#and the shit historians have spewed for centuries

[unbeleveable-archive]

And a note for those of you unfamiliar with my portrayal of her I do NOT accept the popular theory stemming from Huguenot rhetoric that the St. Bartholomew's Massacre was something Catherine had planned. What she had planned was the assassination of a select group of the Huguenot leaders; that things would get out of hand and the violence would spread to the streets of Paris and beyond due to the inflamed hatred between the two religious factions was something she had not anticipated.

Catherine was first and foremost a PEACEMAKER, trying over and over again to get the Catholics and the Huguenots to come to lasting terms. She was also no Catholic zealot; it was thought by many of the other faction that she might be convinced to convert. While this never happened, she had no overriding hatred for the Huguenots that would cause her to deliberately orchestrate such overwhelming violence.

The only reasons even the select murders were planned were due to a threat made to her face against the crown and her family, as well as to trying to prevent the Huguenot leader, Coligny, from getting France entangled in a war with Spain. The true orchestrators of the massacre at large was mob mentality and a religious fervor Catherine never could manage to understand.

[thescarletlibrarian]

are u doing good, I love your enthusiasm and knowledge, it just feels as if alot of your comments on posts are slightly aggressive and I can’t tell if they’re coming from a place of genuine anger or not. No hate! Just checking in

Thanks for checking in and pointing that out, I forget how horrible reading people’s comments on your stuff is.  And it’s very kind of you.

Mostly I just see something scrolling by, it bugs me, I go on a rant that probably reads a LOT worse than it does in my head, and then I’m done.  It’s a lot of venting, and really, thank you for bringing it up, because instead of just commenting directly, I should probably go have my tantrum on my own post and just link to whatever set it off.  Especially since the venting is usually old baggage or unrelated crazy that gets set off.  I’ve always used Tumblr as a dumping ground to take out frustration on something--it started as bitching about red carpet clothes, so it was the most frivolous, unimportant thing, but I could get a good bitch going about it and then go deal with the Real Shit that built up the bitchiness when I felt better.  (Or not deal with it.  But that was the idea, anyway.)

Some of the “state of academia” type responses are genuine anger at an increasingly screwed-up situation that dominates my life and career...plans?  We’ll call them plans, like anything is an actual “plan” right now.  And a lot of that shit is Behind the Curtain of academia that most people never see.  I know what I knew and thought I knew before getting back here and seeing it, I know what non-academic friends and family think it is, and I’m kind of yanking on the curtain trying to make some of it more visible--especially because I keep seeing articles on “this is what’s going on in higher ed and how it should be fixed” and “this is how grad school is happening now and why that’s [any adjective you want]” circulating The Internet, and it’s like, bitch, please.  You’re not from around here, go opine at somebody else.

The 17th c. vs. medieval one I tapped out on my phone in righteous indignation and hit post without ever rereading it, and I let the full run-on sentence ADHD brain just GOOOOOOOO, which comes out looking insane and worked up and probably jumping around screaming or something, or just straight-up manic.  It IS a bit manic, I’m just trying to spew the manic somewhere it’s okay to make/be a mess.  

