#ancient combined armies

[jeannereames]

What do you think were some of ATG’s biggest/best innovations in warfare? Additionally (and this is kind of a thought more than a question) I thought it was incredibly fascinating how quickly he took to naval warfare despite most Macedonian military expertise being land-based (although I might be wrong)

It took him a while to catch on to naval power, actually—perhaps not surprisingly as Macedon was never that sea focused. Some recent archaeology suggests Pydna was a Macedonian port from way back, and certainly Archelaos moved the capital from Aegae to Pella in order to get a protected port on the Thermaikos Gulf. Later, Kassandros would combine several old settlements NE of Pella into Thessaloniki. Yet the goal of all these seems to have been trade more than military, albeit by Kassandros’ time, he was thinking military too, and certainly the Antigonids did.

Philip rather famously had to retreat his own “navy” (essentially a bunch of pirate-type pentakonters) when only about 20-30 Athenian triremes showed up during one of his campaigns in the north. He would manage to seize over 200 triremes when they were beached but couldn’t take them on the water. The non-Athenian boats he freed, but the Athenians ones? Did he use them himself? Nope, he broke them down for siege engine timber. As we’ll see, siege engineering is where he threw money.

He did realize he needed a better navy before going up against Persia, but his solution was to use Athens’, not build his own—despite owning acres upon acres upon acres of perfect ship timber. It still takes money to build those ships, even if not paying for the timber, and ol’ Phil just didn’t have it then. Plus, navies have to be maintained (ships deteriorate), and I’m not sure Philip cared enough to make that sort of long-term commitment. Alexander is the first Macedonian king (that we know of) to invest significantly in building warships, not just borrowing other people’s, and that wasn’t until late in his career, India forward.

Why the change? I’m about 90% convinced his real next target (before his death) wasn’t Arabia, but Carthage. So obviously, he needed a huge navy, and Persia’s navy (which he was now responsible for) had been famous. Yet he was also building boats for trade linking India back to Asia, specifically Babylon, which is why he made the whole Gedrosia trek in the first place. Baloney on him trying to outdo Cyrus and Semiramis. That’s largely imposition by later authors. He was looking for trade routes.

I do find it curious that the nation who supplied Athens with such copious amounts of ship timber that it became the 3rd front in the Peloponnesian War was not, herself, a naval power.

In terms of military innovation, Philip did more with basic equipment. He created the sarissa, devised the hammer and anvil tactic, and employed combined arms in a masterful way. He’s also the one who invested in artillery. That’s where his extra money went, instead of into ships. Alexander largely refined technology.

Alexander’s military innovations were more in the realm of ideas. Philip had made a few moves towards advancement on ability (not birth). Alexander pushed that forward post-Gaugamela. If he couldn’t touch the highest positions (and may not have wanted to right then), he did introduce advancement on bravery and ability with the lower-level offices among both infantry and cavalry. Especially with cavalry, this would have been tough to force through, as cavalry was traditionally for the elite (who could afford horses). Naturally, they expected to advance based on family connections. Also, following the downfall of Philotas, the cavalry was divided up into increasingly independent units. It started with the division between Hephaistion and Kleitos, but after Kleitos’s death, Alexander broke down the Companions into six hipparchies…not unlike the way the infantry taxeis were each under the command of a single general, who then answered to the man in charge of that wing of the army (Parmenion or Alexander, or later, Krateros or Alexander). This both allowed the army to operate more efficiently, but also prevented too much power concentrated in the hands of any one person. AND it rewarded ability, which tied the receiver to the king, breaking down mini-family dynasties within the army. (Such as Parmenion’s.) Philip had tried this a bit with the Pezhetairoi (later called Hypaspists), who were selected for size and courage. Alexander really expanded it, and renovated how the army command structure worked.

Likewise, Alexander had a rare ability to come up with, on the spot, new ways to use old toys. So, for instance, he put siege engines on boats to attack Tyre. In Thrace, earlier, he used a turtle (and gravity) to break apart carts rolled down on troops from above. He also used sarissai to “mow” down a big wheat field to attack the enemy from an unexpected direction. He built ginormous ramps all around Gaza to bring his machines up to the level of the walls. In India, he used “junk” from the countryside to fill in “impossible” ditches and construct a causeway to attack a mountain fort. Etc. Basically if somebody told him, “You can’t do that,” he figured out a way to do it anyway.

Militarily, he was the ultimate problem-solver, and he was brilliant at military organization. But Philip was more the innovator when it came to the tools of war, from weapons and armor to artillery, even if his son would then use that artillery in ways he hadn’t thought of.

#Alexander the Great #Philip of Macedon #Philip II #Philip II of Macedon #Macedonian military #Macedonian artillery #military history #ancient Macedon #ancient military history #ancient combined armies #Macedonian military innovations #Macedonian army structure #Classics #ancient history #tagamemnon #asks

[kizzer55555]

DP x DC: The Most Dangerous Card Game

Ok so Danny has essentially claimed earth as his. And he is fully aware that there are constant threats to the planet. Now he can’t stop a threat that originates on earth (that’s something he’ll leave to the Justice league) but he can do something about outside threats. Doing some research on ancient spells, rituals, and artifacts, he cast a world wide barrier on the planet to protect it from hostile threats so they cannot enter. This will prevent another Pariah Dark incident. However, barriers like this come at a price. You see, there are two ways to make a barrier. Either make one powered up by your own energy and power (which would be constantly draining) or set up a barrier with rules. The way magic works is that nothing can be absolutely indestructible. It must have a weakness. The most powerful barriers weren’t the ones reinforced with layer after layer of protective charms and buffed up with power. Those could eventually be destroyed either by being overpowered, wearing them down, or by cutting off the original power source. No, the most powerful barriers were the ones with a deliberate weakness. A barrier indestructible except for one spot. A cage that can only be opened from the outside. Or that can only be passed with a key or by solving a riddle. So Danny chooses this type of barrier and does the necessary ritual and pours in enough power to make it. And he adds his condition for anyone to enter. 

Now the Justice league? Find out about the barrier when Trigon attempts to attack, they were preparing after he threatened what he would do once he got to earth. How he would destroy them. The Justice league tried to take the fight to him first but were utterly destroyed, so they retreated home to tend to their injuries, and fortify earth for one. Last. Stand. Only when Trigon makes his big entrance…he’s stopped.

The Justice league watch in awe as this thin see-through barrier with beautiful green swirls and speckled white lights like stars apears blocking Trigon and his army’s advance. The barrier looks so thin and fragile yet no matter how hard the warlord hits, none of his attacks can get through and neither can he damage said barrier. That’s when Constantine and Zatanna recognizes what this barrier is. Something only a powerful entity could create. For a moment, the league is filled with hope that Trigon can’t get through yet Constantine also explains that it’s not impenetrable. And clearly Trigon knows this too for he calls out a challenge. 

And that’s when, in a flash of light, a tiny glowing teenager appears. He looked absolutly minuscule compared to Trigon and yet practically glowed with power (this isn’t a King Danny AU though).

And that is when the conditions for passing the barrier are revealed. And the Justice realize that the only thing stopping Trigon and his army from decimating earth. The only way he can get through….is by beating this glowing teenager in a card game. 

Not just any card game though. The most convoluted game Sam, Danny, and Tucker invented themselves. It’s like the infinite realms version of magic the gathering, combined with Pokémon, and chess. And Danny is the master. So sit down Trigon and let’s play.

(The most intense card game of the Justice league’s life).

After Danny wins, this happens a few more times with outer word beings and possibly even demons attempting to invade earth, yet none have been able to beat the mysterious teenager in a card game. Constantine might even take a crack at it and try to figure out how to play. He’s really bad though. Every time this happens, the Justice league worry that this might be the time the teenager looses. Yet every time, he wins (even if only barely). 

Meanwhile, Danny, Sam, and Tucker have gotten addicted to the game and play it almost daily. Some teachers might seem them playing the game are are like ‘awww how cute’ not realizing this game is literally saving the world. Jazz is just happy they aren’t spending as much time on their screens playing Doomed.

