eventually people are going to reach a degree of historical distance that they can fetishise European colonists in much the same way that they can fetishise the Mongol horde today, like haha look at those bad boys go!
Eventually? I don’t think people ever really stopped.
Or do you mean eventually there’s going to be so much distance that anyone talking about how bad European colonists were is going to sound like that whole “cancelling Genghis Khan” discourse?
Honestly, after the last four years of lunatical bullshit, it’s really, really hard to look back and understand just how improbable bordering on surreal the idea of “President-Elect Joe Biden” is
Again, to really get this you have to put yourself in a pre-Obama administration frame of reference, which is hard enough for those of us who were politically involved during the first decade of this century much less for people who’s entire political memory begins in a world where we always already had a black president and Joe Biden was his VP.
If you can make that leap backwards, you’ll reach a place where Joe Biden was the goofball who’s 1988 presidential campaign crashed and burned because he couldn’t stop plagiarizing speeches. His second run, in 2008, didn’t go much better. It was widely seen as a joke, especially given his role in the Iraq War which had reached radioactive levels of unpopularity by the start of the 2008 election cycle (the fact Obama was elected president in 2008 was in no small part due to his consistent opposition to the war compared to his chief rivals in the primary and general).
There’s an old joke that every Senator looks in the mirror and sees a president-in-waiting, and Joe Biden was the platonic ideal of that idea; a drip who looked like someone had ordered a day player out of central casting for a bit role as a senator with no more than five lines. He represented a state in the senate that barely had more residents than the average congressional district, and in which getting elected to state wide office depended on cozying up to Delware’s real electorate: the financial services industry. Biden’s close ties to banks and credit card companies were so infamous and so odious that progressive website Daily Kos used to taunt him by putting “D-Mastercard” in parentheses after his name.
The idea of Biden, before becoming Obama’s running mate, ever getting “President-Elect” in front of his name was the punchline to an SNL sketch. If you told someone in 2007 that you’re from November 2020 and Joe Biden was just elected president, their response might well be “Oh yeah? And who was president before that? Donald Trump?” That’s how fucking outlandish the idea of Joe Biden ever getting elected president would have been.
It really is hard to remember a time when politics was somewhat normal and plagiary constituted a campaign scuttling scandal after four brain melting years of Trump (not to mention 8 years of Obama which is when the political class really figured out they can do whatever without consequences), but once you remember all that, the fact Joe Biden is going to be sworn in as the 46th president of the united states is extremely fucking weird.
Bringing this back in time for Inauguration Day
the fun part is when you get Universal Theories of Politics that try to predict the future but then America swings wildly between dynasties like the Bushes and the Clintons, celebrities like Donald Trump, wonder boy newbies like Obama, and barnacles on the ship of state like Joe Biden, it’s all over the place! there’s no consistent pattern, no rhyme or reason!
Ladies and gentlemen, buckle up for a new Outlander post. Sanity has prevailed, and we’re also getting to the part of the series where I have the most to talk about, so I am indeed starting a different thread rather than risk, this, the original, becoming the longest post on tumblr.com.
Right, straight to it. At the end of the previous post I said that the villain’s British uniform was actually pretty okay. That post was made after midnight, and I have since decided that my standards are slipping unacceptably. It’s “okay” as a random British Army officer’s coat in the 1740s. It’s not okay as the uniform of an officer specifically belonging to the 8th Dragoons, which is what he said he was. I present the actual show uniform, and what it should have looked like;
It’s sadly ironic, because for some reason when redcoats are depicted in TV and art during the ‘45 rising they’re very often given red uniforms with yellow facings. In reality the colour of the facings varied depending on which regiment the soldier belonged to. This time they’ve given the baddie blue facings when, actually, the yellow they so often otherwise go with would’ve been correct!
There are further issues with the uniform. The 8th Dragoons, who he supposedly belongs to, were known sometimes as the “crossbelt dragoons.” According to regimental legend they engaged a unit of Spanish cavalry at the battle of Almenar in 1710, where they attacked them so viciously they supposedly tore off and kept their crossbelts. Henceforth the waist belts were worn over the shoulders to commemorate the event.
Moving on, the 1745 uprising has now started and the hero has to engage in a Mulan-esq training drive with his sorry lot of highland vagabonds. There’s some good and bad stuff about this. Highlanders weren’t all natural-born warriors, most were just farmers. The hero is right when he points out that an army needs discipline and can’t just rely on wild charges. In reality the Jacobite army did have discipline. While often portrayed as a hairy bunch of savages milling about, highland regiments were drawn up and drilled in a very similar manner to their regular British opponents. Take this near-contemporary image of Culloden by the artist Paul Sandby. This is the Jacobite army just as the battle began, not the British.