THAT being said, that one triggered the manic because there’s been so much “medieval” factoid and “things you didn’t know” and shit floating around what with the coronamolecule, much of it shitty misinformation directly or indirectly supporting stereotypes of medieval Europe that are straight up wrong, and it’s one of those personal DON”T GET ME STARTEDs that all the bad shit about the middle ages people focus on really does come from the goddamn 17th c., aka The Worst Century Ever.  Studying/teaching medieval stuff (is weird, I know, it’s fine, it’s my weird and I’m okay with it) you get some weird responses and assumptions from people.  Who often try to modernsplain things to you historians chucked out forty years ago and are thinking about very differently now, that you know about in detail because this is your life and you’ve published on this shit.  God, is that annoying, and all the stuff going around with plague and some of The Old Guard fandom ends up seeming like the entire damn internet is doing it.  And obviously this shit is important to me, I think it’s important to try and understand as much as we can about historical events and people and stuff because it defines the context of...everything, while keeping in mind that any understanding is an interpretation of what we see, a model, not The Past itself.  Really, really important.  Some people flip their shit over representations of the US Civil War, I flip my shit about people assuming the 14th c. Black Death was The One True Plague, for one thing, or that there’s been some intellectual war between Faith and Science for Time Immemorial when...no?  I’m not exactly sure when somebody came up with that one, I’m guessing 19th c. because a) 19th c ruins everything and b) that’s when the exceptionalization and cultifying of “science” as a Superior Form of Knowledge got rolling and the modern definitions of “science” gelled.  That narrative is part of the context of how contemporary people see the world, think about it, and act in it.  Yeah, it might seem like a big jump from “Age of Reason my ass” to refusing to wear masks or “believe in” vaccines and so on as political statements.  It is a big jump, because there’s a whole hell of a lot of little jumps in between.  But that’s why history--not only “what happened” but how “what happened” is represented, interpreted, and respond to--is relevant to everything.  And that idea is also really important to me, and I consider it one of my main jobs as a teacher to try and get that across and help students see and contextualize their world differently--even just a little bit without really thinking about it.  Which is why I think/talk about it a LOT.

TL;DR--thank you for being concerned, I really am losing my shit about things in a way that suggests something needs to be addressed.  I’m stressed out AF right now (more than usual...), some of that I can’t do anything about, but if the internet is setting me off like this, we probably need to take a break and see other people for a while.  I’m a bit too off-kilter for my liking, but I’m not falling over yet, though--again, it is very, very perceptive and kind of you to notice and check in on a stranger.  Please give yourself a gold star for today.  

Seriously, though, fuck the 17th c.

[chinesegal]

Myths about the middle ages: the hotep edition

Is it me, or does almost every website that describe itself as “afro-centric” spew horrid bullshit myths about the middle ages?

Anyway, today I found an article posted on the website africaresource which makes me wanna pterodactyl-scream until my lungs expire. Whev, where do we begin?

“Before the Advent of the Black Moors of Africa who ruled parts of Spain for 700 years there was Medieval Europe a classic rat hole.  Until the Blacks came in from Africa and cleaned it up.“

“moor” simply means muslim and does not mean being black. And anti-blackness was actually all over the islamic World at the time, Ibn Khaldun who was from Morocco said some horrific shit about black people.

source: https://www.tremr.com/Duck-Rabbit/no-whites-did-not-invent-anti-black-racism-muslims-did

“People normally associate different epochs with different smells. “

Citation please. Also, what level of pseudohistoric pop-Culture history is this?

“The Middle Ages smell of sewage and decaying bodies. German writer Patrick Suskind, the author of a well-known novel “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” wrote in his book that the stench of European cities in the late Middle Ages period was unbearable. His work conveys the terrible smell of human faeces and urine in the streets, decaying wood and rat dung, spoiled coal and animal fat, mouldy dust and chamber pots. “

Suskind was an author, not a historian and he was Writing about the 18th Century, not the middle ages.”

“Stench used to be an inseparable part of all human activities, constructive or destructive. The Queen of Spain Isabel of Castle (the end of the 15th century) confessed that she had taken a bath only twice in a lifetime – when born and married. A daughter of one of French kings died of lice. Dysentery and scab caused fatal terminations to Popes Clement V and Clement VII correspondingly. Duke Norfolk neglected bathing for religious reasons. As a result of such disregard numerous abscesses dotted his body.”

Wow. There’s so much wrong with this, to begin with Isabella of Castlle might or might not have been lying seeing as not taking baths was seen as a “pious” and ultra-christian thing to do (and most people werent that pious). 

“a daughter of the french kings” which daughter? And all examples here are individuals and might not represent the entire population at large.