#DPxDC #dcxdp #Danny makes a card game to save the world. #Technically he worded the ritual so that they had to ‘beat’ him as those are the most powerful barriers and most reliable. #keys can just get lost or stolen (like the one to Pariah’s Coffin) #A riddle would be useless once someone figured out the answer. Like how no one takes the sphynx seriously anymore. #(Sorry Tuck. But it’s true). #And there is NO WAY Danny is just leaving a hole open for anyone to pass through. No thank you! #So…beating him. But it’s not like Danny wanted to fight so…he edited the ritual a TINY bit. Card games are good. Much less painful too. #Danny Tucker and Sam made the most complicated card game they could imagine. #It’s based on their strategies for fighting ghosts. Capturing them in thermoses. And MUCH based on a on field battle strategy. #It often requires spontaneous thinking on the spot. So Danny? In his ELEMNT. It doubles as practice for his actual ghost battles too. #They had SO much fun making this. #Sam added an entire series of plant cards that act as traps and healing ointments and duds that just take up the field. #Tucker added legitimate hyroglyphics combined with Latin as well as English and ghost speak. #Yes. You actually have to speak that language to play. With proper pronunciation. (Amity Parker’s think the three are talking gibberish.) #I headcanon Sam and Tucker are fluent in Ghost. #Constantine WILL figure this game out SO HELP HIM! #Some of the cards also have combinations related to constellations either in name or placement on the board. #By the way the board is based on a Hexagonal summoning circle with Rhunes along the edges #And the placement of the cards on the board and on what rhune MATTERS. #Also the cards move disintegrate and have certain abilities. Think of Harry Potter Wizard Chess. #But they are normal when Danny plays at school. This is just for ✨effect✨ Against invaders. #Danny faces multiple opponents. He also halts alien invasions. #While Danny COULD stop crime on earth he’s not sure how to fight a normal human and hold back so he sticks to ghosts. #The Justice league are going crazy trying to figure out who this entity is and after deep research are convinced this is some sort of #Ancient being who has protected earth for millenia. They have paintings on ruins and everything. #Danny is not aware they think this. #Raven starts praying to Danny as if he is a god and wrangles the other Teen Titans into doing so as well. Danny is still unaware of this. #Danny is not a King or an ancient. Just a very VERY strong ghost.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered. Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth. The Spartans were at best tactically and strategically uncreative. Tactically, Sparta employed the phalanx, a close-order shield and spear formation. But while elements of the hoplite phalanx are often presented in popular culture as uniquely Spartan, the formation and its equipment were common among the Greeks from at least the early fifth century, if not earlier. And beyond the phalanx, the Spartans were not innovators, slow to experiment with new tactics, combined arms, and naval operations. Instead, Spartan leaders consistently tried to solve their military problems with pitched hoplite battles. Spartan efforts to compel friendship by hoplite battle were particularly unsuccessful, as with the failed Spartan efforts to compel Corinth to rejoin the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League by force during the Corinthian War. Sparta’s military mediocrity seems inexplicable given the city-state’s popular reputation as a highly militarized society, but modern scholarship has shown that this, too, is mostly a mirage. The agoge, Sparta’s rearing system for citizen boys, frequently represented in popular culture as akin to an intense military bootcamp, in fact included no arms training or military drills and was primarily designed to instill obedience and conformity rather than skill at arms or tactics. In order to instill that obedience, the older boys were encouraged to police the younger boys with violence, with the result that even in adulthood Spartan citizens were liable to settle disputes with their fists, a tendency that predictably made them poor diplomats. But while Sparta’s military performance was merely mediocre, no better or worse than its Greek neighbors, Spartan politics makes it an exceptionally bad example for citizens or soldiers in a modern free society. Modern scholars continue to debate the degree to which ancient Sparta exercised a unique tyranny of the state over the lives of individual Spartan citizens. However, the Spartan citizenry represented only a tiny minority of people in Sparta, likely never more than 15 percent, including women of citizen status (who could not vote or hold office). Instead, the vast majority of people in Sparta, between 65 and 85 percent, were enslaved helots. (The remainder of the population was confined to Sparta’s bewildering array of noncitizen underclasses.) The figure is staggering, far higher than any other ancient Mediterranean state or, for instance, the antebellum American South, rightly termed a slave society with a third of its people enslaved.

#sparta #ancient history #greek history

[memories-of-ancients]

The Forgotten Mongol Heavy Cavalry,

When it comes to legends of the vicious Mongol conquests horse archers seem to be the celebrity rock stars of the Mongol Army who get all the fame and admiration. Depictions of Mongol battles in modern times usually show wild barbarian Mongol horse archers riding circles around enemy formations while showering them with volley after volley of arrows. Missing are the less glorified Mongol heavy cavalry, an absence which I’m sure would make the Great Khan sad because the Mongols had fine heavy cavalry. Not to put down horse archers, but horse archers alone don’t always win battles. While horse archers have their advantages, they also have several weakness and limitations, especially against opposing heavy infantry and cavalry equipped with shields and armor while in a defensive battle formation. What made the Mongols effective was not the mere fact they had horse archers, but because they had better tactics, among them combined arms tactics where they were able to coordinate the abilities of different units to accomplish a goal on the battlefield. This isn’t just a principle of Mongol warfare, but a principle of warfare in general. Whether we're talking ancient times or modern warfare, the side that has better combined arms tactics typically wins.  

The early Mongol Army consisted of 60% horse archers and 40% heavy cavalry. Later the Mongols would adopt new units such as heavy infantry, light infantry, siege units, and artillery conscripted from the peoples they conquered. However for this post I’m only referring to the early Mongol Army commanded by Genghis Khan and his general Subutai.  The purpose of the horse archers were as skirmishing units; to harass, sow chaos and confusion, and weaken the discipline of enemy ranks. The purpose of the heavy cavalry was to directly engage enemy units in close combat. To do their job, Mongol heavy cavalry were heavily armed and armored, much more so than their horse archer counterparts. They were armored head to toe in lamellar armor composed of metal plates sewn together into a suit. Often this armor also covered the horse as well. 

Their primary arm was a lance used to conduct charges. For melee fighting they would carry swords or axes, and also maces for armored opponents. They would also probably carry a shield. Along with their horse archer counterparts, Mongol heavy cavalry also carried a bow in order to engage the enemy at a distance. In essence Mongol heavy cavalry were similar to Middle Eastern or Byzantine cataphracts and European mounted knights. 

On the battlefield, Mongol units typically fought in five ranks, the first three ranks composed of horse archers, the last two composed of heavy cavalry.  During a Mongol charge, the horse archers would close to around 50 - 100 yards and fire arrows while the heavy cavalry would protect them from counterattack by enemy cavalry. It should be noted that Mongol heavy cavalry were also armed with bows, so likewise would be firing on the enemy as well. After firing, the formation would turn around, resupply with arrows, and remount with fresh horses. They would then repeat the charge again and again until eventually the enemy would weaken, begin to panic, lose discipline, and perhaps break ranks.  At that point the heavy cavalry would swoop in and smash the enemy formation. The Mongols also used deceptive tactics which the heavy cavalry would be an essential part. One common tactic was the feigned retreat, where a Mongol unit would pretend to retreat in panic as if defeated. The enemy would in turn charge expecting to chase down and massacre a terrified enemy. To their horror, the Mongols would reform and counterattack, the heavy cavalry at the front to smash the disorganized enemy and the horse archers firing from the rear. Another tactic would be to use the horse archers to draw the enemy into an ambush, where the heavy cavalry would appear from a hidden position and conduct a surprise attack on the enemy flanks or rear.

#history #mongols #medieval history #middle ages #cavalry #heavy cavalry #military history

[mapsontheweb]

French Expressions based on Other Nationalities

by u/Beurreboule

These expressions come from various online platforms, with a strict focus on those whose etymology can be linked to specific nationalities. It is important to note that this map is not intended to offend, but rather to explore the linguistic interaction between cultures.

I've picked expressions that are tied to people or nationalities. For instance, “To have the Portugueses sanded” (Avoir les portugaises ensablées) refers to a type of oysters, not the people of Portugal.

Here is the list of these expressions, along with their origins:

To take a Scottish shower (Prendre une douche écossaise): This French expression dates back to the 19th century and refers to a hydrotherapy practiced at that time in Scotland. In a figurative sense, it describes a situation where a combination of sensations, events, or impressions swiftly transition from being positive to turning negative.

The English have landed (Les anglais ont débarqué): In comparison to the British armies which, during the Napoleonic wars, were dressed in red.

To slip away the English way (Filer à l’anglaise): Probably an alteration of the English "to take French leave", dating from the 19th century.

To talk like a Spanish cow (Parler comme une vache espagnole): According to the most plausible hypothesis, it would be a distortion of the Occitan expression “parlar coma un gavach espanhòl” (to speak like a Spanish gabatch). The word “gabatch” designates here the mountain dweller from the Pyrenees.

A Spanish wanking (Une branlette espagnole): The origin of this 20th century expression is obscure and mysterious.

A Spanish inn (Une auberge espagnole): This expression was used in the 17th century to describe the poor quality of inns/hostels in Spain, which were widely used because they were on the road to Santiago de Compostela.

A German quarrel (Une querelle d’allemand): The most commonly accepted theory is that the Holy Roman Germanic Empire was made up of numerous small states. These rulers frequently looked for opportunities to engage in battles with neighboring states, aiming to capture land and increase their power and influence.

To be drunk like a Pole (Être saoul comme un polonais): This expression, which has become pejorative, was not so at its beginnings. After a decisive battle, the Polish lancers of Kozietulski in Spain in 1808 were paraded before Napoleon as heroic survivors of this elite unit. Jealous French generals, wanting to downplay the role of the Poles, claimed that they were drunk. The Emperor responded to them, "Well then, gentlemen, learn to be as drunk as the Poles!". Another version states that Napoleon, in admiration, said, "One had to be as drunk as a Pole to accomplish that."

The Russian mountains (les montagnes russes): The concept of Russian Mountains originated from toboggan races held on snow-covered hills, especially in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg. In the late 1700s, these races gained immense popularity, prompting entrepreneurs to explore the idea in other countries. This led to the development of rides using wheeled cars on tracks. In 1812, the company "Les Montagnes Russes" constructed and operated such rides in the Belleville district of Paris. The term was subsequently used to describe roller coasters, and this analogy led to the emergence of the expression.

A Roman’s job (Un travail de romain): From the reputation of the Romans for having accomplished Herculean works, especially the construction of aqueducts and ancient roads.

To be strong like a Turk (Être fort comme un turc): This expression comes from the 15th century and refers to the period of the Ottoman Empire when the Turks achieved many conquests through their sheer strength and ruthless behavior, showing no mercy. Thus, during that time, the Turks represented the ultimate enemy, seen as unbeatable.

To be the Turkish head (Être la tête de turc): This expression is based on the entertainment found at French fairs in the late 19th century. These amusements involved gauging one's strength by hitting a head wearing a turban, evoking the stereotypical image of a Turk.

To send to the Greek calends (Renvoyer aux calends grecques): From the Calends, which were not Greek but Roman, is an expression used by Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars to say “never”.

