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neutralgray · 1 year

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A Synthesized History: An Amateur Comparison of the Perspectives between the "Patriot's," the "People's," & The "True" History of the United States - Part 2

Full Essay Guide link: XX

Patriot - Chapter 2 | People - Chapter 2 & 3 - | True - Chapter 3

Development of Conflict and Culture in the American Colonies

Now that the colonies of England had established themselves with a solid foothold in the America's, a unique culture began to develop-- one born from unique challenges, conflicts, and compromises of a growing frontier.

For the components of the respective texts being compared, a general summation is:

Patriot's History - focuses on the developing culture of the American colonies and how it grew to differ from the mainland English

People's History - focuses on the development of the slave trade and the class system in the United States

True History - The French/Indian War conflict and how it resulted in a schism between the interests of the mainland English and their Americanized colonists

The slave trade had been established in the America's very early, but it had developed alongside "servitude," which was considered distinct (if not by much at the start). Slavery was in demand due to the cash crop of tobacco, but also due to the need for food across the colonies. With not enough labor force being present in the European colony to meet demand, an alternative for labor was "needed." Why, then, did the colonies rely on black slaves from the African slave trade?

Attempts had been made to enslave the Native Americans, but due to their high familiarity with their land and their generally better survival skills, they were harder to control and could more easily survive after escaping. There were sometimes harsh conditions for "lower class" European servants but laws did exist to offer some protections to the servant class. Africans in the slave trade, however, did not have these advantages. Slaves had no legal protection like the European servants. Africans on slave ships were often of mixed tribes, speaking different languages and dialects-- ergo, they often lacked the ability to communicate with one another. Further, they were being transported to a land they had no familiarity with. They were stripped of their culture, their friends, their families, and dropped off in an alien land. It's difficult to imagine a much more vulnerable position than the African slave taken from their homes. Despite this vulnerability, though, the spirit of humanity could not be completely stripped from the African men and women taken to this new and hostile land.

A series of small skirmishes and rebellions took place throughout the 1600-1700's. These rebellions weren't just from slaves, however. Indentured servants, slaves, and lower class Europeans who simply could NOT get ahead all displayed a working class solidarity with one another. Early accounts of interactions among these groups of "lower" citizens (and legally living "property") demonstrated that typically they did not view themselves as significantly different from another-- essentially, the racial line had not yet overtaken the class line. This was displayed no better than in the case of Bacon's Rebellion.

As mentioned briefly in the previous essay, Nathaniel Bacon Jr's rebellion was largely aimed at Natives and the upper class aristocrats. While this seems a good historical artifact paralleling a lot of modern populist right-wing rhetoric, the truth of these situations are always a little more complicated. Bacon's rebellion had a xenophobic hostility, but it was a hostility that appealed to many-- such as the servants and slaves working under pompous rich aristocrats responsible for much of their suffering. In point of this fact, the last holdout of Bacon's Rebellion was a group largely comprised of slaves, servants, and free men. What this meant for the upper class was clear. Solidarity among the poor at the lowest levels was a threat. Even with the stereotypes of the "malleable" and "docile" African that pervaded the culture of the time, these rebellions among the lower class (including the slaves) happened frequently enough for rich land owners with a stake in the game to be frightened of potential rebellions and conflicts.

Seemingly in direct response to these, the next century of developing English-American colonial law tended towards passing laws that punished rebellion but on unequal terms. There are court cases present in history outlining situations in which a small group of rebellious malcontents would cause a "problem," and when the punishments were doled out, the black men among them would often receive the harshest punishments for the same crime. A Patriot's History refers to these laws as the "black codes," which seemed to serve a direct and intentional purpose of ostracizing the black population and serving as a cruel deterrent to snuff out any thoughts of rebellion any others may hold. This was not the only effort to drive a wedge between the light and dark skinned lower class, however.

In 1705, a law was passed in Virginia which was particularly telling. White servants, at the end of their terms of service, were to be rewarded with a select amount of corn, money, a gun, and up to 50 acres of land. Now, instead of fighting against a rich upper class, the lower class servants had a proverbial "pot of gold" at their end of their miserable rainbow. With a reward of service outlined, these servants were more likely to become defenders of a system that previously exploited them.

These promised acres of land did not come from thin air, however-- and they certainly did NOT come from the massive sections of open land already "claimed" by the established wealthy upper class of the colonies. Often, lower class servants or new immigrants were pushed to the expansive frontier. The unclaimed land was theirs to claim. The Native land was theirs to claim. Now the narrative could be shaped easier-- it isn't because the wealthy won't share their land or resources that you're impoverished, it's because those NATIVES are on YOUR land and you must claim it to make it yours. The hostility any white frontiersmen might feel was now much more easily directed at the Natives than the upper class.

The upper class, at this early point of American history, already seemed to achieve a status as near self-sustaining. Once you were rich and powerful, it was hard to lose the riches when you could use your powerful influence to maintain it. A new sector of the economy was beginning to develop, though-- the middle class. This is heralded as an achievement of American progress in Schweikart and Allen's narrative, and perhaps fairly so. The middle class is, still today, often considered the heart and soul of most American culture. However, while the existence of the middle class is not inherently bad, the upper ruling class of society recognized and used it as a further means of creating disenfranchisement among the poorest.

The middle class consisted of special trades and moderately sized farmers and land owners. The lower class whites could aspire to the middle class, and the middle class themselves were protected from the competitive labor of black men and women. Laws were passed which essentially barred free black men from certain lines of work, and slave labor could not be utilized for special community oriented trades. In this way, the middle class became a "safety net" for comfortable wealth that seemed to be reachable among the lower class whites.

Once someone was firmly middle class, they could then aspire to the upper class. Much writing by upper class aristocrats was aimed directly at the heart of middle class men, almost all of whom were white due to the protective trade laws. When political literature was written and distributed to the common masses, it used deliberately inclusive language such as "our liberty,""our property," "our country." By using this kind of language the middle class was wed to upper class aspirations. They were made to feel like they were a "part" of the influential political elements of their home.

In all these many ways discussed, Howard Zinn proposes that racism as a concept in society was a means of control. By punishing black men and women far harsher, they provided a deterrent to would-be rebels among the African population. Who would dare to risk such severe punishment? By benefiting white servants and tradesmen with special privileges and rights, they were far less likely to rebel with their fellow impoverished. Who would dare to throw away all they had to gain if they simply kept following the "rules"? This systematic creation of barriers among the lower class served its purpose well-- it created a binary system of race in which almost all American people could be defined as either "white" or "black," with only one side of the two treated with any human dignity or respect.

1754 marked the start of the French and Indian War, a theater of the Seven Years' War. This theater of a larger conflict pitted American colonists and English troops against the French who allied with key Native groups.

While there a lot of potential factors and reasons for the start of any significant conflict, a common point for the "start" of the French and Indian War was when a French patrol was ambushed by a 22 year old George Washington-- our first "mythic" man of American history. A battle took place, in which the French were defeated and Washington's Native ally, Tanaghrisson, killed the head of this patrol. If the American colonies did not consider themselves at war yet, this seemed to be the key event to change that.

This conflict continued until 1763. During the initial years of the conflict, the British/American colonists were handed defeat after defeat. Eventually, though, this changed. American colonists eventually gained the upper hand and continued to push. The French were beaten back and ceded their claim to any of the territories contested over. With the French defeated, the American colonists could declare themselves victorious over their chapter of the larger Seven Years' War.

The Natives who were previously allied with the French now had no support. To make matters worse for them, without an active war on the American lands and coasts, they could not rely on European conflicts with one another to distract the American colonists' aggressive and often hostile expansion. With no front to fight, the Americans' could turn their full focus on the enticing west. This would not be the end of the Natives' fight, though. Events such as Pontiac's War/Rebellion, pushed the fights further. The Natives were further protesting England's claim in the Americas, with or without their French allies.

Across the sea, the English Crown was realizing how costly it was to support a war so far away. With Native attacks continuing to happen even after the French allies had given up, the English found themselves forced to continue supporting a conflict that had already burdened them with heavy financial losses. This led to multiple decisions that would lead to the coming "American Revolution." Two primary causes can be examined:

Heavier taxes to make up for the financial loss of the war. Notably, despite the English pushing further taxes in the colonies, the colonies had virtually no representation or consideration in English government.

The English passed the "Proclamation Line of 1763," which effectively called for a halt of frontier expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains; this proclamation was in direct contrast to colonial interests.

Despite the Americans colonists largely still identifying proudly as a part of the British Empire at the end of the French and Indian War, these conflicts quickly led to a critical cultural shift on how the colonists felt towards their motherland. This was not terribly shocking, however. Despite the previous English pride, the culture of the American colonies had been mutating from English culture for well over a century at this point.

