Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
This attitude is actually the thing that's killing off nomad cultures in real life. It's the state going "why aren't you sedentary like the rest of us??"
Cliches you can't stand
- Thread starter Mithras
- Start date
This attitude is actually the thing that's killing off nomad cultures in real life. It's the state going "why aren't you sedentary like the rest of us??"
Because the narrative typically portrays them as being in the right, as though trying to make our lives better by inviting new solutions like modern medicine and housing is somehow wrong and makes you weak when it's just a byproduct of trying to get away from the hardships of living in the wilderness.
The implication that trying to make life easier is somehow flawed is absurd, especially when half the time they're just opportunistic parasites raiding farmland made by settlers who are just trying to live their lives.
I uh, can't quite tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me, but I hope I made it clear that this line of thinking applies to fiction only. The real would would be better off if people would just leave each other alone.
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- She/Her
Yeah that argument is pro assimilation hog wash use to justify cultural genocide
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
It would be interesting if that attitude is something they actually enforce upon others, destroying any attempts at city-building and progress, to purposefully keep the others down and helpless so they can be the biggest badasses forever.
Also, those authors usually tend to be very pro-colonial when it is their pet 'strong, manly wild men' against the 'decadent, effete, liberal city-dwellers.'
Tundra Sniper
A Sniper on the Ridge
- Location
- United States
Speaking of zombies, many months ago I watched a podcast where the group was talking about the issues of The Last of Us 2 where one of the members briefly popped in and talked about how a cure would have done very little in a world where society had long collapsed. It got me thinking about how effective a cure would really be in a zombie apocalypse and the logistics required to distribute it. If the site of infection is isolated to a country like Harran from Dying Light that I assume is small, then I could see a cure working there, but you'd still need a way to effectively distribute the vaccine, but if the infection is worldwide and wiped out much of civilization, then I don't see a cure doing a whole lot.
Another thing brought up in the podcast was that even if you were cured, it wouldn't necessarily stop a zombie from tearing you to shreds unless it made you undetectable to the infected via the serum from the movie World War Z. On top of that, what's stopping the scientists that created the cure from using it to gain leverage over others or rival gangs from trying to seize the cure for themselves. Ruined roads would also provide a challenge in getting the cure out unless you had a helicopter or a plane, though in a post apocalyptic environment they would probably be in VERY short supply. Plus you'd need fuel and experienced pilots to fly them.
More on the subject, what if the cure is only temporary, or worse, the virus mutates to overcome it?
A lot of media portrays the vaccine as the shining light of humanity's survival, but many of them don't really take into account the logistics required to distribute it and other circumstances such as the aforementioned mutation or selfish survivor groups trying to steal the cure for themselves.
Another thing brought up in the podcast was that even if you were cured, it wouldn't necessarily stop a zombie from tearing you to shreds unless it made you undetectable to the infected via the serum from the movie World War Z. On top of that, what's stopping the scientists that created the cure from using it to gain leverage over others or rival gangs from trying to seize the cure for themselves. Ruined roads would also provide a challenge in getting the cure out unless you had a helicopter or a plane, though in a post apocalyptic environment they would probably be in VERY short supply. Plus you'd need fuel and experienced pilots to fly them.
More on the subject, what if the cure is only temporary, or worse, the virus mutates to overcome it?
A lot of media portrays the vaccine as the shining light of humanity's survival, but many of them don't really take into account the logistics required to distribute it and other circumstances such as the aforementioned mutation or selfish survivor groups trying to steal the cure for themselves.
Stop: ITG towards fictional groups still violates Rule 2
- Location
- United States, EST
- Pronouns
- He/Him
itg towards fictional groups still violates rule 2
@JayTee has been infracted and threadbanned for three days for violating Rule 2: Don't Be Hateful. Just throwing in token cover about how one doesn't want it applied to real-world(-coded) groups does not keep ITG fantasies about how you want to see a group violently killed from violating Rule 2: Don't Be Hateful.
Thank you for your time, and please have a pleasant day~
Thank you for your time, and please have a pleasant day~
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I definitely don't condone their attitude but I think it should be self-explanatory why technology and science are special.
