Look Ma, I'm on the channel! Jokes Aside, i fully agree with you all that while technically historically plausible, this is just one of many anachronisms that mess with the verisimilitude of the story, and unlike in the "Tiffany issue" of historically accurate things that feel anachronistic due to false preconceptions about the past, this is just lazy writing, i mostly made the original comment to expouse historical trivia and be a nerd
Better writing could create the right impression without describing all the detail. The main problem is that the entire book is completely modern at the surface level. Just from the way people act and talk. If that were done properly and it created the general impression of a older time period (it doesn't have to be accurate at all), people would come with their appropriate mental images on their own. For example imagining some kind of older toilet, rather than a modern bathroom.
You could also go with the angle that this world has had a long period of peace where civic technology vastly outpaced military advancement, so they have many modern conveniences while still only using medieval weaponry. That would take talent and effort though.
i watched a very good video recently by a historian about historical hygiene. the fact is people in the middle ages might have smelled a bit more than us, but most didn't stink. that's because they wore inner clothing against their skin that was easy to launder and made of linen so they could remove old sweat sometimes multiple times a day, and while they didn't bathe often they washed frequently, its a lot easier to heat a pot if water and dip a cloth into it with a bit of soap for a wipe down than to immerse your entire body, even a peasant or serf could do that. hair was cleaned by thorough combing and brushing with a fine tooth wood or bone comb and a boarhair brush, which was also frequently cleaned (clean brushes=clean hair!) and kept covered with a clean linen cloth or hat. Linen itself keeps the body clean through gentle exfoliation and absorbing oils and sweat. how people keep themselves clean may differ from place to place and era to era but people have always done so
My storyis set in an ancient Mediterranean setting. They have wooden and terracotta plates and they wash them IN A BUCKET! They collect rainwater and use it for everything, but they don't have hot baths, they have to heat water over fire when it's cold to wash themselves. Their neighboring country does have hot baths, like the Romans did, and they will eventually encounter other countries that have showers. Of course, these are ancient showers. These people realized how to change the pressure to make water from the river travel through their stone walls and trickle down from the rocks to wash themselves. I love history, especially ancient history and I made the mistake to including glass windows lol but I let it go bc it was just one little thing and glass could have been discovered earlier in this alternative world :)
Your world sounds very interesting and love how you play with different countries having developed diferent technologies. On the topic of glass I wonder if you know about lapis specularis. It's a type of stone that looks translucent and was used like glass for windows. It was used by romans specially in the first and second century b.C. It's a rock, so it was mined in blocks and then cut to the desired shape. I don't know if this helps, but it's an easy explanation for glass windows in ancient times.
lol my favorite series (Valdemar) just now, *44 books in* (NOT counting the 17 anthologies!) got around to sort of discussing how Haven's sewer system works (there's a giant... entity underground that helped build the city and it eats things like that, just dig a latrine and it'll find it)
It is these videos that just make my day. This verisimilitude vs realism is something I couldn't quite articulate. Just to add on to that point, Atwood made a really interesting about how small things like breakfast are really important, where they would get those food items, and whether or not they would say a prayer over them, and how they would pay for them, and what they would wear during that meal, and, if cooked, how. What I love about world building is how smaller items and customs can create a bigger picture. Yarros not thinking about it means she misses out on this advantage.
Fun fact there was also toothbrushes & toothpaste back in Medieval times too. Not as sophisticated like we have now obviously & a lack of plastic. The paste could be made how of ground bone, mint, & other herbs or exfolianting matériels. I deliberately have the protagonist of my WIP novel brush her teeth to avoid readers assuming her breath would smell or teeth be rotting out due to the medieval time the setting evokes. Cause sadly lot of folks still believe medieval people were unhygienic.
Your (Will's) analogy for the cracks in the wall / compounding damage was a very good one. On the topic of Roman toilets - there are still communal toilets in more remote locations of eastern and northern europe. A friend I knew told me their school in Ukraine had communal hole-in-the-ground toilets, and I went to a summer camp in southern Finland as a kid and still remember everyone in our group of 10yos avoided toilet business as much as possible, because the only option outside lunchtime (held at a further little villa) was the lovely, atmospheric 4-hole wooden outhouse in the middle of the woods. Unfortunately in the middle of the woods that IS still one of the best ways to build a toilet for a big group of people.
My fantasy setting isn't beholden to a specific era so I include basic electricity and plumbing lol. There's like a way to do it and not to do it. Much like everything else in that book, it's the way not to do it.