More examples following which arent of the middle ages but the late 16th and 17th centuries. Of course, from what I know “bathing” as immersing yourself fully in a tub of water was rare but spongebaths still existed and you could actually manage to have relatively good hygiene by changing your clothes regularly and rubbing yourself raw with a dry cloth: https://newrepublic.com/article/129828/getting-clean-tudor-way

Also fun fact: people actually got beat up for littering in medieval cities.

[logh-icebergs]

Episode 12: Invasion of Imperial Territory

August 796/487. Yang, Sitolet, and Cazellnu get stuck in traffic. They run into Lebello and give him a lift in their handy military zip-helicopter. At the High Council meeting, Royal Sanford and Cornelia Windsor convince all council members except for Lebello, Huang, and Trunicht to vote in favor of the military’s proposed invasion of Imperial territory. With the operation approved by the government, Sitolet convenes a meeting at which he appoints Lobos to command the mission of eight fleets totaling 30,227,400 soldiers, with Greenhill his second in command. Andrew Fork, who crafted the invasion plan, accuses Yang of aiding the enemy. Meanwhile Rubinsky and von Remscheid go on a....date? No, okay, they’re probably just talking politics. Probably.

...Okay, got all that? We’ve been focused on laying the groundwork of the main themes and relationships that we’ll be following throughout the series, which means that many of the little plot details and secondary characters that have flitted by so far haven’t figured heavily in our posts. Since this episode is less like an iceberg and more like an ice floe that’s mostly above the water, I’m gonna take this opportunity to formally introduce us to some of these (many, many, many) characters. 

Alex Cazellnu

Pictured here with his characteristic “I’m not quite sure what’s happening around me” expression, Cazellnu is Yang’s friend and former upperclassman from the military academy. Many mysteries surround this man, as we’ll talk much more about later. For example, how did he land such a smoking hot and kickass wife? (We’ll see her soon, don’t worry.) What made him think Yang was fit to be anyone’s legal guardian? (Yes, that was his brilliant idea.) And what the fuck kind of name is Cazellnu? (Actually my guess is that it’s based on the word caserne meaning military barracks, which is a bit on the nose honestly since his job has to do with supplies and housing…)

More seriously, Cazellnu plays an interesting and important role in the show: He personifies the heteronormative societal structures and assumptions both of the in-universe world and the world of the audience. Like so much in LoGH this has a dual purpose. For the characters around him, the normative crap he says applies concrete pressure on them to meet the expectations of their society. For the audience, he explicitly articulates some of the (incorrect) "surface readings" that help the show pass as way straighter than it is. We will of course be keeping an eye out for these moments as we get to know him better.

Another Cazellnu mystery: Why didn’t he bother to give his younger daughter a name? Did he use up all the female names he could think of on Charlotte Phyllis??

Sidney Sitolet

We’ve seen Fleet Admiral Sitolet (or Sithole, as it’s sometimes spelled, but come on, have some respect…) before, most recently when he was laying a major guilt trip on Yang about trying to resign from the military. In this episode he intensifies that guilt trip even further, telling Yang that he’s the literal only hope for preventing the whole military from falling into the hands of over-ambitious zealots eager to get everyone gloriously killed. Sheesh. I know that Sitolet is clearly demarcated as one of the Good Guys here—an older, more powerful, slightly sterner version of Yang who is also extremely practical about using his resources to try to minimize the damage caused by the continuing war. And Yang is one of those resources. I get it, but...this scene at the end of this episode just makes me want to write AU fanfic where Yang tells him to go to hell and moves to a nice mountain villa where he writes history books all day while Julian goes shopping at the local market for the best deals on high quality tea.

...What, a girl can dream, can’t she? (From episode 3.)

Anyway, platitudes about patriotism and duty to crush the Evil Empire etc. won’t keep Yang in the military, but Sitolet is the one who knows exactly the kind of logic Yang finds inescapable. As much as it obviously frustrates and saddens him, Yang feels the burden of Sitolet’s expectations. 

João Lebello

Or Joanne, sure, why not.

This is the first time we’re seeing Lebello, the current secretary of the treasury serving on the Alliance High Council. He’s a childhood friend of Sitolet’s, and their banter reminds me a bit of Yang and Cazellnu’s friendship. 

