GuardianSing

There is a special place in hell for people who attack not only civilians, but the methods and people in which those civilians could've been healed.

You definitely would have stuff like that the more you get into Mesoamerica but it is true that due to lack of surviving sources in the north, we just don't have records of specific actions the "high ranking members of society" might've done. But we can theorize on how it might've been like based on what we do know. Of course it would depend on the tribe and individual, but generally there is an understanding among Native scholars and historians that the cultural ideas surrounding government and social structures were a lot different compared to the rest of the world. As mentioned before in the Northwest we know that it was believed to be the right of people living in the land to overthrow and replace any landowner they didn't like because the "elites" of society were considered to be in benefit to the community at large, and if they weren't contributing to that overall collective and cruelly driving lower classes to their own benefit then the people were allowed to kill and replace them. And this makes sense because when you're in a small tribe that may only have a few thousand people or less, the average person probably met the chief and their managers personally, maybe even be on first name basis if you were in the community capital, and a "serf's" word would be just as valued as a landowner's during council meetings. Especially since many of those council meetings would've likely been about stuff concerning the workers, how the fishers, farmers, hunters, and so on may carry out their duties in service to not just the community but also the land. Depending on the seasons and migration periods of certain animals and fish, there would be meetings discussing when to increase or decrease land harvesting, to make sure that they weren't over hunting and killing the ecosystem. In the western Christian perspective of things, it's believed that the land is in service to humanity, that God specifically created Earth for humans to exploit and do with as they please, but the Indigenous perspective is the opposite, that humanity is in service to the land and to take care of the land is in our best interest. Many tribes would do their best to think about how any major decision may effect the next 7 generations. But as you say, it wasn't all peachy. Slavery was practiced in many tribes as during war any prisoners caught from enemy tribes would become slaves. They were usually kept as hostages to trade back to the enemy tribe for goods or land. And any person can still become an asshole if their life was hard enough so you would get the occasional war mongering chief, usually in the bigger tribes, who would be fine killing your entire family if you looked at him wrong. Uh, I don't know as much about Oceania but major conflicts wouldn't always be internal. There was a period of Polynesian history where people would sail all over across Oceania, meeting other people and settling new communities on new islands, those new communities maybe even splitting off from their home island and become independent. They probably never had like big ocean naval warfare since we have no record of ships designed for that kind of thing (Though who knows, maybe they all were sunk) And there might not have been much reason for conflict when resources and land are an ocean apart but I imagine there had to be some warmongering leaders who wanted to conquer the other islands. Which to be fair, there was. The Kingdom of Hawaii was once multiple kingdoms on each island before it was brought under one dynasty by Kamehameha I in a military campaign with the help of western weapons traded with by the European colonizers. Though this in the 19th century long after the great wayfinding era of Polynesia. Also there's the Maori in New Zealand who had multiple tribes and kingdoms on that island who would compete with other, so that's interesting. I don't know as much about the social hierarchies or values that existed within Oceanic countries before Colonization but I figure that in general across all human societies that smaller communities tend to have not as strict class boundary lines because it's hard to oppress people you personally met and are friends with, and exploiting the land is hard because doing so may kill like half of your people with the other half wanting to kill you. I did not expect to write a mini-essay on the topic, I am so sorry. It must be the adderall.

It's hard to say when it's a period in history that happened so long ago and so much of it was destroyed and lost. Not unreliable oral histories as many like to assume but actual written records of events that have been lost within the 500 years since Columbus arrived, and the most amount that we have is documents written by white settlers going off of second-hand information and observation, a lot of it is filtered through that lens because of that. This goes for Oceania as well, while we have a general idea on how specific tribes might have lived and societies operated, the records detailing specific events, people, philosophies, art, music, and mythology, have largely been demolished. This of course helped lead to the racist idea that Native Americans just didn't keep records, or make art, or think complex thoughts before colonization. So it's true that there was something about the Americas that we're never getting back, and what makes it the most painful is the fact that we may never know fully what that something even is.

Goddammit I didn't mean to post that early. I mean unless you're asexual the horny is within us all. I don't think I'll ever get over this fact, it's the funniest fucking thing. It's the most neo-liberal American take on ideology. Here is thou blessing. Good point. What they should've done is give the abs to Azura with her 70% Berserker strength growth.

