#just wanted to rant about history

[gayrotinha]

I was looking for an app to talk to people and practice my English, but I get so anxious, and some folks there were really something 🙂

[gilbirda]

hot take but we as a society need to be more comfortable about discussing "icky" parts of history, and even telling the side of the "bad guys"

hear me out

history is written by the victors, and will be heavily biased. The defeated will be painted as evil, deviants and/or like they have always been "the bad guys".

Reducing people to "the bad guys" does a huge disservice to the opportunity of learning from the past, because it creates a distance between the modern reader and the actual events, it creates the comfortable position of "I'm not like the bad guys, so i will never make their mistakes"

I think is important we understand how and why people believed in something, and where did things turn a certain way. Yes. Even "the wrong side". Even the nazis. Even those people you are thinking about, whoever they are.

Because you are not immune to propaganda and it's so so so so important to understand what happened and how did we get to those points before we fall to the same techniques again and again.

"Learning from the past" isn't deleting the ugly parts or cringing when someone brings up war. Thinking otherwise is a huge mistake and precisely what someone who wants to make the same mistakes wants you to think.

[fantastic-nonsense]

I wouldn't mind the heavy focus on warrior Amazons so much if they were allowed to be competent instead of just being used as red shirt cannon fodder. But it seems DC only hypes up the Amazons as deadly fighters so other characters can look more impressive when they take them down.

Oh and Happy New Year.

Happy New Year! Forgive me if I use your ask to talk about a piece of the Wonder Woman mythos I've wanted to discuss for some time, because your complaints offered me the perfect segue to write a nice, in-depth meta on it and I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Honestly, I think a lot of people (both creatives and readers) either don't know, forget, or fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the Amazons' warrior status. So they often get reduced to "deadly warriors who strike first," "supposedly deadly but generally incompetent warriors when outside of their own books," or "militant man-haters" by a lot of people. None of which are true.

The Amazons are incredibly competent warriors and have been since Marston's first portrayal of them in the 1940s, so I don't inherently mind them being shown as such. However, where people get bogged down is insisting that they be shown as deadly and trigger-happy offensive fighters who are happy to strike first and hard, which fundamentally goes against the philosophy and thematic messaging built into Amazonian lore.

DC's Amazonia, lore-wise, is traditionally framed as an Aphrodite vs. Ares "peace and love vs. violence and war" story. In Marston's original rendition of the Amazon's backstory Aphrodite is not only their patron goddess but also their sole creator; it was only after Crisis on Infinite Earths and George Perez's long-overdue lore expansions that the rest of the goddesses became co-creators and co-patrons of the Amazons. Regardless, Ares and his domain are consistently invoked as what the Amazons don't want to be like or engage in. That behavior is the antithesis of what Amazons are supposed to be. This lore informs literally everything about how the Amazons view both their combat abilities and their duty to the goddesses.

The contemporary Amazons are, for the most part, women who died in terrible and traumatic ways at the hands of men (usually through domestic violence, murder, or as conquests of war). When the goddesses created the Amazons by reincarnating these women via the Well of Souls, they specifically charged them to become their champions. And what did these goddesses want? They explicitly wanted justice and protection for women in a violently patriarchial world. The Amazons being warriors is thus specifically tied to an understanding of necessary self-defense and protection (both of themselves and other women), not offense.

Which of course is what lands the Amazons on Themyscira in the first place: invoking the goddesses' ire by not obeying these commands after their rebellion against their enslavement by Heracles and his men crosses the line from the necessary battle to achieve their liberation into wanton violence and revenge:

"The battered Hippolyta prayed to her goddesses and found the courage and inspiration to free herself. Athena had reminded Hippolyta of the Amazons' purpose and mission—but not all of the Amazons remembered. Or cared. They yearned for vengeance. For retribution against those who violated them...and under Antiope, many found it." -Wonder Woman: Our Worlds at War (2001)

And as Hippolyta and Menalippe tell Antiope:

"No, Antiope. Never vengeance; never again!" /// "That is Ares' way, Antiope. We achieve no glory by embracing the Dark God's power!" -Wonder Woman (1987) #1

The Amazon way is promoting a society based on love, equality, truth, and peaceful conflict resolution, not vengeance and violent combat. It's a philosophy that defines Diana's mission in Man's World as an ambassador, teacher, and living example of her peoples' way of life:

Enraptured, they listen to her dissertation on equality between the sexes, tolerance, peaceful coexistence. Social Philosophy 101, Amazon Style. -Wonder Woman (1987) #170

Diana's gods-given mission was to spread the Amazonian ideals of conciliation—to give those living in the World of Man the proper tools to peacefully coexist with each other. It was her life's purpose to teach the possibilities of respect and love by being a living example of an upbringing founded in those ideals.