In the council’s deliberations, he’s the loudest voice speaking up against the invasion, on the grounds that their economy is already being stretched thin by the ongoing warfare and further military spending could lead to collapse. Unfortunately the counter of “eh we’ll just print more money” is persuasive to most of the council, who vote in favor of the invasion in hopes that a victory will improve their polling numbers. Let’s hear it for democracy! 

Huang Louis

Like Yang, his family name is first; his given name is ルイ in Japanese, and I’ve seen it rendered as Rui, Lewi, or Louis.

The only other council member to speak against the invasion plan. Huang is quietly awesome; I don’t have a ton to say about him yet other than that, and the fact that I totally ship him and Lebello. 

Huang/Lebello is pretty high up there on the LoGH Ships expanding brain meme.

Cornelia Windsor

The token woman on the council, Windsor does a great job smashing the sexist stereotype that women are less likely than men to warmonger and advocate the deaths of millions of citizens. And she does so while reminding me so strongly of Dolores Umbridge that I’ve been trying to convince myself that J.K. Rowling must have watched at least the first twelve episodes of this show somehow. 

I mean, just look at that giggle.

There are three philosophies put forward in the council discussion: Lebello and Huang making practical arguments about the toll the war is taking on the Alliance economically and socially; Sanford, the head of the council, arguing that inaction is less likely to get them re-elected than a potential victory; and Windsor making the ideological case that war against the Empire is so righteous that no cost is too great to pay.

I’ll go out on a limb and say this show hasn’t been very subtle from the beginning about its distaste for people making arguments in favor of war and destruction on purely ideological or dogma-driven grounds. This stance seems mostly uncomplicated for now—pragmatism: good; blind idealism: bad—but so far the stars have aligned so that the characters spewing the dogmatic rhetoric are using it to push for increased death. It’s easy to roll our eyes at ideals of honor and glory in war; what about ideals like “try not to kill people if you don’t have to”? What if those go against the pragmatic arguments? We’ve already seen this tension a bit between Yang and Jessica, with his willingness to work within the military clashing with her ideals of pacifism, even though their ultimate goals align. In those cases there’s much less of a clear cut answer.  

...But for now at least, we can all agree this Umbridge-wannabe person sucks.

Job Trunicht

(From episode 6.)

We’ve already heard plenty about Trunicht and we’ll hear plenty more, so I won’t dwell on him here. But a quick Fun Fact*: Yang, being generally a luddite, refused to even get a remote control for his TV (er sorry, SolidVision) for a long time, until Trunicht started appearing regularly on the news. Yang hated seeing Trunicht’s face for even a split second so much that he would bound up off the couch to turn it off as soon as Trunicht showed up. Of course Yang is incredibly lazy, and he finally realized that with a remote control he could remain on the couch and have to see Trunicht’s face for even less time, so he caved and bought one; and now he sits eagerly watching the news with the remote clutched in one hand, hoping he’ll have the chance to turn it off in disgust.

...Relatable.

*Source: Julian’s Iserlohn Diary, one of the side stories written by Tanaka. Yes yes our canon here is the anime not the books; but we get to pick and choose adorable details that we like, and I hereby make this one Official Icebergs Canon.

Andrew Fork

Speaking of characters spewing pompous platitudes about war, meet Andrew Fork, who I really really wish I could say was a hyperbolic caricature who could never exist or gain actual power in real life but………..*looks around* here we are I guess. Fork must be a historian who wrote his thesis on early 21st century Earth internet message boards, since he employs tactics like accusing anyone who questions the practical implementation of his ideas of Aiding the Other Side. I again can’t resist sharing a passage from the novel of another character describing Fork:

*thinking emoji* *thinking emoji* *thinking emoji* I dunno it sounds familiar but I can’t place it...

