That would be AWESOME. I am so excited! So excited I don't know where to start, aahh, this road trip is getting in my wayyy. Maybe I will print this out and work in a notebook.
I like that approach to the charms a lot!
And you know there's all sorts of surveillance and breaking up of the groups that meet (sedition!) - this sort of thing went on with the IWW too before WWI gave the government a real excuse to regulate the workforce. Yes! the pressure put on university presidents who put pressure on their faculty to stfu about this red stuff, whole files of blackmail keeping them in their place, bans and ruination upon their name, etc etc - there would be an extremist group that Uther wasn't technically involved in but he turned a blind eye when they burned mountains of books of questionable morality. I don't know if Gaius could stand to actually give these people up to the authorities; his specialty seems to be turning a blind eye. Maybe he is just working for NASA or whatever (what was it we said? in a University? and working on a govt research grant w/ Nasa maybe) and not actually using his magical powers to fight his own kind but he's fully aware of the purges going on around him and how he could save them but he can't, and he doesn't. so it is morally dubious and tragic.
oh my god, if Nimueh is Martin Luther then Uther is running the Inquisition - yes yes autos de fe! :OOO She's a witch! or a heretic! or a greedy land-grabber (as Spain figured when the accusations of witchcraft started leaking in from France. in France they were all mad about witches but Spain had been fighting the infidel Moor and Jew for a long time now and thought this magic hubbub was nonsense.) But yes! the source! no ideas but in things! She says, these books and writers were not causes but consequences, and we can get more in touch with the real source of our power if we don't rely on the translating medium of a text, a manual, an facet, an idea.
I would love to write about subversive books. It makes me think of the story I heard from my aunt's Romanian friends, who were Christians in Romania under Ceauşescu, about the terrible danger of smuggling bibles and hiding them and not knowing who to trust. Code phrases whispered at speakeasies or bookhouses that seem innocuous but are really lines from Das Kapital or Lenin or 1800s Arthuriana that mentions Nimueh.
What you're saying about the body is an awful lot like Foucault's description of medieval punishment. Like, the King has his body and violations against the law and kingdom are considered attacks against his person (this is soooo evident w/ Uther) and so the criminal is punished bodily, drawn and quartered publicly etc. but you can't do that these days - you can't destroy, you have to have incarceration and rehabilitation etc. but you can't deal that way with terrorists. Uther would, well, have a secret wire-tapping plan and a Guantanamo Bay.
no subject
I like that approach to the charms a lot!
And you know there's all sorts of surveillance and breaking up of the groups that meet (sedition!) - this sort of thing went on with the IWW too before WWI gave the government a real excuse to regulate the workforce. Yes! the pressure put on university presidents who put pressure on their faculty to stfu about this red stuff, whole files of blackmail keeping them in their place, bans and ruination upon their name, etc etc - there would be an extremist group that Uther wasn't technically involved in but he turned a blind eye when they burned mountains of books of questionable morality. I don't know if Gaius could stand to actually give these people up to the authorities; his specialty seems to be turning a blind eye. Maybe he is just working for NASA or whatever (what was it we said? in a University? and working on a govt research grant w/ Nasa maybe) and not actually using his magical powers to fight his own kind but he's fully aware of the purges going on around him and how he could save them but he can't, and he doesn't. so it is morally dubious and tragic.
oh my god, if Nimueh is Martin Luther then Uther is running the Inquisition - yes yes autos de fe! :OOO She's a witch! or a heretic! or a greedy land-grabber (as Spain figured when the accusations of witchcraft started leaking in from France. in France they were all mad about witches but Spain had been fighting the infidel Moor and Jew for a long time now and thought this magic hubbub was nonsense.)
But yes! the source! no ideas but in things! She says, these books and writers were not causes but consequences, and we can get more in touch with the real source of our power if we don't rely on the translating medium of a text, a manual, an facet, an idea.
I would love to write about subversive books. It makes me think of the story I heard from my aunt's Romanian friends, who were Christians in Romania under Ceauşescu, about the terrible danger of smuggling bibles and hiding them and not knowing who to trust. Code phrases whispered at speakeasies or bookhouses that seem innocuous but are really lines from Das Kapital or Lenin or 1800s Arthuriana that mentions Nimueh.
What you're saying about the body is an awful lot like Foucault's description of medieval punishment. Like, the King has his body and violations against the law and kingdom are considered attacks against his person (this is soooo evident w/ Uther) and so the criminal is punished bodily, drawn and quartered publicly etc. but you can't do that these days - you can't destroy, you have to have incarceration and rehabilitation etc. but you can't deal that way with terrorists. Uther would, well, have a secret wire-tapping plan and a Guantanamo Bay.