And isn't piper cj's witcher girl book all adrenaline and endorphin? Like how? How do you people know these words and how do you know how the effects of hormones feel in your magic land...
@@jasminv8653 The adrenaline thing isn't a romantasy issue unfortunately. I've come across that several times in regular fantasy books. Authors should just describe the effect rather than naming it in the text.
This mostly stems from the common misconception that fantasy MUST be medieval, so authors try and fit round peg ideas into that square hole when they absolutely do not have to. You guys said she should've set this in our modern world, but honestly she doesn't even have to go that far; a constructed industrial or modern world that isn't ours would work too, and those are lagging in the genre of fantasy.
Most books in the fantasy romance genre might be vaguely medieval settings in the fantasy world, but they always have epic bathrooms and libraries. You need to relate the readers and be clean and nicely scented for all the smut, it’s just what all the authors collectively agreed upon. While more realistic, no one wants to read about a long drop and poop stick, 10/10 not sexy. It doesn’t bother me, I’ve just learned to accept quirks in world building, it’s technically a fantasy world so anything goes I guess
Having conveniences is fine, its about presentation and naming conventions, if for example in Fourth Wing she'd named them Water Closets or some such, and not specifically named the parts of the toilet it would have fit better within the setting.
This is sounding like the same self-centered-world thinking that has modern teenagers demanding to know why their parents didn't video events in the parent's childhood on their cellphones. If you're a modern teenager, you don't HAVE to think about that kind of stuff; if you're a writer, you definitely DO.
I'm struggling with a similar verisimilitude issue regarding exactly what sort of technology would be in my fantasy world, specifically making sure that the question "why is this here in medieval fantasy" because it's not that. Like, whether a loud (not necessarily effective) surgical drill can coexist with swords, the occasional gun, and a phonograph.
take a look at early dental drills, they were hand-powered. drills in general have been around for a very long time, even very small ones. the main barrier for use in our world as surgical tools was pain control, until we had effective local and general anesthetic using something like a drill was extremely difficult and so surgery and dental work was designed around speed rather than fine detail. if your world has a method of dealing with pain and infection you could easily use surgical drills
@platedlizard ohohohoooo pain is not a problem in this circumstance, but it does need to be able to deal more damage if you stabbed someone with it. Do you think though some sort of mechanism like a pull chord or a wind-up crank like a music box could work?
Um... again, cannons appeared before handguns. And it's very logical, making a primitive cannon should be way easier. It's basically a very thick bucket. But I think I get what you're saying.
Something interesting about the comment on private bathrooms - not all cultures and not all historical periods had the concept of privacy you might see in the "West" and more specifically the United States today: in particular, many people in medieval Europe slept communally & washed in public bathhouses.
So i imagine fourth wing wouldnt have been set in the modern world because the rebellions a thing (and Yarros would never make it where the US is a bad guy), but imagine the concept in the hands of an author who was willing to work with those ideas (that actually tackles the US military as not a force for good and US imperialism and what about dragons and industrialization and who gets to control the dragons is it something only wealthy countries get access to).
Try to tell this to some TikTok fans. 😂 but what’s even more interesting: how did they know that they will need more printed copies than acotar when this is the first fantasy of the author? How did she get a movie contract before! published? And now the readers are “crying” because the books are low quality in print, the special editions are having issues.
Its probably fine to have a communal toilet that is just a hole with something and sit on and a changable box? anyways, heeping it to a hole should be fine. And people used to have a toilet or shower in a corridor, so a communal one might be in any scenatio ok. And group showers? And thats last century, so a dorm having a community toilet might work, and shower. and share a water spender? I mean that might be more believable, if, still being last century. or magic which still, maybe a communal tilet and shower.
Honestly, the aspect of how people did their business in a fantasy book shouldn't make a detailed appearance unless it has plot relevance (don't ask me how it would be relevant cause I'd rather not dwell on it 😂). Unfortunately, this being a romantasy, the author probably felt the need to establish that they did in fact have ways to clean themselves. In any case, this is just a little facet of the greater superficiality of this book/series.
This book belongs in a medieval toilet.
Lol 🤭
Look Ma, I'm on the channel! Jokes Aside, i fully agree with you all that while technically historically plausible, this is just one of many anachronisms that mess with the verisimilitude of the story, and unlike in the "Tiffany issue" of historically accurate things that feel anachronistic due to false preconceptions about the past, this is just lazy writing, i mostly made the original comment to expouse historical trivia and be a nerd
Honestly, I picked your comment because I found it super interesting, and it's something worth considering.
