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I think by the time of Don Quixote the ages of knights and chivalry have already faded into distant myth and legend, and the point at the start is that he's part of a crumbling old aristocracy stuck between a rock and a hard place; he owns a lot of fancy old stuff including a big house and a library, but he's got little to no income and if he takes an actual job he'll lose his noble status that exempts him from paying taxes (which would likely be high for said big house and library) so he's basically got nothing to do but read and fantasise til he loses touch with reality. A lot about the book would probably be called postmodern if it wasn't from hundreds of goddamn years ago. There's a lot of commentary about said books of chivalry, with the most educated people in turn (a barber and a curate) being asked by Quixote's family to burn the books hoping that'll snap him out of his madness, which they aren't keen on and end up stealing a couple of favourites for themselves. And you get things like the author intervening in the story, characters reading early parts of it, even pointing out supposed plot holes and cliffhangers left hanging. And IIRC the synthesis in the end is kinda that while Don Quixote may be crazy, he's also genuinely trying to live up to ideals of a knight that never really existed and there's certainly worse things to be. The unauthorised sequels and such could probably just be summed up as what we'd call adaptations and riffs that tend to be shallow and exaggerated, reducing characters to base and often inaccurate stereotypes based on the bits people remember the most; Don Quixote charging at windmills while Sancho Panza tries to rein him in, Sherlock Holmes wearing a deerstalker and holding a magnifying glass while Watson bumbles behind him, etc.
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Apr 4, 2021 05:56
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I'm just picturing LARP drama with real swords, how many knights fought over who got to be their favourite character, which nerds dressed up as obscure side characters, who was Merlin
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Apr 4, 2021 15:46
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steinrokkan posted:Death of the author isn't the unified theory of literary criticism, you aren't forced to always reflexively, blindly apply it, and neither should you. Someone did say 'Death of the Author was a suggestion, not a divine commandment.' The mediums available do influence the kind of stories told and sold in them, I'd wager. People who grow up reading full-length novels rather than short stories or self-contained tales are likely to try to write more novels than short stories. Same for people who watch plays at the ampitheatre, puppet shows at the fair, animal cruelty at the circus, etc.
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Apr 5, 2021 18:42
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That and I imagine a significant issue was that far less of your potential audience could actually read. And even those who could may prefer to listen to readings and watch performances.
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Apr 6, 2021 05:33
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Chinese history of governance is super long, complicated and fascinating, dealing with corruption and accountability across a massive empire and a palace that could get so isolated at least one Emperor basically had to develop his own spy corps just to get useful, reliable and unaltered information and messages in and out of the Forbidden City. And a fair few cases of 'Actually pay people in important jobs a living wage rather than expecting them to grift, embezzle and take bribes'. Brings up a historical question, which like many I expect to be hopelessly broad but elicit some interesting conversation anyway: The usual stereotype of medieval times is that outside of monks and priests, and them even barely, near everyone is illiterate, even sometimes royalty. Certainly there's a lot of ways a society was built around most people being semi-literate at best, though certainly not necessarily stupid, and where formal education was mostly a thing for the clergy and the children of the nobility and rich fuckers, and maybe certain religious communities. How common would some level of schooling be over time, not just as a dedicated path for clergy or merchants but something children with access to it would be expected to do? I imagine like a lot of things it goes back and forth and depends on where you are as well as when. I loosely recall Charlemagne supposedly being famously illiterate, but valuing educated advisors, and sitting in on lessons with the children.
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Apr 6, 2021 18:30
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Crab Dad posted:I still don’t understand how these people were not murdered by hungry workers more often. That occasionally did happen, though I imagine foremen understood that letting workers go hungry on the job, especially while doing strenuous, difficult manual labour and following complex plans, is a very bad idea. I'm told they'd sometimes be paid in beer. (presumably at the end of the day)
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Apr 7, 2021 14:24
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The Hercules cartoon had all kinds of deep cuts, it does seem like they were having a lot of fun with it.
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Apr 14, 2021 05:46
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Yeah, a lot of myths and stories use the gods as much or more as representatives of concepts than as actual people/characters. Though also that each god has their own domains and spheres of influence; you don't go praying to Jupiter Optimus Maximus for every little thing when you have more specific domains and household gods. Abrahamic monotheism seems to be more the odd one out, (and of course the Catholics love their saints) since Eastern spirituality seems to often be pretty similar, stuff like Shinto involving a spirit in pretty much everything you can think of, and the ideas of formalised, official heavenly government and bureaucracy with jobs, roles and spheres of influence that can get very specific.
