#it’s blood libel. the entire series is blood libel like can we fucking not

[lesbiansanemi]

So hard being an “I hate attack on Titan and think it’s fucking bad” bitch in an “I love attack on Titan 🥺” world

#‘eren was right actually’ #bro you might as well admit you are highly susceptible to falling face first into fascist ideology lmfao #it’s blood libel. the entire series is blood libel like can we fucking not #also even aside from that. it’s just not??? good???? like i genuinely don’t get it #every single character has the personality of wet fucking cardboard they ALL are so goddamn boring #it’s obvious the plot had no idea what it was doing until WAY too late in the series #and oh man that fucking ending. man. don’t even try and tell me that shit is good you are all fucking lying to yourselves #I am excited for it to get animated tho jfjddjdk it better get the game of thrones treatment I swear to god #if y’all still try and tell me it’s good I’m gonna start fucking losing it #kaz rambles

[gayregis]

Oh yeah that reminds me of another question I've been meaning to ask (sorry to jump on you like this haha) but which vampire canon change in B&W annoys you the most? For me it's the whole 'even touching silver will harm a vampire' (when it's explained that Syanna figured out Dettlaff was a vampire because he wouldn't directly touch a silver candlestick). I just choose to ignore that detail bc I don't think it makes much sense haha

omg this is such a good ask im so excited to answer

first of all, i really agree with you, even when i hadn’t read the books fully i had read that one passage in lady of the lake where regis gestures with a silver fork at the banquet, and blood and wine tries to make it so like regis and dettlaff are the same “kind” of vampire, so this obviously doesn’t make any sense, and since it’s just such a small detail i tried to ignore it, like, maybe dettlaff just wanted to keep the silver candlestick fingerprint-free, ever consider that, syanna? you’re gonna pawn something, you don’t want like a billion fingerprints mucking it all up... and then syanna thought this made him a vampire, when in reality he was a vampire but the candlestick had fuckall to do with it

but yeah i think i’m gonna do like a top 5 style: TOP 5 THINGS CDPR GOT WRONG ABOUT THE VAMPIRES. im not gonna do a countdown because im a very direct person and think its best to get the worst out of the way.

1. their society and relationship with humans.

the thing that upsets me the most that cdpr changed is how vampires exist on the continent. stuff like tesham mutna and the unseen elder breaks canon lore so hard it makes me physically upset. 

this is a bad thing because not only is the trope of “vampires control everything from the shadows as a secret society so they can feed on human blood” incredibly boring and overdone (it’s a trope, so it’s something that the witcher should stand to invert since that’s pretty much the purpose of the witcher), but it also has origins in antisemitism (the myth of the illuminati or “reptilians/secret societies controlling the world”, blood libel), so it’s super gross! i don’t want the vampires to be that trope, that’s completely unfair.

they already were something other than that trope, they already HAD their own society (or lack thereof) as part of the canon lore. maybe it is personal preference, but i think that their “anti-society” is super interesting. how does something like that function with no rules or figures of authority or customs? it’s incredibly different to the ways humans function in this universe, who are mostly bound around their nation, city/town/village, and home unit, and abide by strict custom and systems of authority. it’s really something to be explored from a lore perspective, there wasn’t a whole lot explained in canon (for good reason: see #2) so it has perfect potential to be elaborated upon in the adaptational spinoff that is the witcher games.

it makes them super boring and trope-y to have them all kowtow to One Figure Of Authority in the area. plus CDPR states that the reason toussaint is so perfect is that this secret society controls toussaint as an area to perfect blood, when toussaint literally existed as a fairy-tale duchy to be an OBSTACLE to geralt and his hansa in the saga. it was the “leave-your-quest” test. think of the island of the lotus eaters from the odyssey. it’s a perfect place, there’s no reason as to why it is perfect, it just is, and it keeps the company hostage there for months so they will get distracted and eventually forget what they came there for. 

