#but i also don't really get why this is such a Well Akshually thing at all

[anghraine]

I've got a much longer post in drafts about it, but something I've noticed and find kind of odd is how there's so much insistence on the absolute episodic inconsistency of TOS, and writers knowing absolutely nothing about any previous episodes and the production team not really caring about consistency. It seems like almost any time there's a post about repeated themes or characteristics or whatnot in TOS, you'll get "that episode was written and produced entirely after the episode it might superficially seem consistent with or internally related to, but WELL AKSHUALLY..."

Like, for instance, any discussion of Kirk's (very consistent!) backstory and youthful personality in light of his canonical age will almost always get some insistence on how his age is completely up in the air until "The Deadly Years" establishes him as 34 in S2, there's no real consistency about his age in TOS, the internal timeline especially can't be considered significant to any S1 episodes or backstory as originally envisioned, etc. Yet in the S1 episode "Shore Leave," it's clearly stated that a) 15 years before the events of the episode, Finnegan was an older upperclassman who bullied Kirk, who was a "plebe" (first year) at the Academy at the time, and b) Finnegan was 20 then, nailing down Kirk's current age as no more than 33 or 34 (33 seems more probable, syncing exactly with him being 34 in the next season), and as far as I recall, none of the aired episodes contradict this or suggest otherwise.

A scene in "The Conscience of the King" would have suggested he's significantly older, but this was removed and the scene didn't make a lot of sense in the first place. Other backstory details in TOS are consistent with this as well, like the young Lieutenant Kirk being on his first deep-space assignment 11 years earlier c. S2 (aged 23 by the other episodes' timeline).

The production staff actively forced removal of details they considered inconsistent with his characterization and function (often rightly—sorry, Ellison, they were dicks about it but correct dicks). Details established in earlier episodes do recur—the existence of Sam Kirk, his wife, and sons and their good relationship with Kirk are established many episodes before "Operation: Annihilate!", Spock's painful, unexpressed love for his mother is introduced long before "Journey to Babel," Christine Chapel's crush on him is explicitly stated or clearly referenced in background shots over and over in S1 and S2 and is only really resolved as a thread in "Plato's Stepchildren," well into S3. Even specific events in earlier episodes are sometimes explicitly referenced in other episodes, like the Horta and Spock's desperate attempts to save Kirk in the Tholian web.

But honestly, I'm just kind of puzzled about why there seems so much investment in the idea that TOS is purely episodic and lacks all consistency from episode to episode, nothing ever recurs, it's never implicitly or explicitly calling back to other episodes, character arcs don't really happen, and so on.

[olderthannetfic]

Really annoyed by the contingent of people reading some sort of deep-seated patriarchy-derived trauma into all of cishet women's sexual fantasies.

Wanting a partner who is ruthless with their enemies (i.e. capable of protecting themselves and you), sweet with their loved ones, and capable of working in an organized group is something that humans simply almost universally value, regardless of value, and your average romance novel mafia boss or whatever is just an exaggerated version of that. It's not that women are brainwashed by the patriarchy, it's just some feral, animal-brain-driven idea of what's hot.

It's CISHET MEN who are brainwashed by the patriarchy, and this is why you get stuff like that Trevor Noah quote about men not wanting a submissive women, but a strong woman they make submit. It's not because they enjoy breaking women's wings or something like that (that notion smacks of the sort of person who thinks anyone who's ever been mean towards them is a master manipulator with NPD), it's because they too are naturally attracted by all the cues of strength and competence but then that contrasts to what society tells them women should be like to make them look good as men.

And for the more unhinged kinks/romance tropes as well, if you go to, say, romance novel or otome game reddit or any other community full of straight women who like romance, you'll see a bunch of women who are into those tropes dissecting why they like them. Like, they're very self-aware, and it often has nothing to do with the patriarchy (and sometimes it does, and that's okay, and they're very aware of which is which), and they don't need some Tumblr "um, akshually" queer man-hating asshole patronizingly analyzing them from afar like a 19th century anthropologist observing a native tribe.

And men are often into similar tropes as well - men enjoy a good clingy psycho stalker girl with a knife as much as the next person! Just look at some of their anime waifus!