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Apr 24, 2021 03:10
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Jamwad Hilder posted:neat thread. It's long so I'm not going to link them all. Summary: imperial Rome puts the dirt in fighting dirty.
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May 6, 2021 12:00
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Discussion about empire came up on a TG thread, with the Assyrians in mind where the issue comes up of presenting yourself as an unstoppable juggernaut is a bit of a binary thing; it works right up until it doesn't, especially if a plucky band of rebels manage to foil your scheme, then suddenly your entire external presentation is broken, and everyone you've pissed off (which is often everyone near you) is eager to gang up on you. This thread's description of Rome during the Punic Wars suddenly came to mind; they kinda did the opposite, simply refusing to give up and accept defeat long after the point where the invaders expect you to.
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May 8, 2021 17:11
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Longinus becomes the original vampire, clearly.
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May 25, 2021 13:02
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skasion posted:There’s something about the matter of fact tone of these medieval findings of fact that is incredibly hilarious to me. The Record always follows this specific format like “there was no wound on him, except only that his skull was utterly broken even unto the brain” or whatever That seems like it might be a syntax thing, like we'd put 'No other injuries' at the end instead. English changes a lot.
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Jun 1, 2021 16:44
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euphronius posted:- There was way way way more bars in Pompeii that seems reasonable so what we think are bars were probably just shops of some-kind. Or they were all drunks. Silver2195 posted:Right. The Latin word "smaragdus," for example, referred to any green gem, not just what we would call an emerald today. And that makes me wonder if the Chaos Emeralds infamously being all kinds of colours has something to do with that. Brawnfire posted:well dosh garnet. I had no idea I would not be surprised if that was part of the joke, given how much Steven Universe makes use of both the scientific and folklore/mythical associations with precious stones.
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Jun 15, 2021 10:54
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I'm not surprised it seems complicated, shooting arrows from a moving horse has to be an incredibly complicated process with so many moving parts you need to be keeping track of at all times. Having solid basics and the proper equipment sounds pretty necessary to do it with any reasonable accuracy and efficiency.
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Jul 6, 2021 11:25
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I'm pretty sure there's a Finn Simulator video game where you just try to fix up a lovely old car and have a key to just yell random finnish swears. My Summer Car?
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Jul 11, 2021 16:17
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Scarodactyl posted:Not always. Occasionally it works, like spreading milky spore to kill japanese beetle larvae. Though those are cases where they actually remember to check that the new species they're introducing is actually the predator of the one they want to get rid of Telsa Cola posted:Imo the whole panda sex thing is super dumb because its actually fairly to incredibly difficult to get a poo poo ton of species to breed in captivity and somehow everyone fixated on Pandas (Well its because they are big strongly colored bears) Reminds me that apparently lions breed so well in captivity that zoos give them contraceptives.
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Jul 14, 2021 07:24
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Mister Olympus posted:So if you're dragooned into land armies but shanghaied into a navy, what's the term for being forced into flying a plane? Or being made a space marine while drunk? Something something about the latter one being 'joining the Space Wolves'. I'm not sure press-ganging for pilots was ever a thing... outside maybe those suicide planes the Nazis intended to be flown by Hitler Youth.
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Jul 18, 2021 07:33
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There's a reason armchair generals study tactics, actual generals study logistics. Can only wonder what it's like growing up in a multi-decade siege.
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Jul 21, 2021 07:49
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Gold's iirc actually good for utensils and food storage since it's sterile and easy to clean.Crab Dad posted:Give it a cheap coat of paint to hide your wealth in plain sight. Came up a while back but not even that long ago an unspoken reason for women to have expensive jewellery was basically an emergency store of cash in case they need to get out quick, and wouldn't be surprised if that's been a principle for a long time; a wealthy family's jewellery, furnishings and such were stores of wealth in themselves.
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Aug 7, 2021 05:59
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I imagine a big problem with the history of Islam is most of the available primary sources and relevant material isn't in English.
