Otter's Rock

Lo these many years ago, American History was one of my special interests.  My undergrad degree was in it (well, not technically, but like 90% of my classes--including Historical Methods and stuff like that--focused on US history).  I still love it, but I'm not focused enough on it to call it a special interest any more.

But you guys, there is SO MUCH interesting stuff about early American history that, if it were taught properly, would REALLY change peoples' perspectives on the "brave, gallant, noble" men of the Confederacy.  And I'm not talking just the racism stuff, like 90% of them were whiny pissbabies and THAT is why the Civil War even existed in the first place.  I shit you not.  The modern Conservative Christian persecution complex has NOTHING on the antebellum Southern elite.  Sure, a lot of those guys were personally brave in battle.  But on a political or moral level, they were ... most five-year-olds are more mature.  (I'm simplifying things a lot here and painting with a really broad brush, but it's not inaccurate.)

This meta is going to take as read that slavery=EVIL and that there is no such thing as a "good" slaveowner and that racism is horribly, horribly evil and nothing good can ever come of it and white supremacy twists and mutilates everything good it comes in contact with.  You all know that, or you should, and you can find lots of places talking about that with a quick google search.  Also, Blacks and poor Whites had vibrant cultures during this time period that I'm going to largely ignore because while all that is awesome, I want you to truly understand ALL the reasons why it's stupid and pathetic to glamorize the Southern elite, which means focusing on them.  The South was (and is!) REALLY AWFUL AND SCREWED UP and racism is part of that but not the only part.  But we will start a bit by talking about racism, because it's the root of so much other evil.

I'm sure you've heard that "race is a social construct!"  Let's look at how that construct got constructed, shall we?

( How Black And White People Came To Be )

( Economic Differences And Political Boondoggles, or, How The South Learns That Temper Tantrums Are A Viable Political tool. )

( The South's Persecution Complex vs. the North's Manifest Destiny )

( Taking Their Marbles And Going Home, Then They'll Be Sorry: Civil War Edition )

( More Delusions Of Grandeur: The Whole Lost Cause Romantic Bullshit )

And I look at this and shake my head at the triumph of propaganda over reality, and also at the fact that ANYBODY, even a racist, could POSSIBLY think that those idiotic inbred delusional cretinous whiny pissbabies were cool or worthy of adoration.

Title: From Castle to Palace
Fandom: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Author: beatrice_otter 
Rating: Gen
Length: 17,645 words
Betaed By: arithanas 
Written for: eida in yuletide 2016
Summary: The curse is broken. Belle and her Beast would be happy to just live quietly together in the curse-free castle. Unfortunately, the rest of France has other ideas …

AN: This supposedly takes place in France, but Adam is not a very French name. So, since I don’t know that that name is ever used in the animated movie (and if so, it is only very briefly), I am taking the liberty of changing his name in this story to Louis.

AN2: Also, as I was reading up on the French court of the Ancien Régime, I came across a LOVELY way to slip the Beast into actualfax French Royal Family and French history. This then sparked an idea that ate my brain. The historical details and personalities are as accurate as Wikipedia would let me get.

At AO3


( The rest of that day was chaos. )

As someone who knows a bit about history, there are a few things that most historical fiction (pro or fan) gets wrong ALL THE TIME, and it really drives me batty.  So I will be writing a few primers about basic details that people get wrong a lot, on an irregular basis.  It will not be a systematic "everything you need to know" basis, but rather "these are the things that are most glaring to me."  Unless otherwise specified, all these primers will refer to European and European-American culture and history.  (So, for example, your standard Regency AU.)

And period clothing and fashion are things I know a bit about, given that a) I find it fascinating and b) I used to work in the costume shop of a theater, so that's the subject of my first post.

One of the most common clothing gaffes I see is, well, ANYTHING related to corsets.  We get that SOOOOOO WRONG.  The myths, they are strong with this one.  So I'm going to define what a corset is, and then bust some myths about them.

( What a Corset Is and What it Looks Like )

( Corset Myths )

( General Undergarment Information, for Pre-20th Century Europe and America (both men and women) )

tl;dr most corsets weren't uncomfortable, unless you're going for high-fashion in the Victorian or Edwardian eras.  Most women could do anything up to and including play sports and do hard physical labor in their corset without a problem.  If you have a European or American woman of the corset-wearing era dropped into modern life, she's not going to think ditching her corset for a bra is the most awesome thing ever, although she may think the idea of getting to wear trousers when she wants to is.  A modern woman put into a corset-wearing era will probably adapt to the corset itself fairly easily, more easily than she would adjust to other aspects of the fashion (the skirts, and the things that held the skirts in whatever ridiculous fashion was popular in that era).  But the lower-class she's going for, the less elaborate they were--a working-class woman would wear simpler stays, and skirts with no under structure.  And a woman in a corset-wearing period, staying in her own era, probably isn't going to think about wearing corsets one way or the other, it just is.

