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Wow I watched the first episode of Spartacus and turned it off half way through because it looked like a bad 300 knockoff
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Sep 27, 2020 15:58
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CommonShore posted:Wow I watched the first episode of Spartacus and turned it off half way through because it looked like a bad 300 knockoff embrace the abs and keep going like the worst you can say about it is that it is a good 300 knockoff.
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Sep 27, 2020 16:19
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Power Khan posted:What is this based on, any particular find or local illustrations? Looks like they ripped it straight from the Orlat plaques Korean culture from this period (the first half of the first millennium) is pretty strongly influenced by steppe culture so the resemblance isn't coincidental, but nearly-complete sets of the armor have been excavated in a couple of places in Korea, both from Baekje and Silla:    There's also a whole bunch of depictions of cataphracts in the Goguryeo tomb murals:  Along with some much cruder ones and some statues from Silla. I think that reconstruction is a composite of a few rather than being based on any one of them though. fe: On second thought I'm not sure that one is as accurate as the one in the museum itself, which seems to be directly based on the Silla cataphract; in the reconstruction on the live horse, he's wearing a king's crown so it's probably based on Cheonmachong, the "Heavenly Horse Tomb," which was a royal tomb find of a Silla king buried along with full horse regalia, but that one wasn't a cataphract.
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Sep 27, 2020 16:59
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Chopstix posted:Wait, is that show actually decent? The commercials and clips I’ve seen made me think it was a low budget lovely action series It's rad. Though again, I cannot emphasize enough that the first episodes are hot garbage. Persist and you will be rewarded.
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Sep 27, 2020 17:53
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CommonShore posted:Wow I watched the first episode of Spartacus and turned it off half way through because it looked like a bad 300 knockoff Sparticus is absolutely worth embracing the crazy and just rolling with it. It's Blood and Tits and Swears and Blood and Dicks and Abs and Blood and Sex and Blood The TV Show. It's not just a 300 knockoff, it's like if someone said "what if 300, but we gave it the plot of a Telenovela? And five or six seasons?" Like, a loving motif that crops up many times is huge oiled up dudes getting drunk and singing, shirtless, "my cock rages on!" It's just completely bugfuck insane. I'm not going to even comment about the historical accuracy, because at that point it's like going "well actually" in the Space X thread about Xwings and Tie Fighters. It is best enjoyed with cheap beer. I think I do a rew-watch of it about every three years or so.
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Sep 27, 2020 18:59
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Grand Fromage posted:Was there ever an article about the production of Spartacus? It's baffling how terrible the first episodes are compared to the entire rest of the show. I don't know what changed after the first few episodes, but there was a major production gear shift in between seasons 1 and 3. The whole reason that Season 2 is a prequel season (and arguably one of the stronger seasons for it, tbh) is that the actor who played Sparticus in S1 got cancer. One of those awful fast onset ones that just kills you loving dead. So they made S2 a prequel season and used the gap to make it less jarring in S3 when some other dude walked on screen and everyone went "why yes, hello Sparticus, the man named Sparticus who I know quite well and recognize as my friend, Sparticus."
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Sep 27, 2020 19:01
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Chopstix posted:Wait, is that show actually decent? The commercials and clips I’ve seen made me think it was a low budget lovely action series It's great. There's got to be a piece out there that goes into more detail because the whole show's timeline had a few things happen. The first ~four episodes were odd and just not that enticing, but then one of the episodes just blew everything up. The show took off, and everyone I talked to had the same experience watching the show. Then the main actor, Andy Whitfield (who I thought was integral to the show's becoming great) was diagnosed with cancer somewhere near the end of season one. He ended up being replaced by Liam McIntyre who while good never seemed to take over the role like Whitfield did. And I always get all these guys confused with Sam Worthington cuz my god they must be the quintessential vision of hollywood's opinion of what greco-roman men look like.
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Sep 27, 2020 20:22
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Cyrano4747 posted:Sparticus is absolutely worth embracing the crazy and just rolling with it. It's Blood and Tits and Swears and Blood and Dicks and Abs and Blood and Sex and Blood The TV Show. It's not just a 300 knockoff, it's like if someone said "what if 300, but we gave it the plot of a Telenovela? And five or six seasons?" Yeah the first season is very tight with a nice last episode iirc
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Sep 27, 2020 21:39
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downout posted:It's great. There's got to be a piece out there that goes into more detail because the whole show's timeline had a few things happen. The first ~four episodes were odd and just not that enticing, but then one of the episodes just blew everything up. The show took off, and everyone I talked to had the same experience watching the show. Then the main actor, Andy Whitfield (who I thought was integral to the show's becoming great) was diagnosed with cancer somewhere near the end of season one. He ended up being replaced by Liam McIntyre who while good never seemed to take over the role like Whitfield did. And I always get all these guys confused with Sam Worthington cuz my god they must be the quintessential vision of hollywood's opinion of what greco-roman men look like. Nu-Spartacus is OK but from S2 on Crixus pretty much becomes the new protagonist. Manu Bennett is loving great at just chewing the scenery and being all around bonkers and he steals every scene he's in. The Doctore also gets fleshed out in a major way. Basically all the secondary cast were great.