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Aug 11, 2021 14:02
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I'd watch it.
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Sep 9, 2021 10:34
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Azza Bamboo posted:The Romans replaced the corvus with grappling hooks. Much later on, Agrippa's navy used grappling hook bolts —which were fired from ballistas— to reel in boats at range. Sail me closer, I want to hit them with my sword!
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Sep 17, 2021 09:43
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Brawnfire posted:I'm enjoying this mental image. Elephant just comes walking over to a barricaded position, pulling out posts and poo poo like "no. Nope. None of that. No fortifications, thank you." Pretty much how it goes. Properly trained elephants are like having construction machinery thousands of years early. And while impractical for most purposes, riding around on an elephant is cool as gently caress.
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Oct 2, 2021 08:47
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Elyv posted:Well, the sword being the only thing in the wielder's hands and the wielder being entirely armored are related because a lot of hits don't do real damage to someone in full plate so a shield is less necessary. A lot of games like D&D (we can probably blame D&D for among other things popularising this) mess this up because traditionally you had lots of armour or a bigass shield, not both.
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Oct 16, 2021 05:28
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D&D wizards also started out as reskinned siege weapons.
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Oct 16, 2021 18:20
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Yeah, can't be understated that the Roman army is explicitly a machine of imperial conquest. Not that they wouldn't sometimes go up against enemies with near equivalent levels of training and equipment, (and after all, the Romans aren't the only ones who can steal ideas) or even fight each other in one of those fashionable civil wars, though I imagine they were capable of changing up their tactics when necessary. The Romans also developed their gear and tactics over time; iirc, the signature gladius short sword was used in Spain at the time and the Romans adopted it because it worked well with their shield wall tactics. Legionaries were apparently trained in a lot of different things, too, so they could be as self-sufficient as possible in the field. Building fortifications and assembling siege weapons, supposedly even building roads.
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Oct 17, 2021 03:55
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And on the other hand you have cases like the Mongols and other steppe/plains nomads where their whole advantage was coming from a society where shooting arrows from horseback was basically a way of life. Of course, they were entirely willing to adopt new tactics and weapons that suit them, much like the Romans, who iirc made use of specialist auxiliaries to the Legions like archers and cavalry to fill roles that Legionary training didn't cover. Mixed-and-matched armour oddly enough might make sense for a lot of video game/role playing characters being lone/small-unit mercenaries using whatever they can find, since I'm pretty sure that's how it often ends up in real life. People bring whatever they can afford, scrounge and steal to the battlefield and think will keep them alive/kill the other guy first. Libluini posted:If this is true, this would be even funnier, considering there were real life priests who rode around in full armor, bashing people's heads in with a mace. See also the old adage about how amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. (Also reminded of Warhammer Fantasy backstory of Sigmar's mortal life; like Conan the Barbarian but with a fetish for infrastructure and happy to ask the dwarves how they did things if humans didn't know how.) Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 07:20
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Really is amazing how much effort went into things like 'having clothes to wear' before industrialisation.
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Oct 24, 2021 14:05
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The real wild part is wondering how people figured these methods out.
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Oct 24, 2021 17:17
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Gaius Marius posted:That armor was probably a compromise with the actors contracts that said they had to have x number of screentime with their face present. Same reason Spiderman gets his mask ripped in the raimi films They only put on the helmets for a relatively small part at the very start and end of the movie, though. I presumed they're jousting helmets, given the way the duel begins.
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Nov 11, 2021 17:57
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 Discuss. I'm now picturing Alf set in Roman times, as a friend has apparently seen a post expanding on this as how 'wacky houseguest' could basically be a career in certain social situations.
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Nov 13, 2021 17:37
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Ola posted:Screengrab from the latest episode of Digging for Britain on BBC. In an Anglo-Saxon sword handle, an Anglo-Saxon tick, entombed in copper. I'm wondering if the wielder knew about that and considered it his sword-pet, maybe even called his sword Bloodsucker.