And everybody was wearing two layers of clothing, and only the under layer would get washed unless there was a stain on the outer garment.

I love Hamilton the musical, yo.  It's great.  The music is good, the words are incredible, I absolutely adore it.

But the thing is, I know enough about history to be able to see what they're doing.  And the way they tell the story, Hamilton absolutely comes off like he is what we would today call a progressive or a liberal.  They don't actually say that, but with the multiracial cast and an emphasis on him coming up from the bottom of the heap (except not quite the bottom, because he was still an educated able-bodied white guy, you know) it's implied.  And they make a big deal about Hamilton being opposed to slavery and Jefferson the slaveowner and all of that.

It's a very pretty story.  But the thing is, none of the founding fathers were anything close to what we today would consider a liberal or a progressive.  They weren't much like today's conservatives, either.  Things were very different.  But even outright abolitionists weren't out to free slaves because they believed in racial equality; nobody was advocating for anything like gender or sexual equality; and very few were arguing for economic equality.

Vox explains Cabinet Battle #1 and gives all the background to show you just how misleading the show is.  Because if nobody was arguing about racial, gender, disability, or sexual equality, there were a few people trying to make things at least a little more equal for poor white men.  Trying to reign in the power of speculators, bankers, and other rich people from profiting on the backs of the working class.  And in the debate that Cabinet Battle #1 depicts, the guy trying to protect poor whites from rapacious rich guys?  That was Jefferson.  Hamilton's plan got American business off to a good start and set the stage for the economic expansion of the 19th Century.  It also royally screwed a lot of poor people.

Hamilton was not the community activist working for his peeps and keeping it real.  He was the brilliant guy from the wrong side of the tracks who got a scholarship, got out, never looked back, and was happy to join the system with no qualms about enforcing and strengthening it. Because anybody who was smart like him could make it out the way he did, and if you weren't smart and dedicated enough, you deserved your lot in life.

I love the musical.  But it's a perfect example of how the way you tell the story--even if technically all the major details are accurate--can drastically change the meaning.

jedibuttercup asked: "You have a two way trip in a time machine backwards only. When do you choose to visit and return to the current time?"

Hrm.  That's really difficult.  I mean, I do have a degree in history and there are so many times and places where I would love to go back and be a fly on the wall.  Or, better, hide some small cameras and/or audio bugs around key places and times.  (As long as, you know, I didn't have to actually stay there.)  If I were doing it for personal interest ... maybe the time of Christ, and follow him around?

You see, we have no historical documents about Jesus or any of his disciples.  None.  We have the Gospels and Acts, of course, but those are not history books and were never intended to be.  (Even by the standards of the day, much less our standards.)  This is what people who read the Bible today pretty much always miss.  While the Bible tells true stories, that doesn't mean it tells factual ones.

Look, when a historian today works, they gather all the facts, sift through them, and try to figure out what they mean--to figure out, in other words, the truth.  And if they get any of their facts wrong, they get ripped to shreds.  But in ancient times, historians worked differently.  They figured out what the truth was, and then figured out how best to arrange the facts and garnish them so as to help people understand that truth.  Which is how you get things like Josephus giving us what he says is the speech given in the fortress of Masada the night before its inhabitants committed suicide to the last man.  Either he "improved" things and there were survivors to tell him about the speech, or he made up the speech because he thought it would be the most interesting way of conveying to his listeners the ideals the Jewish rebels at Masada were fighting for.  So even when you're reading history from the ancient world (or, in fact, any place prior to the Enlightenment, or any place where Western scientific theory hasn't come to dominate academia) you have to take that into account.  They told history like a story and would sometimes alter/embellish the facts to fit or dramatize things.

But even by ancient standards, the Gospels are not history books.  (There are history books in the Bible--Kings, Chronicles, Samuel--but they give very different pictures of the same events, and are definitely of the ancient model, which is not what we modern Western people expect history to be.)  The Gospels are "gospels," in Greek "euangelions"--and if that looks familiar, it should, it's the word that "evangelism" comes from and literally it means "good news."  The Gospels are designed to teach people the good news that Jesus came to bring through stories about Jesus' life.  The theology is the important part, not the history.  Which is why, for example, different Gospels record that Jesus was crucified on different days.*  Jesus' death was near Passover and theologically connected to it, but different Gospels explained that connection in different ways, resulting in different days for the crucifixion.  The theological point was more important than factual accuracy.  And more than that: the effect of that theological point on the reader or hearer was the most important thing.