That's the response I wanted. True, although that is not to say the majority of tribes in the north were fully nomadic, because even if they didn't build large cities they did have settlements that would cultivate and harvest crops, they were doing a "Civilization" in western terms. In fact it's theorized that had they not been invaded, many communities in the north could've built larger settlements and communities given the time, and not a very long time either. Which also reminds me, feudalism within North America was practiced to some degree but different in how it was often handled. In many Northwestern tribes, landowners were seen as being in service to the people and the land rather than to themselves, and the people had every right to remove and replace landowners if they didn't agree with them.

I could drown in some girls with well defined chins. I always thought it was funny that Rinkah still gets the baby-face treatment most other female cast members do in Fates but it's in complete contrast with how fucking ripped she is. Man isn't it ironic that you and I are the ones who probably complain about the sexualization of female characters the most here yet we are also simultaneously the ones who gush about certain female character designs the most because we have a self-awareness that while bottoming to a character is kind of funny and endearing, talking about wanting to top a character would come off as predatory and creepy so most people who may feel that way just don't ever talk about it so we end up looking like the horny ones? I mean it'd be neat in an abstract "Oh isn't it cool that a Native American is leading this land for the first time in over a hundred years" kind of thing but it would obviously depend on the individual. From the 60s and 80s the Guatemalan government had for that time declared Indigenous people an enemy of the state as the Mayans were perceived as being more likely to side with the growing communist insurrection. The military at the time would regularly bomb Maya communities and assassinate various people. not for being influential leaders but usually for trying to cut open spaces within the country for them and their family to live safely. One comes to mind of a Maya women who started a clothing business to share and keep alive her communities clothing designs and practices only to be shot dead through her own window by snipers. Particularly in the highlands, various communities were attacked and burned will the aimed goal of total eradication of the people and villages. Women were raped, bodies were burned and buried alive. It's estimated that over 200,000 people died with around 166,000 of them being Maya. This isn't some kind of ancient 1800s story were all we have to remember by are paintings and documents by long dead people. This kind of thing was happening to as late as 1983 and almost every adult Maya within the country today can tell you about losing family members and homes growing up. Is this worse than what the United States and Canada? Well I'd argue it's offensive to say one genocide was better than the other because in either case it was a genocide, and Guatemala is far from being the only Latin American country to carry out things like that. Indigenous pride and pan-unity is still very new in the Americas because while on the surface the culture of many Latino countries looks like one of Spanish mixing with Indigenous, historically and to this day, the most rich and powerful people in the continent are white men, and it's only been the last 20 or so years that some countries have begun bringing in Indigenous pride as a marketing tool for tourism. Small correction, there was never one Mayan Empire, it was always a collection of city states that competed against each other for control. We call them all Maya now but back then they would've likely identified with different nationalities. Even now "Maya" is kind of an umbrella term for lots of different people who speak different languages, it's why I sometimes specify "Lenca Maya" when describing my own ancestry.

Hilda is too shallow of a character for me to make a clever joke out of this. Also I think this is the first time I've gotten a good look at the strategist sprite.

Me too man, me too. Speaking of which, I can't do it now because this laptop can't handle it but I would love to play a game of Victoria 3 where I form the Maya kingdom, which is apparently something you can do.

So the other day I got bored and- The general issue is that these communities are underfunded because they are poor and poor because they are underfunded so the best option is to hope that the Democrat president you elected remembers you exist, which is something Biden has done for a few Navajo reservations.

I'm so happy for these fantasy white people. 🥲 The land-back movement has always and will always be a complicated matter but for now I think reservations deserve to be properly funded and sustained as many don't have ready access to things like clean water and electricity. Where Rosado.

In fighting to end the war, a desire to end the things that started the war in the first place are of utmost importance. After that it gets complicated. I'm going to be honest, I completely forgot that the Ragnell was even in PoR or how it appeared. Ahh...pit falls. And also Garon's long lost brother, Goran. Kinky. Shout out to skills that only seem to happen when I absolutely don't need them to. I'm sorry, did a combination of barriers and pitfalls just lock half my army from progressing? Despair SHIT- I...panicked and tried to reload the latest save but instead I pressed the button to create a save right when she died that overwrote the last save. She's not...dead right? So Ike had to be the one specifically to use the seize command which makes me wonder if I could've soft-locked the game had he been trapped behind the barriers ...Although I'm just now remembering that rescue is a thing units can do. "Am I...no longer the protagonist?"

I love shit like this so much. God fucking dammit, there was a typo where I said "To be against the status quo is to take the path of least resistance" when I meant to say something along the lines of "To be COMPLACENT in the Status Quo is to take the path of least resistance." I'm so ashamed, no one will ever want to have sex with me. We'll have to wait for when they luigi-fy the game.