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Jan 5, 2022 09:23
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ChaseSP posted:Love how we've come full round to setting up quick standardized encampments in modern warfare in an very similar fashion to Roman card camps. Pretty much the whole idea of a 'modern' army was basically reinventing what the Romans figured out. Standardisation is incredibly powerful. FMguru posted:What's interesting (IMHO) is the transition away from itinerant courts and towards permanent settled courts, most famously Louis XIV and Versailles (and all its imitators), because it turns all the virtues and characteristics of the traveling on their head. Instead of going out and keeping an eye on your magnates, you force them to come to your palace (where you can keep an eye on them), etc. I think it mighta came up earlier itt that Versailles became literally lovely because it was never really rebuilt properly to function with all the staff and guests it ended up having, not enough chamber pots and all. I think the idea probably only really went away with the advent of modern communications, and even then you see efforts made in a different way for a government to function on the move, see Air Force One.
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Jan 19, 2022 15:10
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I think games like Civilization can be both helpful and not helpful when it comes to understanding ancient technological and cultural development. With tech trees and such, you have requirements, you gotta unlock A and B to unlock C, and so on. And it's not the same for everyone; people have to use what's available to them, and have a reason to explore that option to fill their needs. Chariots being an important part of warfare before cavalry may seem weird to modern eyes, but makes sense when you realise it's easier to attach an animal to a cart and point it where you need to go, whether donkeys, oxen or horses (or even people) while riding a horse requires lots of things; before you even get to things like saddles, reins and stirrups, all of which you likely need to figure out from first principles, you actually need horses that are big enough, strong enough and tame enough for someone to sit on their backs and control them. (Civ V comes to mind as actually being fairly good with this; the first mounted archer unit you unlock (civ depending) is the Chariot Archer, which is super fast on flat ground and a ranged attacker like you don't get for much later. Downside is, it can ONLY move fast on flat ground and doesn't handle hills well. On certain terrain you'll be at a huge advantage, on others it's useless) Not to mention I imagine having fast carts and reliable animals to pull them is more something that I imagine benefits you incredibly when it comes to logistics and infrastructure first, with the applications for war coming much later.
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Feb 14, 2022 03:26
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cheetah7071 posted:envisioning an alt history where the bicycle is invented before the train and become standard issue for infantry to get themselves from point A to point B IIRC that has actually happened a few times at least, I've seen photos of the Japanese army in WW2 using bicycles en masse. Problem is that it's fairly niche as transportation in large numbers goes, you need somewhere to put all those bikes and to carry tools and spare parts to repair them, and you need roads that are good enough- and flat enough- for them to be practical.
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Feb 14, 2022 10:38
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Leadership getting mad that war isn't unfolding in the way the stories tell it certainly isn't a new or uncommon thing. See also so much of WW1. Actually, the Romans do stand out apparently in that historically they baffled and terrified foes by fighting to win at all costs, and refusing to surrender or step down their military-industrial complex even after disastrous defeats. Like most successful empires, they fought to win and there's nothing they wouldn't stoop to- and of course, even at the time people rightfully criticised how they'd destroy people and cultures and anything in their way to get what they want. The Roman use of what we'd call combined arms, basically different companies of specialists in different fields that complement one another and fill niches that others don't, even if they have a 'main' fighting style and complement, is interesting. And drawing them from different parts of the Empire that maintained different cultures is especially so- not only does it bring up exciting visuals of a diverse army with not only rows of stern-faced legionaries in lockstep with matching gear, but obviously foreign cavalry, archers and whatever, all following the same banner, a demonstration of the reach and power of Rome. Archers and cavalry require specialist training from a young age, as well as equipment and supplies, and given how much standardisation is important to the Legions it says something as to the war machine that fuels such an army that has to feed men and beasts, to make sure they have javelins, arrows and horses, and stop them from getting in each others' way. Something that even modern warfare often struggles with.
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Feb 18, 2022 08:41
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I do love ancient humour, especially the trash and the incomprehensible in-jokes. People are and have been the same all this time and everywhere in the world.
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Mar 25, 2022 13:15
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It's wild to me that there used to be lions and tigers running around places like Iran and Turkey. Hell I think Caspian tigers only went extinct about a hundred years ago. Humans are mass extinction events for megafauna. Also, goats.
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Mar 29, 2022 06:50
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I think it's Set you mean.
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Apr 2, 2022 10:22
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Church latin seems like it'd be a legitimate language when it would be a common language across the Catholic Church's reach after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. At the very least, the Pope could communicate with members across Europe in a common language.
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Apr 6, 2022 16:11
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