in canon as well, vampires do not seem to care much about humans. regis certainly does, but he is regis :). there was little conversation about how vampires view humans, rather about how humans view vampires and project their innermost fears and desires to them. further breaking some vampire tropes. in blood & wine. instead of that trope-flipping, we get... “vampires tortured humans out of curiosity and selfishness.” what? why would they do this? there is not much to gain, and it would take a lot of cooperation and effort to get to this point, which leads me to ask, HOW could they do this? as regis says in bof, there were only about 1,200 vampires when they arrived on the continent, so they were completely and utterly outnumbered as they were likely scattered around. they wouldn’t be able to build a castle and re-engineer toussaint to fit their needs. i understand that he is massively biased, but i feel like regis calls these first vampires “hapless survivors” for a reason, and also since regis is regis, i do not feel like he would feel this way about them if they committed massive crimes against humanity.

tl;dr for this point: not only is it fucked up for no reason but to be gross/shocking to the audience, but it also removes their purpose as a metaphor, which is #2.

2. the removal of their purpose as a metaphor in the story.

originally, the vampires are not meant to be the focus of the witcher series or even a smaller part of the series at all. they are simply a metaphor for aspects of human society so that regis can have a backstory. the vampires are nothing more than a fictional means of exploring the effects of alcoholism, and a thought experiment as to what an authority-less, family-less, custom-less society would be like. the question “what do youth do when they have no support and no guidance?” already is one of the witcher’s major questions as a saga, the vampires and regis’s backstory serves to be another one of the stories within it that fits this theme. except we add more conditions to the thought experiment this time, like “what if these youth never aged and were powerful enough to survive on their own?” there would be no reason for them to ever change or grow out of their behavior. it’s quite interesting, because it’s meant to reflect upon human nature, the vampires are metaphorically humans. there is no reason for regis to even be a vampire, except that he needs to be able to survive death and learn from his mistakes. a human would have died had he hit rock bottom like regis did, but since regis wasn’t human and could rise from the grave, he had the chance at a new life. humans don’t get second chances. this is the point of the entire story being about vampires.

now, i understand that the purpose of the witcher games is to entertain, unlike the point of the witcher book series, which are like any other books and serve an author’s message. so, it stands to reason that the vampires do not have to prove a strong point here, but they should retain their essential traits and serve as the metaphor which was already really interesting and deserves more explanation and thought. i think using a fictional lens to take a look at real-world issues can be helpful sometimes, when done respectfully and when still using creativity. even if it’s just to entertain, that doesn’t mean it should be brainless and throw all of the commentary out of the window.

the vampires as a subject for the game to focus on should really be a vessel for thought and critique. it should mean SOMETHING for them to be there, because they were originally a message and a metaphor.

but in blood & wine, they are incredibly shallow, only there to exist for the attention-getter of gore.

does it MEAN anything that dettlaff regenerated regis from his own flesh and blood? or does that just happen because we needed a convienient way to bring regis back and tie him to the antagonist? does it MEAN anything that dettlaff cuts off his own hand? or is that just because it’s cool and kinda gross. does it MEAN anything that the vampires attack beauclair? or is that just because there needed to be some violence and conflict.

there is no deeper meaning! it’s all just flashiness to shock the audience! it’s incredibly shallow and because it is shallow, it becomes boring and forgettable.

blood & wine focuses on details about the vampires that are gross, gorey or bloody, uncomfortable because of how nasty they are. and these elements have NO PURPOSE to the story other than to gross you out, like regis being regenerated, dettlaff skewering regis like a kebab, dettlaff cutting off his hand and that hand being handled by the bruxa, geralt, and regis, regis going crazy in a cage, syanna also getting skewered, etc. ... it’s this focus on the physical action that is happening on screen with little thought as to any deeper meaning that makes me tired and nauseous. why treat the vampires as savage animals?

as a mention in this topic, i am going to comment on how they deliberately changed the lore to “make childrens’ blood taste better than adults’ blood,” because that is mega-gross. why change it to focus on child endangerment? that’s nasty! why make orianna feed on children when it was LITERALLY canon that the “best” blood was that of strong adults? if you want to make orianna morally grey, she could have owned any other kind of place to get blood from. see #2 for more discussion of this.