The levies are equipped with farm implements, which is okay in some cases, but not enough muskets, which practically every one would have been armed with. The relucance of some is accurate - the clan system, essentially the same as the feudal system, conscripted men and gave them no choice whether or not they fought for Prince Charles.
Speaking of, 10/10 for portraying Charles as a wee shite of a man.
The hero struts about for a while in a rather silly leathery-looking coat, another concession to our modern love affair with leather in historical dramas. It’s really not that ideal a garment material, folks!
Throughout all this we miss many of the “traditional” beats that get struck when the ‘45 is portrayed in drama. Charles lands with just a few men and is told by dismissive clan chiefs to go home. He replies “I have come home.” The Stuart banner is raised at Glenfinnan, where support arrives seemingly against the odds. Charles doesn’t even have a horse to ride, but it given one belonging to a captured British officer. The fiery cross, a singed crucifix and the ancient highland symbol of impending war, is sent out among the clans, calling them to arms.
In a way it’s refreshing to not see all this endlessly repeated, but damn, they sure missed out all the good real-life actual drama. In contrast, the training the hero’s band gets is fairly lackluster.
On to the battle of Prestonpans. Fought just a few miles outside Edinburgh on September 21 1745, it saw the Jacobites facing off against the British forces then mustered in Scotland to defeat the rebellion. The Jacobites performed a night march to negate boggy ground in their front and outflank the British. The British were surprised by this, but successfully redeployed to face the Jacobites before the battle began. British moral soon collapsed in the face of the highland charge, and the “battle” was basically a route. Interestingly, the battlefield was bisected by a wooden wagon rail line to help facilitate the local mining work, a rail that many Jacobites tripped on as they charged through the light fog.
The battle in the show is almost unrecognisable to the real one. The Jacobites perform their flanking move, and then catch the British off-guard and unprepared in an impenetrably heavy fog. It is a common misconception that the flanking move went undetected, but in reality the British had fully redeployed by the time the charge began, and even had their artillery in place.
We do get a brief historical cameo from Scottish dragoon officer Gardiner. In the show he appears as an unnamed redcoat rider (the captions name him though) who slashes one of the heroes and is then shot by another. The reality of Gardiner’s stand is altogether more story-worthy. According to a primary source he was trying to rally his own dragoons, and when he saw the officers of a nearby infantry regiment falling he;
“Immediately quitted his horse, snatch’d up a half pike and took it upon him the command of the Foot, at whose head he fought, until he was brought down by three wounds, one in his shoulder with a ball, another in his forehead by a broad sword, and the third, which was the mortal stroke, in the hinder part of his head by a Lochaber axe; this was given him by a Highlander, who came behind him, when he was fetching a stroke at an officer, with whom he was engaged.”
Gardiner’s home was just a few minutes’ walk away from the battlefield, and he was buried in the local graveyard where eight of his children were already interred. Outlander does him a sorry disservice.
Mood.
So a Scottish nationalist from the 1960s who likes to give speeches on how great everything would’ve been if the “Scots” had “won” Culloden has burned her husband alive as a ritual sacrifice in order to go back in time to 1743, where she was promptly seized as a witch by the actual historic Scots and burned to death.
If you Google “Skye Boat Song” the first thing that comes up is the Outlander version.
The correct lyrics to the above, by the way, are “sing me a song of a cat that is long.”
Anyway, we’ve reached it folks,
The episode about Culloden
Well, sort of. The battle is split up into little flashback chunks that probably only amount to about 3 minutes. There’s not a whole lot to critique that hasn’t already been said. The main annoyance is how depictions of melees always split off into dozens of solo duels, but the savagery of the combat depicted just about makes up for it. The Jacobites definitely need more muskets and bayonets though.
It’s probably worth talking briefly about the battle’s realities, and the logistics of what happened at its height. Boggy ground and musket and cannon fire forced the oncoming Jacobite centre and right to meld together as they charged, resulting in their whole weight crashing into basically just one British regiment, Barrell’s, the 4th or King’s Own. Previously highlanders making contact with the regulars had been game over for the government side - massed panic and routing followed at Prestonpans, and almost at Falkirk. On this occasion, however, something different happened.
The King’s Own stood their ground. Both sides had reached deep levels of antipathy for one another. The Jacobites were cold, starving, soaked, exhausted and driven by the fact that victory seemed to be within their grasp. The regulars were disgusted by past defeats and determined to avenge themselves against people they thought of as barbarians. Both sides knew their opponents wouldn’t be taking prisoners.