To go get lost at the Greeks (Aller se faire voir chez les grecs): This expression indirectly refers to the alleged common homosexuality among Greeks since ancient times, including practices like pederasty. Notably, Plato's work "The Symposium" illustrates this, featuring figures like Socrates.

#maps #Beurreboule #phrases #french language #europe

[peasantexchangeprogram]

helloo since we're on the topic: top historical fiction (or adjacent) ? can be any time period I just really love your taste in shows/games/etc and am always on the lookout for history inspired media !

thank you!!! im rly glad im like. inspiring other ppl to engage w things im insane abt hudofajsdfdassfsad. anyways. i will probably expand that list bc i literally forgot every single thing i ever read. also i havent watched that many movies so far

ancient times: i havent really watched a lot of movies/series set in ancient times so far :(

rome HBO (2005-2007) (tv series) - OF COURSE. i personally think its one of the best series ever made. they combine political, miliatry history with the lives of every day people in an incredible way. they never let you once engage with the series through modern lenses. according to my teacher (a historian, archeologist & self described 'romaphile') its incredibly historically accurate, mostly the clothing, set designs, characterization, military practices, etc. except for the things they straight up made up, of course.

i really enjoyed gladiator (2000), i think its a masterpiece.

prince of egypt (1998) i guess?

all the asterix movies of course, all the animated ones and most of the live actions. but i wouldnt really call it historical fiction

ok i havent actually finished watching it for now but sebastiane (1976) - an erotic, x rated, gay interpretation of the martyrdom of st sebastian. its in latin also.

wait i cant believe i forgor about assassin's creed odyssey - so far the only one ive played. its so fun and incredibly immersive visually. especially pour moi who cries into the pillow about how ill never experience the ancient world. also you can b a faggot which is always fun. i have things to say about their portrayal of same-sex sexuality and slavery in classical greece but i get why they did that considering its supposed to like. appeal to a lot of people, and a more "historically accurate" portrayal (for example of pederasty or how common slavery was etc.) would b v difficult for a lot of their target audience. alas.

medieval and early modern era:

the name of the rose (1986) - my medieval history teacher literally showed us bits of this movie to teach us about monasteries and monks fhdosiasdjasd.

the borgias (2011-2013) - incredibly messy, lots of political intrigue, and so so fun to watch. about the history of the borgia family. filled to the brim with drama.

the three musketeers (1993) - my favorite adaptation, also coincidentally the one i grew up on. casting tim curry as richelieu was genius. he slays so hard.

i also like bbc's the musketeers (2014-2016) - a neat little series. very fun and entertaining to watch.

outlaw king (2018) - like i dont think most ppl heard of this movie. its about robert the bruce's fight to reclaim the throne of scotland. starring chris pine

vikings (2013-2020) - its fun. i havent watched the entire series tho. dont expect anything resembling historical accuracy

the northman (2022) - you will see something resembling historical accuracy

mihai viteazul (michael the brave) (1971) - a fun movie. very much romanian propaganda tho.

1670 (2023-) - such a fun series!!! incredible cast, shows respect to the actual history and the lives of historical people. really cute and funny.

caravaggio (1986) - a biopic about caravaggio.

wait i also forgor about pentiment - an intriguing, immersive, and incredibly beautiful video game! it has a lot of 'the name of the rose' vibes, with it being a medieval murder mystery taking place in a monastery. its incredibly touching and made me cry, and in the last few years i very rarely cry. also im 99% sure its an indie game? go support the creators!

vaguely-medieval/early modern fantasy:

mirror mirror (2012) - a retelling of snow white. a very fun movie imo, with incredible costume design. julia roberts plays the evil queen and she SLAYS. armie hammer is unfortunately in that movie.

stardust (2007) - one of my fave movies growing up. more modern-inspired but still.

the green knight (2021) - controversial i know but i actually loved this movie! i liked it both as a standalone movie but moreso as a 21st century adaptation to sir gawain and the green knight.

galavant (2015-2016) - !!!!!!! one of the most series ever! they manage to tackle such difficult concepts and conversations with a hilarious wit. so fun to watch. i listen to a lot of the songs still, and rewatch every once in a while.

disenchantment (2018-2023) - very fun to watch, especially the first season.

i also really liked the novel uprooted by naomi novik. its a polish-inspired fantasy.

modern era:

killers of the flower moon (2023) - of course. a masterpiece

aferim! (2015) - a romanian movie set in 19th century wallachia, about two officers, a father and son, who were sent by a nobleman to retrieve an escaped enslaved romani man. a lot of the people in the comments were calling the movie humorous and funny, maybe im missing smth (as im watching with subtitles n dont understand the original language) but it was a very difficult watch for me??

the handmaiden (2016) - need i say more

black sails (2014-2017) - a prequel to the famous novel 'treasure island'. not an easy series to watch. incredibly good.

the favourite (2018) - need i say more pt 2

the rabbi's cat (le chat du rabbin) (2011) - animated movie set in early 20th century algeria. a rabbi's cat learns to talk overnight.

the nice guys (2016) - a fun murder mystery set in the 1970s

o brother, where art thou (2000) - a retelling of the odyssey set in the southern us in the 1930s

victor/victoria (1982) - set in early 20th century paris. julie andrews pretends to be a man and takes on a job as a drag queen. extremely fun, extremely gay movie.

lady chatterley's lover (2022) - very much porn for moms but it was a nice watch imo

amulet (2020) - set in like. idk. sometime in the 20th century. this is a horror movie, deals a lot with misogyny, sa, and so on. i really like it, personally. a lot of people, mostly weird men, dont tho.

the great (2020-2023) - i have mixed feelings about this show. on the one hand, its really fun to watch. on the other hand, its basically ofmd for girls who have public mental breakdowns whenever someone claims corsets were oppressive. and theyre so weird about russians, jesus christ.

disses:

domina (2021-) - i just couldnt get into it, esp since i tried right after finishing rome hbo. it was kind of silly, and not in a good way. takes itself wayyyy to seriously.

i didnt like spartacus (2010-2013) - the dialogue was almost grotesque and the editing, especially the transitions, straight up killed me

damsel (2024) - holy fuck what a trainwreck of a movie. absolute waste of angela basset and robin wright. the only good thing were the costumes.

lancelot du lac (1974) - i just didnt like it at all. couldnt get into it. i guess it was way too french and artsy fartsy for me. a movie that was trying to say both too little and too much at the same time.

i didnt rly like bram stoker's dracula (1992) - i mean. it was a fine movie. it was definitely not the godfather. the movie itself was meh. the visuals tho? absolutely stunning

#asks #anon #mine* #slavery ment #sa ment

[unhelpfulfemme]

More random Captive Prince thoughts, because I feel like being a sadist to all of my mutuals these books are living rent-free in my head right now. These ones are more about the plot and the worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding-wise, I loved the attention to detail, because as far as I could tell all the little details of how a medieval-ish army functions and how you would run it and what you would do with the horses and the supplies and the roads etc. etc. were pretty accurate. I mean, these books are by no means a treatise on warfare (in fact they can be delightfully pulpy, which I liked - I grew up on The Three Musketeers and the Scarlet Pimpernell and similar swashbuckling novels, and I got some of the same feelings here!), but there were details in there that most other authors don't bother to put in or inadvertently fuck up (I love ASOIAF to death but historically accurate it is not), and most of the military stuff seemed plausible enough as well, though again not described in too much detail so you can fill it in with your own assumptions or skim over if it's not something that particularly interests you. And I also loved the architectural details and could imagine everything quite well, but again, as I said previously, this may be because the author spent some time living near where I live so we've seen a lot of the same stuff probably.

Actually when I was first reading it and thinking it was going to be bad I was reading it exclusively for the architectural details lol, I was like yeah, yeah, they're all sucking each other off, but Damen please tell me again how you feel about the tiling?

What I also particularly liked is how the... scale of the conflict I guess? was refreshingly accurate for the "historical period".

The worldbuilding is a mashup of Ancient Greece and medieval France, but what it really felt like to me is a world where the Roman Empire never really consolidated to the extent that it did in our world and Italy went on into the middle ages (because these are decidedly feudal systems) with Cisalpine Gaul having the, well, Gallic culture, while the South had a Greek one. I may be thinking this because I live in Italy and so everything reminds me of Italy, but once I thought of it I couldn't unsee it.

I guess I gotta put in a cut somewhere and now's as good of a time as any?

But anyway, back to the scale of the conflict, the actual middle ages were filled with small and mid-sized countries, and petty local conflicts with family members turning onto each other over succession and stuff, and random small territories going back and forth (well, that's just Europe in general, always, TBH), and this is how it all felt like to me. Actual medieval history has a guy who started a rebellion because his brothers threw a pisspot at him and his father did nothing about it and he felt humiliated, and the war was secretly funded by his mother, so the combination of the small scale with a random local conflict that probably literally nobody cares about outside of the region we are in + everything being so intensely driven by interpersonal drama between insane people felt really authentic to me, like the kind of weird historical moment that would get turned into a funny Tumblr post. And of course the royals did a lot more sneaking around than was probably smart, but I can forgive that for the swashbuckling vibes and also because if Cleopatra could sneak into a palace in a carpet these guys can do whatever they want in my book.

Speaking of the petty interpersonal drama, I also liked the emphasis on how in this system personal reputation and the performance of kingship are king. Usually when you have a heavily political story it's much more based on the quid-pro-quo, "rational actor" kind of politics, but medieval politics also had a lot more going on in the cultural sense (and so do modern politics actually but at least pretending to be a "rational actor" IS the modern performance of leadership), and here you had people dealing political blows through meticulous management of their own and others' political reputations, which was fun to see, especially in combination with so many manipulative bastard characters. Like, how Laurent is manipulated into going to the border just because looking like a coward will lose him more political points than he can afford, and Damen's continued wearing of the slave cuff and instistence on not being served by slaves initially deals massive blows to his reputation, because these are cultures that value heroism, of one sort or another.