Truth-seeking, diplomacy, and peace are the Amazonian way of dealing with conflict, not violence. And when you are forced to engage in combat (and you should be prepared for that eventuality because sometimes it will happen), your goal should be self-defense and de-escalation, not offense and prolonging the conflict longer than necessary.

This is also, as an aside, why Diana (and specifically Diana in her capacity as Wonder Woman) does not usually carry offensive weapons like a sword and why her primary "weapons" are the Lasso of Truth and protective bracelets. She's the official representative of her peoples' culture and personally deeply believes in that cultural philosophy. Other Amazons have different views on the matter, including her mother, but Diana grew up completely separated from the World of Man and fully immersed in that belief system, which deeply informs how she views her mission as Wonder Woman.

Personally, I think many (but not all) of the problems re: depicting the Amazons in the modern era come from various writers attempting to solve contradictions that don't exist. They see "kickass trained warriors living peacefully on an island" and see that as a contradiction they have to solve: why do they train if they're pacifists? Why do they fight if they're peaceful? In reality, it's not a contradiction: their status as warriors and champions is specifically tied to self-defense and protection (both of themselves and others), but given the choice they don't want to have to take up arms to protect people because that goes against their fundamental cultural philosophy. Outsiders and meddlesome gods are the ones who force them to do that! What they want is for everyone to be treated with love, respect, and understanding so they don't have to!

And there's a lot of problematic elements built into the concept's execution, but this is the core thesis behind the split between Hippolyta's Themyscirans and Antiope's Bana-Mighdall. The Themysciran Amazons have had their fill of violence and war; they just want to live in peace. But a) they were specifically tasked with guarding Doom's Doorway when they were taken to the island, a duty which necessitates perfect combat readiness, and b) their history is littered with examples of people refusing to leave them alone. So they train, in case someone decides to take shots at them, but otherwise live in peaceful isolation. Meanwhile, the Banas looked at that same shared history and went "we need to take the fight to the outside world. Offense is the best defense, and the only way to protect ourselves and the other women of the world is to actively seek vengeance for the violence women face." So they chose to actively intervene in Man's World, fighting constant battles and exacting revenge for any women mistreated at the hands of men.

...which is also why Artemis was such a necessary and interesting addition to the Wonder Woman mythos (even if she's often handled...poorly), because she and Diana represent two diametrically opposed views of how to protect and represent both their cultures and the women of Man's World, but that's a rant for a different time.

Anyway, the Themysciran Amazons' martial pacifism as a cultural value isn't a contradiction; it's one way of looking at a history filled with violence and victimization and saying "no more." And it's a pretty subversive way of doing so, which (well-written) comics tend to note!

So yes, the "Amazons are warriors" mentality has always been there and has been solidly emphasized at various points throughout Wonder Woman's history, and it should be acknowledged and shown that they're all incredibly competent in battle when they're forced to engage in it. But the way in which it gets emphasized is what defines whether a writer has a solid understanding of the history and baggage that comes with depicting the Amazonian struggle and the socio-political issues embedded in their lore. And unfortunately...many writers just don't seem to get it.

[shouldprobablybereading]

I haven’t started reading again yet but there has been like 15 mentions of renarin reminding someone of or acting like dalinar I lowkey hope it’s implying he’s gonna take up the position after dalinar gets killed of from the horrible luck of being 30+ and a protagonist

[chuluoyi]

the snort i let out 😭

[oreolesbian]

the absolute lack of media literacy from people who haven’t even seen oppenheimer is making my head spin but whatever

[technicalthinker]

Seong Gi-hun | Would've, Could've, Should've

"The tomb won't close, stained glass windows in my mind, I regret you all the time"

[carnivalls]

Killing myself a thousand times over. Do I want the setting of Good Intentions to be past based (fantasy greece meets the industrial revolution) or futuristic (fantasy greece meets itself after a stupidly ambiguous amount of years)

[rhysintherain]

@blackjackkent's liveblog of BG3 has inspired So Many Thoughts about the Emperor and Raphael and how they compare as characters.