Perhaps because of America's "rough" frontier start, Americans in general seemed to prefer more "practical" applications of knowledge. Most literature in the early American colonies focused on practical knowledge, current events, advice, and general information. This was also seen in the earliest of American colleges. While many of these initial colleges served as training grounds for clergymen, they offered courses in medicine, law, teaching, and other applicable "pragmatic" skills. These colleges moved away from the theoretical and philosophical humanities seen in the educated scholars of Europe. Benjamin Franklin, another "mythic" figure in American history, exemplified this pragmatic use of intelligence towards practical and useful technology with his inventive contributions. Franklin is often credited to be the inventor of the bifocals, the Franklin stove, lightning rods, and select other amenities.

Another prominent example of how American culture shifted from European culture was the de-centralization of religion, which was likely bolstered by the intermingling of multiple Christian sects in the colonies. In the colonies there existed courses in clergy work, but one did not need to take these to call themselves a preacher-- one merely needed to be felt "called" to it as a purpose. Perhaps due to this cultural shift in how people conceptualized "men of God" and America's roots with "practical" knowledge, a lot of early American preachers took an anti-intellectual stance, arguing that heavy interpretations and re-interpretations of the Bible (as seen in the more philosophical trainings of Europe) led to a muddled and misunderstood Bible. No one exemplified this brand of unique new American Christianity better than Jonathan Edwards, who is famous for his fire-and-brimstone approach to preaching. His 1741 sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is often cited as a prominent and important example of the "salutary terror" that was used by American preachers.

The roots of the American colonies were now established and a clear distinct culture arose in the 100+ years following the English move to American coastlines. Schweikart proposes three primary reasons for the imminent American Revolution:

English efforts to push expenses for the war on American colonists by conscripting soldiers and taking expenses from the colonies while denying the colonies any government representation

Distance to the Crown of England made them apathetic about larger English conflicts while their culture continued to evolve

The philosophy of "American enlightenment" rejected traditional ideas of Mercantilism, believing the individual should pursue wealth for one's self rather than pursuing wealth for the ruling state

Interestingly, Schweikart makes no mention in this chapter of the Proclamation Line act which Sjursen (A True History) mentioned as a primary motivator for the coming revolution.

Regardless of the exact reasons, the stage was set at this point for the American Revolution. The American colonies now had a unique "American" culture, thriving businesses which relied on the exploitation of human rights, and incentives to pull away from their own English masters across the ocean.

Final thoughts: Thus far, reading all three narratives has been (in my opinion) beneficial for a comprehensive view of history. While I have attempted to simplify the narratives across all three into segmented essays, the truth is that there is no easy way to condense every single facet of history into single statements because they can never carry the complete picture. Each book has a clear tone and purpose to impart the reader with a specific understanding of different facets of the same general subject.

Zinn stokes empathy for the people often affected by the "big" history, but it's interesting to me that A People's History hardly touched on the French and Indian War at all despite its prominence in the other two narratives. Had I only been reading Zinn's historical perspective, I would have missed the ways in which the French and Indian War functioned as a preface for the coming American Revolution.

Schweikart and Allen tell a largely factual account of history (far as I can tell) but have the occasional glib "gotcha" moment aimed at people I'm not even sure exist in any real number. One example of this from the chapters summed up above was a moment in A Patriot's History that mentions the method American colonists used to clear large sections of thick forested areas. The colonists used a cut and burn method learned from the Natives. This is followed up with a comment on how this is opposed to the "myth of the ecologically friendly Native," which seems to imply that there are a number of people who believe Natives never cut down trees or used wood or fire for the purposes of their own survival or expansion. This reads like complete nonsense to me and I feel it's attacking a strawman interpretation of the "general" narratives of American history.

Sjursen can also be accused of the occasional glib commentary, but with Sjursen there is at least some tonality which suggests sometimes his glibness is an intentional joke. He tends to end shocking narratives with punchy factual quips or opinionated interpretations that sometimes read as a deliberate attempt at displaying a cynical and bitter sense of humor. It does make for good black comedy (when appropriate) and definitely helps emphasize the horrors of the atrocities described, though it's definitely something I feel could be easily attacked by potential detractors of his work.

Overall, these narratives serve to illustrate that many of the problems that plague the United States today had a root in the country's very foundation. This is a bleak reminder of how prominent and long lasting cultural narratives can take and maintain a certain shape. Perhaps, though, it also serves to illustrate how truly young the United States is-- perhaps it's not too late to change the course of the American "empire" if the common peoples' reject the idea of needing to be "empire"-minded at all.

#A Patriot's History #A True History #A People's History #A Synthesized History #Larry Schweikart #Michael Allen #Howard Zinn #Daniel A. Sjursen #American History #Educational #Opinions #Text Essay

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walks-the-ages · 1 year

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OP deactivated, and some of the links were broken/marked unsafe by Firefox, so here's a new compilation post of Leslie Feinburg's (She/her, ze/hir) novels and essays on being transgender:

Stone Butch Blues official free source directly from Author's website:

Stone Butch Blues, backup on the webarchive:

Transgender Liberation: A movement whose time has come, on the web archive:

Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, on the web archive:

Lavender and Red, PDF essay collection:

Drag King Dreams, on the web archive:

(Also, if anyone ever tells you that the protagonist of Stone Butch Blues ""ends up with a man""........ they're transmisogynistic jackass TERFs who are straight up lying)

Please also check out your local public libraries for these books and see if they carry them, to help support public libraries! If you have a library card already you can checkout Libby and Overdrive to see if your public library carries it as an ebook that you can checkout :)

EDIT: another not included on the orignal masterpost-- Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or blue !

annnnnd in light of the web archive losing it's court case, here's a backup of both PDFs and generated epubs a friend made:

5/26/2023: hello! I am adding on yet another book of queer history, this time the autobiography of Karl Baer, a Jewish, intersex trans man who was born in 1884! Please signal boost this version, and remember to check the notes whenever this crosses your dash for any new updates :)

6/24/2023: Two links to share!

Someone made an Epub version of Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years, which you can find Here , as a more accessible version than a pdf of a scanned book if you're like me and need larger text size for reading--

And from another post I reblogged earlier today, I discovered the existence of "TransSisters: the Journal of Transsexual Feminism", which has 10 issues from 1993-1995, and includes multiple interviews with Leslie Feinburg and other queer feminists / activists of the 90s!

Here's a link to all 10 issues of TransSisters, plus a 1996 "look back at" by one of the writers after the journal ended, you can find all 10 issues on the Internet Archive Here !

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8/28/2023:

"Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out", can be found on the web archive Here, for the 25th Anniversary Edition from 2015,

and also Here, for the original 1991 version.

Each of the above can be borrowed for one hour at a time as long as a copy is available :D

This is a living post that receives sporadic updates on the original, if you are seeing this on your dash, click Here to see the latest version of the post to make sure you're reblogging the most up to date one :)

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October, 25th 2023:

"I began to dawdle over breakfast during shift changes, asking both waitresses questions. After weeks of inquiries, they invited me to a demonstration, outside Kleinhan's Music Hall, protesting the Israeli war against Egypt and Syria. I was particularly interested in that protest. The state of Israel had been declared shortly before my birth. In Hebrew school I was taught "Palestine was a land without peo-ple, for a people without a land." That phrase haunted me as a child. I pictured ears with no one in them, and movies projected on screens in empty theaters. When I checked a map of that region of the Middle East in my school geography textbook, it was labeled Palestine, not Israel. Yet when I asked my grandmother who the Palestinians were, she told me there were no such people. The puzzle had been solved for me in my adolescence. I developed a strong friendship with a Lebanese teenager, who explained to me that the Palestinian people had been driven off their land by Zionist settlers, like the Native peoples in the United States. I studied and thought a great deal about all she told me. From that point on I staunchly opposed Zionist ideology and the occupation of Palestine. So I wanted to go to the protest. However, I feared the demonstration, no matter how justified, would be tainted by anti-Semitism. But I was so angered by the actions of the Israeli government and military, that I went to the event to check it out for myself. That evening, I arrived at Kleinhan's before the protest began. Cops in uniforms and plainclothes surrounded the music hall. I waited impatiently for the protesters to arrive. Suddenly, all the media swarmed down the street. I ran after them. Coming over the hill was a long column of people moving toward Kleinhan's. The woman who led the march and spoke to reporters proudly told them she was Jewish! Others held signs and banners aloft that read: "Arab Land for Arab People!" and "Smash Anti-Semitism!" Now those were two slogans I could get behind! I wanted to know who these people were and where they had been all my life! Hours later I followed the group back to their headquarters. Orange banners tacked up on the walls expressed solidarity with the Attica prisoners and the Vietnamese. One banner particularly haunted me. It read: Stop the War Against Black America, which made me realize that it wasn't just distant wars that needed opposing. Yet although I worked with two members of this organization, I felt nervous that night. These people were communists, Marxists! Yet I found it easy to get into discussions with them. I met waitresses, factory workers, secretaries, and truck drivers. And I decided they were some of the most principled people I had ever met. For example, I was impressed that many of the men I spoke with talked to me about the importance of fighting the oppression of gays and lesbians, and of all women. Yet I knew they thought they were talking to a straight man" Transgender Warriors (1996) Leslie Feinberg

#bold text #large text #transgender #trans #nonbinary #leslie feinberg #neopronouns #activism #no id #pride #essays #Karl bae #memoirs of a man's maiden years #bi any other name

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feraldogbite · 1 month

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in the pilot jackie teases shauna abt her catholic phase and to that shauna responds that she liked the saints bc she thought they were so tragic. in the last ep of s1 during their fight the first insult shauna calls jackie is tragic. she calls her other things too but its so intresting that the first thing she thinks of is tragic. to me thats like a freudian slip. jackie was shaunas saint.