(And speaking of heroism, the emphasis on the physical activity-related activities that are the centerpiece of noble life in both countries were wonderful, especially since because both Ancient Greece and the European Middle Ages were really into that in their respective ways and it makes the mashup feel really well-done and coherent in how she tied it together.)

What's notable is a lack of any kind of religion, which felt particularly glaring during the whole Kingsmeet thing - in the real world there would likely be a belief in some kinda curse from the Gods or something similar to discourage the drawing of weapons, but since I'm not really religious and tend not to personally care about religion (while ofc recognizing its anthropological importance) I really didn't care and it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the series.

Still, I do have to say that the ending of the last book felt reeeeaally rushed, and that felt really glaring exactly because the rest of the series had such amazing detail work and excellent pacing and very gradual plot development.

I didn't get the part with the doctor and the letter (why didn't he say anything earlier? how would they verify the authenticity of the letter? Did anyone even have the time to READ the thing?) but I'm gonna be honest with you here, I read book 3 under a heavy fever and it was like 2 AM when I got to that part, so I'm not sure that I haven't missed something that makes it make more sense.

BUT even if that part makes sense, I feel like the Regent was dealt with far too quickly. Like in one paragraph he is in control of everything, in the next they've already beheaded him and that's it. I can imagine in my head that a lot of the nobles were probably already sick of him and took little convincing, that they were disapproving both of his meddling in foreign politics and of his likely grave breach of cultural rules via taking an aristo kid as a pet, or that he initially rationally seemed a better choice over Laurent until Laurent proved himself to be more competent and with a more competent ally, or they already had some hints about what happened that the audience didn't and the evidence confirmed what was inconclusive before.

But I feel like in a series that spends so much time detailing the shifting alliances between the characters and the public's opinion on everyone that matters? I really needed to be sold on it a bit more. Like I really needed some discussion over what to do with the Regent, I needed them to keep him in a cell for a while as they decided whether to kill him (and have the leads scared that the Regent will turn them over as Laurent often does to people), I needed them to consider the evidence just a little bit more, I needed some post mortem with the council members where they explain what was happening on their side of the things. It needed to be MUCH longer and more detailed.

Another thing I wondered at was why the Regent was so insistent to paint Laurent's collaborations with the Akielons as a bad thing when he was... also collaborating with the Akielons? Like he is foaming at the mouth calling them barbarians and accusing Laurent of sleeping with the prince-killer but it feels more like setup for Damen's big declaration of love than an actual political strategy because my brother in Christ, you are literally in the Akielon royal palace, in the middle of Akielos to which you ran after your nephew started a rebellion, with the Akielon king sitting next to you as your equal. Why do you think that you can convince your people that YOUR Vere-Akielos alliance is somehow more morally pure than Laurent's? This was also the right moment to pull out all the patricide allegations that seemed to be going around for Damen, but IIRC he didn't use that as much as he could if at all.

Since there were some Akielons in the room as well, I was also wondering WTF was Kastor doing as the Regent was shitting on his country and calling them barbarians and making it like allying with them is a grave transgression? Why was HE allowing this humiliation? It felt like a very unpolitical thing to do from a character whose strength was in his political acumen (obviously meaning the Regent, not Kastor) and the plot just let it slide by.

I feel like a lot of this is due to this being the first time that the story had to fit within the constraints of a traditional book? So it needed a decisive traditional climax and perhaps it was getting too long for a traditional format, or the author got a bit tired of it and wanted to wind it up now that she wasn't getting regular feedback as you do with serialized publishing, or she prioritized emotional impact over plot logic.

I don't know. I still think they're great books, and the conclusion was emotionally satisfying in the sense that the psychological and interpersonal threads were wrapped up impeccably, I just wanted more detail on the political side. It's still grabbed me like nothing else did for a long time, I can take a mid ending, half of my favourite series will never have one at all because the author wrote themselves into a corner and then died lol.

#captive prince #this one's a plot and worldbuilding analysis #I just have so many things to say I'm sorry ._. #they really scratched an itch #RIP to everyone who followed me for anything else (so basically everyone)

[northern-polaris]

The Giggle At a Funeral

so... just want to reiterate I love my bbg Tamlin. Precious lil guy who should have been a happy bard and deserves the happiest ending possible. Just keep that in mind pls. Enjoy!!!

__________________________________________

It looked like it was a quiet passing. 

Not a single peep had rang out amongst the now dark forests, like all sparks of life were smothered to cold ashes. The only noise was the rustling of dead leaves and snapping of weak branches against the harsh wind. 

It looked like it had been a soundless death; an even lonelier funeral.

Rhysand was the one who had originally found the corpse. The body was already in the stage of rotting when the High Lord happened upon the remains. Rhysand seemed to have been there with the intent to antagonize and gloat. One could only rationally assume he was met with an unwanted response from his target. 

Eventually, the news had followed Rhysand back to the Court of Dreams, where Lucien was first informed of it. He had originally been there to offer updates on the politics of the Continent and any changes from the last briefing. All for show, of course, Azriel already knew all there was to know. It just took place so the Inner Circle would test to see if Lucien lied. 

Lucien had been occupying a lone leather chair close to the corner, delicately nursing a small glass of fae wine. Time spent in the Mortal Lands made it so consuming fae cuisine was now unreasonably difficult. It was hard to withstand flavors now when one was accustomed to the taste of ash. 

The Inner Circle was lazily scattered on the other pieces of furniture occupying the room. Mor was languidly draped over a velvet couch, chatting idly with Cassian who was giving her a tender foot rub. Azriel was standing over them, pointedly staring at the floor with crossed arms but dutifully nodding along when appropriate. 

Nesta was off training with the Valkyries. Lucien rarely saw her nowadays, and it felt purposeful, at least on Rhysand’s end. Keeping the outliers separated. 

The ancient horror was, thankfully, away with her Summer Court prince. Small mercies. 

Elain was nowhere to be found. Lucien had stopped letting that wound sting for a while now.

Finally, Feyre was settled in the other couch, her son in her arms. The baby kept trying to squirm out of his blanket, and Feyre was trying her best to keep him snuggled, but Nyx’s small wings kept getting squashed or poked out awkwardly. The boy had started making agitated squeaks, and Lucien could tell a meltdown seemed imminent. Nobody had looked to be worrying about that on the other side of the room. Feyre had briefly glanced upwards at one point towards the Inner Circle, and had tried to get their attention, but her calls were drowned out by their combined voices. 

Lucien had thought about getting up to help several times, but he was rooted to his seat. He had helped her so many times before on much grander scales. The trials, Spring Court, Autumn Court, The armies, and what did he ever receive as gratitude? Nothing at best and torture at worst. 

What would happen to him this time if the Inner Circle deemed him too close for their liking to the Heir of the Night Court? Too close to the High Lord’s Lady? It seemed utterly irrational, but it’s been proven to be completely within the realm of possibility for this Court. 

It made him all the more apprehensive to put his head on the chopping block again for her, even if it was no fault of Nyx.

So he had only watched on, and it made him feel despicable. It was a lonely and wretched feeling. 

Though he had been invited to Velaris, he was certainly not welcome. 

Suddenly, Rhysand had stumbled through the doorway and roared thunderously, shaking the mansion like a quake. Nyx let out a startled screech that quickly devolved to inconsolable wailing. Feyre tried to comfort him, but there was little she could do by herself. The Inner Circle quickly flocked to their High Lord with questions and worry. 

Some started to celebrate the news once Rhysand’s crazed rambles gave enough context. Their applause and cheers seemed to muffle out the baby’s crying and Feyre’s calls for help with her son. Rhysand seemed to be the only one enraged like a mad animal.

Lucien had been struck paralyzed for an eternity before he had found himself winnowing to the ruins that was once the Spring Court, Running to a tomb that was once his home, and standing over the body that was once alive.

Among the bones of animals, He was laying on His side, eyes closed with softened features, like He was merely taking a much needed rest. Thin arms hugged His body, locked in place even after His heart quieted. The tunic, empty baldric, and trousers looked more like they blanketed His emaciated corpse instead of being worn. 

It uncannily looked everything and nothing like who He was before. 

His face was never that peaceful or open. 

It looked unbelievable. Fake. A cruel joke that made him want to hold his breath for the moment when the ruse ceased. But that moment would never come.

Lucien couldn’t understand Rhysand’s rage. Didn’t Rhysand want this? Rhysand was furious at His continued existence and now he has the gall to foam at the mouth at His death?

Rhysand was always a spoilt creature, never satisfied with anything. 

It was all so insane that it made Lucien laugh. He couldn’t hold it back. He kept laughing and laughing until he was sobbing, slowly falling to his knees and his hands clutching weakly onto the cold, rotting hand of the other.  

Tamlin was gone.