--Will
Better writing could create the right impression without describing all the detail. The main problem is that the entire book is completely modern at the surface level. Just from the way people act and talk. If that were done properly and it created the general impression of a older time period (it doesn't have to be accurate at all), people would come with their appropriate mental images on their own. For example imagining some kind of older toilet, rather than a modern bathroom.
You could also go with the angle that this world has had a long period of peace where civic technology vastly outpaced military advancement, so they have many modern conveniences while still only using medieval weaponry. That would take talent and effort though.
i watched a very good video recently by a historian about historical hygiene. the fact is people in the middle ages might have smelled a bit more than us, but most didn't stink. that's because they wore inner clothing against their skin that was easy to launder and made of linen so they could remove old sweat sometimes multiple times a day, and while they didn't bathe often they washed frequently, its a lot easier to heat a pot if water and dip a cloth into it with a bit of soap for a wipe down than to immerse your entire body, even a peasant or serf could do that. hair was cleaned by thorough combing and brushing with a fine tooth wood or bone comb and a boarhair brush, which was also frequently cleaned (clean brushes=clean hair!) and kept covered with a clean linen cloth or hat. Linen itself keeps the body clean through gentle exfoliation and absorbing oils and sweat. how people keep themselves clean may differ from place to place and era to era but people have always done so
Is this about Bernadette Banner?
Bernadette Banner?
My storyis set in an ancient Mediterranean setting. They have wooden and terracotta plates and they wash them IN A BUCKET! They collect rainwater and use it for everything, but they don't have hot baths, they have to heat water over fire when it's cold to wash themselves. Their neighboring country does have hot baths, like the Romans did, and they will eventually encounter other countries that have showers. Of course, these are ancient showers. These people realized how to change the pressure to make water from the river travel through their stone walls and trickle down from the rocks to wash themselves. I love history, especially ancient history and I made the mistake to including glass windows lol but I let it go bc it was just one little thing and glass could have been discovered earlier in this alternative world :)
Your world sounds very interesting and love how you play with different countries having developed diferent technologies. On the topic of glass I wonder if you know about lapis specularis. It's a type of stone that looks translucent and was used like glass for windows. It was used by romans specially in the first and second century b.C. It's a rock, so it was mined in blocks and then cut to the desired shape. I don't know if this helps, but it's an easy explanation for glass windows in ancient times.
I feel like Yarros Googled when indoor plumbing was invented and then went "yep. Good" and assumed they were exactly the same as modern day.
I never explained how my characters used the restroom in my fantasy worlds unless it is for toilet humor. 🤣
very lowbrow(n) XD
That's how it should be. If it isn't for humour or horror, the reader does not need to take a shit with the characters.
lol my favorite series (Valdemar) just now, *44 books in* (NOT counting the 17 anthologies!) got around to sort of discussing how Haven's sewer system works (there's a giant... entity underground that helped build the city and it eats things like that, just dig a latrine and it'll find it)
I love these comment reviews. I can watch them all day
It is these videos that just make my day. This verisimilitude vs realism is something I couldn't quite articulate. Just to add on to that point, Atwood made a really interesting about how small things like breakfast are really important, where they would get those food items, and whether or not they would say a prayer over them, and how they would pay for them, and what they would wear during that meal, and, if cooked, how. What I love about world building is how smaller items and customs can create a bigger picture. Yarros not thinking about it means she misses out on this advantage.
Fun fact there was also toothbrushes & toothpaste back in Medieval times too. Not as sophisticated like we have now obviously & a lack of plastic. The paste could be made how of ground bone, mint, & other herbs or exfolianting matériels. I deliberately have the protagonist of my WIP novel brush her teeth to avoid readers assuming her breath would smell or teeth be rotting out due to the medieval time the setting evokes. Cause sadly lot of folks still believe medieval people were unhygienic.
Your videos actively make my writing better 😅
Your (Will's) analogy for the cracks in the wall / compounding damage was a very good one.
On the topic of Roman toilets - there are still communal toilets in more remote locations of eastern and northern europe. A friend I knew told me their school in Ukraine had communal hole-in-the-ground toilets, and I went to a summer camp in southern Finland as a kid and still remember everyone in our group of 10yos avoided toilet business as much as possible, because the only option outside lunchtime (held at a further little villa) was the lovely, atmospheric 4-hole wooden outhouse in the middle of the woods. Unfortunately in the middle of the woods that IS still one of the best ways to build a toilet for a big group of people.
My fantasy setting isn't beholden to a specific era so I include basic electricity and plumbing lol. There's like a way to do it and not to do it. Much like everything else in that book, it's the way not to do it.