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Sep 27, 2020 21:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:Like, a loving motif that crops up many times is huge oiled up dudes getting drunk and singing, shirtless, "my cock rages on!" While maybe not strictly accurate, it certainly seems to fit the spirit of the lewd Roman graffiti.
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Sep 27, 2020 21:49
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One of the things that really gets me about the History of Byzantium podcast is just how much the dude loves Byzantium. That probably sounds weird, but he mentions a couple times during the 7th/8th century episodes how he feels like he's rooting for them, and has been poo poo-talking how evil the Normans are for the entirety of the 11th century episodes  It's cool he wears his bias on his shoulder but still.
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Sep 27, 2020 22:21
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I feel like that's kind of part and partial to just immersing yourself in any kind of political/social history. I definitely tend to start rooting for the figures/cultures I read about, even at times when they're straight up enemies of ones that I'd felt for in the past.
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Sep 27, 2020 22:34
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Koramei posted:Korean culture from this period (the first half of the first millennium) is pretty strongly influenced by steppe culture so the resemblance isn't coincidental, but nearly-complete sets of the armor have been excavated in a couple of places in Korea, both from Baekje and Silla: Hm nice. I wasn't aware that there's sets that were found
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Sep 27, 2020 22:43
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Beamed posted:One of the things that really gets me about the History of Byzantium podcast is just how much the dude loves Byzantium. That probably sounds weird, but he mentions a couple times during the 7th/8th century episodes how he feels like he's rooting for them, and has been poo poo-talking how evil the Normans are for the entirety of the 11th century episodes It's great that he loves the byzantines, but it's gonna make the last hundred years or so of the series real hard to listen to.
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Sep 27, 2020 23:01
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Or really great 
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Sep 27, 2020 23:03
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Koramei posted:I feel like that's kind of part and partial to just immersing yourself in any kind of political/social history. I definitely tend to start rooting for the figures/cultures I read about, even at times when they're straight up enemies of ones that I'd felt for in the past. Rapidly switching between reading about Korean and Japanese history is extra fun for that. Especially when you're in the 19th century and their relationship hasn't completely broken down yet.
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Sep 27, 2020 23:41
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I usually find myself subconsciously rooting for whoever the focus of a historical work is. Even if they were the opponent of the last thing I read. Like you want Rome to win until you start reading The history of the Goths or something and suddenly you start saying "Go Odoacer! teach those Roman losers a lesson!". It's a thing you always have to be on the watch for.
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Sep 28, 2020 01:41
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narrative history, basically by definition, has to have a point of view. a rooting interest is a natural offshoot of that. i feel like robin is very open about that and does a decent job of broadening the perspective during the end-of-the-century overviews. i know my hostile feelings toward the arabs loving up my man heraclius in the narrative warmed a whole lot when robin went into some depth on their origins in later episodes.
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Sep 28, 2020 02:17
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I try to step back every so often because otherwise you end up conflating the ruling class with the whole of the population. If you zoom in close enough, I can understand sympathizing with the lives of individual characters, but the state itself isn't really even something I want to sympathize with.
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Sep 28, 2020 02:42
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SlothfulCobra posted:I try to step back every so often because otherwise you end up conflating the ruling class with the whole of the population. Its something I've noticed, as a casual history viewer, that a lot of ancient history seems to be some form of "king a did this, and then he died and king b did this until - twist! - his nobles killed him and now there's a new king c who..." Understandable, but it definitely makes things a little hard to follow at times. A large part of this is probably my listening to too many podcasts, which by their nature don't have the time for too much detail (though I imagine a lot of it is that we don't have many details of ordinary people's lives in those times).
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Sep 28, 2020 03:31
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Sarrisan posted:(though I imagine a lot of it is that we don't have many details of ordinary people's lives in those times). This is more of the problem. For most of history, all you can say about the lives of ordinary people is what you can infer from archaeology. There are exceptions of course but 90%+ of the written record is about the elites. Sometimes you get some bits and pieces about other classes in that. But there's not much. That doesn't mean we know nothing, there's all kinds of books you can find about the average Roman or whatever, but you rarely get the ability to just like, follow the life of a normal person the way you can do with figures like Julius Caesar.