#Im sorry but not really #I love tamlin i promise #TRUST ME IT GETS BETTER IF I ACTUALLY MANAGE TO POST CHAPTER 2 #tamcien #tamsand #those two ships were implied but tamcien is endgame #tamlin #lucien vanserra #rhysand #Feyre I’m sorry the ic are pieces of shit. they and rhysand deserve to be boiled in oil #acotar fic #pro tamlin

[txttletale]

i mean i can guess at a lot of it - maybe all of it - but could we hear the sid meier's civilization opinions you have so hinted at?

fuck yeah you can. alright so an easy one off the bat is that sometimes it is just manifestly racist in pretty obvious, surface-level ways. like, i think kongo's civ ability in civ vi (that they are preternaturally good at getting religiously converted) is a pretty good example of what i mean--that and a bunch of stuff from the older entries.

but (as ever) that sort of thing is significantly less interesting to me than the broader assumptions about reality baked into the game's core premises. so let's talk about some of those!

first of all, there is (unsurprisingly, it's a pretty loaded term) so much ideology packed into what 'civilization' considers 'a civilization'. like, let's talk about some of the things that are true about 'civilizations' in sid meier's civilization:

they settle cities

they each consist of one culture which is contiguous both geographically and temporally across thousands of years

each of these cultures is represented by one continuous state with complete top-down control

they 'progress' through a linear set of 'eras', with corresponding 'advances' in technological development & aesthetics

over the course of these eras, they expand territorially to exploit natural resources

they have standing armies

they have innate & deterministic competencies (unique units & buildings in earlier games, civ abilities in V onward)

other than the aforementioned unique units, they develop a certain set of universal technologies and institutions (ie, all civilizations will have access to and build a 'bank' or 'library' building)

they have 'hard' (rigidly defined, mutually exclusive, militarily enforced) borders

so--! off the bat, looking at the very first point--what about the mongols? what about the shoshone? what about the scythians? there is a clear normative ideological implication to say that in order for these historically nomadic peoples to be depicted as a 'civilization' they must be depicted as settling urban population centers--and it is the same normative implication that the rest of these points have, which is a very narrow view of what a 'civilization' is, a colonialist (at best) view of what lies outside 'civilization'

#2 and #3 have unfortunate synchrony with a lot of real-world national myths that obscure vast amounts of violence and destruction of culture in order to create a national identity--the idea of one coherent 'ancient greek' culture, for example, would have come as a very great surprise to the spartans and athenians. the idea of 'france' having a shared set of cultural traits would have definitely not been welcome to the bretons, normans, occitans, or any of the other regional identities that were violently suppressed over centuries to create the modern french nation-state.

#4--especially as combined with #7 and #8--really lays bare a lot of the colonialist assumptions at the core of the game. for example, if you play as the inca in any civ game, you'll have to research 'writing' and 'the wheel', technologies that the incan empire never relied upon, in order to 'advance'. this 'advancement' follows (a pop-history version of, obviously) chiefly the technological development of Europe and later the USA--this is falsely universalised out. and the idea of linear progression through levels of technological 'advancement' is very very explicitly a colonialist one--the idea that the peoples of subsaharan africa, the americas, australia, etc. were 'less advanced' than europeans was a key ideological pillar of colonialism!

it also very much plays into the 'Vanishing Indian' myth. for example, the aztecs get their unique unit in vi (the jaguar warrior) at the start of the game, in the 'ancient era'--at the same time that the gauls get theirs, the 'gaesetae'--and replacing the same unit! now in real life, the 'gaesetae' and the aztec triple alliance were well over a thousand years apart -- the jaguar warrior is more contemporaneous with the real-world basis of the 'conquistador' unit than it is with the gaesetae! in civilization vi, the major cultural innovations of 'the aztecs' are over and done with long before the innovations of 'rome' are--which must be a very great surprise to the millions of nahua people living in mexico now--and moreover is part of the mythologization of indigenous peoples as 'of the past', as precursors who vanished to make way for settlement, rather than people who were violently suppressed and still very much exist in the present day!

#5, #6, and #9 all fall under the same umbrella of both backdating and universalizing the model of the Western capitalist nation-state to all of history and the world. 'national borders' as they're currently understood didn't exist for most of human history--standing armies especially were an extreme historical rarity until the last couple of centuries--Western capitalism is certainly not the first social model to result in colonialism and extractionism but the particular attitudes and manifestations of this are certainly, again, unique to a specific part of the world in the last couple centuries. all these things are universalized out to apply to every single civilization in the game from the moment of their existence, something which some of the people depicted in these games have complained about!

ultimately this is all downstream of the concept of 'civilization', developed as it was as an intentional imperial project of 19th-century anthropology and history! and especially as formulated in samuel huntington's very bad and racist book 'the clash of civilization', which seems to have had a pretty major impact on the civ game's outlook on history (see edward said's critique of it)

and of course, once we get out of that, there's a lot to talk about--how the world of civilization is filled with indiscriminately violent 'barbarians' (!) who, unlike your fellow 'civilizations' have no technology or culture of their own, existing only to be massacred--how the game is structured around the assumption that one civilization will eventually 'win'--but this post is already long enough, so i'll leave those deeper critiques as an excercise to the reader.

oh, and--because a lot of people misinterpreted me on my silly little minecraft post and argued against a much stronger and less justified position that i did not in fact take--i do not think that sid meiere's civilization causes colonialism or imperialism!

in fact, i do not even think that 'colonialist ideology' causes colonialism. the order of operations (as it always does) flows down from historical and material conditions: it is economically advantageous to engage in colonial and imperialist exploitation -> ideological justifications are developed; the exploitation is narrativized and mythologized -> these narratives and mythologies embed themselves in the cultural imaginary and are replicated in media objects produced from that culture. i am never making the opposite case--if you argue with me as if i am you are shadowboxing.

#ask #civilization vi #long post

[blogtaculous]

I really want to give a shout-out to the Mobile Frame Zero community for the really, really cool work they’ve done since the following work was made possible by their efforts.

So, I watched all of Evangelion and was like “wow, mechs vs monsters is so sick like for real”

So my next Lego project is going to be mechs vs monsters in a micro city, thus continuing my trend of projects that stretch my collection instead of building on it.

While Brikwars shenanigans continue I have been building the mechs.

Here they are, a handsome little collection.

I wanted to write this post to expand on the lore of each machine but also to give credit to the excellent mech and frame builders I copied from. I think I have a real talent for castles and landscapes but machines and space builds still don’t feel right, so I’m thankful for others who have paved the way.

From left to right:

—

W-024 “Ancient Ode” is one of the original War Class mechs before the expansion of their battlefield roles, and is now one of the last to operate. It owes its longevity to numerous upgrades given its stellar combat record across conflicts and operators. It keeps its original colors, an homage to the Army it used to serve.

This one is based on principles from Josh's Super Chub Marines, though I've multiplied the legs and made some significant changes to the arms and shoulders. This mech was originally going to be a melee focused machine, but the super chub legs have some balance problems when posing, and I was frustrated by the lack of articulation in the ankles.

The solution came to me in a dream (Armored Core VI). I doubled the legs for a quadrupedal design, inspired by the success I had using them against Sea Spider. Now it stays upright effortlessly and I could also use more sand green (one of the best Lego colors). In general, the four legs allow for beefier body parts and the back-mounted rocket launcher.

“W-class” refers to a time when mechs were first used for warfare instead of construction or manufacturing. Today, Ancient Ode would be referred to a BL-Class (Battleline), but owing to its service record the original classification sticks. Ancient Ode is the Ma Deuce of battle mechs. I enhanced the build with stickers from the Avatar sets, though I was disappointed when the sand green on the stickers clashes with the brick color.

—

A-094 "Distant Oath" was one of the first artillery class mechs produced, as such the it was outfitted with a now-obsolete shoulder-mounted heavy cannon. While heavy cannon mounted in this manner such as the LM-15 Ultra Sonic have gone out of fashion in favor of much larger cannon or shorter range missile pods (a precursor of which is mounted on the right shoulder), it has been impractical to repurpose A-class mechs like Distant Oath.

Distant Oath is heavily based on the MF0 frame Uhlan Marine by skroberto on Flickr. I had to figure out most of it from his photos and other resources on the MF0 Facebook page. It's a great frame, but I made some internal changes to make it suitable for physical construction. Unfortunately, it is the least stable mech in the collection because the “knee” joint is a round tile using opposite anti-studs to hold the legs together.

Given the stability problems and its size I decided it would be an artillery piece. I added some stickers from a Mindstorms set, and the “A” in “A-class” was derived from the stickers. The cannon has one that says “Ultra Sonic” so that’s the name of the cannon. Distant Oath was almost a shade of blue, but I was using Orange while I designed it and decided I loved it too much to change.

—

S-62-2 “Wild Eyes” is a strike/support class mech designed for air superiority missions. These machines are among the newest frames produced, with boosted legs for softer landings and a lighter exoskeleton to let the booster engines really shine. They are useful for sustained flight and boosting directly into engagements.

This is a combination of concepts from -SuspendedAnimation-'s Rigel II and Andromeda MFO frames that use their X-11 core.

Wild Eyes is a strike/support class because I’ve decided that machines that are smaller and more mobile can have so many different roles that it would be impractical to classify them all different. The color chosen for the only soft blue that includes the chest piece and the shoulder bricks. Wild Eyes is a little lanky after I modified the arms to be more posable and it looked very “flight” to me so I gave them a real set of boost engines designed to fly around and harass.

I used more mindstorms stickers since they are transparent, but I was able to find some for the fund that say “Danger, Jet Blast” in a Marvel jet I could cut apart to fit.

—

S-973 No Survivors is a strike/support class mech designed for sustained ground operations. It's outfitted with stronger than standard armor and a booster engine for mobility to offset the additional weight. Additionally, it's equipped with a utility launcher for tactical munitions or a short range pile driver. Often, this style of S-class mechs carries a melee weapon, and No Survivors wields an RES (Rapid Energy Sword).

This one is a modified version of -SuspendedAnimation-'s Comanche core. I changed the shoulder and elbow assembly because I don't like how fragile modified tiles and taps are, something I also did for Wild Eyes and Ancient Ode. The rifle is their design as well.