3. their focus on the conjunction of the spheres.

the vampires never had this obsession with “returning home.” i... have no idea where this comes from. remember how i just said that i appreciate a metaphor for real-life when it is done respectfully? CDPR gave us this awkward metaphor for the vampires “wanting to go home” because they have to “assimilate” in this new world, apparently every vampire ever misses their homeland. ... it’s the story of immigrants who didn’t have a choice to be born in The New Land, but they were anyways, and now they want to go home. and it’s the story of minority groups, who are overshadowed by the society they live in, but cannot be themselves in, because it would mean violence. 

this is an incredibly awkward metaphor just because it’s not done well, but also CDPR literally just focused on how extremely violent the vampires are, and how they also control everything so they can use the humans they were thrown in with to their own fancies. this is... i didn’t know that the metaphors for fantasy racism in the witcher could get any worse than sapkowski’s were.

also, there’s some weird lore-breaking moments when regis says he misses the vampire homeworld or whatever, and i just am left staring at my laptop like. you’re only like, 4 centuries old, regis. the conjunction of the spheres occured more than 3 times your age in the past. plus the fact that regis in baptism of fire calls himself a “descendant,” it’s obvious that someone at cdpr just didn’t do their research when writing those lines.

4. their power level and exactly how powerful they are. 

let’s take a moment to think about a grain of truth. the second story in the witcher books, it was written before sapkowski had a lot of the vampire lore down-pat. geralt says things like “it’s silver, this blade is silver” and “an ordinary vampire couldn’t come out in the sun,” which are incongruent with what we learn in baptism of fire about vampires. but nevertheless, there’s a lot which is still accurate to the vampires, such as that VEREENA ABSOLUTELY KICKS GERALT’S ASS. geralt very nearly DIED in that fight, he was ABOUT to die, but nivellen saved him at the last split-second. geralt finds out that vereena is a bruxa, and he is alarmed, he shouts and then falls on his ass. he scrambles, he’s unprepared to deal with a foe THIS powerful. he manages to land his sword on her during the fight, but it barely harms her. she dodges incredibly, and swipes of his sword that should have hit do not. she screams terribly, and geralt is in incredible, writhing pain. he uses his signs to help him, this is no normal fight with a normal foe. flash forward to in baptism of fire, when geralt meets another vampire, one that is considerably more powerful and unique than vereena was. dandelion asks geralt, if ... potentially... maybe... and geralt responds that he sincerely doubts that he could beat regis in a fight, and he really does not want to have to try.

geralt was BESTED by vampires in the books. he was as close as a witcher can get to being INTIMIDATED by their power. but what happens in blood & wine? there’s like 8 bruxae and alpors ganging up on you and you can easily vanquish all of them with your silver sword and by knocking back maybe a glass of black blood and white raffard’s decoction. it’s fine, it’s easy to kill vampires. geralt doesn’t hesitate to fight dettlaff. he doesn’t worry, he doesn’t tell anyone that he sincerely doubts that he could beat him in a fight, that he doesn’t want to have to try. instead, it’s regis talking geralt out of the fight, trying to advocate for peace. 

CDPR massively nerfed the vampires just to make them easier targets for the player. i think this is unfair to how the vampires were powerful threats to be reckoned with in the books, foes that even geralt, a witcher, did not want to face. not even out of geralt’s pacifism and apprehension to slay innocent and/or sentient beings, but out of not wanting to fucking hit that die button

i also understand that regis was supposedly less powerful now because he was just tired from being regenerated, but vampires like bruxae should have been able to turn into giant bats. there’s nothing stopping them besides cdpr not wanting to code it in, just like how they didn’t want to code in bruxae or alpors wearing clothes (because vampires do wear clothes in canon).

5. their classification: adding new vampire species, distinguishing between “higher vampires” and “TRUE higher vampires”

just plain annoying to me. there’s only seven types of vampires, as regis says in baptism of fire: 

“In the case of higher vampires, never, I agree,” Emiel Regis said softly. “From what I know alpors, katakans, moolas, bruxas, and nosferats don’t mutilate their victims. On the other hand, fleders and ekimmas are pretty brutal with their victim’s remains.”