I guess TERF-ism is a big part of it (last year I saw a person claim that young girls only like play fighting because men have brainwashed them into liking violence. PLAY FIGHTING. A thing that young animals of many species and all sexes and genders do across the world), but also, for fuck's sake, saying this as a developmental scientist, the art world needs to lay off its fucking psychoanalysis and adjacent theories.

It's been debunked from ten different angles and the only reason it still exists is because its practitioners have a strong lobby. It's really disheartening to see someone with left wing politics and good art taste suddenly plunge into straight up 1930s explanations of sexuality and kink and the human psyche (mixed with the worst of second-wave feminism for spice) that happens to reproduce all the bad conservative and misogynistic and queer-hating politics they're ostensibly against.

just please. PLEASE. look at art from any other analytic lens. PLEASE.

--

[abeautifulblog]

(Leslie Fish - "Dane-Geld")

ROFL, I love it. 🤣 This is so fuckin catchy, I am beyond delighted that this song exists. Thank you for introducing this to my life, friendo. 🙏

But also: lol Kipling was so full of shit.

And apologies, but you have activated the hyperfixation, soooo...

--

DANEGELDS: WELL, AKSHUALLY---

or

DANEGELDS: I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED!

--

So, I should have been more clear in my last post: there's nothing inherently ¿🤨? about Burgred bribing vikings to go away, despite what the victorians would have you believe. Paying tribute to placate an aggressive foreign power was standard operating procedure in that era -- just one of the occasional costs of doing international politics.

I mean ffs, lol, THIS was the viking invasion of England:

Vikings land in Kent; Wessex pays them a danegeld to go away. Vikings go to East Anglia; East Anglia pays them a danegeld to go away. Vikings go to York; Northumbria tries to fight them and gets curb-stomped. Vikings go to Nottingham; Mercia pays them a danegeld to go away. Vikings go to Thetford; East Anglia tries to fight them and gets curb-stomped. Vikings go to Reading; Wessex gets curb-stomped for a bit and then pays them a danegeld to go away. Vikings go to London; Mercia pays them a danegeld to go away. Vikings go put down a revolt in Northumbria. Vikings go to Torksey; Mercia pays them a danegeld to go away…………….. but this time the vikings don't leave. (cue my fic)

(Really, Kipling? "We never pay anyone danegeld"?? Said no one ever. The mid ninth century is nothing but the Saxons playing hot potato with the vikings.)

The only ¿🤨? part about Nottingham was why Burgred bothered dragging the West Saxons out of bed to help him besiege the city, if he was just going to pay the vikings off without a single fight. Why assemble such a massive coalition army and then not use it? (That's what modern historians give him shit for, not the danegeld itself -- contrast this with how they tend to characterize Alfred's danegeld, that yeah okay sure, he paid one too, but he made the vikings work for it first.) To me, it suggests that either something about the situation at Nottingham changed, that made fighting untenable, or that having the army was the point -- that it was part of Burgred's leverage for encouraging the Danes to take the payout and go, rather than deciding to keep the city like they'd done with York.

The point is, no one was under any illusions that danegelds would buy a permanent peace -- what they bought you was time. If you were genuinely unprepared to fight off a viking invasion, then paying the danegeld was your best option. (Even if it makes later historians big mad that you didn't go heroically stiff-upper-lip yourself into an early grave.) Yes, your economy will take a hit -- danegelds were not ""trifling"" -- but it'll recover faster from a danegeld than it will from having your armies decimated/crops burned/towns looted/peasants carted off into slavery.

Bribing vikings was a reliable way to make them go bother someone else for a few years, while you (theoretically) got your shit together so you'd be better prepared for the next time they circled back round. Paying a danegeld, in and of itself, was not a dumb or lazy or shameful move -- so long as you treated it like the temporary measure that it was, and followed up with stronger steps. Wessex did; they made good use of the time they bought, and consequently they withstood the next round of invasions. Mercia did not, or not good enough anyway, and that's a different story.