Once again, the mech’s numerical designation is derived from the stickers. This one uses several unmodified from a Marvel jet. Like Distant Oath, No Survivors has last resort munitions in the chest. The RES isn’t a static blade like a lot of other mech settings, as that would be impractical when trying to fight in between buildings. It operates a little bit like a lightsaber, activating when necessary, and the energy isn’t all that stable. It explodes out from the handle and is closer to a giant lighter than a true sword.

—

I’m excited to get the city built for the mechs to romp around in. I have a few buildings mocked up already, but I don’t have space for more until I can block out the roadways. I love how AC6 cities are laid out and will be taking lots of inspiration from there. I also want to do some retractable structures like Tokyo-3.

Anyway, have a good day, thanks for checking out my work.

#lego mecha #mobile frame zero #neon genesis evangelion #armored core #ac6

[digi-lov]

Are there any interesting references I’m missing in any of the Lilithmon cards maybe?

Hey! I've been thinking a lot about that too. Lilithmon doesn't have many cards, though. There's BT3-091 which depicts her on a throne. Usually with such explicit backgrounds, it feels like it would be a reference to something, but I haven't been able to find anything yet. There is a figure of Lilithmon on a throne (don't know if it's oficially liscensed though), but that is based on the card, not the other way around. There is also the Alt Art by Kenji Watanabe with skulls and roses as decorations. I don't think there's anything beyond the allusion to beauty and death in that. [also there's a filling mistake at her thumb and it's driving me nuts]

Lilithmon BT3-091 by Tonamikanji and Alternative Art by Kenji Watanabe from BT-03 Booster Union Impact

Then there is the BT11-087 card. This set has many Xros Wars Hunters cards, and as such Lilithmon has the Bagra Army trait. The glowing hand is probably supposed to be her move Nazar Nail. Otherwise I couldn't find anything. Also with just being a rare, there has been no Alt Art for this card yet.

Lilithmon BT11-087 by Shin Sasaki from BT-11 Booster Dimensional Phase

And recently in Japan we got EX6-057. While there isn't anything specific tying this artwork to the games or anime, as far as I can tell, there are many butterflies featured on this card along with flower petals.

Lilithmon EX6-057 by poroze from EX-06 Theme Booster Infernal Ascension

Now butterflies have multiple symbolic connotations. In Japan, butterflies are often associated with death, and or souls from the dead. Some theorize this originates from people in ancient times seeing butterflies gather around dead bodies (to sap), while other assume it's due to the metamorphosis akin to to the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Butterflies are also used as a symbol of beauty and womanhood, in this case the metamorphosis is compared to a girl growing into a woman. They're often used as decorations for women's kimono or yukata. This combination of death and womanhood obviously works well for Lilithmon. Her X Antibody form fully embraces this as well.

If you were to look for it, you will be able to find many similar usages of the butterfly in modern media, for example with Bayonetta and her Madama Butterfly.

The EX6-057 card also received an Alt Art as a part of the Seven Great Demon Lords matching art, which I plan on delving into in its own post.

#digimon #digimon tcg #digimon card game #digisafe #digica #デジカ #lov asks #lov rambles #Lilithmon #Lilithmon X #butterflies #digimon card #Lv6 #color: purple

[worldhistoryfacts]

Let's take a look at Indo-Greek art and culture this week. Indo-Greek culture emerged after Alexander the Great's armies pushed to the edge of India. Even though Alexander's armies retreated, he left behind a lot of Greek culture and Greek people. The two cultures combined in all sorts of interesting ways.

Here are some coins of Agathokles the Just, a Bactrian king who ruled in the 180s BCE. We don’t know a whole lot about him, but he left behind a lot of coins that give us a sense of what must have been happening in this part of the world.

This shows Herakles wearing a lion skin on his head, with the words “ALEXANDER SON OF PHILIP;” on the back of the coin, Zeus holds an eagle, accompanied by the words “KING AGATHOKLES THE JUST.”

Pretty Greek, right?

It’s square, a shape much more common in Indian coins. And you’ll notice that it has two different scripts, one on the front and one on the back. On the one side, we see the Hindu deity Balarama-Samkarshana with the words (in Greek) “KING AGATHOKLES,” while on the back we have a Hindu god, Vāsudeva-Krishna, with Agathokles’ name written in the Brahmi script, which was widely used in South Asia.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

#history #ancient #greece #india #alexander #art

[helix-studios117]

Halo Reloaded: Master Chief & more about Spartans

Born and raised on Eridanus-II, John Downes was the son of bioengineers and gardeners, who wanted to genetically modify Earth-plants to be sustainable on other planets (everyone, up until this point, had just been using the indigenous plants from the alien worlds they colonized); up until he was taken into the Spartan Program, John attended a school known as "The Reach For Life Foundation," a prestigious upper-class school (that was created on Reach before expanding out to the rest of the galaxy) designed to turn all of it's students into the next generation of pioneers, colonizers and explorers who will bring life into the uncharted reaches of space. Humanity came in contact with The Covenant in the year 2511. The Spartan Program saw production in 2517; most of the Spartans were born in the year 2528, while John Downes was born in the year 2530. That two year gap may as well have been a chasm between him and his brothers-&-sisters-in-arms. But, like in canon, the main reason why John was chosen despite being everyone's junior was because he still exhibited the exact same unique genetic-markers that all of the others do. With John being the youngest, he's needed to prove himself to the others by working and training thrice as hard as everyone else; his angst comes from the fact that, because he's the youngest, he's the most generic one of the group. He's not the fastest (that's Kelly), not the strongest (that's Samuel), not the biggest (that's Jorge), the best combatant (Fred), the best at weaponry (Vannak), the best at demolitions (James), the best shot (both Linda & Kai, who are rivals to each other, beat John out), the smartest (Riz), the best pilot (Daisy), the best at technology (Joshua), the one with the best intuition (Kurt), or the most charismatic leader (Jerome); he's only really impressive in comparison to the standard marine, this angst he faces is something he later comes to accept as he gets older. He eventually embraces his status as 'The Generic One' and becomes the Jack-of-all-trades, the one everyone can lean on for just about anything; the "Swiss-Army Spartan," if you will. They all got augmented, and the rest is history; but it wasn't until Operation SILENT STORM, the Spartans' FIRST mission as Spartans, where John was given the rank of "Master Chief Petty Officer," the highest rank a non-commissioned serviceman in the Navy can attain; he even got his first metal, "The Purple Heart," after he got shot on the line of duty (and survived, obviously). When he was a kid, before being inducted, John had discovered an ancient Forerunner rock (not that anyone knew what it was) that had almost possessed him; his obssession over it resulted in his father forcing John to bury the drawings he made of it in the backyard. The training and conditioning of the Spartan Progran, while not designed to brainwash anyone, did result in John repressing any memory of the rock. In the present (2552), John had discovered a similar rock during an extraction mission on Biko, which brought a terrifying wave of memories back to him; this drives him to rediscover the rock he found as a kid back on Eridanus-II, in cave beneath the abandoned ruins of his father's old Solar-Paneled Garden Field. After some back and forth battles between The UNSC and The Covenant, John is quick to deduce that the rock he found on Biko is a keystone to the artifact that he found as a kid; with two rocks joined together, they create a starmap that leads to the one thing The Covenant had been after this entire time: Halo.

Spartans are much younger here than in canon, being in their early 20s as opposed to being in their 50s like in the show and the games. Their youth, combined with their less traumatizing upbringing, makes them more colorful in their personalities (still professional and their canon personalities are about the same, but they're less sociopathically brusque and terse like in-canon). Super-Soldiers in media are usually portrayed with two major qualities: Extreme Aggression and Complete Obedience. They're designed to be ruthless killers, desensitized to violence, who are more aggressive than the average soldier, as they are more than willing to make the hard-choices and will not stop until their opponents are dead ("They [Spartans] just... keep killing. Until there's nothing. Left. To kill... You in or out?" - Angus; Halo, Season 1 - Episode 1) and the battle is won. As for complete obedience? Well, that's self-explanatory; they are happiest when given an order and only do what's asked of them ("Good soldiers follow orders." - Crosshairs; The Bad-Batch). The Spartans as seen in Halo Reloaded are the opposite. They're trained in: Lateral Thinking, Improvisation and Freestyling. They're very creative, on and off the field, people who are capable of salvaging a busted plan and thinking on their feet in the midst of high-stress situations; which is precisely why they're so good at their jobs, BECAUSE they're not dependant on the word of their superiors. They're less an army of Robocops and moreso an army of Captain Americas. John himself, particularly in his later years at 22, is a more "Commander Shepard' type of person: Swashbuckling, noble, still emotionally guarded but far less traumatized, charismatic (again not as much as Jerome) and often goes with the flow. He's still much more brusque and aggressive in comparison to the other more lively Spartans (the others often call him "the mean one"), but he's still as nice and compassionate as he's always been.

@ionlymadethissoicouldleaveanask

@mrtobenamedlater

@killer-orca-cosplay

@biomecharnotaurus

@authortobenamedlater

#john-117 #master chief #halo fanfic #halo #halo fanfiction #Halo au #Halo headcanon #halo reloaded #ultimate universe

[aria-ashryver]

Meet my MC - Luca O'Rinn

Name and Meaning: Luca — Bringer of Light / O'Rinn — Descendant of the Stars

Book: Immortal Desires Love Interests: Cas Harlow and Gabriel Adalhard Pronouns: He/they Birthday: 5th January 1997 Sign: Aquarius Born: Kinloch Rannoch, Scotland Raised: Inverness, Scotland Heritage: Scottish with ancestral roots in Ireland

More under the cut! 🖤✨

Family

Therese “Terri” O’Rinn (mother) Wayne MacAllister (father — estranged) John “Jock” O’Rinn (grandfather) Esther O’Rinn (grandmother) Morag O'Rinn (great aunt) Phoebe O’Rinn (cousin)

Skills / Hobbies

Dance, drums, butterfly knives, annoying ancient vampires with incessant questions and somehow not being murdered outright

Random Trivia

Luca has an avid curiosity (which often gets them into trouble) and is fascinated by how the world works — in every possible universe, they would have found out about the vampires in Crimson Beech.

