from growing errant branches. Because come on, we're talking about teenagers here. Are fantasy writers really going to look me in the eye and tell me the kids parents are more eager for that then the kids themselves? Your kid getting married is not something taken lightly on an emotional level by any parent that actually gives a shit about their kids.

Ironically, the Early Modern Era was in many ways more brutal about women's rights than the Middle Ages and even some European pre-medieval societies.

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Can you elaborate? Because this is actually kind of relevant to the stuff I'm writing and totally not just thinking about writing.

 

[Fernandel]

Well of course, women are people and people work in factories and treated horribly cause in the grand of things they arnt important.

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...Beg your pardon? Factories have nothing to do with this.

I'm referring to the fact that the Early Modern Era involved lots of families feuding with each other, and lots of men outright killing women for perceived faults.

Also, the Renaissance was in many ways just very, very brutal, as there was a lot of interpersonal violence in peacetime and fledglingnation-states started raising larger armies to fight their wars, many of them mercnaries. Medieval wars involved smaller fighting forces that just didn't have as much of an impact.

Really, the Renaissance was very, very brutal to men and women alike.

The Christian "ideal"?

Ironanvil, Renaissance Christians were just terrible people by our modern standards, plain and simple.

The below is by a professional historian reviewing historical TV shows.

Article:

Borgia: Faith and Fear, episode 1. One of the heads of the Orsini family bursts into his bedroom and catches Juan (Giovanni) Borgia in flagrante with his wife. Juan grabs his pants and flees out the window as quickly as he can. Now here is Orsini alone with his wife. [The audience knows what to expect. He will shout, she will try to explain, he will hit her, there will be tears and begging, and, depending on how bad a character the writers are setting up, he might beat her really badly and we'll see her in the rest of this episode all puffy and bruised, or if they want him to be really bad he'll slam her against something hard enough to break her neck, and he'll stare at her corpse with that brutish ambiguity where we're not sure if he regrets it.] Orsini grabs the iron fire poker and hits his wife over the head, full force, wham, wham, dead. He drops the fire poker on her corpse and walks briskly out of the room, leaving it for the servants to clean up. Yes. That is the right thing, because this is the Renaissance, and these people are terrible. When word gets out there is concern over a possible feud, but no one ever comments that Orsini killing his wife was anything but the appropriate course. That is historicity, and the modern audience is left in genuine shock.

[...]

Rome in 1492 was so corrupt, and so violent, that I think they don't believe the audience will believe them if they go full-on. Almost all the Cardinals are taking bribes? Lots, possibly the majority of influential clerics in Rome overtly live with mistresses? Every single one of these people has committed homicide, or had goons do it? Wait, they all have goons? Even the monks have goons? It feels exaggerated. Showtime toned it down to a level that matches what the typical modern imagination might expect.

[...]

Borgia: Faith and Fear did not tone it down. A bar brawl doesn't go from insult to heated words to slamming chairs to eventually drawing steel, it goes straight from insult to hacking off a body part. Rodrigo and Cesare don't feel guilty about killing people, they feel guilty the first time they kill someone dishonorably. Rodrigo is not being seduced by Julia Farnese and trying to hide his shocking affair; Rodrigo and Julia live in the papal palace like a married couple, and she's the head of his household and the partner of his political labors, and if the audience is squigged out that she's 18 and he's 61 then that's a fact, not something to try to SHOCK the audience with because it's so SHOCKING shock shock. Even in other details, Showtime kept letting modern sensibilities leak in. Showtime's 14-year-old Lucrezia is shocked (as a modern girl would be) that her father wants her to have an arranged marriage, while B:F&F's 14-year-old Lucrezia is constantly demanding marriage and convinced she's going to be an old maid if she doesn't marry soon, but is simultaneously obviously totally not ready for adult decisions and utterly ignorant of what marriage will really mean for her. It communicates what was terrible about the Renaissance but doesn't have anyone on-camera objecting to it, whereas Showtime seemed to feel that the modern audience needed someone to relate to who agreed with us. And, for a broad part of the modern TV-watching audience, they may well be correct. I wouldn't be surprised if many viewers find The Borgias a lot more approachable and comfortable than its more period-feeling rival.