But that's not how Kipling and the victorians felt about it -- they fuckin H A A A A A T E D danegelds. 😂 It didn't vibe with the English Exceptionalism that they were attempting to manufacture, a version of history in which the English were a godly-heroic race of brave and brilliant white people who righteously deserved to take over the whole world. Danegelds were a very embarrassing thing to have to explain -- how could their illustrious ancestors have been so spineless that they'd let themselves get shaken down rather than fight? Or so STOOOOPID, because don't they know that "once you have paid him the Danegeld / You never get rid of the Dane"???? (And with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, they could confidently say that paying danegelds had done Mercia and East Anglia no good.) It would have been far more palatable to their sensibilities if the Saxons had believed in death before danegeld.

But that's imposing an ahistorical set of values on the situation. There's nothing in the contemporary sources to indicate that the Saxons attached any particular shame or stigma to paying a tribute -- to the military defeats that had made it necessary, yeah absolutely, but not the payment itself.

In my opinion, what the Saxon kingdoms should be embarrassed about is not the danegelds, but how long it took them to get their shit together and recognize the vikings as a real threat, and then put aside their petty internecine squabbling to deal with it -- too long, for most of them, and too late by the time they did. It's depressingly familiar, to have one's society faced with an existential threat, while the people in power would rather use the opportunity to dunk on their political rivals than do anything about it. 😐

[calamitaswrath]

Lucia plays Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn: Part 3 Chapter 13

Rebellion in Begnion! Shame that we don't actually get to see it, that could have made for a neat perspective as well. But considering that this part already has to juggle the perspectives of three armies and doesn't manage to give the Dawn Brigade an adequate amount of screentime, it's probably for the better that this happens off-screen. Especially since there wouldn't really be any characters to follow while this happens (unless you pull together some of the ones that are currently absent).

Pelleas. . . oh god. Since I looked up various gameplay specifics of the upcoming chapters beforehand, I did actually know that some kind of choice involving him was coming - I saw that depending on your choices, he may show up in the next chapter as an enemy. But I had somehow just been doubtful that he'd actually get killed off, since I also know that he's playable (which is apparently only something on subsequent playthroughs?). And to have MIcaiah be potentially the one to do the deed. . . oof. I went with her for this because mmmm gimme that drama and those character-breaking moments, but I also know that if you don't let her do it, Tauroneo has to. Which is also an ironic moment for his character, considering that if you have him fight Ashnard in PoR, he boasts about becoming a kingslayer. . .

Well, of course this wouldn't be that easy. But Almedha sure seems to know a lot about blood pacts, eh?

Laguz alliance scoffing at the idea of Daien having only 10,000 soldiers. . . not to go "uhm AKSHUALLY" on this whole thing, but fantasy writers sometimes really have no scale of how big of an army that would be, huh? Especially if they're all retreated to a single castle.

Rafiel and Nailah wanting to talk to Micaiah. . . hm, okay.

Base conversations - rather short, these ones. Leonardo and Edward getting some screentime which is appreciated but will probably the last time, and Laura and Aran having one about. . . sleep. I know that the Sleep staff being used on Ike is a way to somewhat cheese this map, but since Micaiah doesn't have the staff rank for these yet, and Laura is still entirely unpromoted, there's no way I'm getting to use that.

So, the battle! I heard about this one being infamously hard. And if memory serves - again, me actually playing this map was a few weeks ago at this point - I did have to reset once, though I don't recall why exactly. For the most part however, I managed reasonably well. I didn't really get to see the famous 3-13 archer in action in any way that stood out to me, and I'm actually still not quite sure which one that was. As was to be expected, the Greil Mercenaries were beasts once they showed up, but by that point I was already in full retreat mode, anyway.

And. . . uh, I also came to realize that I picked perhaps not the best moment to maximize Micaiah's movement like this, what with her being stuck behind that line she can't cross.

Now, battle dialogue! Not much there, but uhh, the ones that Micaiah can have with Ike and Soren is also super nice. That's some good pain.

Dragon reinforcements! Not much to add here, but it's another nice bit of escalation.

And just a whole lot more escalation, especially with the medallion. I also don't really have anything to add here, it's just cool to see the stakes getting raised now.