For ten minutes, a frenzied, horrific melee ensued as the Jacobites drove like a wedge through Barrell’s and the neighbouring regiment, Munro’s. The former suffered 33% casualties, and very few of their wounded survived the brutal, slashing wounds of broadswords and Lochaber axes. Their regiment’s colours were momentarily lost, with one officer having his hand cleaved off defending them. The captain of Barrell’s grenadier company, a Scot by the name of Robert Kerr who was also a senior figure of Clan Kerr, impaled the first Jacobite to reach his company with his spontoon, and was then hacked in half by the strike of an axe. His men cited the desire to avenge him later as they fought.
Afterwards one soldier recalled ‘our lads fought more like Devils than Men.’ Another claimed ‘there was scarce a soldier or officer of Barrell’s or Munro’s which engaged, who did not kill one or two men each with their bayonets or spontoons.’ Another source wrote that ‘after the battle there was not a beyonet in this regiment but was either bloody or bent.’ A survivor from Barrell’s wrote how the regiment;
“Bravely repulsed those Boarders with dreadful slaughter, and convinced them that their Broadswords and Target is unequal to the Musket and Bayonet, when in the Hands of Veterans who are determined to use them.”
The stand of Barrell’s gave Cumberland time to bring up his second line and seal the emerging gap. The colours were retaken - the King’s Colour that was caught up in the midst of the horror that day remains in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Anyway, Outlander. The main event in the Culloden scenes are the hero and the villain catching sight of each other moodily across the battlefield.
Bayonets, bayonets everywhere!
Time spent reading a takedown of Outlander by someone with historical knowledge, a care apply to it and with wit aplenty: 10 minutes
Time spent actually watching a populist entertainment portrayal of history on a big budget: 0 minutes
Result happiness
So today is the 275th anniversary of the battle of Falkirk, a battle that occurred three months before Culloden and which the show completely misses out. Government forces were once against routed without a great deal of fighting actually being done. The battle took place during a thunderstorm so severe a senior British officer died from exposure. Another, who fled the battle using a horse he’d stolen from his artillery limbers, later committed suicide by slitting his wrists. Two of the most senior casualties were brothers Robert and Duncan Munro, both high-standing highland Scots and the former a British Army officer who were killed in the aftermath. Robert had been attacked by six Jacobites of Cameron of Lochiel’s regiment. Robert defended himself for some time with his half-pike and managed to kill two of the Jacobites. Another Jacobite then shot Robert with a pistol. He then finished Robert off with three sword blows to the head. Robert’s unarmed brother, Dr Duncan ran to his assistance but he too was killed by being shot and slashed.
The show makes the situation in Inverness just prior to Culloden pretty weird in order to shoehorn characters in. In April 1746 the town was firmly occupied by the Jacobites until mid afternoon on April 16, after Culloden. Despite this the main villain comes and goes (at least not wearing his uniform though) and supposedly British troops are seen purchasing food for the Duke of Cumberland’s birthday. That’d be like, I don’t know, Soviet soldiers being spotted in Berlin buying food as the Red Army bears down on the city in 1945. Immersion-breaking.
The fate of the Mackenzies as a clan is also fudged. As mentioned in the older thread, some of them backed the British government, as did the chief Kenneth Mackenzie, yet the chief here is shown visiting the Jacobites and choosing to die among them. In reality there were very few Mackenzies present at Culloden, because the majority were defeated by pro-Government Mackay and Sutherland highlanders in the battle of Littleferry two days before.
The involvement of the Frasers (the hero’s main clan) is also a bit off. The main Clan Fraser played no part in the 1745 rising. The Frasers of Lovat did, though again most of them missed Culloden. They were actually still marching from Inverness when they heard what had happened, and promptly turned around and went back to the town. There is even some suggestion that they betrayed the Jacobites by refusing to let fleeing survivors cross the Ness Bridge. Certainly their leader, Simon Fraser, went on to become a highly successful British Army officer.
Oh and fun fact, these stones on Culloden battlefield don’t actually mark mass clan graves. I can assure you bodies weren’t carefully sorted into clan groupings and properly buried afterwards. Great for tourists though, thanks Victorians for your terrible-as-ever faux history.
Of course, it couldn’t be a retelling of Culloden without the post-battle EXECUTIONS.
Prisoners were indeed executed, though the extent of it remains open to debate. I’d recommend Jonathan Oates’ Sweet William or the Butcher: The Duke of Cumberland and the ‘45 on the subject. We also see Jacobite flags being collected, which they were. These were burned on Edinburgh high street in front of cheering crowds.
