#cossacks cossack heroes

[theophan-o]

The Cossack is going away and the girl is crying...

The Ukrainian song, in musical adaptation of the Ukrainian/Polish composer, Władysław Zaremba (Владислав Заремба, 1833-1902). Music notation published in Kyiv, 1900.

From the collection of the Polish National Library (Mus.III.146.887):

[lemuseum]

[astral-multiverse]

The Origins and Adventures of the Super Fighting Robot: Mega Man

@smashingveteransandnewcomers

We're all familiar with the Blue Bomber, Mega Man (aka Rock Light) around here. And we know about his adventures with his friends from other worlds, like a certain blue hedgehog and a certain cosmic hero of the stars. But what exactly happened with Rock to make him become the hero he is today? Well, let's go back in time to even before he and Roll were created where we see Dr. Thomas Light and an old friend of his from his early years, a man from Russia named Dr. Mikhail Sergeyevich Cossack (Or just Dr. Cossack for short). He was visiting his friend while he was working on a brand new project

"So Thomas, what exactly have you come up with here?"

[kobzars]

Album “From Ukrainian Antiquity”

Album “From Ukrainian Antiquity”, compiled by Samokish together with Vasylkivsky about the life and history of Hetman Ukraine.

Fighting for political freedom, for the Ukrainian faith, the Cossacks watered every inch of their native land with their blood and sowed with their bones. They created such heroic heroes, which caused contemporaries and cause fair amazement in posterity.

[marykk1990]

My next post in support of Ukraine is:

Next site, is another Ukrainian. Heorhiy Ivanovych Narbut (Георгій Іванович Нарбут), a Ukrainian graphic artist. He was born 1886 in what is now Sumy Oblast. He designed the coat of arms for the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-1921). It also had the Tryzub on it like the current Ukrainian coat of arms. He also designed bank notes for the Ukrainian People's Republic. The last pic is artwork he did for what is believed to be the first book published completely in the modern Ukrainian language. Eneida (Енеїда), written by Ivan Kotliarevsky in 1798. It is a parody of Virgil's Aenid, where the heroes of Virgil's story become Zaporozhian Cossacks. The poem is included in a list of the top 100 most important creative art in Ukrainian.

#StandWithUkraine

#СлаваУкраїні 🇺🇦🌻

[usssnarfblat]

Did Anastasia deserve to die for her family's crimes against Fieval's family?

I've always found it interesting that "Anastasia" and "An American Tail" were made by the same guy...

My mom got us "An American Tail" as kids, since we were Jewish, and a Disney-like movie with Jewish characters was a one-of-a-kind thing. ("The Prince of Egypt" was still a few years away. Yes, I'm that old.) More to the point, my dad's side of the family is largely Russian Jews, who immigrated in the early 1920s, for exactly the same reasons as the Mouskewitz. Being a child of this background and very literally obsessed with cats, I had mixed feelings about the movie.

When "Anastasia" came out a few years later, Mom didn't let that history stop us from enjoying the new princess movie, but she didn't shelter us from it either. We regarded it like we did the real history behind any sugar-coated princess movie. She even got us some history books about the real Romanov family, and we were fascinated by the subject.

Still, it's an odd elephant in the room, watching "Anastasia" and knowing that her granddad was the one who sent those Cossack cats after Fievel's village, and her dad himself continued doing it to the Jewish mice who didn't leave.

"Go, Pompom, Kibble and Fluff-Baron! Kill those Jew mice, and I'll give you extra catnip treats tonight!"

Don Bluth presents both the Romannov family and their victims with equal sympathy, even opening both movies with the family celebrating a holiday, with the kid heroes getting a plot-specific present, before being viciously attacked.

"Wow Grandmama! Fieval and Tanya could use this as a merry-go-round!"

*Cough* "Yes uh, about those Jewish mice Sweetie..."

Bluth's portrayal of the Romanov family is not entirely inaccurate. By all accounts, Nicholas II was a deeply loving father who both doted on his children, but raised them not to be spoiled. Despite being royalty, the princesses shared bedrooms and did charity work at hospitals.

It's a baffling irony that Nicholas was nevertheless was a tyrant, and not remotely just to his Jewish subjects. When I was about twelve, Mom got me the Dear America book A Coal Miner's Bride, about the Catholic Polish immigrants who also fled the oppression of the Russian Tzar. (Anastasia's family conquered part of Poland in the 1800s, banning the Pols from speaking their own language and drafting their sons into the Tzar's dick-measuring contest wars.) Anyway, that's what my mom's side of the family was fleeing when they immigrated. Yes, my family has double reason to hate the Romanovs.

So, I personally don't have a lot of sympathy for Nicholas II. But the horrors his poor wife and children endured in their final moments never fails to get the reaction from me.