There is something to be said about how strong our innate human empathy for other humans is when in order to get one group to hate the other, there has to be an immense amount of dehumanization. It's only when you can convince a people that the other aren't human when you can get away with hate and discrimination. Our brains are so wired to look for the humanity in things that it can be difficult to push it away. Historically that's why groups would be segregated and lies be told about the other. Lies of inhuman nature, like not being able to feel pain so it's okay to attack them, or not able to feel emotion so they must always be selfish. Sometimes people like to bring up the Christmas truce during World War 1 in where unofficial cease happened all across the frontlines as French and German troops would meet up in the fields to celebrate together, and that's an incredible feat of humanity, but what's often not talked about is how at that time the general's of the respective sides were horrified that stuff like this could happen because if their troops saw the enemy as human then it would be much harder to get them to kill them. And across World War 2 it was a priority to make sure something like that could never happen again.

Oh I played this chapter a day ago but completely forgot to write about it. Kicking up stones in the Black Sea. Ignore the dozens of Beorc gentry and monarchy that is unchanging and have the final say on how the country will always be run. Would it be weird to say I want to kiss all of them? Her best So after saying this I was expecting her to declare this war unjust and a clear grab for racial supremacy and genocide so she decides to join arms with alliance to defend against the Empire. But instead... "Yeah you guys can fight, but can you take it outside the bar please?" Ah, so he is a gay stereotype. At this point all I need to do is put Ike in enemy range without a weapon, watch him draw them in and dodge all their attacks, and then hit back. Well on the bright side this means like the Empire will have lost their only competent general so this should make the war much easier- Thank god for Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and nationality. I've always found it interesting that for as long as humans have been exploiting we have also been trying not to exploit. Philosophy has always been there to discern what is right or wrong, always with the basic tenets of "Murder is wrong and theft is wrong" Ideas that, on their own if all people followed them from the dawn of Civilization, would've probably created a much healthier society. Yet no matter how many times despotism seems to take the reigns, there are always those withing a society who would fight against it, the human capacity for empathy is never routed out completely. Of course to be against the status quo is to take the path of least resistance, and ultimately most people just want to live their lives even if means being complacent to the horrors of the current world. So I always thought there was a strength in staying true to values and ideals, appealing to that innate human empathy even if it's just sharing progressive ideas online. Ultimately I feel as though our brains are primitive things not made for this kind of society. Only for a couple thousand years we've been doing civilization and engaging in a settled lifestyle completely unlike the ones during the neolithic period, and yet we still have that same caveman brain that hasn't evolved since over a million years ago and has not caught up with how we run things now. And yet we are still capable of being better, still capable of being more empathetic rather than selfish. There are millions of people on this planet who believe in something better for all of us collectively and I would much rather stay hopeful for the future than fall into nihilistic despair and become part of the same apathetic people who gave us that despair in the first place.

The worst thing about humans is how they can face horrific generational oppression and trauma and yet fail to use that as a chance to question hierarchies, discrimination, the things that create oppression and genocide as long as they can further their own power. Persecuted religious and racial groups in England fleeing to the Americas only to do the same thing to Native Americans. Oppressed Muslims in Arabia in the earlier days of the faith only to conquer the regions there and beyond by force, oppressing religious minorities as far as Iberia, those oppressed Christians in Iberia under Islamic rule only to impose that same religious absolutism decades later once they gained freedom. the Mexica groups fleeing the Yucatan to escape racial discrimination only to found the Aztec Empire and conquer the surrounding native peoples, and then that same empire destroyed along with nearly the entire continent's people by those same Christians in Iberia. The history of most countries is one of oppressed turned into oppressor without any questions of whether or not that authority should exist for any people. So it goes again with Israel. This more than enough proof that racial, religious, and national identity can be anything and it wouldn't matter, a human is human regardless and is just as able to fall victim to corruption and bigotry as they are to being the target of said corruption and bigotry. Our empathy as humans is only matched by our selfishness. I've heard marches going on in Boston as well. I'm surprised my city of Portland has gotten to it yet as we're usually the first to protest about these things. Organizations may already be underway and with little power I have over the situation I plan on going. I feel you there. The toll this has all taken on my mental health is already staggering. BS Super Mario collection remake when?

A small group of protesters the the other day tried to block entrances the white house calling for the US to demand an immediate Israeli cease-fire on Gaza, though most were booted out or arrested this morning I believe, including some Jewish people. Biden himself has issued a statement saying "It's also a priority for me to urgently address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza... We can't lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with the Hamas and the appalling attacks." ...But it's hard to take that statement genuinely when the US continues to funnel billions to the Israeli government and has done nothing to stop war escalation.