Many people would die without them, and many more people wouldn't be alive today if they didn't exist. Primitivism by its very nature demands mass murder and permanently lowering the life-spans of vast numbers of people, including myself. It's something that I would say is reasonable to hate. Though of course, that does not justify posts like theirs.
VolantRedX
Official Conscience of Worm Fanfiction!
I never understood why Sci-Fi thinks aliens won't have idioms or sarcasm. These traits are shared across all human languages no matter time or location. The idea that aliens won't have them is absurd. If they're such strict literalists how do they have any culture?
- Location
- America
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
"No changling has ever harmed another."
And I have to hurl.
- Location
- Strip-mall Hell
- Pronouns
- She/They
people that instantly get defensive at the idea of fictional creatures being better than humans even in small ways make worse fiction about aliens imo. first, let's be real, HFY is pretty much just bashfics for the nerds that think they're too good for fanfic. Second, even if its not "realistic" I want to read about alien fiction in which we have differences and our own strengths and weaknesses but we can still communicate and learn things about and from each other. Why must everything be about constant domination
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To be fair, it's not like no one makes obnoxiously perfect aliens to unsubtly criticize Humanity.
That's not to say that people can't be too defensive when it comes to any kind of alien superiority, but I'd argue "some aliens are obnoxiously superior" and "HFY stories are consistently horrible" are both equally true statements.
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
IMO, both feel like reading some RL tracts about Asians, the former has a 'Mysterious Wisdom of the East' vibe, the latter the 'Yellow Peril', but racist all the same.
Tundra Sniper
A Sniper on the Ridge
- Location
- United States
To add to this, alien species that are constantly warlike for the sake of being an antagonist, never mind the fact that their society would need an infrastructure to function and that pumping more and more resources into their military and neglecting other important parts such as agriculture and education would destroy their economy and themselves in the long run. If you want a faction with a strong warrior culture, that's fine, but there are other parts that need to be addressed for them to work as a society.
I know that 40K Orks are like this, but even they have an economy via their own teeth. I don't know how this works, but I just accept it and move on because it's 40K.
I know that 40K Orks are like this, but even they have an economy via their own teeth. I don't know how this works, but I just accept it and move on because it's 40K.
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
Teefs are basically fiat currency. They work because the Orks think they have values and are willing to accept them as valid. That's it.
Raw materials and dakkas may also be accepted as payment, but that's far riskier than just paying in teefs, because there is an ever-present threat that the Orks will later use that payment to kill you.
Especially because the 'strong warrior culture' in fiction is often based on RL historical propaganda, not reality. The Celts, the Germans, the Mongols, they all had fairly robust civilian economy and infrastructure - your average Northman probably spent more time tending his farm than going Viking overseas.
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- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ancient Rome however, while we remember they certainly had a military, we usually don't call a 'warrior culture' in the same way we do the Celts, Norse, or the Mongols, even though the military was a core part of social mobility in Rome. I guess this is probably because we don't think of Ancient Rome as 'barbarian', in fact we're lead to believe of everyone but Rome as that.
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I love technology as much as the next internet poster, but I do think nerds are to quick to have any criticism of "progress" or certain technologies as "dumb Luddite ahah, do you hate books' like new technology isn't inhertly good
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
The Romans too. But I was specifically noting the historical propaganda directed at 'Barbarians', so didn't include the Romans because they were the ones writing them.
In this case, though, those authors are more like 'Right-wing people who despise cities because they are progressive, multiracial and tolerate LGBT+' so I do think they deserve condemnation.
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Tundra Sniper
A Sniper on the Ridge
- Location
- United States
To be fair, military overspending was one of the main reasons that the Roman Empire collapsed, but that was due to the constant threat of foreign invaders.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Ehhh... yesn't.
It is of course true that no civilization or culture ever has subsided solely on war. Indeed, the base for all peoples and cultures is how they get food and other necessary things. Therefore, of course most Norse were farmers and most Mongols were herders. However, that is not an either/or thing. The Romans, too, would know that the Germanics were farming back home... and then during the campaigning season in summer they would go and raid their neighbours. Which, of course, early Rome did likewise with its neighbours in Italy. That is the crux here - that all the farmers in those cultures are also warriors, with little division of labour: Near-everyone is a farmer, there are only small populations of craftsmen, merchants and other specialists, and the farmers are also all warriors.
