Whisperer By Alessio Albi

The fun thing about knightly honour and chivalry is that it was always just recently dead, you know? It was invented as something that had just recently died. That's why all these early knightly romances are set before the actual knightly class even emerged. They were telling the knights contemporary to them: "Look, this is how the knights in this bygone golden age behaved. They would never have hurt a woman or a civilian back in King Arthur's days. They were all honourable and pious back when Charlemagne was on the throne". And the unspoken but fairly obvious part was: "Unlike you disgusting bunch of rapists, looters and murderers". And it was a complete lie, of course, soldiers of all kinds have always been a disgusting bunch of rapists, looters and murderers. But it was a lie a whole bunch of people thought worth telling, because maybe, just maybe, it will shame at least some of these bastards into acting like a human being. And it didn't, I mean, not really, or at least not a lot of them. But then again, we got some bitchin' stories out of it, so I personally think it was worth telling after all.

All I want is to write a novel at my desk with my coffee

being a girl is nothing but craving for sweets, love and holding a claymore in your hands all the time

The thing people miss about medieval smells and lighting a lot of time is the fact that everything is fire powered. All their heat and all their light. Now I don't know if you have ever been to a place where all you have had is fire but it smells. It smells strong. The smell of fire will pretty much drown out most other scents. So it is likely you wouldn't always smell the person next to you, especially if the wood was wet and made a lot of smoke. You are going to stink like it for days even under modern circumstances where we bathe more regularly and also don't have to continually do this. Don't get me wrong, a city stink will still out stink it with the sheet amount of poop, but it is perfectly okay to imagine a medieval bar where everything just smells smoky.

This fire effect is also why you can always find shady corners in taverns. They didn't have high ceilings. They had some torches/candles/fireplace in a low ceilinged room. It is crazily easy for a pickpocket or anyone to just linger in there, especially once people have been drinking, and just not be noticed. Sure your eyes adjust, but everyone has different night vision and it all depends on how rich of a place you are at as to how much fire is available. Maybe if you are lucky it is a full moon.

NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.

“When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.”

— Carl R. Rogers

me, as a child: all the asians look the same

me, as a 15 y.o. liberal: NO YOU CAN'T SAY ALL THE ASIANS LOOK THE SAME THIS IS RACIST YOU HAVE NO RESPECT AND DON'T DESERVE TO SPEAK

me, as a 20 y.o. junior Asia-Pacific researcher: all the asians look the same and their websites are cursed with the same spell