“Bravo,” Geralt said, looking at him in genuine admiration. “You didn’t leave out a single class of vampire, Nor did you mention any of the imaginary ones, which only exist in fairy-tales.”

so there are seven classes... five of which are higher vampires which can probably be classified by having sentient thought and not harming their victims, two of which are lesser vampires, which are quite violent with their victims and more animalistic for this reason.

also i am confused as to why CDPR made fleders the least likely to sustain flight, when their name i’m pretty certain is taken from fledermaus, the german word for bat, which just means flying mouse (feel free to correct me if i’m wrong, idk german), so “fleder” should just mean “flutter,” or “to fly.” 

SO. it’s total bullshit to be like “there’s some higher vampires and then TRUE/REAL higher vampires, which cannot be killed...” and it confuses everyone as to who is ACTUALLY a higher vampire and who is not, when the system we had before wasn’t broken at all!

BONUS. general changes to vampire powers

it annoys me how they turn into puffs of mist/smoke instead of vanishing, simply vanishing. no deeper reason why, it just bothers me because you’re not supposed to be able to see them at all, that’s the point of turning invisible/incorporeal.

there was no mention or demonstration of how regis can hypnotize people, even though that was probably his most frequently used vampire power in the books asides from turning invisible/incorporeal. it showed that even though he was very powerful, he opted to use his passive powers and nonviolent routes of dealing with people.

i think it also makes the vampires way overpowered to be able to regenerate each other with each other’s blood ... and it takes away from the finality of stygga... also them just flying and turning into bats whenever they want, as if regis didn’t say that he can only turn into a bat during a full moon. they made them overpowered and still made it super easy for geralt to kill them. alright

#ask #vamp squad #regis #dettlaff #dol--blathanna #long post /

[goingmedieval]

Keep the word ‘Judeo’ out of your Racist Mouth, Nigel Farage.

My loves, it is with a heavy heart that I announce Nigel Farrage is once again saying some meaningless garbage.

I know, I know. You are not surprised, but I am afraid I have to respond to this douche canoe’s latest idiocy – in this case the following tweet:

For those not up to speed with this particular flavour of British idiocy – at the moment the Archbishop of York, Nigel ‘Why don’t I have a chin? Let’s blame the EU’ Farage, and now Prime Minister Theresa May are all shocked and offended that Cadbury’s promoted an ‘Egg Hunt’ for the National Trust rather than a specific ‘Easter Egg Hunt’.

I know.

All of this is, of course nonsense, and ordinarily I try to ignore Farage as much as possible, being as my well-being is perched on a knife’s edge in today’s political hell scape. However, Farage just referred to England as having a ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture, and I cannot stand for it.

Leaving aside the issue that Jews don’t, you know, celebrate Easter, because they are Jewish, the idea that we here in the UK somehow celebrate the ‘Judeo’ in Judeo-Christian is offensive, given the hundreds upon hundreds of years of bloody repression of Jews in England.

Backing right the fuck up, it should be obvious that medieval society was not particularly kind to Jews. (If you are out of touch about this, check out Moore’s, The Formation of a Persecuting Society.) Because medieval Europe was largely Christian (except Spain, which was balling), Jews generally had a terrible time. They were restricted from pursing most trades, and as a result largely ended up in the financial sector.  Christians, you see, were prevented from lending money at interest because that constituted the sin of usury. Jews did not have the same religious prohibition and made the best of their place in a super stringent society by lending money. This probably led to the stereotypical bigoted idea of Jews as terrible money grubbers that we are all still dealing with.

Jews were so hated that they usually had to be under royal or imperial protection. People resented them because something something the death of Christ (which the Romans were totally off the hook for, obvs), and also because they now owed the Jews money.

English people, like most Europeans, were pretty big dicks to the Jews. First off, and for your information Mr. Farage, there were no Jews in England until after the Norman conquest. (Remember? When the French people took over? Because England is a part of Europe? YOU GIT.) William the Conqueror invited a group of Jews from Rouen to settle in England in 1070, though he wouldn’t let them own land. Because LOL.