It's come up that the Emperor's character writing could be intended to portray very different motivations based on how the player character responds to it, but personally I don't think that's it. At its core, I think the Emperor is being honest about its motivations: it only wants to survive. What it's not saying is that it will do anything to achieve that end, at the cost of anyone in its way. And the best tool it has to do that is the protagonist.

Its conversations with the protagonist always remind me of abusive relationship dynamics. it plays nice as long as that works, and changes tactics when nice doesn't get what it wants. It constantly reminds you that you need each other, that you couldn't survive without it, that it is the only one you can trust. It offers moments of vulnerability to lure you in, then tries to cut you off from any allies or courses of action it doesn't approve of.

The thing about abusive relationships is that they only turn violent and confrontational when the abuser doesn't get their way. Violence is a last resort, and most abusers prefer to manipulate people without it. Some people go years without discovering their abuser has the capacity for violence, because they never confront them on the control they exert.

And that's exactly how the Emperor relates to the protagonist. If you never question it, never choose a path it doesn't like, you never get pushback. As long as you play by its rules it has no reason to change tactics, because what it's doing is working.

It's only when the protagonist's aims clearly don't match its own that it resorts to threats. It's only when you call the Emperor's bluff, tell it you know it doesn't care about you, that it shows you the truth about its relationship with Stelmane.

Because the truth is, it only cares about its own survival and freedom. And it's very skilled at the game it's playing. It has a profound ability to judge what the protagonist needs to hear, and show them what they want to see. If you want to see a friend who transcends what a mind flayer is supposed to be, it plays that part flawlessly. If you see through that, it has other methods of control at its disposal.

And the Emperor is brilliantly written as a manipulator. It can convince you that it's been on your side all along. It leaves just enough doubt that you might never know the truth. It preys on trust, and exploits the protagonist's willingness to believe in the inherent goodness of people. It expresses trust and vulnerability to the protagonist, anticipating that they will return that trust in response, regardless of whether it can be trusted.

And the cool thing about Raphael is that he's a very similar type of character. He also knows that being nice gets you further than being dangerous. The difference between them is that Raphael isn't quite as good at it: he has a temper, and is quicker to drop the mask. He has an ego that won't let him tolerate even the slightest resistance without breaking character. He believes in bribery over trust, and it makes his act easier to see through. The protagonist can express the same doubt in both of them and get threats from Raphael and disappointment from the Emperor, which pushes them away from one and towards the other.

And one of the striking things about BG3 is the sheer range of dangerous people it throws at your party. You have the tyrant queen, who took power through betrayal and maintains it through disinformation. The power-hungry boss, who offers what you want only until his rise to power is threatened. The abusive parent, who sees his children as possessions who exist to entertain him. The political climber, who treats his loyalists as pawns in a long game of personal gain. The sadistic elite, who's never had to hide her cruelty to those she controls because that's what authority means in her social circle. The loving father, who cares so little for the rest of the world he'd burn it all down to keep his daughter safe.

It's all excellent writing, but the Emperor might be the masterpiece. You can play out the whole story without clearly seeing how it fits the pattern. It can be your loyal partner, standing at your side and protecting you from all those dangerous people.

But it doesn't have to be. If you question its protection and loyalty, it can also be your worst enemy, determined to use all your shared struggles and deepest secrets to tear you apart.

[chibishortdeath]

Ok so yesterday I was looking up Simon (common occurrence) cause I was drawing him (another common occurrence, drawing isn’t finished yet) and a took a little better of a look at his armor plate from Simon’s Quest and the designs on it.

So—

These gold patterns are very swooshy, fluid shapes with some very spikey, hooked sections. They also have gems inlaid in three places on the chest right at the ends and center of the design, with little circles coming off of it dedicated to them specifically. And it sounds weird, but this looks like a floral design to me, or at least some kind of plantlike. Very stylized for sure, but in the way that the fleur de lis is supposed to be a lily and doesn’t look exactly like one.

So at like uh midnight a bit back I looked up some stylized plants in art and whatnot and boy was that a hard search because google doesn’t know what you mean by “floral stylized in a similar way to the fleur de lis” and the amount of AI that comes up under armor designs specifically doesn’t help. Anyway, two things it could be that I ran into—

It could be a very simplified depiction of acanthus leaves, which are sometimes depicted more like actual leaves of a real plant, but sometimes are just swooping curves with some spikiness on them. They often times also have the motif of three points of interest (usually buds or a bloom) that line up fairly well with the three gems and were common for things like metalworking and gilding. It’s a fair match, not super great since it’s not exact, but considering there’s no distinct flowers, a ok-ish bet. My biggest thing with it, even if the symbolism would be so fitting and cool, is that they’re typically depicted way more clustered and there’s usually not very much of an open space, especially on a breastplate like that.