Last part hit like a truck. The Romans were truly dedicated to servicing authentic realistic war reenactments, so much so that actors would fucking die in the battles.

Which is incredibly ironic since pants were specifically invented by nomadic steppe peoples centuries ago to make it easier and more comfortable to ride horses, many of these horse riders in question would be women. The Victorian approach is on point. Gives me similar energy to that one time I compared Fates and Three Houses positively and your reaction to that.

I like it. Not as wild as the armor on the Nohr royals and reminds me of actual European armor styles. Up there as my favorites among the generic Nohrian portraits. Though I wish the piece on the top of the helmet was an actual feather. If you wanted me to talk about the characters who are cavalier (Or part of the cavalier branch) at base, well... Cool old man with a scar is sick, and though the armor is very fantastical it manages to look good without looking too bulky and dumb. The crest on the front of the color puts me in mind of French designs. Wasn't ever a fan of personally. I don't like the armadillo armor approach as much. Same problem as Silas. the Armor always looked off to me. Also weird armor, but I like it a tad bit better. I think the claw-like gauntlets are cool am I like the emblem on the pummel of the sword. Her skirt is kind of like hip guards on real armor and if those are pants and not tights than it would actually make some sense to have the crotch be exposed like that so her armor doesn't get caught on the saddle. Similar to Peri's but she's not wearing any pants so...ouch. Reminds me how there is also a distinction between sexualization that is meant to display a sense of beautiful eroticism and sexualization that is meant to instill sexual stimulate. And that's an important distinction to make because saying that all female characters should be covered up and modest can be a dangerous pipeline to thinking that women in general should be forced into the box of modesty and any girl who shows her shoulders is a whore, kind of thing, you know. Basically, sexual objectification is bad, but sexuality in itself is fine. Now do I think Fates and particularly Azura aimed to portray beautiful eroticism with the feminine body and not to appeal the male gaze for it's largely straight male audience?? Abso-fucking-lutely not but when I look at Azura I definitely see something beautiful and artistic, and even if that was never intended it is still worth noting I think. Yeah the line is usually drawn when said designs start look dumb instead of cool. Camilla I think is the greatest example of a character who, in any cutscene she's in, just looks weird, goofy almost. Like she's a parody of sexualized female characters in RPGs.

Azura skirt split rides up so high that she flashes the audience, but compared to the other Fates female designs it's pretty tame which...says a lot I think. Still it's the widest and highest I've seen a skirt split be for any Fire emblem character. In fact, the dress looks like it would be perfect for leg popping in a dance which she does do something resembling that in the Nohr dance. Though in general her outfit puts me more in mind of a ballet dress, and she does do ballet-like movements in the Hoshido dance. There's nothing in the text that gives us an implication on how she would feel about her dress, but in a game where a handful of female fighters fight in their underwear it's probably not that significant. Ooh, interesting. In general I'm partial to fem styles but I like these. I like the fluffy blouse of the third doctor and the coats with scarfs that the 8th and war doctors sport. Very 19th century, I like. Though the last one looks like she's a presenter in a corporate video. I've completely ruined my pinterest feed by trying to find alternate designs for Camilla. There's this edit which is neat and all but I don't know, still looks off to me personally. Though maybe that's just because I've worn a bodice before and imagining that shit as a tight metal armor piece sounds like hell. Perhaps but you can kiss that mobility goodbye if you insist on wearing heels the entire time. And with how mages can glide effortlessly across sand I have to wonder if they just levitate instead of walk. Fair. Though I will never stop making fun of FE female fliers who don't wear pants on a mount as if that wouldn't be incredibly uncomfortable.