#in this essay i will #fuck jackieshauna #jackieshauna #jackieshauna come home the kids miss you #shauna shipman #jackie taylor #yellowjackets #yellowjackets text posts

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luthienne · 6 months

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Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick, from Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

#marc lamont hill #mitchell plitnick #except for palestine: the limits of progressive politics #words #essays #lit #palestine #free palestine #on zionism #typography #id in alt text

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raavenb2619 · 4 months

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I’m not sure when exactly this happened, but I think it’s clear that the aro community really is a community, now.

For the longest time I’ve felt like we were still in stasis, not quite there; a proto-community, yes, but not quite a community. But we have more history now to lean back on, more of each other to talk to and laugh with and cry with and learn from. More people that’ll go forward and make a part of modern aro history. More people that believe us, believe in us, will stand with us if we ask them.

I wouldn’t consider myself an aro elder yet, though each year I’m surprised at how long aromanticism has been a part of my life, how long I’ve been free of doubt or insecurity about my aromanticism, how far we’ve come since I was questioning. Then again, when I was questioning, some of the people I looked up to for guidance were probably close to the age I am now, so I might be there sooner than I think.

And, I’m so so hopeful for all aros, young or old, new or not, because we’ve come so far. Day by day, progress is slow (and yes, it’s unfair, it should be so much faster), but looking back it feels fast. We are our own role models, the people we look up to for guidance. We carve our own path through life, making things up as we go. I used to find that terrifying, because I had no idea what the future would bring. But it’s actually amazing, because I can ignore all these silly “rules” and guidelines about what my life should be, and instead ask, “what do I want my life to be?”

Younger me, you have no idea how awesome your future is gonna be. I’m sorry about the pain and hardship you’ll go through first; it won’t be fair and you shouldn’t have to deal with it. But you’ll make it through, and one day you’ll be me. I can’t wait for you to get here.

#aromantic #aro #aspec #queer #lgbtq #original #text #can't believe i was busy on a day when aromantic got super trending #also on the topic of history: history is super important and we should make sure we're good custodians of it!#make backups of your tumblr blogs/wordpress sites/fanfiction/analytical essays/whatever!#save links into the internet archive/wayback machine!#future aros will thank us for every thing we save from link rot #current aros will thank us for keeping our resources alive and accessible

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public-trans-it · 7 months

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i would love to hear your dark spore rant. i didnt even know spore had a sequel.

Oh anon. Poor sweet anon. I’m so sorry.

So, the thing about Darkspore is…

… it was a really REALLY… mediocre game.

Like, the moment to moment gameplay was… fine. Just fine. Not incredible. But not BAD! Really, it only had two major flaws:

The first, it was buggy as hell. One particularly nasty bug was present in the games launcher, and on certain systems the game would fail to install at all. They were unable to ever fix this bug, which I speculate was a major reason the game was abandoned by the devs so quickly and lead to it being taken down from every major digital distribution site. You could still install and play it if you already bought it though! If… it actually installed for you.

Which leads us to the second flaw. It’s right there on the box.

“Internet connection required”

The game has Always Online DRM. All the levels, enemies, loot, your entire account, was all stored server side. And servers are expensive. So, when the games bugs became unwieldy and not worth fixing, and they took it offline… it became a money sink. It was a game generating ZERO revenue, but had huge server maintenance costs. So eventually, they just shut down the servers.

It is now very difficult to obtain the game, requiring you to buy one of the few unopened physical copies remaining. And even once you do have it, it is IMPOSSIBLE to play. There is a project called Resurrection Capsule in the works, some fans trying to create a private server for it. But with so much info stored server side, they basically have to recreate entire subsystems from scratch. It’s… not going very fast, and to my knowledge hasn’t been touched in over a year.

Story

The story of the game is pretty basic. A progenitor race of alien super-scientists create a new, synthetic form of DNA, called Exponential-DNA, or E-DNA. This rapidly mutates to create new life, and can be guided to create specific, specialized organisms, condensing thousands of years of evolution to a few hours. It can also be injected into existing creatures to alter them and make them more powerful. However it also linked everything affected by it into a hivemind. So it was outlawed. The creator of it decided to respond by creating a E-DNA virus, called The Darkspore, infecting himself with it, and spreading it across the galaxy and conquering it, wiping out his own race.

You play as another member of that race, who has been in hibernation for 1000 years while that was going down. Your ship AI has woken you up because it has managed to stabilize E-DNA and also keep it disconnected from the hivemind, and needs you to go kill the guy who took over the galaxy. That is how the game starts.

…

And how the story ends. There is not really any more story past that part. You get a cutscene describing each of the games 6 planets the first time you visit it, and a final “Hey you won!” cutscene after killing the final boss which ends with the cliche “implication the villain isn’t really dead” trope, and… that’s it. That’s the entire story. Not really the selling point of this game. Its not even entirely clear if it takes place in the same universe as Spore! It’s just set dressing for “Run through these 24 levels and beat everything up”

Gameplay

Darkspore was created by Maxis. This alone was HUGE. This was a team of developers who only really made lifesims like The Sims and Sim City, taking a stab at making a diablolike game.

And I GENUINELY BELIEVE every single studio out there needs to do shit like this. Designing for something so outside your wheelhouse creates SOOOOO much innovation so quickly. You get fresh new ideas injected into the genre so quickly. The final product won’t be good! You don’t have any damn experience in the genre! But it will create something unique beautiful, and god damn I wish we lived in a world where that alone was enough and devs weren’t focused on chasing profits instead.

Genesis

Genesis is just a fancy way of saying ‘Element’. There are 5 of them: Plasma (fire and lightning), Bio (plants and animals), Cyber (machines), Necro (death and fear), and Quantum (space and time) and the way they interact is… certainly a choice I guess. Each Darkspore you face has a genesis it falls into, and each of your heroes has one as well. If your Genesis matches that of the darkspore you are fighting at the moment, you take double damage and they take half damage. If they don’t match, all damage both ways is neutral.

The system itself is kinda mediocre. The biggest part of it, however, is the Variant Skills. Each Genesis has 4 unique skills tied to it that represent the common elements of that type.

Heroes

There are 25 heroes in the game, which each have one Genesis and one Class (Sentinel which are the tanks, Ravagers which are the DPS, and Tempest which are the Casters/Support)

Each hero has 4 total variants, with the first one you unlock being Alpha, and as you level up your account (heroes do not have their own levels) you eventually can purchase their Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants, with each variant having slightly different stats, and a different one of their Genesis’ 4 variant abilities.

Each hero has a unique basic attack, which USUALLY has a little extra to it. For example Sage shoots a bolt that hurts enemies it hits, but heals allies it hits. Zrin alternates between two different punches, one of which has a short duration DoT and the other of which has a 10% stun chance. Stuff like that.

They also have a passive effect that is always active while you are playing them. Collect a soul from each enemy killed for a 5% damage boost, 10% damage bonus when attacking from behind, a stacking defense buff every time you take damage, stuff like that.

Finally, a character has 2 unique abilities. One that is unique to them and can only be used while you are playing that hero, and a second ability that is everyone in the squad can use if that hero is present.

Squad Decks

Which brings me to the first rant and something I am SO AUTISTIC ABOUT (positive). SQUADS. The game had you craft Squad Decks, collections of 3 heroes that you can swap between during your missions, for a total of 883.2k squad combinations (I think my math might be off on that). Swapping between them is on a cooldown of about 10 seconds, but otherwise is don’t instantaneously and as often as you want without penalty. You always have 5 abilities active:

- The unique ability of your active hero

- The Genesis ability of your active heroes variant

- Hero 1’s Squad ability

- Hero 2’s Squad ability

- Hero 3’s squad ability

The first two abilities change out every time you swap heroes, but the last 3 are fixed. So you have 3 abilities that you always have access to, and 6 abilities that are paired up and you can swap between which pair of those abilities is active.