I also ran into other armors from the time period (or at least the websites said they were) with other closer looking floral designs and had to try to find out what these were on my own. This one in particular caught my eye as a little bit closer.

One seems to be a gladiolus, and the symbolism here works out, it’s pretty standard stuff that’d be on armor. However, again, the Simon’s quest armor does not have very distinct blooms, more similar to simplified buds, so it’s hard to tell.

There’s also a possibility this could be roses, since those tends to have thorns as a main focal point and the hooked parts look thorny, or it could be a combination of multiple flowers I’m just not running into. Of course, I know the original artist likely did not mean anything in particular by this design other than “cool old looking armor design”, BUUUUT— I want to know what looks like closest to it to uh take the flower symbolism for myself hehe :3.

If anyone else has more knowledge on ye olden armor and art styles than I do, do pop up and tell me your thoughts on what this pattern looks like to you!!!

[burningcheese-merchant]

Ok fuck it. Fuck it I need to rant. I'm disappointed to the high heavens. This just looks like X and Y again. It just looks like they finally bothered to get off their asses and make Pokémon Z like everyone begged for 10+ years ago and they're trying to relabel it as a Legends game. You know what the word "legend" means? It means OLD!!! It's a fantastical tale of days long past! PAST! NOT FUTURE! Why are we in the future!!! There are no legends about the damn future, only the past!!!

How cool would it have been if we were in the Pokémon equivalent of Napoleonic France? If the protagonist was from a lower-middle-class family (maybe even lower, a genuinely struggling protagonist would be interesting, especially within this time period), who set out with their Pokémon to earn money to help out, only to end up caught in the middle of a nationwide shitstorm? What if you ventured throughout the region, through the beaches and mountains and beautiful French/Kalosian countryside, all the way to Paris/Lumiose, where the societal rot is at its most obvious and damning? What if the "evil team" wasn't evil at first, just a band of revolutionaries with their hearts in the right place, seeking change and justice for the broke and starving public against the laziness and corruption of the self-absorbed elite? What if the villain was the king at first, because he and the other royals really are as awful as they're stated to be? What if there were (optional, because not everyone was against the French monarchy) side quests to help spread revolutionary propaganda or help the rebels earn money, gather resources, toughen up their Pokémon in preparation for future battles against the royals? Hell, what if there was a rival group of royalists who acted as the rebels' foil, whom you can also help and hinder as much or as little as you liked?

What if there was an honest-to-God violent coup where people and Pokémon stormed the royal palace and destroy everything in sight (and you could be there, battling guards or something)? What if the king was challenged to a battle and lost miserably, proving once and for all how weak and pathetic he is, and thus overthrown and exiled (can't execute him, this franchise is too cowardly to evolve past being milquetoast kiddie shit)? What if the rebel leader, with his dear Empoleon beside him, took his place and crowned himself emperor right then and there, to the overwhelming joy of his followers and sympathizers, dismay of his opponents, and whatever it is the player chooses to feel, because there should be a genuine undercurrent of historical, political and philosophical discussion about all of this throughout the story that encourages us to form our own thoughts and opinions about the situation?