By the twelfth century the Jews in London were granted a series of concessions by Henry I that meant they were treated a little bit more like people. They were allowed to buy and sell property, be tried by their peers, and swear on the Torah instead of the Bible. They were also allowed the right of movement around England – and I quote – ‘as if they were the king’s own property’ (Sicut res proproae nostrae). (I know. I know.) So Jews were totally allowed to be people in England. You know, people who were royal property, but stuff got kind of bad after that. King Stephen decided to be a total dick and burn down a Jewish man’s house in Oxford because he wasn’t paying towards the king’s expenses. (Stay classy Stephen!) Then in 1144 there was the death of (soon to be saint) William of Norwich.  William had been an apprentice tanner. William showed up dead. The good people of Norwich decided that William had been killed by Jews because sure, why not. Obviously Jews had killed him as a part of a ritual murder that re-enacted a mass because blood libel is definitely a thing. Thomas of Monmouth wrote a crazy-ass hagiography about it and everything.  After this, any time there was an unsolved murder of a child, everyone in England blamed it on any Jew that could be found. This included Harold of Gloucester (d. 1168), Robert of Bury (d. 1181), and Little Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1255). All the boys were sainted. People were increasingly giant dicks to Jews.

Stuff got really bad under Richard the Lionheart. At his coronation a number of high ranking Jewish people showed up to do homage at Westmister, and they got kicked the fuck out of the coronation banquet and then attacked by a crowd outside. A rumor then started spreading that the king had ordered the London Jews to be massacred, and a good old fashioned mob went into the Old Jewry pretty much killing anyone they could get their hands on. The super friendly Judeo-Christian culture that Mr. Farage is celebrating then kicked off a series of violent attacks against various groups of Jews in Lynn, Stamford Fair, Colchester, Thetford, Ospringe, and Bury St Edmunds with dozens of people ending up dead. The Jews of Lincoln only survived an attempted massacre by taking refuge in the castle.

One of the worst incidents was, of course, the Pogrom (or Massacre) of York where on March 16 and 17 1190 a bunch of soldiers preparing to leave on the Third Crusade decided it would be classy and good to try to force the local Jews to convert. The Jews hid in the castle, but couldn’t escape the mob outside. Most of those inside decided to take their own lives, with the fathers of most families killing their wives, children, and themselves, and then setting fire to the keep. All the survivors were killed by the enraged bystanders. A Judeo-Christian culture – ladies and gentlemen!  

During Richard the Lionheart’s absence the Jews that no one had managed to kill were generally harassed by William de Longchamp, and when Richard got his ass captured in the holy land, the Jews were told that they had to contribute 5,000 marks towards the king’s ransom. That is more than three times more than the city of London was supposed to contribute. Cute.

Eventually English kings found ways to make money that didn’t involve shaking down the Jews, and at that point the Church was putting more and more pressure on kings not to allow Jews to lend money to Christians. So at this point Edward I was just like, ‘Sod it, let’s just kick all the Jews out of the country.’ On July 18 1290 it was decreed that all Jews should be expelled by All Saints Day that year, with somewhere between 4,000 and 16,000 Jews forced to leave. I mean – what an amazing cultural exchange we had here! Wow!

Jews were eventually allowed back in the country in 1655 when members of the Dutch Jewish community directly approached Oliver Cromwell. Don’t be fooled by this though. Cromwell was, as many important historians have noted, a total Puritan douche nozzle. He thought Jews should be let back in because – in terms of Christian apocalyptic theory – Jews are necessary at the End Times because they first have to be swayed by and worship Antichrist, and then convert to Christianity. Then the world can end. Isn’t that nice? What a great spirit of cultural cooperation! Anyway, Cromwell’s Puritan ass wouldn’t have eaten chocolate egg one on Easter because that would be fun, and as we all know, God hates fun.

My point here is that none of this points to a ‘Judeo-Christian culture’ like Farage wants you to believe in. He’s just using the phrase to exclude Muslims from British society, even though they are here to stay, fam.

Why anyone wants to choose Easter Eggs as the hill to die on is a mystery to me, and the entire ‘controversy’ is a manufactured tempest in a tea cup. My major point is that you shouldn’t trust racists when they tell you about the ‘culture’ of anywhere. They don’t know a damn thing about culture or history.

#jewish history #easter eggs #nigel farage #medieval #antisemitism #english history