Of course the economic backbone of nomadic steppe peoples were their herds (replace "farmer" above with "herder" for those cases). But raiding their settled neighbours, or getting a 'Danegeld' or, ehem, "diplomatic gifts" from them, pretty much was also an integral part of their economy. That wasn't just an extra that happened now and then, that was pretty much part of the expected and required income. And likewise, in Norway, during the "Viking Age", everyone went viking (which was a proession, a raider/merchant, not an ethnicity) so much that it caused economic problems back home due to labour shortages. There were even law codes established that curtailed going on overseas adventures... and that all shows of course how large the amount of the population was that took part in those expeditions.
Saying that most of them were farmers or herders is hence not a counter-argument. The terrifying thing is indeed that near the entire population would be potential warriors on raids or in battles, just with a "civilian job" for the off-season.
Of course, that doesn't really translate well to sci-fi, where such a structure would lead to absolutely superfluous amounts of military manpower while disturbing the all-important war industry back home. These days, wars are won on equipment, logistics, the war industry rather than people, manpower and morale, after all (well, compared to historical times, that is - those things are still important, of course).
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- She/Her
Their also seems to be a trend as portraying the Celts,Germanic, and other sorts of non state people as raid happy "barbarians" that only exist to raid and rape good civilized folks villages and never the other way around. like nomadic and tribal people are never put at a disadvantage by huge agricultural states /s/ like people are buying into propaganda written by their enemies. It's like if someone portrayed Native Americans like 1800s propaganda today. Even the heavily "historical inspired" ultra mature amd adult A Song of Fire and Ice does this with the most prominent non agricultural-state the Dothraki, which are portrayed as a caricature of various Horse nomads.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
ASOIAF's claim to... well, not realism per se... but its claim to verisimilitude and attention to nitty-gritty details is entirely based on Westeros. Essos is where worldbuilding goes to die. Nothing there makes any sense at all, not the free cities, not the slaver states, not the horse people either.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Depicting steppe dwelling mounted nomad cultures as relying on sheer numbers to carry the day always gets my goat.
While horse-nomad cultures could mobilise much larger percentages of their population for an individual fight or campaign than agrarian culture with basically every adult knowing at least the basics of fighting from horseback, they tended to be casualty averse because they couldn't eat losses to the same degree that the more populous crop harvesting cultures did due to their total population being much smaller.
Steppe nomads generally sought to avoid getting into fights they didn't decide the terms of and concentrated their force on either the weakest or most important section of an enemy polity's war front to allow them to breach in deeper and carve apart the lines of communication and supply that let their sedentary enemies function as coherent polities.
The Mongols were rather exceptional for being willing to storm strong points like castles or walled metropoli rather than waiting for them to starve after making it impossible to reach them after incorporating Sinnic siegecraft into their military following the conquest of the Manchurian Jin dynasty. Generally, steppe hordes did not try to rush heavily fortified points like the arachnids in starship troopers.
While horse-nomad cultures could mobilise much larger percentages of their population for an individual fight or campaign than agrarian culture with basically every adult knowing at least the basics of fighting from horseback, they tended to be casualty averse because they couldn't eat losses to the same degree that the more populous crop harvesting cultures did due to their total population being much smaller.
Steppe nomads generally sought to avoid getting into fights they didn't decide the terms of and concentrated their force on either the weakest or most important section of an enemy polity's war front to allow them to breach in deeper and carve apart the lines of communication and supply that let their sedentary enemies function as coherent polities.
The Mongols were rather exceptional for being willing to storm strong points like castles or walled metropoli rather than waiting for them to starve after making it impossible to reach them after incorporating Sinnic siegecraft into their military following the conquest of the Manchurian Jin dynasty. Generally, steppe hordes did not try to rush heavily fortified points like the arachnids in starship troopers.
- Location
- Busan Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea
Thing is, the fictional 'warrior culture' is often described as actively despising and not doing those works, unlike RL 'every farmer and herder are also warriors' dynamic. This is what makes them unrealistic (and problematic) because it appears they solely subsist on stealing and... I dunno, hunting? EDIT: And slavery.
EDIT 2: And oftentimes they also despise trade.
Essos is basically Conan the Barbarian continent.
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