#period set media

[sequencer987]

I kind of hate how ridiculously hostile people get when someone mentions historical accuracy in period set media.

Like people will dogpile and mock you for having the audacity to actually want accurate clothing/culture/architecture etc.

“Who cares about historical accuracy if the story is good?” Idk sometimes historical accuracy actually allows for a much more interesting story than just slotting in the generic theme park version of your setting; plus period media that actually gives a shit about where and when it takes place is frustratingly rare (especially for video games).

Like, the way AC Odyssey and RDR2 meticulously recreate the look and feel of the eras they’re set in is legit astounding. It absolutely does make the games better.

This post is about Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.

[sequencer987]

I really want more slice of life historical fiction. History is just what Right Now used to look like. I feel like people get the impression that the past was somehow innately more “epic” than today.

I wanna see more media that leans into the fact that there have always been slow days in human society. People lived day to day back then just like they do now.

I’m gonna pitch a show as “like Game of Thrones but even more gritty and realistic” and then it’s nothing but a baron handling land estimates and organizing road repairs and stuff. There’ll be an entire episode about how a peasant gets brought to court for letting milk cattle graze on communal pastureland even though it’s supposed to be reserved for draft animals.

[wonder-worker]

Thinking about Elizabeth Woodville as a gothic heroine is making me go insane. She entered the story by overturning existing social structures, provoking both ire and fascination. She married into a dynasty doomed to eat itself alive. She was repeatedly associated with the supernatural, both in terms of love and death. Her life was shaped entirely by uncanny repetitions - two marriages, two widowhoods, two depositions, two flights to sanctuary, two ultimate reclamations, all paralleling and ricocheting off each other. Her plight after 1483 exposed the true rot at the heart of the monarchy - the trappings of royalty pulled away to reveal nothing, a never-ending cycle of betrayal and war, the price of power being the (literal) blood of children. She lived past the end of her family name, she lived past the end of her myth. She ended her life in a deeply anomalous position, half-in and half-out of royal society. She was both a haunting tragedy and the ultimate survivor who was finally free.

[the-golden-vanity]

The thing about watching Hornblower is that it’s from the '90s. This can apply to a lot of things about it, from the cheesy explosion special effects to the candy-apple-red fake blood, but right now it's about a moment that left me feeling some truly indescribable emotions.

(I'm trying to talk about a moment that came out of nowhere for me without giving away any spoilers, so I'm sorry for the intentional vagueness, but if you haven't seen the show yet, you will thank me later.)

I just watched two of the characters in this show have a Big Damn Moment. The music was dramatic, the actors were beautiful, the time would never come again—and while the part of me that has seen more recent boat media was going, "oh my god, are they gonna kiss?" the part of me that is A Queer Millennial knew that a show from the '90s would never let that happen. Alas, compulsory heterosexuality strikes even in the historico-fictional Royal Navy. 😔

[phantomoftheorpheum]

listen, I just love how much physical agency Belle is given in her romantic scenes with Jack. it's just little things about how the scenes are directed and shot, but it's lovely.

[dadbastiandisaster]

What is it about Black Butler that sticks with you so much? Like, I read all of death note about the same time as I watched Black Butler for the first time, and much as I have boundless love for the series it just didn’t alter my brain chemistry on the same level as Black Butler did. I have a another friend who has broadly moved on from a lot of her old fandoms but is still in the kuro fandom. What is it about kuro?

[slavicafire]

ultimately though, watching anything set in the interwar period is so tragic - because you as a viewer know both what came before and what comes right after. it looms over the characters - they are inherently intertwined with it all - but you as a viewer know. no number of fascinating plots and interesting characters and great cabaret sequences have any power to put even some semblance of distance between you and that knowledge

[dullahandyke]

Films good movies good banshees of inisherin was good

[elboxitracio]

Now why would my dad, this cishet construction worker pushing 60 who spend his life watching only action movies and the occasional comedy movie, suddenly got VERY into mostly romantic K-dramas ??

[robertsbarbie]

it’s the mcu so really what can you expect but it’s so unbelievably fucked up to me that they do not give a genuine single fuck about the art they’re making, like it is just commercial bullshit at this point and i just think it sucks because they were starting to make movies and invest in projects of substance and meaning with complex villains and storylines that felt real and genuine but they didn’t invest in them at all, they were shit on marketing the new phase and then were surprised the movies did poorly. like i’m still pissed at the shit they pulled with the Marvels bouncing its release constantly and any promo they did have lined up went through 4 months before the movie came out and then they were like ‘welp no one wants to see female superheroes i guess’ WHAT? and now they’re setting sam wilson up to fail by including a character that has been spoken out against from the start all while bringing back RDJ and the russo brothers to “fix” a franchise they stopped giving a true shit about 5 years ago. it’s maddening!

[always-a-joyful-note]

I've been watching Idolish7 and though I suspect we'll probably get some sort of explanation of why Kujo the elder is literally insane, it's not gonna convince me of anything regarding him. I mean, even narratively speaking, the fact that the only two people who followed him were literal children driven to a desperate corner through family debts while every other adult (old Re:Vale, Sogo's uncle, and even probably Zero himself) refused him.....well. That says nothing good about the man no matter how tragic and desperate his reason is and someone please save Aya and Tenn or tell me they do or -

[sequencer987]

One of the things I realized when playing RDR2 is that San Denis really is one of the only depictions of a late 19th century city in an open world game.

Tbh I kinda just want an open world crime game set in 1890s New York. One with the same level of attention to historical detail as RDR2. I’m tired of the present day stasis that so many open world crime games are stuck in.

Tbh another real breath of fresh air with RDR2 is that it just allowed itself to be set in the historical Wild West. It didn’t feel the need to pull any Steampunk or Sci Fi bullshit.

Like it’s rare to even get an exact year for video game westerns; but RDR2 is so specifically set in the summer and autumn of 1899. It’s set in a real year, and it actually has things to say about its respective time period as a result.

It is honestly more subversive to just have your video game set in the regular 1800s than to fill it with werewolves and steampunk bullshit.

(Before someone willfully misreads this post as me being a killjoy, enjoy your steampunk and Victorian Halloween monsters all you want. It’s just that the market is so fucking oversaturated with that stuff, and there honestly aren’t a lot of open world narrative driven games that just do historical settings).

[cozymochi]

never wrong 💃

[interstellar-elf]

Sometimes I think about how Minority Report predicted the PATRIOT ACT, being a movie that was made before, during and after the events of 9/11 and released a few months before the PATRIOT ACT was passed.

[ickypuppi3]

“billy’s homophobic” has to be one of the most unserious takes

[fluentisonus]

the thing about master and commander as boat media is there's lots of media that's set on boats but very rarely is it actually about the boats themselves & how they run & what living on them is like. most of the time the boats just feel like a piece of scenery to stand on & use for plot points but not something to continuously interact with. whereas m&c gets that a ship is a living organism made up of a symbiotic relationship between a vessel and a huge number of sailors that's always moving & working & healing itself