Only for the rebel leader, the Napoleon figure, to turn out worse than the king ever was, and his close subordinates immediately going mad with their newfound power and practically destroying the country. Then they really ARE the evil team for real this time, because they became the tyrants they sought to destroy, and depending on the player's past actions, it might partially be their fault that they succeeded. Imagine the Pokémon equivalent of the fucking Reign of Terror. People and Pokémon being attacked, imprisoned, exiled (again, they're too chickenshit to kill people. Tens of thousands died during the REAL Reign of Terror). Imagine your new mission going from trying to flee Lumiose and go home (only to fail, because they won't let anyone leave outside of being formally exiled out of fear/paranoia about uncontrolled dissidents) to taking an active role against the new regime, battling police to bust innocents out of jail, reuniting families and friends torn apart by fear and force? Imagine a heated battle against the stand-in for Maximilien Robespierre to help put an end to the madness!!! What if you went to libraries and picked up newspapers and listened to the telegraph and discovered everything has been censored in some way? What if you went into houses and found depressed wives and mothers and sisters and daughters, and opened letters from the men in their families (and their Pokémon, too) who were conscripted into the Kalosian army because the Emperor is trying to wage wars against neighboring regions to fulfill territorial ambitions (which actually did happen, Napoleon's France was constantly at war, which majorly tanked the economy because all the men were sent off to die or be horrifically injured. Remember when they tried to invade Russia? Over half a million troops went, barely 1/6 of them came back)? The climax of the story + defeat of the Emperor in battle can be a nod to the Battle of Waterloo!!! The post-game can have the player looking for runaway rebels like how you hunted for the Sages in post-game Black and White! What if there was a limited time mystery gift event where you could win a ferry ticket to the island the former Emperor is imprisoned on, JUST LIKE THE ACTUAL NAPOLEON, and there was a final cutscene between you and him where you discuss everything that happened and he asserts that he did what he had to and he still believes that he was acting in Kalos's best interest!!! Because many of the revolutionaries really did think that way, they believed they were doing right by France!!! Even when they jailed and murdered thousands of innocent people!!!

But no, we don't get cool shit like that, we get AZ running a fucking inn for whatever reason and an "urban redevelopment plan" that's literally just "let the Pokémon trash half the city with zero repercussions or any consideration for the homes and businesses in the areas they overrun". What the fuck man

[pain-is-too-tired]

I keep seeing people say "historians are gonna skip this generation" on like goofy meme videos and in just like ???

Do y'all think older generations didn't have their own goofy and fun things in the media they had?

Like i saw this comment on a video of a 3d animated rat dancing to Caramelldansen???

If that's all it took for historians to skip a generation the history books would be like 5 pages- hdgdg

People always been goofy!! They always been silly!!! They made songs about liking bananas cause they had no bones!!! They named things after politicians out of spite!!! They had their own shitpost!! They've wrote funny things on their own versions of bathroom stalls!!! They wrote self insert fics based off the Bible of where they sent those they hated to hell that we now read in English!!!

Why do y'all think English class is often connected to history class lessons?

If anything historians are gonna have a field day seeing how we dealt with what came our way. Edits of politicians to Hot To Go is gonna be our version of political cartoon strips- along with our actual political cartoon trips!!

Sorry for the rant but I hate how quick we are too look down on generation for...us having fun? Instead of looking at what's going on around us to see why we react to things the way we do. They're not gonna look at our dancing rats and go "yeah this few decades ain't worth our time"

Please I'm begging y'all look into more history other than wars and political stuff. People weren't just npcs, they were like us. They were people.

[veggiecorner]

I saw someone on Twitter talk about how BOTW-verse Zelda wouldn't have kids, which would end the goddess bloodline and now it has me thinking like....did every Zelda...always end up having kids? For thousands of years? Was the bloodline continuous since Skyward Sword Zelda (which has to be like...hundreds of thousands of years AT LEAST at this point). It's interesting to think about in a scenario where a Zelda doesn't manage to have kids....how does the bloodline come back...

[imminent-danger-came]

YOU think MK is a selfless forgiving good boi mc. I think he's self-centered, but that doesn't devalue the good deeds that happen as a result. We are not the same

[inkandpaintsnowleopard]

So. Thoughts on the short?

Me and the friend who got me into SM watched it during lunch at school today and we were freaking out. When the credits hit we shrieked at the top of our lungs so loud that we accidentally single handedly overwhelmed our autistic friend. It was ok ig.

I WENT THROUGH AND TOOK SCREENSHOTS OF ALMOST EVERY SINGLE FROM THAT END BIT CUZ LIKE UM????? THE LORE DROPS WERE ABSOLUTELY INSANE WITH THIS ONE LIKE JESUS CHRIST THAT LAST IMAGE IS GONNA HAUNT ME IN MY DREAMS

NOW MY WHOLE CAMERA ROLL IS JUST ALL THE MOMENTS

I cannot express my sheer joy and lowkey frustration at seeing younger Skid and Pump. Like. I thought we wouldn’t get something like this until like 2030. And yet that’s not the way I’ve been drawing them for this entire year so I’m just. Rrrrmmmmmmmmm but I still love it I love it so much like dude I will never be able to express

AH

Oh yeah, also me and that friend were Skid and Pump for Halloween today, something we decided on at the beginning of October last year lol. But we did it, and we got occasionally recognized :D

[theworldiswhispering]

Bro the Soviety Union development and government is so dang interesting