Your heroes do NOT share a health/energy pool, but DO share healing pickups. Any time you pick up a health or energy restoration pickup, it refills a chunk of the respective health pool of your currently active hero, and a smaller chunk of each of your inactive heroes in the squad.

So the core loop of moment to moment gameplay becomes swapping situationally between heroes both offensively and defensively, to get access to your other heroes skills and also to mitigate damage from enemies based on their genesis or control where your healing is directed.

Loot

Loot in Darkspore is fairly standard for your average Diablolike. Item drops have 4 tiers: Common (Item Level=Account Level-5), Uncommon (Item Level=Account Level), Rarified (Item Level=Account Level+5), and Purified (Item Level=Account Level+10)

Items of higher tiers have more chances to roll on a table to gain beneficial modifiers.

Each item fell into one of a few different categories: Weapon, Hands, Feet, Offensive, Defensive, or Utility.

Each hero has one of each slot, plus an additional slot based on their class. Ravagers have an extra Offense slot, Sentinels have an extra Defense slot, and Tempests have an extra Utility slot. Any hero can equip any item you gain, with the exception of Weapons that are hero specific. Some heroes also lack Hands or Feet, in which case their weapon has extra stats and can get the same modifiers as hands and feet can.

The items you equip can then be added onto the Hero in the Hero Editor. The Hero Editor is often equated to the Creature Editor in Spore, which is BULLSHIT and was a pet peeve of mine the ENTIRE DAMN TIME THE FAME WAS LIVE. This is a FALSE EQUIVALENCE. It uses the outfit editor from the Tribal/Civilization phases of Spore instead. Importantly: this means you cannot alter the overall silhouette of your hero. It will always maintain the same basic profile and animations. However you can freely place the extra parts you equip anywhere on its body, and can also place multiple copies of them.

Additionally, old parts can have their stats stripped, converting them into ‘Detail’ parts with no stats, of which you can equip 6 different parts, each of which you can include 10 copies of on your hero. So you could get some pretty cool looks from it!

However all this loot is garbage and you likely would not use most of it outside of appearance. Which brings me to…

Cash-out Loot

Usually if you mention the word ‘cash’ in any sentence involving a game published by EA, it would be a call for concern. Luckily this isn’t that! It’s just gambling! Everything is fine!

The main progression in Darkspore comes from gear, and the best gear comes from how good your ships engines are. These come from account upgrades as you level up your account, determining how many levels you can do in a row. Every time you complete a level, you are given an option: Keep going, or ‘cash out’ and get a guaranteed piece of Uncommon gear, with a 10% chance of it becoming Rarified, as well as all the gear you picked up in the level.

If you choose to keep going, you have to complete the next level. If you die, you lose ALL the gear you picked up, including that guaranteed piece. If you make it to the end, you are given another choice: Risk it all again and go on to the next level, or stop here and get your TWO pieces of guaranteed uncommon loot, which each now have a 20% chance of becoming rarified and a 5% chance of becoming purified.

You can only go another of levels equal to the number of Engine Upgrades you have earned by leveling up your account. So at first, after the second level you HAVE to cash out. As you progress you can start to do many more levels at a time, getting a dozen pieces of gear that are practically guaranteed to be the highest rank.

But of course you have to play these levels in order, and you don’t get a chance to upgrade your character with all the cool new loot you found on the way, so you can’t just jump straight into this. You have to slowly build up to being able to push yourself this much, and once you can, you have a readily available source of some of the best gear in the game.

And that ties into my absolute favorite system of Darkspore:

Catalysts

Many diablolikes have a mechanic called ‘Sockets’. The gear you equip has its own type of equipment slot, and you put gems in there that give you small bonuses. Every game does it a little differently, but it’s kind of a staple of the series.

Darkspore uses a similar system, but utilizes it VERY differently. While you are running levels, enemies will rarely drop Catalysts instead of loot. These come in 5 colors: Purple (boosts your base stats), Red (boosts offensive secondary stats like damage or attack speed), Blue (boosts defensive secondary stats like health regen or damage resistance), Green (boosts utility secondary stats like movement speed or lifesteal), and Rainbow (can contain any of the bonuses of the previous categories) They also come in two sizes: Big and Small. This determines how big the bonus from them is.

You have a 3x3 grid on your HUD that the catalysts you collect go into. You can rearrange them however you want, and if you create a line of 3 of the same color (Rainbow is a wildcard and matches with all of them), it will double the bonus of all Catalysts in that line. This stacks, meaning if you create multiple lines over a single catalyst it could get a x3, x4, or even x5 bonus if it’s the center piece of the grid and forms a line in every direction.

However, you can’t save Catalysts. You can equip it to the grid or drop it on the ground and move on. That’s it. You have to decide now. Do you keep that Big Purple you have for the big buff to your most important stat, or do you trade it for that Small Rainbow for a mediocre stat you just found that you can plug in the middle and double everything else in your grid?

“Surely that only matters early game, and once you have good catalysts you don’t swap them out that much, right?” I hear the diablolike veterans asking, because that is how socketing works in most of those games. And normally you would be right. Except for one major change: All your catalysts only last until the end of your run. When you get to the cash out screen, and choose to keep going? You keep them. But if you choose to cash out, or if you ever die, your catalysts all vanish. Every new run you have to go through and collect them again, which results in you playing your heroes in new ways and adopting new strategies based on what catalysts drop for you each run.

It’s an INCREDIBLE easy to learn system that adds SO MUCH depth and replayability to the game. I love it so incredibly much. Each mechanic flows elegantly into the the next. The catalysts help you do better runs which gets you better gear which upgrades your heroes which lets you do better runs, the entire spiral being locked into your account level to give a quantifiable metric of how far this spiral is gone. It was so good!

And now, it’s gone forever.

Man that sure was a long post. Friends have heard me go on this rant SO many times. Thank god I never got into a second mediocre game filled with novel innovations that are ultimately lost to time and can never be experienced again due to Always Online DRM making it unplayable. Can you imagine if I didn’t learn my lesson and did that a second time? Ha!

… I never did that again. Right?

… right?

…

HEX: Shards of Fate

Hex was a digital TCG legal battle with TCG elements created by Cryptozoic. It was originally put up on Kickstarter, advertised as a digital card game with both PvE and PvP modes, a unique focus on the design space opened up by being a digital game, and gameplay damn near identical to Magic: The Gathering.

The thinly veiled truth was that this game was never meant to succeed. They had hoped it would, and it would be great if it did, but I’m fairly certain that was always a secondary objective. The first objective was to get sued by Wizards of the Coast over the similarities to Magic: The Gathering.

Now, that might sound strange to an outsider, but to anyone in the industry, they are probably nodding along and going “Yeah that tracks actually.”

You see, Wizards of the Coast is… bad. Really bad. They do everything in their power to choke the life out of the industry and have resorted to a lot of questionable tactics to do so. One of these is against anyone who develops any form of trading card game. You see, WotC has a patent on booster packs, customizable decks of cards, and turning cards sideways.

Literally.

U.S. Patent No 5,662,332 (A)

It is not a coincidence that the second two biggest names in TCGs don’t involve turning your cards sideways. Konami contested that Yugioh was different enough to not violate the patent.

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Nintendo actually hired WotC to design the Pokémon TCG to NOT violate the patent in return for WotC getting to distribute the first few sets. WotC gladly accepted, distributed the game, got their cut of the sales, and as soon as that was over….

WotC responded by suing them. They settled out of court.

Every single other game out there ended up paying royalties to WotC. Because the cut of the sales to WotC was cheaper than going to court even if you won. WotC had their fingers in every pie, but was smart enough to make sure not to piss people off so much that refusal was ever a viable option.

Cryptozoic was a company that, at the time, was making several licensed TCGs. The big one that jumps out was the World of Warcraft TCG, which they were in charge of (though it was originally made by Upper Deck). Cryptozoic was begrudgingly paying royalties because having the WoWTCG license was too good and they didn’t want to give that up. Then Hearthstone happened and Cryptozoic was going to lose the WoWTCG license as it got discontinued.

So Cryptozoic set up their new game, Hex, specifically to bait WotC into suing them, so they could get the patent overturned.

See, the patent isn’t actually valid. You cannot patent a game mechanic. There are certainly aspects of the patent that ARE valid and CAN be enforced, but the parts about mechanics can’t actually be enforced. WotC uses it because people can’t contest it, but if it actually was used in court it would get overturned VERY easily, and WotC would be declawed.

So Cryptozoic created a game that was a clone of MtG, used a Kickstarter to build up a large amount of legal funds, and got sued by WotC! Yes! Exactly what they wanted!

… and then they settled out of court.

Sigh.

I guess I’ll talk about the game now.

Lore

The lore of the game was solid. Pretty typical fantasy setting. Humans and elves and sort of racist orcs (better than most other orcs I’ve seen at least) and extremely racist tribal coyote people make up the good guys. Undead, spider-orcs, dwarves, and also pretty racist samurai rabbit people make up the bad guys.