He gets bored if he hasn’t learnt something new in a while.

Luca has Combined Type ADHD and frequently needs something to do with their hands — they can often be found flipping small items (pens, drum sticks, balisongs, etc, their phone, if they can’t get their hands on anything else)

...His phone screen is always cracked.

TERRIBLE at replying to text messages if they don’t do it then and there. Cannot make a phone call to save their life.

Has no problem biting ice cream, but sometimes sensory things ( unexplained sticky hands, clothes textures that feel suddenly wrong) with make them explode with sudden rage that comes on fast and goes away even faster. (It always alarms Gabriel whenever it happens. He tries to help and inevitably gets in the way and makes it worse. Cas knows to just ignore him when he’s having a moment.)

Loves playfighting with Cas (despite always losing and probably getting thrown somewhere)

Late. For everything. All the time. Zero time management skills.

Luca's first crush was Howl Pendragon of Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle

He takes his tea/coffee without milk bc he’s forever forgetting to drink it — there is always a small army of half-full, forgotten cups and mugs around his room.

Restless sleeper, abhors early mornings, can’t fall asleep unless he feels safe (which leads to a lot of falling asleep on Gabriel and Cas)

He despises math and still counts on his fingers. Numbers make his brain short-circuit.

Will absolutely eat food off the floor if they drop it.

Forests have always made him feel calm and want to dance.

Luca has had a habit since childhood where, any time they are walking alone through a forest, they’ll slow their pace and hum a gentle tune, trying to see if they can catch sight of any fairies or little fae creatures out of the corner of their eye. (Which seemed like a silly superstition until a few months ago, but now that they know vampires are real? Hey, maybe little Luca was on to something.)

Education (Scotland)

Rather than traditional schooling, Luca attended a specialised Arts school from the age of 14, in their hometown of Inverness, Scotland. Avalon Academy of the Arts is an alternative educational institution, covering both secondary- and tertiary-level studies in fields such as traditional arts and media, photography, music, theatre, and dance.

At Avalon, Luca trained primarily in ballet, lyrical jazz, contemporary, jazz funk, street dance, and urban hip-hop. Luca does enjoy ballet, but he found most of the ballet students too pretentious, cut-throat, and close-minded to consider pursuing a career in ballet long-term (especially as a non-binary dancer in an extremely gendered environment).

Luca’s main dance style tends toward a unique blend of lyrical, ballet, and street — though in recent years, there is definitely something of a K-Pop influence present in their choreography. They idolise Lee Taemin of SHINee, in part because of his expression and technical precision, but also because of the androgyny and power of Taemin’s dance style. They enjoy watching dance practice videos on YouTube in order to study other dancer’s body lines, transitions, and use of tension.

Education (USA)

In transferring to Crimson Beech High to round out their formal education, it became clear that Luca was very behind in some areas (math, physics, sciences) and very ahead in others (history, literature, anything pertaining to arts studies).

The semesters at Avalon do not align with traditional US schooling system (beginning in February and wrapping up in December to mirror their sister school in Avalon, Australia), so Luca is actually marginally older than many of his current classmates at Crimson Beech High.

(well. Those that aren’t vampires, anyway).

As at the first chapter of ID/SICSIG, Luca is 18, and will be turning 19 in January.

Hobbies

Luca could have taken music as an elective at Avalon, but he never did. Music is something that is purely for self expression and fun. While he did take drum lessons for about a year as a child, most of Luca’s musical ability comes from the school of fucking around and finding out — he is a kinaesthetic learner, so much of his drumming is self-taught.

Wayne (read: awful person) never really approved of Luca’s dancing and wanted them to quit when they first started taking lessons in primary school, but Terri put her foot down when she saw how happy it made them to have a form of self-expression that really spoke to who they were. As a means of compromise, Wayne suggested Luca take up drumming — something he saw as a suitably “masculine” hobby to “help him man up”.

A lot of the arguments Wayne and Terri had regarding Luca’s hobbies in their formative years were, in truth, veiled conversations about Luca’s sexuality and gender identity. Terri has never been anything but accepting of her child, and Wayne has never been able to get his head out of his own ass around Luca being gay, let alone non-binary. Though Terri tried to shield them from it, Luca often bore the burnt of a tirade of queerphobic verbal abuse, which escalated to physical violence in the years preceding Wayne and Terri’s separation.

There were a whole host of reasons why the O’Rinn household wasn’t the easiest or safest place to be growing up (which I have explored more in Starlight!); understandably, Luca had a lot of energy (and, in the years before Wayne’s arrest, a lot of anger) that he was able to take out on his drum kit.

Drumming on his own has turned into a really therapeutic space for Luca, wherein he can get into a flow state, lose the outside world, and work through a lot of his feelings. As much as Luca despises his father, he loves his drums — and knowing his father was the one to buy him his first ever drum kit is something of a sore spot. To this day, Luca still has mixed feelings about it.

Drumming with Viktor’s band, however, became a space of growth and celebration. Your Bisexual Awakening (as they are currently called — the band's name changes with almost every gig) is made up of other students from Avalon, and is unapologetically queer and in your face about it. They mostly play classic rock, punk, and grunge tracks, but ultimately do not limit themselves by genre.

Viktor, the band’s vocalist and frontman, is an OC (and will probably get his own "Meet My OC" profile!) (eventually); the other band members are Easter Eggs from other Choices books: WtD’s Angel on bass, NB’s Cal on keys, and ILITW’s Ava on lead electric guitar.

You can find out more about Luca via my masterlist, or read about them in my longfic, snow in crimson, starlight in gold on AO3! 🖤(direct link, fic is rated Explicit)

tagging: @choicesficwriterscreations

#SICSIG #luca o'rinn #meet my mc #cfwc meet my mc #choices immortal desires #immortal desires #playchoices fanfic #choices fic writers creations #🏳‍🌈🏳‍🌈🏳‍🌈

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … April 13

c.435 BC – The Greek philosopher Aristippus was born on or around this date (d.circa 360 BC). He was a pupil of Socrates, but adopted a very different philosophical outlook, teaching that the goal of life was to seek pleasure by adapting oneself to circumstances and by maintaining proper control over both adversity and prosperity. Aristippus held that the highest purpose and virtue was the pursuit of pleasure.

Aristippus was born at Cyrene. He came over to Greece to be present at the Olympic games, where he fell in with Ischomachus the agriculturist, and by his description was filled with so ardent a desire to see Socrates, that he went to Athens for the purpose, and remained with him almost up to the time of his execution, 399 BCE

One work attributed to "Aristippus" in ancient times was a scandalous work entitled On Ancient Luxury (or On the Luxury of the Ancient Greeks). This work, judging by preserved quotations was filled with spicy anecdotes about philosophers and their supposed taste for boy-lovers and courtesans. The author supports his claims for Plato's various erotic relationships through his quotation of epigrams attributed to the philosopher.

"The art of life lies in taking pleasures as they pass, and the keenest pleasures are not intellectual, nor are they always moral." - Aristippus

1841 – Michigan amends its sodomy law to specify that emission of semen is not necessary for completion of the crime.

Molinier - Self-portrait

1900 – Pierre Molinier was a painter, photographer and 'maker of objects' (d.1976). He was born in Agen (France) and lived his life in Bordeaux. He began his career by painting landscapes, but his work turned towards a fetishistic eroticism early on.

Molinier began to take photographs at the age of 18, and started his erotic production around 1950. With the aid of a wide range of specially made 'props' - dolls, various prosthetic limbs, stiletto heels, corsetry, dildos and an occasional confidante - Pierre Molinier used his own body as the basis for surreal and fantastic distortions of the human form, blurring sexuality and gender and ultimately producing a large body of photographic work. Most of his photographs, photomontages, are self-portraits of himself as a woman.

By combining costume, props, photography and photomontage he stepped beyond mere photographic representation of himself and his models to create a bizarre and distorted world of gender-confused fetishism and auto-eroticism.

He began a correspondence with André Breton and sent him photographs of his paintings. Later Breton integrated him into the Surrealist group. Breton organised an exhibition of Molinier's paintings in Paris, in January-February 1956.

In 1976, as his health began to decline, Pierre Molinier lay on his bed in front of a mirror, masturbated and committed suicide by shooting himself. The staging of his death initially led police to suspect he had been murdered but it seems that his death was Molinier's final creative act.

1936 – Win Ng (d.1991) was a Chinese American sculptor, industrial designer and illustrator. He is best known as the co-founder of the groundbreaking San Francisco based handmades department store Taylor & Ng.

Ng was born in Chinatown, San Francisco. He studied at the City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. After serving in the United States Army he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1959.

Ng was openly gay.

In 1965 Ng met artist Spaulding Taylor and shifted his focus toward utilitarian work. The two founded Environmental Ceramics (the precursor to Taylor & Ng) and moved into creating handmade artware and homewares. The company called Taylor & Ng was founded during the same period and, with the addition of Win Ng's brother, Norman Ng, as president, grew into a major producer and retailer of housewares.

Through their own San Francisco department store and wholesale business, Taylor & Ng not only created a signature style still in demand by collectors, but helped to popularize Asian culture and cuisine. The Taylor & Ng company is credited with bringing the Chinese wok to the U.S. and making it a common kitchen utensil.