Indeed, Lieutenant Wallace, indeed!
Speaking of, I’ve been enjoying the hero’s struggle against what appears to be a villainous version of Governor Swan from Pirates of the Caribbean.
And before I forget, at one point Louis XV (you know, the actual king of France) blackmails the female lead into having sex with him. I’m sure @qsy-complains-a-lot will approve.
I think I’m going to take a break for now, as watching this has pretty much given me anxiety. I’ll probably skip the next season and go on to the latest, which brings us to the American colonies in 1770. What fun!
Damn, I was 16 when I realized how cringe it is to performatively hate cats. That was a good call.
Get over your cat-hatred before it gets to this level lmao.
huh even in 2015 there was a brief flash of discourse about cats treacherously discouraging women from having babies as they ought, it just never ends does it.
transhumanoid said: remember that 4chan post calling cats “the purring jew”? I’ll never forget it
you kind of have to hope that was a joke simply because of what it says about humanity if someone was capable of typing that in all seriousness.
While there is footage of Lenin petting a cat, with a quick search I can’t find any evidence of Stalin having a pet
Though while trying to find it I did discover Mussolini had a pet lion, Ras
predicted meme for later in the year: everybody saying “shit now I can do X because I’m vaccinated” when X is something entirely unrelated to the coronavirus
first meme wave: X is a completely outlandish or impossible thing. Like “shit now I can shapeshift again because I am vaccinated”
second meme wave: X is a completely mundane thing. Like “shit now I can put milk in my cereal again because I am vaccinated”
“Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after getting vaccinated?”
People who disagree with liberal democracy because it’s only ever served the rich:
People who disagree with liberal democracy because they don’t kill enough Jews, gays and black people and won’t investigate the secret lizardman child smuggling tunnels:
You: these are the same
Answer:
yes, there are certainly people who disagree on almost every issue except for the fact that democracy isn’t producing the outcomes they want and should be scrapped entirely.
I’m trying to figure out how to add a prediction that the coup attempt is not actually over yet without it being seen as endorsement and getting me put on a list.
don’t want to judge a book by its cover but I suspect he was up to no good
Most of downtown DC’s roads are shut down until inauguration day. They’re calling it the Green Zone, the same term used to describe the area around the US embassy in Baghdad during the Iraq War.
There’s an perimeter blocking all car traffic, and an additional inner set of checkpoints if you want to get anywhere within a couple of blocks of the WH or Captiol. Roads are totally dead except for a handful of cars. Most streets blocked off with multiple dump trucks or vertically-aligned concrete barricades. Looks like a mix of DC police, National Guard, and Secret Service, though there’s likely much I couldn’t see.
A guy got caught at one of the checkpoints earlier with fake Inauguration passes, a 9mm, and several hundred rounds of ammunition
Good luck over there, hope you don’t get sent to the FEMA camp
I wonder how things would have turned out if Bernie won the primary, like all this for Joe Biden, dude has already been VP for eight years, the ultimately known quantity.
guys it’d be pro-imperialist for Hong Kong to reform its British colonial system of government and stop having half the seats in its legislature be reserved specifically for corporate lobbyists don’t ask why just trust me
yes it’s funny but are you sure you want to promote this guy?
these are just some examples, if you look at his twitter he repeatedly condemns the hong kong protestors as violent terrorists, says they were “10 times as violent” as the capitol rioters, etc. just something to consider
Ok so which part is supposed to be the lie?
how can anyone still be upholding the hk rioters in 2021 like what kind of cognitive dissonance must it produce to believe pro colonialism chuds praising Trump and raiding the Capitol in dc are bad, but the same thing in Hong Kong is good. like be thankful the universe gave you such a clear illustration
You guys realize you can hate both the US and Chinese authorities, right? Just because they hate each other, too, doesn’t mean we have to fight over who’s boots would be tastier to lick.
I don’t think anyone is “licking boots” here pointing out the clear hypocrisy of the western media spectacle all year round. Protestors literally did destroy tons and tons more of city property and infrastructure and whether that’s good or bad isn’t necessarily the point it’s that if you buy into using “terrorist” as a derogatory label then logically any protestor who breaks a window would be a terrorist, and that western media applying it to disorganized right wing morons in washington who stormed the seat of government and not people who beat an old man to death with a brick, lit a dude on fire, beat up reporters at an airport, there’s CLEARLY an ideological tinge to account for this difference in reporting.
i know the feeling of living in a country run by a useless govt that seemingly works against the good of its ppl. and i understand that you expect the chinese govt to be exactly the same just by default, but that doesn’t make it true.
but back to the topic.