There are two types of magic in the world: Blood magic and Wild magic. Elves are adept at wild magic. Shin’hare (the rabbit people) are adept at wild magic as well. The Shin’hare tried to take over the world, forcing the Orcs, Humans, Elves, and Cyotle to ally together to drive them underground into the underworld.

There the Shin’hare met and allied with the Vennen, an all male race descended from Orcs. They were adept blood mages, and they procreated by kidnapping orcs and using them as incubators for spiders. I fucking love the Vennen. I’ll focus on them a lot in this. The Vennen taught the Shin’hare how to sacrifice their young for more power.

The two then allied with the Dwarves, a genderless race of sentient stone statues who excel at creating machinery, and who believe the world itself is a giant machine. Specifically, a weapon of mass destruction, and they are trying to set it off. They believe blowing people the fuck up to be their natural calling.

The underworld and overworld forces go back and forth a bit, with the Elves doing a large chunk of the work as the only overworld race that can use magic.

Then Hex happened. Hex is a massive meteor made up of Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire. Hex punched clean through the world, scattering gems all across it, before stabilizing in orbit on the other side, becoming the worlds moon.

These gems were incredibly magical, allowing every race to now use magic. Diamonds were restorative, bringing life to things. Rubies were extremely destructive and burned bright and hot and quickly. Sapphire allowed finesse manipulation and control over water. These

Yes this is just the MtG color pie.

Eventually, humanity stumbled into one of their old crypts that was very close to the impact site of Hex, and found it CRAWLING with undead. They were taking the Diamonds from Hex and putting them into the eye sockets of human corpses, causing those corpses to reanimate. These were NOT actually undead, but an alien consciousness that existed within the gems that were using human corpses as a host.

The Necrotic sought a peaceful and symbiotic relationship with humanity as thanks for the use of the bodies. Humanity responded by getting really pissed off that the Necrotic were grave robbing, and went to war over it. Eventually the Necrotic retreated deep into the underworld and allied with the other races instead, eventually helping the Shin’hare with a second attack on the surface.

The lore has a lot more depth than that, but that’s the basic. I liked it a lot. The Orcs being good guys who just really liked tests of strength was a refreshing take on orcs. I liked them a lot. The extremely racist caricature that made up the Cyotle and the Shin’hare? Less so.

Digital Design Space

As for the actual gameplay… it was MtG. Like, almost 1:1.

Like…

Seriously.

Shards work similarly to Lands, with there being 5 basic shards, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, Wild, and Blood. You can only play one Shard per turn and when you do you get 1/1 Resource. 1 resource to spend on this turn, and 1 permanent resource. You spend that resource to play a card that costs 1, and you go down to 0/1 resources. Start of your turn, you would go back up to 1/1 resource.

Pretty straight forward stuff. Resources are a card type like in MtG, but once it’s played it acts as a perpetual resource like the Mana in Hearthstone, with no need to care about where the resource is coming from.

… wait a second though, this is a MtG clone. It uses the color pie. Caring where those resources come from is KIND OF a big deal in MtG.

Which is the first really cool difference between Hex and MtG! THRESHOLD! Each time you play a shard you gain 1 threshold in that color. To play a card, you have to have at least as many threshold as are displayed below its cost. See that purple dot below Murder? That means you need 1 blood threshold to play it.

Threshold is NOT consumed when you play a card, which DRASTICALLY alters deckbuilding and how feasible multi-color decks are.

For example, in MtG, if you had 4 swamps and 1 mountain in play, and 5 cards in hand that all cost R…. You can play 1 whole card this turn.

In Hex, if you have 4 Blood and 1 Ruby, and have 5 cards that all cost 1 and have a single Ruby threshold, you can play your entire hand that turn. This made it incredibly viable to splash colors in relatively smaller amounts. It also opened up cool new design space, like cards that cost 1 but still required 3 threshold in a color. Or cards that require 1 threshold of every type to activate a bonus effect (very common among Necrotic) or… for sockets!

HEY WE ARE COMING FULL CIRCLE!

Remember how I mentioned Diablolike games having sockets, but how Darkspore didn’t use it? Well Hex DOES. There was a pair of keywords called Socketable Major and Socketable Minor. Each set, there would be 10 gems (two of each color) that rotated out for Socketable cards. Cards with Major sockets could equip any gem, while minor sockets could only equip half of them. So for example the current rotation might have the Sapphire gems be “While you have at least 1 Sapphire Threshold, this card has Flying” for its Minor gem, and “When you play this card, if you have at least 3 Sapphire Threshold, target player draws 3 cards”

You chose which gem was in each Socketable card during deckbuilding. Different copies of the same card could have different gems equipped, or you could have the same gem equipped across multiple different cards. It was basically a way to go “This card was designed to be splashed in other color decks. You pick what that other color is.”

It opened up a lot of design space! This was something Hex did VERY well. They knew they were making a MtG clone, but they weren’t beholden to the same restrictions a physical card game did, and they THRIVED in those areas.

For example, REPLICATORS GAMBIT, a one cost card that creates six copies of a troop (read: creature) that just… could not exist in MtG.

Another example of this was in my favorite archetype in Hex: Mill. Now, I’m not normally a blue player. I’m not a big fan of the ‘you don’t get to play the game’ archetype. Even mill isn’t really my thing. But the way it worked in HexTCG? God I loved it. I wish I could see my opponents faces as they reached a trembling hand out to their bloated, grotesque deck, a cruel mockery of what it once was. They had started the match with only 60 cards, but now it held twice that number. Knowing every draw was more likely to bring their own skittering death out.

…

Maybe I should back up a bit.

Vennen are, in MtG terms, tribal Blue/Black with a focus on control. Specifically an aggressive form of control. Your wincon is still ‘beat your opponent to death’, but the means by which you do it is… spiders.

Lots of Vennen cards work by still allowing your opponent to do the thing that you blocked, but it now creates Spider Eggs in their deck. Lock down a creature as it enters play with ‘Everytime this creature becomes tapped, shuffle 3 spider eggs into your deck’ or ‘Whenever an opponent draws a third card this turn add a spider egg to their deck’ or ‘When this creature is destroyed add a spider egg to your opponent’s deck’ and when they DRAW a spider egg… well… the effect of a spider egg is more or less ‘When this card enters your hand or graveyard, draw/discard another card into that zone and destroy this one. Your opponent creates a Spiderling and puts it in play. “

Spiderlings are 1/1 Unblockable creatures.

The Vennen win con is to just fill your opponent with spiders and then shred them apart once the spiders start hatching. It was a DELIGHTFUL playstyle.

PvE

Hex also features a fairly robust PvE mode with a point crawl encounter map that was quite delightful. There were cards unique to PvE, but all PvP cards were also legal in PvE. In general, all your staples came from PvP and were the same core staples everyone uses to win (they were very generous with handing out common/uncommon PvP cards in the single player mode, which in turn also made Pauper a very popular format), however you also had PvE cards which made up your win cons. PvE cards weren’t balanced as tightly, and allowed to just be dumb overpowered bullshit just because it’s fun to use dumb overpowered bullshit sometimes!

There were also equipment slots that would modify the cards in your deck, turning PvP cards into PvE cards. For example, Replicators Gambit made it so that EVERY copy of that card gained that text.

PvE started with character creation. You would create a character that was one of the 8 races, and one of 6 3 different classes. Warrior, Cleric, or Ranger. I think there was a late update that added Mage but I don’t recall too clearly, and it isn’t document online anymore as far as I can tell!

Each class had a unique talent tree that you could customize and change how you played. Your race determined what colors you could play, and your level determined how many of each rarity you could play.

I played a Vennen Cleric. Cleric’s whole thing was that you would gain Blessings, 0 cost cards that would rise in your deck each turn, and could be played to draw a card as well as additional effects based on your build. My blessings put more eggs in the enemy deck, to the surprise of no one.

As you went from encounter to encounter you would earn new cards to modify your deck, swapping decks between fights. Then there were dungeons, long laborious streaks of a dozen or so encounters, with branching paths and decisions to be made, earning you tons of new packs and equipment and experience to boost your character. One especially fun encounter was crossing a desert with a pack of… I think it was gnomes? There were 20 of them that needed rescuing. The way you rescued them was putting them in your deck, and then leaving the desert through a single combat encounter. Except they were AWFUL. Like 3 cost vanilla 1/1’s level of awful. The more you had in your deck, the harder the encounter became. It was a really nice way to portray the logistical challenge of trying to fight while protecting all these useless tagalongs.

There were plans to even introduce Raids, 3v1 PvE encounters, but they fizzled out as the game got sunset.