[...]

The Borgias thrills and entertains, but Borgia: Faith and Fear also succeeds in showing the audience how terrible things were in the Renaissance, and how much progress we've made. It de-romanticizes. It feels period. It has guts. It has things the audience is not comfortable with. It has people being nasty to animals. It has disfigurement. It has male rape. When it's time for a public execution, the mandatory cheap thrill of this genre, it goes straight for just about the nastiest Renaissance method I know of, sawing a man in half lengthwise starting at the crotch and moving along the spine. The scene leaves the audience less titillated than appalled, and glad that we don't do that anymore.

Source: http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2176

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[Alane1]

Yes, and people keep unironically repeating Enlightenment-era propaganda about the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era written to make themselves feel better and look good.

It's fucking ridiculous.

Ironically, the Early Modern Era was in many ways more brutal about women's rights than the Middle Ages and even some European pre-medieval societies.

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That is certainly true the people of the early modern period were also more execution happy than the medieval period with vastly far laws laying down death sentences than the middle ages with the biggest extreme likely being England later great britain where they went from 50 laws laying down death in 1688 to 220 laws that all involved death sentences by the end of the 18th century.

Early modern people were also were vastly less likely to bath because then modern 'medical science' had decided that bathing allowed evil Miasma to enter the body making people sick while people in the middle ages were frequent bathers with roman style communal baths being common for the lower classes while the nobility tended to prefer a wooden tub lined with a wool cloth to prevent splinters both because it was improper to bath with the lower classes and because bathhouses also sometimes hmm be dens of impiety that it wouldn't be proper for a man or woman of noble class to be seen at.

 

[Fernandel]

Early modern people were also were vastly less likely to bath because then modern 'medical science' had decided that bathing allowed evil Miasma to enter the body making people sick while people in the middle ages were frequent bathers with roman style communal baths being common for the lower classes while the nobility tended to prefer a wooden tub lined with a wool cloth to prevent splinters both because it was improper to bath with the lower classes and because bathhouses also sometimes hmm be dens of impiety that it wouldn't be proper for a man or woman of noble class to be seen at.

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Pretty sure people "bathing less" in the EME has been exaggerated, though.

I mean, peasants and soldiers are gonna want a bath after a hard day's work and exercise to wipe off the sweat and dirt no matter what people say about miasma bullshit.

But communal baths were indeed a big thing in ancient times and the Midlle Ages. Especially hot springs.

Nobody ever writes hot springs episodes for medieval stories.

 

[Alane1]

Can you elaborate? Because this is actually kind of relevant to the stuff I'm writing and totally not just thinking about writing

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Hmm I know the early modern period had a lot of women getting burned at the stake or hanged for supposedly being witches while in the middle ages the charges of witchcraft was predominately leveled against men with the most common charges being necromancy and taking part in a black Sabbath which was always leveled against men because it was believed that no woman would ever take part in such a thing. Of course in the middle ages witchcraft were disapproved of as delusion and pagan superstition by the catholic church who tried to shut them down when they got wind of them.

Pretty sure people "bathing less" in the EME has been exaggerated, though.

I mean, peasants and soldiers are gonna want a bath after a hard day's work and exercise to wipe off the sweat and dirt no matter what people say about miasma bullshit.

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Perhaps to a point but It was also being encouraged by a number of the churches especially the protestant churches from what I understand as bathhouses also had a tendency to be dens of prostitution, gambling and other things deemed immoral that those churches tended to rail at. The early modern period also saw a shift in how one was viewed as being clean from having a physically clean body to wearing clean cloths being more important from what I understand which was likely reflected in the changes in religious and soical views and medical science.

Beyond that the belief in miasma being the source of disease was a widespread and common dominate belief from ancient times into the late 19th century in Europe and Asia. Germ theory didn't develop until the 1850s and didn't overtake the belief in Miasma theory until the 1880s with viruses being discovered in the 1890s. Ironically the belief in Miasma as the source of stickiness was a major driving force behind efforts to improve sanitation in early modern and 19th century cities.

 

[Entropy Judge]

Hmm I know the early modern period had a lot of women getting burned at the stake or hanged for supposedly being witches ...