⚠️ the real argument here is NOT whether anti-govt protests are justified or not, but whether the protests are left-wing or right-wing.
examples of left-wing protests: black lives matter movement, the recent workers’ protests in india, anti-war (vietnam war, iraq war, new cold war with china, etc) protests in the us
examples of right-wing protests: stop the steal, pro-trump attack on washington, anti-mask protests, free hong kong protests*, thailand protests*
*cia-funded and pro-western imperialist
like there’s a clear distinction here.
if the Thai protests against the monarchy and military dictatorship are right-wing and the Hong Kong protests for universal suffrage are right-wing then you’re just painting right-wing protests as good, actually.
Anti-Imperialism is when you say the wealth of an Asian country should go to some king in Europe
feeling compelled to post about why people fetishise getting fucked by their political enemies but also compelled not to post about that.
okay since it’ll bug me if I don’t: the recent round of silliness was prompted by someone fantasising about being the kidnapped bride of the qanon shaman, leading to outraged squawks about how he’s a fascist don’t you know, because jokes about sexual fantasies in a haha only serious sense have to conform to political orthodoxy at all times.
but obviously if you’re entertaining noncon fantasies in which you are helplessly carried off by a lunkheaded barbarian he can’t be someone with woke politics by definition, otherwise he would respect your stated preferences not be kidnapped! (unless he was telepathic enough to sense your revealed preferences, but that’s a different kind of fantasy).
so any noncon fantasy is already built on a foundation of you being not in your right mind or them being reprehensible or both, that’s a given, but his bad politics actually enhance the scenario by making you his moral superior even as you succumb to his physical prowess, allowing you to keep your dignity while you lose it!
just like the patriots fantasising about being force femmed by a hot commie girl or girl adjacent, they know she’s in the wrong morally speaking and that a fine upstanding tradwife would never do this but they’re also in thrall to her overwhelming power as a tool of the perfidious deep state cabal, so they helplessly accept the imaginary estrogen injection with the moral surety that as a righteous Christian Man they cannot possibly be blamed for suffering this violation.
yes it’s all very silly but so is everything.
I mean, sexuality in general is rife with ‘I want this thing/find this thing hot but have strong shame associations so I reconcile the cognitive dissonance by either incorporating the shame as part of the appeal or by making someone else take moral responsibility for it occuring’. That said, wanting all the benefits with none of the effort has pretty much been standard operating procedure for the entirety of conscious human history.
in this case it just dovetails too well, it doesn’t really make sense to fantasise about being ravished by a woke bro because uh how woke could he be in that situation, really.
I think the classic bodice-ripper plotline would have him become Woke by the power of your love, but importantly, after the ravishing.
right the ravishment is always retroactively justified after the fact, allowing the fantasy to be noncon in appearance while remaining technically consensual by virtue of time travel, it’s very convenient.
The post-ravishment reform of the rake by how amazing your pussy/ass is, is part of the fantasy. You, your morals, and your hole are so awesome that you mindcontrolled him into agreeing with you just by contact! Like, if rape and ruination there by are plausible fears for you, “your rapist magically becomes a good guy” is a pretty obvious fantasy.
That said, the Q shaman guy is fairly conventionally attractive and obviously in very-good-for-a-regular-person levels of fitness, and then was on TV shirtless and wearing a weird hat that Roosh V would endorse. (Seriously, the “weird hat” part of PUA is underrated and seems to have been a part that actually worked to gain female attention, and it isn’t in itself objectionable.) Also, there’s been a shortage of plausible IRL “sexy barbarian” types in popular imagination for a while. All that means that is entirely unsurprising that a decent number of people are fantasizing about being kidnapped and ravished by the sexy violent half-naked fur-wearing fit guy who was splashed across their news feeds.
one thing I (thankfully) haven’t heard much about is people fantasising about Trump, that was (more understandably) a big thing with Clinton, to the point that I recall someone published a book of assembled “sex dreams about the president”, not sure if Obama got that too.
In 2008, I had a co-worker, an older White woman, who was pretty open about how sexy she found Barack Obama. It was kinda weird, but there were definitely people who kinked on that skinny Black guy thing.
The Apprentice era Trump definitely had some fans (Rich AND bossy!) and he’s basically a sugar baby ideal target even now.
Like, it feels like everyone forgot about The Apprentice TV show, but in retrospect, it’s an unavoidable part of why we ended up with Donald Trump as president.
ideal sugar baby target is presumably a guy who is rich, soon dead, and easily flattered, so yeah.
Remember when Turnbull wore a leather jacket on qanda and people started calling him “daddy”?
in average
are photos
are videos
are texts
are gifs
are audio