The game was good. REALLY good. It relished in the digital design space in a way I haven’t quite seen since then. A few games, like Legends of Runeterra, have come close, but always fall short, and that’s so sad! I DESPERATELY want to play a TCG with this level of customization again!

Luckily that was the end of it. I finally learned the error of my ways, never touched anything ‘always online’ again, and now can live a life without regrets! … except Legends of Runeterra a little bit like I mentioned above but THATS IT! There are no other always online games I have regrets about!

…

ToonTown Online

Okay no, not seriously. I’ve never played toontown. But honestly it looked kinda silly and like a shitpost in video game form. I think it would have been fun to try at some point with a few friends. Not seriously, just to screw around in for a bit.

Never going to get that chance. Just like nearly everyone reading this will never get to play two of my biggest influences that shaped how I think about game design.

Always Online DRM is an insidious beast. It doesn’t just kill games, it kills *archival*. All we have left of these games is a relatively small number of gameplay videos. I was planning on having a lot more pictures in this post of all the interface elements I was talking about as I talked about them, but there just… aren’t any good pictures of them. Even these details are based on my own memory cross referenced with a couple of wikis, and even those were sparse.

Some games can’t feasibly avoid Always Online. MMO’s are a big example. But by adding it into a game that has a single player experience involved, and not making that single player experience a standalone thing on its own, you are destroying any hope that your game will be remembered. It will fade into obscurity. There will never be a cult revival. Your work will be discarded and forgotten and it’s… so incredibly sad to see.

I jokingly titled this section being about ToonTown, but really this section is about Kingdom Hearts: Union X. It was a mediocre and disgustingly predatory gacha. It was horribly managed with horrible issues around localization and it was just… a mess. But it was part of the world of Kingdom Hearts, and it’s story was important and mattered.

The game is no longer playable, but it’s also not entirely lost. The devs created a new version of it, as a gallery to view the cutscenes. The single-player side mode, Dark Road, is also included. The devs didn’t have to do this. They could have gone the same route as Darkspore and HexTCG, and had their work be forgotten. They chose to save it. Not in full, but at least the parts the deemed important.

It also makes me wonder how much this happens in other mediums. Ludology is a pretty new field, and it rarely goes into specific games and their impact on the medium, mostly just focusing on the impacts they have on humanity, rather than the mechanics themselves as these beautiful pieces of art. And it makes me wonder how often this happens with say… film critics. Are there any indie film makers who are deep in the paint of indie films and critique of not just the films themselves, but the very techniques being used, just sitting there going “It’s so upsetting that this big studio managed to do something this beautiful and all of us in the scene recognize it’s beauty, but no one else seems to, and now it’s gone?”

… as I’m writing this I actually realize that this does happen there. It’s how I found out about what became my favorite film of all time, The Man From Earth. It’s a small film that flopped horribly in theaters, and only gained any attention by being pirated by a lot by indies who wanted to talk about it. It’s a good movie, highly recommend. Not for everyone though.

I don’t know. I’m sure I had a point with all this but… seeing it happen again and again and now with streaming services taking stuff down it’s just… I can’t help but seeing not just more and more games, but more and more of EVERY artistic medium ending up in this area. How many digital artists entire portfolios have vanished off the face of the earth because their tumblr got deactivated? How many movies are going to be gone forever when Netflix eventually goes out of business? We can’t even rely on piracy! Many old pieces of media is just lost forever. Just ask the Doctor Who fandom. They probably know more about that than anyone else at this point.

But mostly I just really wish more developers would consider what parts of their games are important, and what kind of legacy they want to leave, instead of just what will generate a short burst of profit, with no care for what happens after.

… I should start doing video essays with how long this got. It’s like some kind of text based video essay. A text essay. Those are a new thing I just invented.

#Darkspore #Spore #Those are the only two tags on this post because those are the only games I talk about don’t worry about it. it’s fine. don’t read further.#HexTCG #Hex: Shards of Fate #Kingdom Hearts: Union X #Always Online DRM #The Man From Earth #I swear to god if anyone tells me I should just play Temo on LoR I will scream #YES I KNOW AND I DO #but also LoR sucks #and also that is missing THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS RANT #the SAME THING IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO LEGENDS OF RUNETERRA #maybe not soon #but it WILL die someday #and be gone forever #because it isn’t being preserved #Text Essay

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kabutoden · 3 months

Text

had a crazy dream last night where yellowbloods at the top of a different troll planet's caste due to their strong psychic powers, with the young trolls confined to a massive school and dorms system that the adults were outside of. the main characters of the story were a rust and purble blood in artclass who werent allowed to paint with pigments outside their caste until they 'improved artistically' enough. thusly, they were embroiled in a secret blood trade so they could privately paint with any colors they wanted... the deutagonists ended up rescuing a goldblood under pressure to use more power than he wanted. he was super confused about the painting thing LOL but let them paint with yellow for the first time in their whole lives. it was adorable, they were so excited to discover what they could do with it. totally dont have time 2 tell this story unfortunately but i should draw characters for it.

i have a lot of dreams like this that make vivid characters n stories. i wish i had the time to make every one of them into a longer project.

#homestuck #bugstuck #buggy trolls #text post #text essay #dream

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starstrike · 3 months

Text

Mithrun's desire as an SA analogue

TW discussion of SA and detailed breakdown of aesthetics evoking SA. The way I discuss this is vivid in a way that may be triggering, though there is no discussion of actual sexual assault. Just survivor's responses to it.

People relate to Mithrun and see his condition as an analogue for a few different things, like brain injury or depression. And I think all of them are there. But I also see Mithrun's story as an SA analogue, and Ryoko Kui intentionally evokes those aesthetics. I think it's a part of Mithrun's character that a lot of people miss, but I very much consider it text. This is partially inspired by @heird99's post on what makes this scene so disturbing; so check out their post, too :)

So to start off with, the demon invades Mithrun's bed, specifically. There's even a canopy around it, which specifically evokes this idea of personal intrusion; the barrier is being pulled apart without consent or warning. The way the hand reaches towards Mithrun's body from outside of the panel division makes it almost look like the goat stroking over his body. It's an especially creepy visual detail; similarly, the goat's right hand parts into the side of the panel as well. It's literally like it's tearing the page apart; but gently. So gently.

Mithrun is in bed. It is his bed that the demon is intruding on. He's in a position of intimacy. The woman behind him is a facsimile of his "beloved" that he left behind; the woman who, in reality, chose Mithrun's brother. He is in bed with his fantasy lover, who is leaning over him. While this scene isn't explicitly sexual, it is intimate. And it is being invaded. The goat lifts Mithrun gently, who is confused, but not yet struggling.

The erotics of consumption and violence in Ryoko Kui's work(remember that the word 'erotic' can have many different meanings, please) are a... notable part of some of her illustrations. I would say she blurs the lines between all forms of desire: personal, sexual, gustatory and carnal, in her illustrations in order to emphasize the pure desire she wants to work with and evoke to serve her themes. Kui deploys sexual imagery in a lot of places in Dungeon Meshi, and this is one of them.

In this case, horrifically. The goat's assault begins with drooling, licking, and nuzzling. The goat could be enjoying and "playing with" its food. But it can also be interpreted as it "preparing" Mithrun with its tongue as it begins to literally breach Mithrun's body. The goat also invades directly through his clothing; that adds another level of disturbing to me. There's nothing Mithrun can do in this moment of violation. Mithrun is fighting, but he is fighting weakly, trying to grip on and push away when he has no ability or option to. All he can do is beg the goat to stop. And it doesn't care. This all evokes sexual assault.

The sixth panel demonstrates a somewhat sexual position, with Mithrun's thighs spread around the goat's hunched over body. In the next, the goat pulls and holds apart Mithrun's thighs as he nuzzles into him. The way the clothing bunches up looks a bit as if it has been pushed up. It has pinned Mithrun down onto the bed, into Mithrun's soft furs and pillows. It takes a place made to be supernaturally warm and comfortable, and violates it. It's utterly and intimately horrifying. To me, this sequence of positions directly evokes a rape scene. I think Kui did this very explicitly. These references to sexual invasion are part of what makes this scene so disturbing; albeit, to many viewers, subconsciously. It makes my skin crawl.

This is also the moment the goat takes Mithrun's eye. Other than this, the goat seems exceptionally strong, but also... gentle. It holds Mithrun's body tightly, but moves it around slowly. It doesn't need to hurt Mithrun physically. But in that moment, it takes Mithrun's eye. Blood seeps from a wound while an orifice that should not be pierced is penetrated. This moment, the ooze of blood in one place specifically, also evokes rape. That single bit of physical gore is a very powerful bit of imagery to me.

Finally; it is Mithrun's desire that is eaten. After his assault, Mithrun can find no pleasure in things that he once did. He is fully disassociated from his emotions. This is a common response to trauma, especially in the case of SA. It's not uncommon for people to never, or take a long time to, enjoy sex in the same way again; or at all. They might feel like their rapist has robbed them of a desire and pleasure they once had. I think this makes Mithrun's lack of desire a partial analogue for the trauma of sexual assault.