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Which didn't stop Early Modern witch trials from burning anyone they could get their hands on, of course:

• "Three play-actors".
• "Four innkeepers".
• "Three common councilmen of Wurszburg".
• "Fourteen vicars of the Cathedral".
• "The burgomasters lady" (The wife of the mayor).
• "The apothecarys wife and daughter".
• "Two choristers of the cathedral".
• Gobel Babelin, aged nineteen, "The prettiest girl in town".
• "The wife, the two little sons and the daughter of councillor Stolzenberg."
• Baunach, "The fattest burgher (merchant) in Wurzburg".
• Steinacher, "The richest burgher in Wurzburg".

The seventh burning

• "A wandering boy, twelve years of age".
• "Four strange men and women, found sleeping in the market-place".

The thirteenth/fourteenth burning

• " A little maiden nine years of age".
• " A maiden still less (than nine)".
• " Her (The little girl's) sister, their mother and their aunt".
• " A pretty young woman of twenty-four".

The eighteenth burning

• "Two boys of twelve".
• "A girl of fifteen".

The nineteenth burning

• " The young heir of the house of Rotenhahn", aged nine.
• A boy of ten.
• A boy, twelve years old.

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[AKuz]

That is certainly true the people of the early modern period were also more execution happy than the medieval period with vastly far laws laying down death sentences than the middle ages with the biggest extreme likely being England later great britain where they went from 50 laws laying down death in 1688 to 220 laws that all involved death sentences by the end of the 18th century..

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Proportionally speaking, the English of that period executed at least as many people each year as the Aztecs sacrificed.

And, really, both types of killing served the same sort of service: reinforcing belief and obedience to the sovereign/state (And a lesser element of entertainment) One explained because THE LAW and the other because THE WORLD WILL END IF WE DON'T.

 

[Alane1]

Which didn't stop Early Modern witch trials from burning anyone they could get their hands on, of course:

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Yah of course not its just that it was more common that it was men being excuted for witchcraft during the middle ages and of course you had France's werewolf execution spree where they beheaded thousands for supposedly being werewolves. Still witch hunts seemed to be more common and accepted in the early modern period then the medival world when they were discouraged.

Of course we we want to talk about the people who really had issues about witches and sorcery than we can look no further than the ancient Romans whose witch hunts and death tolls during the roman republic vastly exceeded the infamous witchhunt craze during the early modern period in proportion to the population and the later roman empire continued to actively persecute people for being witches until after the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the empire after which the persecutions abated.

 

[Reveen]

See, this is why I have a total hate boner for "Witches are real and evil and the order of awesome Witcher hunters has to kill them all!" Trope.

*Another reason why I love Witcher 3, you can go "D'Atagnan motherfuckers!" On them.

 

[DezoPenguin]

See, this is why I have a total hate boner for "Witches are real and evil and the order of awesome Witcher hunters has to kill them all!" Trope.

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At least so much as when it crosses over with real history. Any time that there are "real" witches of Salem, for example, is positively disgusting, and don't even get me started on the European witch trials.

(Mind you, this is a subset of another cliche that I hate and have mentioned before in this thread: supernatural stories that write off human evil as being the product of external-to-human supernatural forces.)

 

[Morphic Tide]

Mind you, this is a subset of another cliche that I hate and have mentioned before in this thread: supernatural stories that write off human evil as being the product of external-to-human supernatural forces.

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You must hate Christianity, then. Which is more or less the reason why I hate Christianity, myself. That and the problem of Evil.

 

[The Laurent]

Except Christian historiography doesn't blame all things on the devil or demons?

 

[Morphic Tide]

Except Christian historiography doesn't blame all things on the devil or demons?

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It blames them on the Devil or Demons, or it blames them on the idea that humans are really inherently good, but got screwed over because the first two humans ever to live disobeyed God once, and all of their descendants are considered to have committed the same "sin". Said "sin" was eating a fruit that gave them proper critical thinking skills and several more important features that separate humans from mere animals. But God told them not to, so it's bad to become properly intelligent creatures.

Edit: Also, it was the Devil or a demon who convinced them to do it.