All of which means that (despite all the ink spilled on the subject) there is very little we know for sure about Jesus and his disciples, from a factual historical point of view.  I've always been curious as to what actually happened, but it's not a matter of faith for me--that is, if I went back and found that things were very different from the way the Gospels tell the story, I doubt it would affect my faith because I don't read the Gospels for historical fact in the first place.

*Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the Synoptic Gospels) record that Jesus' last meal was a Passover meal (eaten on Passover Eve), and that he died the next day (still Passover, because the Jewish day starts at sunset).  John, however, records that Jesus' last meal was an ordinary friendship meal the day before Passover Eve, and that Jesus died on the Day of Preparation (i.e. he died while the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple).  John wants to hammer home that Jesus is the Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God, the one who dies to save the people from the angel of death, so he dies as the lamb dies.  The Synoptics want to hammer home that the Lord's Supper is connected to the Passover Meal, eaten the last night before the slaves become free, and Jesus' body and blood (in the form of bread and wine) are like the blood of the passover lamb, even though he doesn't die until later.  All four make similar connections, but there are different shades of meaning.  People argue: which day did Jesus die?  (After all, he can't have died on both days, and he can't have had two Last Suppers.)  I don't think it matters.  I think that if the writers of the Gospels knew people were arguing about it and thought it was a major deal, they would have been shocked and horrified.  But with our modern fact-based educations, that's the sort of thing we focus on.

I've heard a lot of good things about Sleepy Hollow, so I decided to give it a try and am four eps in on Hulu.

There are, indeed, a lot of good things about it.  Each episode has been interesting and entertaining, and there is a diverse cast featuring a black woman as co-lead.

Alas, I my undergrad degree is in early American history and my grad degree is in theology, and that is a bad combo to watch this show.

I keep getting thrown out of it so hard.

The historical details aren't so much changed for dramatic purposes as a few pop-culture elements thrown into a blender on high.  And their interpretation of Revelation is just as bad.  I was hoping that once the first few episodes set the scene that there would at least be less historical references, so I would only have half the problems.

Alas, that does not seem like it is going to happen.

I don't know how many eps I can take before it gets to be too much.

Fair warning: I am not an economist.  The sum total of my formal economics training comes from a J-term college class called "The Economics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Worlds" in which we read eight novels in a month and discussed the economic underpinnings of the worlds described therein.  My undergraduate degree is in history, however, and history is very much concerned with the economies of the past.

First, let's start with the Federation.  The Federation, we are told, has no money.  Nobody gets paid; nobody gets a bonus; things don't seem to work on a barter system, either.  There are credits, which appear but rarely, and are used as a unit of exchange; but we are repeatedly told that there is no money and credits aren't money even though we see them used as such.  Various Star Trek people, including Ron Moore, thought this was absurd, but Gene Rodenberry insisted it was so.

I always thought this was absurd, myself.  Look, resources have to be allocated.  Work has to be done, and people have to be compensated for their labor otherwise the dirty un-fun jobs won't get done.  If you don't need money to live on, I can see people having certain careers just for fun and for something to do.  Starfleet officer?  You  betcha, you would not need to pay me to be a Starfleet officer.  Musician, author, various forms of artist, sure.  Engineers and doctors and such, yes, I know people who would do those jobs without being paid (as long as their basic needs were taken care of.)  Construction, yes.  You might have a problem getting enough people to fill your society's need for those jobs, but you could get some and I'm willing to handwave that with automation and such you would need fewer of them than we need per capita today.  But plumbers?  Miners?  Bureaucrats?  You can replicate just about everything, but you still need to have people to make and maintain the replicators, and fabricate larger things.  Like houses.  You're telling me you have enough people who do that just out of the goodness of their hearts?  I thought, you don't have to run your economy the same way we do today; there have been lots of economies throughout history.  You don't have to use your money the same way, but there does have to be some form of exchange, whether money or barter.

( Economic patterns from hunter-gatherer to the modern world: a history in five paragraphs. )

( Future patterns with a Star Trek twist. )

So when I put all of this together, all of a sudden the Star Trek "no money in the future" schtick seems a lot more plausible than it used to.  I'm not convinced things will go this way, but I see how they could.

YOU GUYS.  THERE IS MORE THAN ONE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM.