Alexander Bucock

As you can tell by him giving Fork shit, Bucock is one of the more level-headed of the admirals. We’ll get to know him better in the future, so for now I’ll just mention that he’s awesome and him telling Fork that he’s impolite makes me happy. And that you shouldn’t get him mixed up with Lobos just because they both have white/gray hair and a mustache, as I may have done through pretty much the whole first season...

Quick Aside: Names

Cazellnu/Caserne/Caselnes? João/Joanne Rebelo/Lebello? Sitolet/Sithole/Shithole? Rui/Lewi/Louis? Fork/Falk? Bucock/Bewcock? Mittermeyer/Mittermeier, Reuental/Reuenthal, Mintz/Minci, Lap/Lapp/Shithole…??? It might have come to your attention by now that there is complete consensus about the spelling of essentially zero LoGH names.

You’d think “Jessica Edwards” would at least be free from controversy, but….. (From episode 2.)

Given that there doesn’t seem to be one clearly “official” source, and that it’s 1600 years in the future, we’re not especially hung up on trying to be super authentic and picky with our spellings. Maybe Cazellnu’s distant ancestors who also managed military barracks were named Caserne, but the spelling got modified as humanity emigrated to the stars; it happens. Generally our policy is to spell things however we happen to feel like it, based on some combination of aesthetics and just what we’re used to, and to be as consistent as we can once we pick a spelling; but we’re not really in the business of trying to arbitrate which spellings are “correct.” There’s too much about LoGH that’s worth caring passionately about to spend that much energy on the names. 

...Except Minci is still wrong, sorry animation notes that came with the laserdiscs.

Okay now, where were we…

Lazzll Lobos

...What, really? Lazzll, that’s what the subbers went with? Is that even a name? *quick Google search* No, no it’s not. Well, apparently it’s more commonly spelled Lassalle, but y’know what, I’m sticking with Lazzll god dammit. I make the rules here.

I don’t have anything to say about him beyond his name and that he is different from Bucock apparently.

And last but not...well okay maybe also least?

Adrian Rubinsky

When we last mentioned Rubinsky he was musing about how to use Reinhard and Kircheis’s relationship to his advantage somehow; here we find him informing the Imperial High Commissioner to Phezzan about the Alliance’s impending invasion, which he learned about...somehow. His air is constantly that of one attempting to play puppet-master and sculpt the situation to his own advantage, although ostensibly he is only doing his duty here as an Imperial subject, Phezzan being officially a territory of the Empire. It’s on his information that the Imperial nobles set Reinhard’s fleet in motion to meet the Alliance invasion force, as Yang was afraid they would do.

We also very very briefly meet Dominique Saint-Pierré, a mistress of Rubinsky's, seen here pouring wine while both men leer at her; she has more power than this glimpse suggests, though, and the power struggles between her and Rubinsky are definitely the most interesting aspect of Rubinsky’s role in the story.

Phew! And with this we conclude the entry that will probably mention the highest number of canonically straight characters by name of any Icebergs post. I hope you got all that; yes this will be on the exam. 

Stray Tidbits

I love the four-hour traffic jam caused by some intern feeding a corrupt string into a computer. I’ve mentioned how realistic the self-driving car system on Heinessen feels, and having it break down only adds to the realism.

So much for Yang’s optimism that capturing Iserlohn would lead to peace negotiations rather than an escalation of the war. Cracks are starting to show in Yang’s admiration of this whole “let the people control the government” thing, and I don’t blame him; especially since the Alliance “democracy” seems to involve decisions made by simple majority vote by an eleven-person High Council?? Umm? 

The subs tried to make sense of this line by drawing a distinction that I don't think is there in the Japanese: Yang uses the same verb, "akusei o shite iru," for both governments, where akusei (悪政) is literally bad+government. My interpretation is that Yang is expressing frustration at the irony of people choosing to elect a government that nevertheless governs against their interest...but I guess I might be projecting.

I love this random shot of a Phezzani street. Most Obscure LoGH Love Triangle Award goes to the three teenagers on the right; I wonder which of them is the vertex?? This is the fanfiction the world demands. 

