I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?

CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY

this is awesome but the original link just turned into a redirect loop for me, here it is again (x)

OH HELLO

No more potatoes in medieval novels!

the term “edgelord” implies the existence of an entire hierarchical structure of edgenobility. there ought to be like, edgedukes and edgeviscounts running around. edgesquires. edgecomtessas.  

Edgemarquis

Hah!

Historically, the distinction between a count and a marquis is that a marquis’ domain lies at the border of the kingdom, and is thus more likely to be attacked by hostile forces. This position of elevated trust is why a marquis traditionally outranks a count.

Now, the domain of a marquis is called a “march”, derived from the Old French marche (”border, boundary”), and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European mereg, which translates as… “edge”.

A marquis, then, is a literal edge-lord; i.e., lord of an “edge”, or border domain.

We must therefore conclude that an edgemarquis is twice as edgy as other edgelords.

good lord. 

Fuck

Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel

It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.

For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits. 

Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer. 

You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?

And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.

Enjoy ^_^

This is really important, especially because language can change in very unexpected ways. 

For example, did you know that before 1986 people never said “I need to”?Instead, they were far more likely to say “I ought to”, “I have to”, “I must”, or “I should”.

Don’t believe me?

Anyway, most people won’t notice subtle changes like that. But your reader will notice and be confused when characters in your medieval world use metaphors involving railroads and rockets.

One of the things you can do besides use Google Ngrams is to read books or watch movies written in the time period you want to set your story. The key here is that they can’t just be set in that time period, they have to have been made in that time period.

Also, there’s a Lexicon Valley episode on this very topic which I highly recommend. It’s called Capturing the Past. 

Your DA love interest probably never brushed their teeth in their life.

Let that sink in.

Oh my god

I can’t believe it

All that obsessive research into medieval dental hygiene actually paid off

I was spending all this time thinking “Literally no one cares about Thedosian dental hygiene, Amy, why are you wasting your time on this” but HERE IT IS

So yeah, this isn’t actually true! While the toothbrush itself is a fairly modern invention, there’s a well recorded history of people in medieval Europe using a combination of various sweet-smelling mouth rinses and scrubbing their teeth clean with a cloth and a mild abrasive herb paste of some sort. Some common rinses included mint and wine or mint and vinegar, and pastes included things like marjoram and mint, rosemary and charcoal, and vinegar, pickling alum, white salt and honey.

Someone even tested a bunch of historical remedies out and found out that they were mostly pretty effective.

So rest assured, your DA makeouts are probably reasonably minty fresh!

Also in N. Africa we use swak.(dried tree bark its actually proven to be more effective than toothpaste) I feel like some cultures in dragon age considered how they’re coded culturally

(Ripped from the wiki page other places tht use it ’ It is commonly used in the Arabian peninsula, the Horn of Africa, North Africa, parts of the Sahel, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, miswak is known as Kayu Sugi (Malay for ‘chewing stick’).)

#im just focusing on europe is so 😪😪😪╮(─▽─)╭#dental health#im the qunari totally use swak and mb tevinter does? yah#*imo#da meta#da

Excellent addition! I had never heard of this - thank you! I mostly focused on Europe because we spend most of our time in the Europe-coded areas but we definitely have LI’s from scattered areas of Thedas, and there’s definitely gotta be some swak usage in there. There definitely seems to be a good chunk of northern Tevinter that corresponds to the Indian subcontinent, if not also large areas of Southeast Asia, so I’d say Tevinter using swak is a pretty safe bet.

Probably also Rivain. Just saying.

Medieval hats & hairstyles for D&D. Roll it up! These are a lot harder to cleanly categorize than helmets, obviously, but it gives you something to start with. Print-resolution here.

I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?

A breakdown of medieval armor, since a lot of pieces are required to create a full suit.

ref

Ref

(pics found on google images)

More terminology:

Castle Wales

Medieval Castles

Castles.org

Source

It’s no secret that I like Lady Knights like, a lot. I put together a little randomizer as a sort of exercise. Then I thought, why not share it?

So here’s the thing. Five categories of traits. Pick three and run with it! Bonus challenge: do all five categories. And of course you’re free to add to the categories if what you want isn’t in there. Have fun with it! Don’t forget to tag #Lady Knights so I can see the cool stuff you come up with! Here’s my starter to kick things off: Fists, Top Heavy, Nervous, Indian, Shark/Piscine.