Re: More Westerners' stiff

From: hcarteau_at_w32m95bgJLnAbuuAl7dQRROM_XdioHRKEykdo9MKPPxL48xr6oVI41le5LASb4rT3KS
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:07:48 +0100 (CET)

De: Richard Hayes <richard_hayes29_at_4_fPA_9pLDVDdzCdpq4mmZagm46YZYRBSzYFggR93I2V4MTSEEhE-Poe64Tv0w36aNdxMjyvF3aEc5T7UkRvlMg.yahoo.invalid>  

• Tales of the Reaching Moon 12, which has cast a long shadow over my personal view of the West (but undeniably built on Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars too)
  /// Yep, same for me. Still influences my feel of the West today. My Seshnela still feels more carolingian than anything else, though Loskalm is Something Else, with no earthly reference. As for Safelster, the rule is Anything Goes - it's the weirdest mix, with the "long shadow" of Arkat looming over all.
  

I'm not sure MRQ's treatment of Fronela didn't retain some of the Medievalism too.
/// Doesn't feel that way, but the Jrustela book is based on strong ideas already written before (the land's conquest, war against the timinits, etc) and developped around them, so it fits well with the New West. The Zistorela book describes a truly alien place.
 
Ironically caste is one of the larger anomalies in this analogy -- the 4 - 5 castes of Malkionism at this time doesn't quite fit the three  'castes' of Medieval Europe. It doesn't quite fit Hinduism's main 4-5 castes  either.  To me the castes of medieval Japan (in the form set out in Land of the Ninja) possibly offer the closest analogy of all.
/// Depends. In my Seshnela, the serfs are "below caste", not even dronari. They don't have a full dronar's Rights but neither his Duties. So that makes 5 de facto castes, plus women. In Fronela, the Men of All are somewhere between the Guardians and the Wizards, so again five castes. In the asharan church, there are only three (no zzaburi). The caste ideal still varies a lot from region to region, scola to scola today !

Now the West seems to be going back to something more like the neo-platonist roots that might have grown to fruition in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Though maybe those who were really there have a different tale to tell
/// What I like most with this new west is that it goes back to its atheist roots. Imagine how alien, how absurd must this culture feel to all theists, whether orlanthi or solar : these guys say you must follow abstract, immutable laws that no God incarnates or demonstrates. I think the word "meldek" means "atheist", not "sorcerer" in its prime meaning. Sorcery is just weird magics, but atheism is weird living.