[nl37tgt]

Monkey Business (9-10-19)

People are strange.  Queue "The Doors - People Are Strange" if you wish, I encourage it, my opening statement still rings true though, people do weird stuff.

Honesty has always been the best policy.  Truth is easy, you don't have to remember what lie went where.  It's a simple life.  Yet everyone from politicians to your 8-year-old has a hard time with being honest.  Granted, humans are fallible.  Shit happens.  But to persist in a lie when caught is for fools.  The problem is that there seems to be an abundance of fools.  George Carlin warned us against underestimating idiots in large groups.  If they manage to organize, it can get quite scary.  Look at a Klan rally, there's a prime example of a large group of organized morons.

Another thing of note is a propensity for memory to serve when it's convenient to whatever the narrative needs.  The consistency of a public figure or news article of note can be checked in minutes, along with checking for accuracy.  We live in a world where information is within easy reach at all times, so the excuse that one doesn't know is a poor one.  What is quickly forgotten is that that information can be inaccurate or wholly fabricated to suit a narrative.  Confirmation bias and that pesky Dunning-Kruger effect can turn your average person into a tinfoil hat dipshit with dubious at best ideology in a matter of months.  Pulling information from the asshole of the internet to bolster your arguments leads down that particular rabbit hole.  The internet is an uncurated wild west.  Any and all have a page full of anything you can think of and well beyond.  If your bullshit detector is defective, and your level of gullibility is high, avoid the internet, please.  You're making the rest of the world that much more idiotic and the internet itself doesn't forget.

News flash fuckwit.  The earth isn't flat, vaccines don't cause autism, Elvis is dead, and your horoscope doesn't mean a damn thing.

Let's move on to another curiosity.  Look at a map.  All those borders and boundaries are imaginary.  You could cross one and not even know it if it wasn't for the sign.  You don't see borders from space.  Most of them have Olympic swimming pools of blood splashed all over them from repeated war.  Despite the depths of explanations historians and politicians dive into, the main driver of war is greed and/or some form intolerance.

Global trade is centuries old, global communication is now nearly instant, global travel has been possible for more than a century, but we still hang onto primitive borders and fight over them.  If not borders, it's ideology or something material.  Yet certain groups fear advancement towards global governance.

Some of that fear is warranted perhaps, considering the ease at which corruption and abuse of power creep into even a small country that is less opposed to dragging an asshole out of their office and beating them to death.  But we are one species underneath all the self-imposed herding into particular groups.  This tribal mentality, the gravitation towards opposing groups ranging from sports teams to whole ideologies, might just be the end of us at some point because some of you goofs get violent.  It's a primordial relic we haven't evolved past yet and I don't know if that turning point will happen in my lifetime.

Delving further into the racism and intolerance thing... what the fuck?  Any student of history, even half asleep, can probably figure out that one group of folks may have a superiority complex over another group of folks.  The results from those are plain as day in the annals of history.  As of this writing, there are over 1000 hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States.  One thousand groups of people with their head squarely and firmly inserted into their ass.

Societal tolerance needs hard limits.  Racism should be intolerable and challenged at all fronts.  The same goes for sexism and other ugly marks on the world.  To go absolute with tolerance is just foolish, that would lead to an "anything goes" scenario and chaos.  

Changing lanes here.  If you voted for someone and they gained office, do me a favor and hold them accountable for the bullshit they spew.  They don't need the hickeys from you sucking their ass and you're embarrassing yourself.  Your devotion will only be rewarded by a stray fart to the face or your head in a toilet.  You're welcome for that mental image.

Last-minute exit ramp dive before closing this mess.  Don't put up with abuse. Life is way too short to stick to something that makes you miserable and gives someone undue power over you.  Could be a spouse, partner, boss, "friend," or even a family member.  If they aren't doing you any good by being in your circle, find a way to cut them out of your life.  There isn't a valid reason for hanging around.  There are no medals or award ceremonies for time served in any sort of abusive relationship.  Cut the shit.