Ng died on September 6, 1991 from AIDS related complications. He was 55.

1937 – On this date the award winning playwright Lanford Wilson was born (d.2011). Considered one of the founders of the Off-off Broadway theater movement, Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Wilson was raised in Missouri by his mother, but in 1956 he moved to California, where he worked and attended college. There, Wilson lived with his father, who did not accept Wilson's homosexuality, and so, in 1957, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a graphic artist and studied playwriting.

Wilson began his active career as a playwright in the early 1960s at the Caffe Cino in Greenwich Village, writing one-act plays such as Ludlow Fair, Home Free!, and The Madness of Lady Bright. The Madness of Lady Bright premiered at the Caffe Cino in May of 1964 and was the venue's first significant hit. The play featured actor Neil Flanagan in the title role as Leslie Bright, a neurotic aging queen. The Madness of Lady Bright is considered a landmark play in the representation of male homosexuality. It was the longest running play ever to appear at the Caffe Cino, where it was performed over two hundred times. Wilson was subsequently invited to present his work off-Broadway, including his plays Balm in Gilead and The Rimers of Eldritch.

Wilson was a founding member of the Circle Repertory Company in 1969. Many of his plays were first presented there, directed by his long-standing collaborative partner, Marshall W. Mason. The Circle Rep's production of Wilson's The Hot l Baltimore won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Obie Award, and was adapted into a television program by Norman Lear. In 1979 Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Talley's Folly.

Wilson's style and approach has evolved over the years, sometimes resulting in drastically different effects. Some of his plays are extremely radical and experimental in nature while others clearly have a more mainstream, if still creative, sensibility. His first full length play, Balm in Gilead, is perhaps his most radical, yet it also remains one of his most popular. The play had a memorable off-Broadway revival in the 1980s, directed by John Malkovich, a co-production of Circle Rep and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

In addition to writing plays, Wilson has written the texts for several twentieth century operas, including at least two collaborations with composer Lee Hoiby: Summer and Smoke (1971) and This is the Rill Speaking (1992) (based on his own play).

1945 – Joseph Doucé (d.1990) was born to a rural family in Sint-Truiden, Belgium. He was a psychologist and Baptist pastor in Paris. He was openly gay and was among the founders of the International Lesbian and Gay Association. He served as a volunteer soldier in the OTAN base at Limoges (France), where he had time to perfect his French. After one year of pastoral and humanistic studies at Stenonius College (also known as Europaseminär, a Roman Catholic seminary today extinct) in Maastricht, the Netherlands, he began his conversion to Protestantism around 1966.

His Centre du Christ Libérateur was a ministry to sexual minorities. The center had support groups for homosexuals, transsexuals, sadomasochism and pedophiles.

Doucé was killed and the murder has never been solved. According to Doucé's lover, he was taken away by two men, who showed police badges on July the 19th 1990. The body was found in a forest in October 1990.

The killers are thought to be a unit of the French police, Renseignements Généraux, who investigated Doucé because of his support for pedophiles.

1950 – The American actor Terry Lester was born on this date (d.2003). Lester was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and began an acting career while at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.

After years of musical theater, concert performances, numerous prime-time TV guest roles, and a season starring in the 1976 children's series Ark II, Lester had his big break when he joined CBS daytime soap The Young and the Restless (Y&R) in 1980. He created the role of Jack Abbott, a scoundrel who never met a woman (including his own father's wife) he didn't want to take to bed. Lester was so popular that Y&R creator William J. Bell wrote an entire family for him. Y&R was going through a transition period at this time and many fans believe that Lester's star quality helped the show build more viewers and eventually rise to #1 in the daytime soap ratings.

Lester kept his personal life under wraps, but a 2002 In Magazine LA article on former soap star Thom Bierdz claimed that Lester, along with Michael Corbett and Bierdz, made up a trio of gay actors who worked on The Young and the Restless in the 1980s.

1958 – On this date Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn, Jr. achieved worldwide recognition by becoming the first American to win the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. He was all of 23.

In 1998, Cliburn was named in a palimony lawsuit by his alleged domestic partner of seventeen years, mortician Thomas Zaremba.

1966 – Martin Pousson is an American novelist, poet, and professor.

He was born and raised in Louisiana, in the Cajun French bayou land of Acadiana. Some of his favorite writers include Carson McCullers, Truman Capote and James Baldwin, as well as Denis Johnson and Junot Diaz.

His first novel, No Place, Louisiana (2002) told the story of a Cajun family and an American dream gone wrong. The novel won acclaim from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham and the Los Angeles Times, and it was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award in Fiction.

His first collection of poetry, Sugar (2005) centered on the lives of outsiders, especially Cajuns, Southerners and gay men. Some of the poems also dealt with racism and the AIDS epidemic. He says that this collection would not have ever been published if it were not for a friend's saved copy of the manuscript. In 2005, he was named one of the Leading Men of the Year by Instinct magazine, alongside Jake Shears, Robert Gant, and Keith Boykin.

He is currently Associate Professor of English at California State University, Northridge, in Los Angeles. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program and the Queer Studies Program, and some of his most popular courses include Narrative Writing, Advanced Narrative Writing, Theories of Fiction, and Gay Male Writers.

He was named a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts in Creative Writing for 2014. The NEA grant was awarded for a collection of short stories in development titled "Black Sheep Boy." The stories are about a homosexual boy coming of age sexually in the bayous of Louisiana. The stories also are about mental illness and werewolf myths.

1990 – Queer Nation – The direct-action group's inaugural action took place at Flutie's Bar, a straight hangout at the South Street Sea Port on April 13, 1990. The goal: to make clear to patrons that queers will not be restricted to Gay bars for socializing and for public displays of affection. More visibility actions like this one became known as "Queer Nights Out."

2014 – The Finnish Post announces that Tom of Finland (Touko Valio Laaksone) will appear on postage stamps.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Phyllis Chesler

Day after day, I stare at their beautiful faces, learn their names, and read about the Israeli soldiers who have fallen in battle. I try to imagine their lives in all the cities of the land, lives cut so short. I salute them. I weep for them, and will always remember them.

The fallen soldiers are mainly men–boys really–in their early twenties, although some are only 19. Thus far, over 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed in battle; 168 in Gaza since 10/7.

Demographically speaking, this is equivalent to approximately 18,444 fallen American soldiers.

In addition, three thousand members of the IDF have been wounded which is the equivalent, demographically, to 110,666 wounded American soldiers.

Although one does not hear about this very much, about 200,000 Israelis have been displaced, pulled back from both the north and the south. This is the demographic equivalent of more than seven–nearly eight–million displaced American civilians.

Imagine the cost of such relocation, imagine the trauma of such internal exile.

This is a nightmare, a horror, a continuation of the atrocities launched by Hamas against Israel on 10/7.

You would not know any of this if all you read was the Western media. With some honorable exceptions, your attention would be primarily focused on the number of Gazans dead–statistics which routinely combine Hamas’s soldiers with pro-Hamas Gazan civilians. Even so, one can never trust the totally untrustworthy statistics issued by Hamas.

Where is the media and activist outcry about the Red Cross’s craven refusal to visit the Israeli hostages and to deliver medicine to the sick and dying? Where is the world’s righteous indignation about the Arab Muslim world’s refusal to allow Gazan civilians even temporary asylum?

Jews have watered our ancient homeland with their blood. Arabs have always, always attacked Jews, whether they lived in Iraq or Syria, in Morocco or Iran, or in the Holy Land. Jihad against the infidel always meant “Kill the Jews first.”

In the 1948 war of Independence, 4000 Israeli soldiers and 2000 Israeli civilians were murdered.

I’ve been told that during the Six Day War of self-defense in 1967, more than 700 soldiers fell in six days but no one knew this, (there were no cellphones), and so “it did not affect morale.”

According to Ambassador Michael Oren, 2,656 Israeli soldiers were killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. 

So many wars of self-defense, so many false accusations that Israel launched only unjust wars of aggression.

Nine or more wars later–here we are again.

One Israeli told me that his young soldier son has just lost thirteen friends, “real friends,” who have fallen in battle, and “how each funeral is devastating.” But he adds: “When you see the amazing kids this country has raised, you feel even more how lucky they were to grow up in this country and that this truly is a special place worth defending.”

Another Israeli described the unending shiva calls and how “the burial grounds are a place of honor, love, solace, and community. When one visits the homes of the bereaved, the mourners are surrounded by supporters from their towns and loved ones.”

The spirit of the people is amazing. I received a Newsletter about how a platoon of army reservists on their way to Gaza were treated at the Jerusalem market. The entire line of shoppers insisted on paying for their food and would not take “No” for an answer.

A third Israeli broke my heart with her eloquence. She wrote: “These dutiful Israeli soldiers will not grow old. Nor hug their parents again, nor meet someone they will love, nor parent, nor stroll in a Nature preserve in their beautiful land….ever again.”

Finally, the most humbling email I’ve received to date, was from an Israeli mother whose sons were in combat. She said that my words sustained her and functioned as a light in the darkness.

Oh, but they will all be enshrined in both history and memory. However, they were so young! I am about sixty years older than many of them and thousands of miles away. How many universes have been lost? How many future children and grandchildren will never be born?

When will the American government finally understand that Islamist Jihad is a religious war against infidels, (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’i), a war launched by Islamist barbarians? What will it take for Western journalists and academics to understand that the Jihadists are coming for the Sunday people next; that Iran has Europe and America in its gunsights?

Most important, when will our government decide to respond to Iran’s attacks on America?

#israel #israeli soldiers #idf #fallen soldiers #phyllis chesler