I realize that in the movie they just said "the Smithsonian", as if it was all one museum.  But, in fact, the Smithsonian Institute is a large organization with sixteen museums in DC (plus the National Zoo and a sculpture garden and regular gardens and the castle which houses admin stuff) and another two museums in New York City.  (If you're curious, the list is here.)  The most famous are the Air and Space Museum (i.e. the one with the moon rock), the Natural History Museum (i.e. the one with the dinosaurs), and the American History Museum (the one with the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz).  Many of these museums are close together; there's a whole cluster of them ringing the Mall, which is the big huge grassy area in DC with the White House at one end and the reflecting pool and all the monuments (The Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Viet Nam Memorial, the WWII Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, etc.).  There's maps here.  The Mall is frickin' huge.  (Google tells me it's almost 150 acres; two miles long, and 1500 feet wide at its widest.)  The museums that are there are pretty spread out, and there are always LOTS OF PEOPLE.  (Well, except at night, but then, the museums aren't open at night.)

Now, when we see people walk in to "The Smithsonian" in the movie, they are walking under all kinds of planes and spaceships, which is the Air and Space Museum.  (Duh.)  But I can't imagine why the Captain America exhibit would be there; it makes much better sense to have it in the Museum of American History, which is a ways down and on the other side of the park.  Having been there, it takes at least twenty minutes to get from one to the other by walking.  I'm trying to handwave this.

But.  Please, for the love of God, ficcers, the place is huge and there are many Smithsonian museums.

(By the way, if you don't know the history of the Smithsonian, it's fascinating.  There's a great book about it, The Stranger and the Statesman.  Basically, Smithson was a rich Englishman who resented England because his birth (he was a bastard) denied him lots of opportunity.  So he left his money to America, which he'd never visited even once, to found “at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”  The government dithered about what that might mean--a university? a museum? What sort of university or museum?--and eventually created a museum that was basically a place to send any (hopefully interesting) piece of junk anyone gave to the government.  It eventually became the behemoth it is now.)

“The Borgias” vs. “Borgia: Faith and Fear” (accuracy in historical fiction)
An interesting take on the historicity of the two current Borgia TV shows, from a professional Renaissence historian. Interesting from the perspective of the history buff, the fan of the shows, and for anyone who wants to write a story set in another time period.

In a real historical piece, if they tried to make everything slavishly right any show would be unwatchable, because there would be too much that the audience couldn’t understand. The audience would be constantly distracted by details like un-filmably dark building interiors, ugly missing teeth, infants being given broken-winged songbirds as disposable toys to play with, crush, and throw away, and Marie Antoinette relieving herself on the floor at Versailles. Despite its hundreds of bathrooms, one of Versailles’ marks of luxury was that the staff removed human feces from the hallways regularly, sometimes as often as twice a day, and always more than once a week. We cannot make an accurate movie of this – it will please no one. The makers of the TV series Mad Men recognized how much an accurate depiction of the past freaks viewers out – the sexual politics, the lack of seat belts and eco-consciousness, the way grown-ups treat kids. They focused just enough on this discomfort to make it the heart of a powerful and successful show, but there even an accurate depiction of attitudes from a few decades ago makes all the characters feel like scary aliens. Go back further and you will have complete incomprehensibility.

Okay, you all know about Project Gutenberg, right?  Project Gutenberg works to get books and magazines that are out of copyright online for free in text form.  They've got almost 30,000 books available, with more being added every month, and there are a lot of sites that take books Gutenberg has put up and offer them on their own site.  It's awesome.  And the process of getting books ready is pretty cool, too.  Distributed Proofreaders is a system whereby texts are scanned, OCRed, proofread multiple times, formatted, and made ready for posting.  The whole system is designed so that people who want to volunteer their time can do as much or as little as they want, and still contribute.  Have twenty minutes to spare?  Log on, find a book that interests you, and proofread a single page.  Have more time?  Do more pages.  Alas, there are some steps that simply can't be broken down like that, and content providing--i.e. finding books, scanning, and OCRing them--is one.  (Well.  A lot of the time, you can use Google Books or The Internet Achive or various university libraries to 'harvest' page scans from, and that speeds things up considerably.)

Well.  To make a long story short, I have just finished scanning a book.  It is now ready to be handed off to someone else to OCR.  The book is True Christianity, by Johann Arndt, which was one of the major Lutheran devotional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was the first spark in what became the Pietism movement within Lutheranism.  In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, if a Lutheran household was going to have only two books, chances were one of them was the Bible and the other was True Christianity.  Which makes True Christianity a major work, and one that should be easily available, for scholarly research if no other reason.  And while part of the book is on Google Books, it is nowhere complete, and the Google Books version isn't that readable, as is so often the case.  So I checked an 1863 copy out of the seminary library, borrowed a scanner from a friend, and have spent the last month scanning pages while doing my homework.  And it is now finished!  Yay!  All 542 pages!