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Sep 28, 2020 03:39
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One of my favorite bits of Caesar is that it's packaged with some random low-level officer's account of the Spanish campaign and he has no idea how to tell a compelling narrative so he just does a stream of consciousness of events he witnessed and mentions all kinds of details of what life was like for a roman soldier that Caesar himself didn't write down, because he's a better writer
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Sep 28, 2020 05:02
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well I will watch Spartacus. we just got a stationary bike so that'll be my media.
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Sep 28, 2020 05:09
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Koramei posted:I feel like that's kind of part and partial to just immersing yourself in any kind of political/social history. I definitely tend to start rooting for the figures/cultures I read about, even at times when they're straight up enemies of ones that I'd felt for in the past. Yeah, and I find myself almost expecting that bad events can be corrected. Like maybe the Black Death won't appear and kill a third of the population this time? But of course it will
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Sep 28, 2020 21:32
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Watch him get to 1204 and just start recounting a game of Crusader Kings
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Sep 28, 2020 21:55
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Bongo Bill posted:What's your favorite tolerably accurate work of fiction set in the period of ancient or ancient-ish history you find most interesting? Longest Day in Chang'an is a pretty remarkable series released last year in China. Has a pretty interesting representation of Tang Dynasty China, which seems at least more accurate than a lot of other period dramas in Asia. Seems to be available on Amazon Prime and various Youtube channels. Their costume and armor/weapons department is on point.  
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Sep 29, 2020 03:58
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I know the guy who made these sets. He was doing individual small orders, but he hit it big with this movie. Extra lol: The western name that he picked is Caesar
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Sep 29, 2020 09:39
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Power Khan posted:Extra lol: The western name that he picked is Caesar I mean at least that's a name, most of my Chinese teachers chose... Unique western names. My favorites being Bark (as in the noise a dog makes) and Samanfer (she picked it before she knew English and just stuck with it because why not)
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Sep 29, 2020 11:01
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Are those infantry dudes carrying...muskets? In the 8th century AD?
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Sep 29, 2020 12:42
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feedmegin posted:Are those infantry dudes carrying...muskets? In the 8th century AD? Surely not, at this point gunpowder is still a byproduct of Daoist immortality medicine alchemy. Military gunpowder use is a Song thing Also they just look like sticks to me. Chinese lictors?
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Sep 29, 2020 13:08
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feedmegin posted:Are those infantry dudes carrying...muskets? In the 8th century AD? I rewatched the scene, they’re just big crowd clearing sticks to disperse the rabble.
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Sep 29, 2020 16:19
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Don Gato posted:I mean at least that's a name, most of my Chinese teachers chose... Unique western names. My favorites being Bark (as in the noise a dog makes) and Samanfer (she picked it before she knew English and just stuck with it because why not) Eh, the second one is close enough to Samantha I don't see anything wrong with it.
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Sep 29, 2020 16:21
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Power Khan posted:I know the guy who made these sets. He was doing individual small orders, but he hit it big with this movie. That’s cool, any behind the scene stuff he can share about producing the armor and weapons?
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Sep 29, 2020 16:22
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Eh, the second one is close enough to Samantha I don't see anything wrong with it. I think that strongly depends on your accent
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Sep 29, 2020 16:36
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I watched the first few episodes of that Chang’an show ! It’s fun so far, particularly the .. Occidentalism directed at foreign religious terrorists from the exotic West. I wish they did a better job with the English subtitles though, it really feels like someone just plugged the chinese into google translate.
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Sep 29, 2020 17:53
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Delthalaz posted:I watched the first few episodes of that Chang’an show ! It’s fun so far, particularly the .. Occidentalism directed at foreign religious terrorists from the exotic West. I wish they did a better job with the English subtitles though, it really feels like someone just plugged the chinese into google translate. Speaking of, how far did Nestorianism spread east, and was it as prevalent as is shown in this show?
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Sep 29, 2020 20:05
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GlassEye-Boy posted:Speaking of, how far did Nestorianism spread east, and was it as prevalent as is shown in this show? It reached China! Wish I knew more about it. For those who haven’t watched, so far in episode 3 or 4, one of the arch terrorist dudes wanders into Chang’An disguised as Christian preacher, crucifix and all. Maybe more later! But most of the Occidentalism so far is directed at people coded as Muslims though they worship a flame or something
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Sep 29, 2020 20:27
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Zoroastrians presumably?
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Sep 29, 2020 20:34
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Yep, probably a Sogdian community.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:37
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Ah, of course, that makes sense. No idea how accurate the show is wrt Zoroastrians and trials by fire and molten metal
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Sep 29, 2020 20:43
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