Good point, traditionally that would be the case but hey being a dancer doesn't automatically mean you have to wear the belly dancing garb ...Especially since come to think of it almost none of the dancers in FE who wear that kind of outfit actually do a belly or hip dance for their animation. Tethys comes to mind as kind of doing one and that's it, they mostly go for spins and arm movements, perhaps because that's something easier to convey in animation than hip rolls or leg pops. And I suppose Azura also does a kind of one in that dark song animation which is ironic considering she is like 1 out three dancers in the series who doesn't show their midriff. Well she's a songstress technically but you get what I mean Olivia definitely seems to despise her outfit so I don't see why she couldn't wear something more modest to fit her comfort while still befitting her dancing career. Though there are some support conversations that imply Olivia gains a boost in confidence when dancing so perhaps that means gaining confidence in her body as well, which... good for her I guess. The moral of the story is that Robert Moses single handedly ruined the US economy and by extension, the entire world's Clearly you haven't been to enough American weddings Also unrelated but when checking her concept art I just noticed that she apparently has daggers strapped to her legs which is badass. I guess one thing is that, while I'd expect this kind of outfit for Manuela to wear in a party context, as a teacher it's definitely unprofessional, but being unprofessional is also Manuela's whole deal, so who knows. I don't know anything about Sonya other than I wished my stockings held up that well without a garter. Seriously, thigh highs are way harder to manage than you would expect. Something else I'm noticing is that both of these character designs have a identical approach to the skirt which is to split in two. the front piece being thin almost like a loincloth to show off the legs and the back being wide to hide the behind. You have outfits in real life that split the skirt to ride up the thighs but I've never seen a double split like that. Probably because if you wore something like that without tape it'd be way too easy to flash others...which may not be much of a concern depending on the occasion to be fair. Again, I've been to a lot of weddings. Anyways, uhhh...I forgot what this conversation was about, I just like talking about outfits. I'm biased as I've always preferred outfits that I could tie to real life fashion styles over the fantastical and absurd armor that FE always has. Eastern European Camilla is strangely fitting Though regarding both of those fanmade depictions, ultimately it probably makes the most sense to give Camilla armor since...y'know she's a front line fighter with an axe. There's this fun (Unfortunately blurry) depiction. I dislike the Nohrian armor style in general personally but I am fond of this one even if I still prefer the first one I sent.

We'll get there soon enough. Camilla's problem isn't even that she's sexualized necessarily it's that her design bends around so much to force sexiness that it circles to just looking stupid. There's a distinction that can be made between characters who are sexualized just to appeal to fanservice (See Camilla, Tharja, Olivia) and characters who are sexualized because it's something they would believably do as characters (See Manuela) Camilla (with a BUNCH of character tweaks) could fall into that latter category as someone who finds empowerment in showing off skin but is still shown to be a human. A caring but deadly and powerful political figure with her own ambitions and motivations beyond Corrin. If you don't want skin at all there this amazing depiction Which is a very fun outfit but since her anatomy is still the same it still kind of looks off to me. Unfortunately, the real deal is that of a one-sided relationship where Astrid assures everything Makalov does and doesn't get a wit of anything in return. If I do, I will post pictures.

There's stuff I'd like to reply to later when I'm not on mobile, but for now I had a thought. I might cosplay as Edelgard for Halloween.

So if I am to assume that this war will soon engulf all of Tellius and risk awakening the dark god, I kind of like how it was just a war started by dipshit racist senators who were mad that their slaves were being taken away and so tried to declare a race war essentially. There's no baddy individual who's all like "I'm going to be an ideology-less bad guy who kills for fun and wants to wake up the dark god!" But instead a situation that can and has happened in the real world. Tellius may have fumbled badly with it's race allegory but it's political intrigue is unmatched by all other FE games I've played so far. Which to be fair, there's not tons of competition there. I just remembered the cute conversation between Calill and Naphanee on teaching her how to act like a city-lady, and now I'm sad. Guess the Crimean army hates each other, huh. If there's one thing that Radiant Dawn gets good about it's race allegory it's that racism is established as a true social issue. It's not like there's a few bad apples who are cartoonishly evil and racists, racism is shown to be a integrated problem that plagues even otherwise good people. Actually got me laughing out loud. I was about to say that this way too situational to be useful but Radiant Dawn has been having a lot of those wall opening chokepoints. TELL ME WHAT THE FUCKING SKILL DOES YOU DAMN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT VIDEO GAME!!! When they merge together they become Alear Donkey 😄 If Three Houses had Radian Dawn's political intrigue and Radiant Dawn had Three Houses' racial representation I might just call them masterpieces A Camus trying to be persuaded by a young lady, this never ends well. Indeed. We just can't keep well enough alone when it comes to thoughts on "What could have been."

Goddammit how did I not notice that. Oh wow! Guess that's what the Fates conversations earlier were about. Neat! I want to try Gay Fates in full but my computer can't handle space of the rom alone at the moment. Oh and on the topic of Fanmade creation being far better than the originals... Someone hack this in, those cheek bones could have a swordfight with Ryoma's. Shout out to this great quote that is always the conclusion of any Three Houses discussion ever.