Mithrun's desire for revenge was, supposedly, all that remained. Anger at his assaulter, anger at every being that was like it; though, perhaps not anger. Devotion, in a way. To his cause. I don't know. But the immediate desire to seek revenge is another response to SA. But on to Mithrun's true feelings on the matter.

This is... So incredibly tragic. Mithrun feels used up. Like his best parts have been taken away. Like he's being... tossed aside. This certainly parallels the way assault victims can feel after being left by an abuser. Or the way assault victims feel they might be "ruined" forever for other partners. These are common sentiments for survivors to carry, and need to overcome. In the text, it's almost like Mithrun feels the only being who can desire him is a demon who might "finish devouring" him. That that's his only use. It's worth noting that Mithrun trusted the demon. Mithrun's world was built by the demon, and Mithrun, in that way, was cared for by the demon. I think this reinforces Mithrun's place as a victim.

There's also something to be said about Mithrun as a victim of his own possessive romantic and sexual desire. The mirror shows him his beloved just dining with his brother, and it infuriates him. He doesn't know if the vision is real, nor if she has really chosen his brother as a romantic partner. The goat then creates a whole fantasy world where she loves him. As Mithrun's dungeon deteriorates, she is the only person that continues to exist. Mithrun continues to have control over her. And that is the strongest desire the demon is eating, isn't it? There's something interesting there, but I don't know what to say about it.

In conclusion, I think Mithrun's story is an explicit analogue for sexual assault-- though, certainly, among other things! The way the scene plays out and is composed explicitly references sexual violation and invasion of the body. His condition mirrors common trauma responses to sexual violence. And, at the end, he finally realizes he can recover.

Let's end on a happy Mithrun, after taking the first step on his journey to recovery :) You aren't vegetable scraps Mithrun. But even if you were-- every single thing in this world has value. Even vegetable scraps.

#Mithrun #mithrun dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi #ren rambles #dungeon meshi meta #tag later #I refuse to post at prime time look at my dunmeshi meta boy #tw sa #sa tw #this is literally 1200 words slash 6 pages if I added citations and a proper essay format as well as an introduction to Mithrun's character #and general introduction of the text itself #this could literally be an academic paper #lmao #ren meta #rb this plsss i want ppl to read my essay

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parvuls · 8 months

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no, because - famous person starts dating less famous person and is then gradually overshadowed is a trope. a trope often used to bring external conflict into stories. but jack and bitty are carefully constructed as the opposite of that, and I'm fucking feral over it.

we joke about how jack will eventually be bitty's trophy husband and be thrilled about it, but it definitely has a giant grain of truth in it. it's how they're characterized. bitty is an extrovert; jack is an introvert. bitty reached out and built himself an online audience to deal with his trauma; jack shut himself out and started avoiding the public to deal with his.

bitty finds comfort in being able to talk to others and (as seen in spotlight on eric bittle) considers being a public figure a sort of healing experience: coming out and being a public person (in every manner of speaking, not just sexuality wise) and putting himself in the limelight is such an important part of his journey because he sees it as a way of helping others who were in his situation.

jack grew up in the spotlight as the only son of two prominent figures. he grew up as a child with anxiety with the media's eyes on him as he was compared to his father. he grew up as an overweight teen featuring in trashy gossip columns as he was compared to his mother. he got into rehab in part because of this attention and it only attracted more attention to him. a lot of jack's anxiety stems from the notion of people looking at him and thinking about him and talking about him and judging him, and it's unfortunate because jack's dream is to play hockey, and that comes with even more attention.

but that's the thing: jack and bitty's story is (once again) a demonstration of two people making each other's lives better.

jack's fame thrusts bitty into the spotlight post-cup, and it's a giant push forward in helping him reach a bigger audience and thus grow his independent fame. bitty's growing fame slowly overshadows jack, to the point where ngozi says they'll one day be Eric Bittle and his Athlete Husband. and that means jack gets to play hockey, and win cups, and achieve fame in his own field, but the media's attention slides off him to his husband, and the fans on the street gradually approach bitty more than him, and jack is free to have his success with less of the personal scrutiny.

it's not that jack becomes less important than bitty. it's that bitty gets to stand in front of the direct sun and flourish as a result, while jack gets to stand in the shade bitty creates and flourish as a result. it's symbiosis. it's beautiful.

#omgcp #omgcheckplease #zimbits #watch me write this post as the into to my three part essay series:#Enough Talking About Bad Bob; Let's Talk About Growing Up As A Conventionally Unattractive Child Of A Model/Actress #I genuinely don't understand how ugly baby jack and fat teen jack aren't talked about more #do NOT tell me fatphobia did not affect jack's childhood. I simply do not believe it for a second #anyway zimbits are the true love blueprint they invented healthy relationships etc. etc.#meta #text

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peoplesprincessgeorge · 2 months

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nortrell + txt posts = true

#i mean i dont even go here but their dynamic gives me brainworms #also i am not going to stop making these cause if i do i actually have to write my essays so #simply not doing that #more galex and some brocedes coming up i think #and yes there is a tweet in there but it was too perfect it needed to be included #nortrell #absolute dogshit shipname #max fewtrell #lando norris #ln4 #f1 #formula 1 #f1 memes #my txt posts #formula 1 + text post

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neutralgray · 1 year

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A Synthesized History: An Amateur Comparison of the Perspectives between the "Patriot's," the "People's," & The "True" History of the United States - Part 1

Full Essay Guide link: XX Patriot - Chapter 1 | People - Chapter 1 - | True - Chapter 1 & 2

Foundation of the American Colonies

This is part 1 of an amateur essay series comparing the narratives of The Patriot's History, The People's History, and the True History of the United States.

Of all the historical narratives, Schweikart and Allen's piece spends the most time guiding us through the narrative of factors leading to the exploration of the "new world." Some of it does not seem necessary (such as discussing the historically set 'recent' innovations to boating technology which allowed for further expeditions), but it all serves to paint a picture of a world wherein Catholic and Protestant forces were competing via the spread of Spanish and English worldly influence.

Schweikart's work very early on suggests an earnest love and zeal for spreading the word of the Christian God as a major factor in the expeditions to the new world. However, Zinn and Sjursen's work suggest that the reasons were typically far more economic in nature. Sjursen does later state, though, that some immigrating groups to the future American colonies were intending on establishing a community largely based on a shared Christian fundamentalism (Puritanism), which does lend itself to Schweikart's more optimistic assertion.

The initial point of many of these first expositions was to find waterway shortcuts that would make trade with certain foreign bodies easier. The world stage is thus set for Christopher Columbus: explorer, seamen, and killer of Natives. The Patriot's History largely sings songs of praise to Columbus, giving him no small credit for initiating the spark that incited a serious exploration of the "new world." The book does acknowledge he almost certainly didn't actually land in the United States, but his landing anywhere at all demonstrated that there were resources to be scrounged in the west. This led to further funded expeditions that would see settlers and explorers land anywhere from the lands of modern Mexico up to the frigid coasts of what is now Canada.

Columbus is not lingered on for very long in the Patriot's History narrative nor is he given much of a spotlight in the True History narrative. Sjursen mentions him some, but the conversation is largely folded into the general atrocities enacted on Natives following the push of a multitude of European explorers into the Americas. It's only Zinn's narrative in A People's History that really stops and describes the atrocities committed under the exploration of Columbus. Schweikart makes reference to multiple studies on Native American populations to seemingly "soften" the impact of the Native bodies the Europeans piled in their wake, and suggests that since the diseases brought into the "new world" from the Europeans were (mostly) not spread to Natives intentionally, it does not constitute the term "genocide." Zinn, however, pulls from accounts of Columbus' own exploration journals, which were transcribed by Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Spanish bishop. If Casas' translations and writings are to be believed, they paint a miserably bleak picture of Columbus and his followers. Columbus intended on enslaving the natives almost immediately after making contact. His men were likewise malicious and cruel, often butchering and hurting Natives for failing to complete impossible tasks, small slights, and sometimes simply because they could. It may invite some skepticism simply because it is so bleak one does not wish to believe it.

The first English colony on North America was established as "Jamestown," in 1607. This is Virginia, the first seed of what would become the United States of America. The initial attraction of this expedition (and many to follow) was the promise of land ownership to any settler heading to the new world. English bureaucracy and royal lineage made climbing the class ladder in England exceptionally difficult; with the promise of a new home with potentially many acres of land to develop, any man could suddenly find themselves rich in property ownership.

This initial settlement was populated with "gentleman" explorers who had no valuable trade skills and would suffer for this lack of foresight. Later ships and settlements would establish more varied populations with valuable tradesmen, but not before English settlers suffered and died in large numbers. Conflicts with the Natives inhabiting the land were also not uncommon occurrences.