Like wasn’t one of the bat boys in acotar talking about lactic acid!! BOI HOW YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT!!!
And isn't piper cj's witcher girl book all adrenaline and endorphin? Like how? How do you people know these words and how do you know how the effects of hormones feel in your magic land...
@@jasminv8653
The adrenaline thing isn't a romantasy issue unfortunately. I've come across that several times in regular fantasy books. Authors should just describe the effect rather than naming it in the text.
This mostly stems from the common misconception that fantasy MUST be medieval, so authors try and fit round peg ideas into that square hole when they absolutely do not have to. You guys said she should've set this in our modern world, but honestly she doesn't even have to go that far; a constructed industrial or modern world that isn't ours would work too, and those are lagging in the genre of fantasy.
Most books in the fantasy romance genre might be vaguely medieval settings in the fantasy world, but they always have epic bathrooms and libraries. You need to relate the readers and be clean and nicely scented for all the smut, it’s just what all the authors collectively agreed upon. While more realistic, no one wants to read about a long drop and poop stick, 10/10 not sexy.
It doesn’t bother me, I’ve just learned to accept quirks in world building, it’s technically a fantasy world so anything goes I guess
Having conveniences is fine, its about presentation and naming conventions, if for example in Fourth Wing she'd named them Water Closets or some such, and not specifically named the parts of the toilet it would have fit better within the setting.
This is sounding like the same self-centered-world thinking that has modern teenagers demanding to know why their parents didn't video events in the parent's childhood on their cellphones. If you're a modern teenager, you don't HAVE to think about that kind of stuff; if you're a writer, you definitely DO.
I'm struggling with a similar verisimilitude issue regarding exactly what sort of technology would be in my fantasy world, specifically making sure that the question "why is this here in medieval fantasy" because it's not that. Like, whether a loud (not necessarily effective) surgical drill can coexist with swords, the occasional gun, and a phonograph.
take a look at early dental drills, they were hand-powered. drills in general have been around for a very long time, even very small ones. the main barrier for use in our world as surgical tools was pain control, until we had effective local and general anesthetic using something like a drill was extremely difficult and so surgery and dental work was designed around speed rather than fine detail. if your world has a method of dealing with pain and infection you could easily use surgical drills
@platedlizard ohohohoooo pain is not a problem in this circumstance, but it does need to be able to deal more damage if you stabbed someone with it. Do you think though some sort of mechanism like a pull chord or a wind-up crank like a music box could work?
@cursedcontent4207 How precise does it need to be?
Um... again, cannons appeared before handguns. And it's very logical, making a primitive cannon should be way easier. It's basically a very thick bucket.
But I think I get what you're saying.
Something interesting about the comment on private bathrooms - not all cultures and not all historical periods had the concept of privacy you might see in the "West" and more specifically the United States today: in particular, many people in medieval Europe slept communally & washed in public bathhouses.
So i imagine fourth wing wouldnt have been set in the modern world because the rebellions a thing (and Yarros would never make it where the US is a bad guy), but imagine the concept in the hands of an author who was willing to work with those ideas (that actually tackles the US military as not a force for good and US imperialism and what about dragons and industrialization and who gets to control the dragons is it something only wealthy countries get access to).
Try to tell this to some TikTok fans. 😂 but what’s even more interesting: how did they know that they will need more printed copies than acotar when this is the first fantasy of the author? How did she get a movie contract before! published? And now the readers are “crying” because the books are low quality in print, the special editions are having issues.
Its probably fine to have a communal toilet that is just a hole with something and sit on and a changable box? anyways, heeping it to a hole should be fine.
And people used to have a toilet or shower in a corridor, so a communal one might be in any scenatio ok. And group showers? And thats last century, so a dorm having a community toilet might work, and shower. and share a water spender?
I mean that might be more believable, if, still being last century.
or magic which still, maybe a communal tilet and shower.
I don't like mentioning these things, so I don't. Lol i don't want THAT much realism in my stories😅
But if its modern you cant make a bland acotar clone
Honestly, the aspect of how people did their business in a fantasy book shouldn't make a detailed appearance unless it has plot relevance (don't ask me how it would be relevant cause I'd rather not dwell on it 😂). Unfortunately, this being a romantasy, the author probably felt the need to establish that they did in fact have ways to clean themselves. In any case, this is just a little facet of the greater superficiality of this book/series.
3:14
Cat alert!
Lol you'd HATE From Blood and Ash 😂
CAT!😻😻😻