Soon a second towering foundation of the American myth took root-- the Puritans of Plymouth Rock. These are the groups that Sjursen states were coming to the Americas in genuine search for a land to make their own. Virginia was established as an economic anchor to generate trade and profit. The Puritans, who were to found the land of Massachusetts, were driven by the desire for the practice of religious freedom. These two settlements demonstrate that the concept of private property ownership as an establishment of economic trade and Christian fundamentalism were present from the future country's initial roots.

Tobacco became an essential product that demonstrated Virginia was a financially viable and sustainable settlement. Tobacco required much land to farm, however. The demand for tobacco product and the promises of land for many coming settlers (who were following settlers who already divided much of the settled lands among themselves) naturally created a strong incentive for continued aggravated conflict with the Native American tribes. While many white settlers did NOT want to fight and die with Native peoples, enough influential ones pushed for growth and claimed land. Since land was essentially viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold, which also granted political influence to whomever possessed it, a constant demand for more was present. As the English settlers saw it, the Natives had a "natural" right to the land but not a "civic" one, and ergo, they could not "legally" own the land they lived on despite living on it first.

As tobacco farms began to grow and spread, there was increasing need for a body of labor to work the lands. There were not enough settlers to meet the demands of these farms and thus the labor of indentured servants and African slaves started. Indentured servants were typically lower-class English, Scottish, Irish, and African citizens. Indentured servitude, however, came with a limit. Once the servant's debts were considered "paid" he or she was free to be dismissed. Slaves, however, had no time limit. Slaves lived and died under their master and the laws quickly established for slavery stated that any children of slaves were also born into slavery. The African slave trade took off and being "black" quickly became synonymous with being a slave in the American colonies.

Meanwhile, Puritans continued to spread as well. Puritans were self-assured and often aggressive in their religious zealotry. Many flocked to settlements that promoted "religious tolerance" as a positive, then, as they settled into the community and grew into local powers, they would choke other religions out of the region.

Many men of differing characters populated this fledgling colonial growth. Men like Nathaniel Bacon Jr demonstrated early xenophobia and nationalism, as he killed both Native and early American aristocrat alike. Bacon Jr displayed a narrow tolerance for peoples unlike himself and his followers-- a theme that was not uncommon in the colonies considering the assertive self-assured attitudes of early Puritans. However, there were also men like Roger Williams, who established Rhode Island. Williams established a colony that practiced the edict: "separation of church and state." Rhode Island was a model for true religious freedom in the early colonies, with a mix of Catholics, Protestants, Puritans, agnostics, and few non-Christian religions. Williams was not appreciated in his time for his efforts on equality across beliefs, but he was present and seemed to be one of a few genuine positive influences on the growing settlements.

A True History's narrative does the best job depicting how vastly different the settlements of Virginia and Massachusetts started, but as Sjursen closes his opening chapters he highlights how they were similar: land ownership as a means of politically active citizenry, and frequent violent confrontations and escalations with the neighboring natives.

Here we close on the early narrative of the English colonists who "discovered" the new world.

Schweikart and Allen make it no secret that they do not condemn the concept of "American exceptionalism," and even challenge the notion of "multiculturalism" being valuable very early into their historical narrative. They see America as a wholly unique and novel entity in the western world, and in many ways it was. They believe America was unique because of five significant contributing factors:

Great distance between the governed and their rulers

The acquisition of land as a commodity to any interested

Tendency for rebellious attitudes towards authoritarian government, which was caused by mistrust of the English Crown

Religious tolerance, as least as far as the multitude of differing Christian branches go

Colonies like Virginia and Maryland serving as blueprints for how to establish further settlements

Meanwhile, Zinn states that while land ownership as an economic commodity made the Americas unique, it fueled much of the vicious conflicts between the settlers and the Natives. The settlers wanted land for their tobacco farms and promised claims and so they simply took it.

Above almost every other trait, early colonial men were highly political for their age. Considering the very reason most traveled to the Americas was for the promise of immediate wealth and land aristocracy, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't be political. It was a necessity of the colony's small beginnings, which were predicated on notions of civic responsibility, land ownership, and economic gain. Schweikart and Allen describe the traits that feed into American exceptionalism as the following:

A general following of common law/ bottoms-up government ruling

Ownership of property largely being open to "all"

A largely Protestant foundation in its conception

The practice of citizen militias in lieu of formal military

The quick establishment of wealth classes due to ownership of property

Zinn and Sjursen's writings focus more on the Native side of the conflicts that arose with the colony's growth. Zinn states three lessons the Natives learned from conflict and compromises with their new colonial neighbors:

European promises were worthless the moment the advantage of breaking an oath outweighed the obligation of keeping it

The Europeans were merciless in their undisciplined fighting methods, often crippling Native populations by killing or threatening non-combatant populations to both demoralize and terrorize the Natives

Superior output of weapons manufacturing and metals made the settlers extremely difficult to fight in the long term

It's clear just from these opening chapters that each book has a distinct mission to accomplish, and insulates the history of the United States to that purpose. Schweikart and Allen take an optimistic approach to the notions of American exceptionalism-- likening the idea of being "better" as one in the same as "striving to be better." I will give them the benefit of the doubt though I've learned to be cautious of such happy narratives. Sjursen thus far writes a scathing condemnation of much of the United States' origin, and is very blunt in his deconstruction of the founding American myths. Zinn wants to focus on the downtrodden-- the beaten, the broken, and the fighters who push at the grassroots. Howard Zinn essentially takes the notion "History is written by the victors" and tries to turn it on his head immediately, focusing on voices who would otherwise be voiceless in history.

Final thoughts: Finishing up the first portions of each book, it's clear to me that there is a lot of information to take in. As this series of exploring American history progresses in the coming weeks and months, I want to keep an open mind to what each speaker has to say about each significant period of time. For this particular period, I did, however, want to dissect something that worried me about the narrative of A Patriot's History.

As mentioned above, Schweikart and Allen challenge the idea of multiculturalism having any real value to "progress" and issues this challenge by demonstrating the significant advances of Western culture. However, in my personal view, I feel like this likens the idea of civilization to a flawed argument that is often seen in evolution debates. In amateur evolutionary/creationist debate there tends to be this common mistake among inexperienced or young debaters in which they speak of evolution as if it is intelligent design itself, even when it's the one arguing against intelligent design. Young would-be scientists likely aren't doing this with the intent of giving evolution some kind of personified guided hand (as creationists might) but it presupposes that the evolution of intelligent life marks some kind of natural "end goal." Evolution is simply what occurs, and the most beneficial traits survive simply because they aided survival. Evolution has no "end goal," it just continues to happen.

To bring this back to my original point, Schweikart and Allen seem to speak of civilization in a way that suggests some ideal "end goal" that western culture was striving towards faster than any other. Meanwhile, in Zinn's narrative, we see the "lesser" civilizations as he lifts the veil on many Native tribes that were ruined, destroyed, crippled, or sadly lost to time altogether. As Zinn describes these fallen cultures, he tells of their art, their technology, their baskets, their statues, their homes, their very ways of living. It paints a beautifully sad depiction of many lost egalitarian and open minded tribes. One could accuse this narrative of appealing to the stereotypical "noble savage" archetype of Native Americans but nonetheless, it makes the reader face the loss of lives that paid for the foundation of the States to be laid. It begs the question: is "advancement" of civilization worth the bodies and is this sacrifice even necessary at all for advancement to happen?

One could also potentially argue that sacrifices must be made so that progress can be made (whatever your abstract assumption of "progress" is). However, it's easy to think this way when removed from it. If it was YOUR body and your bloodline that needed to die for someone else's idea of progress, would you accept it as a requirement of progress? If the colonists were so self-assured that they were "better" than the native "savages" they killed to push their territories, so self-assured that their way of life was better, so self-assured their civilization was more enlightened-- then it seems they did not lead with the example that would be expected of such "better" men.

I will not pretend that I don't benefit in some direct and indirect ways from the foundation of the State's history. I myself am a white American who is inherently limited by that narrow understanding. Obviously as a person living in the modern age, I highly enjoy many modern amenities I readily have available in my home country. I like a lot of aspects of living in my country in the digital modern era, despite its many problems and the ways I personally suffer under it. As far as my own existence, this is just what currently "is," though knowing what lost in what "was" is still tragic knowledge.

To close off this first discussion I will express what is maybe a sentimental, foolish, and overly romantic position to take... but when you realize how insignificant our small lives are in the unfathomably colossal space of the entire universe, what did it matter if one civilization was more "advanced" than another?

#A Patriot's History #A People's History #A True History #Larry Schweikart #Michael Allen #Howard Zinn #Daniel A. Sjursen #Educational #American History #Opinions #Text essay #A Synthesized History

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