The rationalization for the murder of the children and queen was that it was the only way to ensure that the monarchy never returned. But I assume most modern-thinking people would say that the ends do not justify the means in this case.

That said, millions of families like Anetka's and Fievel's suffered as bad or worse than the Romanovs, because of the Romanovs, and no one remembers them because they didn't wear tiaras. This no doubt was another factor that killed sympathy for the Romanov children. But they were still children.

The question today is, if we can feel for a family that was literal royalty, despite their father being an undeniable tyrant against our own families...can we also feel for Palestinian and Israeli families, during a conflict that is vastly more complicated than Imperial Russia?

Or do they need to be cute mice and glittery princesses to get our attention?

[marysmirages]

Cossack Mamay (2022)

This work was inspired by the image of the Cossack Ivan Bohun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Bohun) and the Ukrainian folklore hero of the 17th century - the Cossack Mamay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_Mamay). This is my tribute to the Ukrainian people and also to my ancestors, who had the surname Mamaeu, descendants of Mamay...

[ninjastar107]

Had a thought about mmfc. I think if I have Suna's mom be Lalinde, Tempo could be her sister-in-law. Vesper as well!

I think if I made an arc for the show, it'd be about a bunch of the Scientists just showing up. Like, I already have Dr. Cossack showing up with Kalinka, Dive Man, and Break Man, It would be just as funny to have Dr. Lalinde show up with Vesper Woman and Quake Woman.

Lord Obsidian for sure would start finding ways to confuse or convert the robot masters to his side. I think Kalinka being captured (sort of like in mmc) and having Break Man caught between pretending to be human and stopping Megaman would be interesting.

Maybe a bit cliché, but Quake Woman working for Obsidian due to ??? Control chip or something similar. I think the banter between her and a feeling-replaced Drill Man would be hilarious.

I could make QuakeBlues work, I think it'd be funny to have a shy nerd with a super hero alter ego being head over heels for a drilling droid who has a bad habit of getting too excited and breaking things.

[danvolodar]

Pathologic and the Town's Russianness: 2

In part 2, let's explore the Town's social structure, compare it to what Russian Empire had before the Revolution, and see if the two are alike.

Two warnings have to be kept in mind when exploring this topic.

First, of course, the Kin are outside its scope, because they're a society quite apart from the real steppe nomads the Russian state had struggled against since before it became an Empire. So it'd be senseless to say "oh, but we can't really hear any Kin mentioned among the nobility in the Capital the way Apraksins, Arakcheevs, Yusupovs, or any number of other noble families were, thus the Capital is nothing like St.Petersburg!"

Second, when comparing the social structure shown in the game, we have to use the Imperial society as a yardstick, and not just because there's said to be an Emperor in the Capital, but because after the Empire fell, the Russian society changed quite radically, guided by purely ideological concepts, so the comparison would be meaningless from the start.

Now, that said, the society of Imperial Russia was explicitly a class-based one. There was some class mobility, and in the timeframe the game is set in the whole structure was under pressure of the new economic realities (as shown in quite a number of classical pieces, starting with, say, Checkhov's Cherry Orchard), but still, it was rigid enough.

And the Town's ruling families fit into said structure well enough.

The Kains could well be Russian nobility of the high noble stock. That works well with what the game tells us of the "blood of heroes" flowing in their veins; and it explains the source of their wealth, too.

Similarly, the Saburovs fit the mold quite well, as a nobility-for-service family. Alexander in particular is a match, with his inflexible values in his P2 depiction.

Now, the Empire had formally codified forms of address for high nobility and top-ranked officials (think "your Highness" or "your Excellency"), and our marry gang of healers, despite all being commoners, do not follow these, but it's nothing but a nitpick, since doing otherwise could've made the likeness of the Empire all too close.

The Olgimskys are a bit more of a mixed bag. They're clearly rich merchants, but they don't exactly fit the stereotypical depiction to a T, starting with Big Vlad's clean-shaven visage (compare him to the Morozovs or the Ryabushinskys, for instance). Beard fashions differed between classes, and with the number of Old Believers among the merchants (who considered shaving blasphemous), full beards were ever in style among that class - even Peter I's laws that leavied taxes on beards did little to change that. But then again, Olgimskys have a Western Slav surname, who's to tell, perhaps they come from Polish or Jewish stock, like the historical Poliyakovs.

A much more significant difference would be their apparent irreligiousity. The way religion in Pathologic 2 differs from what happened in the Russian Empire deserves its own post, I think, so I'll just note that the Olgimskys as merchants not using their religion (whatever it might be: Old Believer or mainstream Orthodox Christianity, Judaism or even Catholicism) at least as an ostentatious outlet for charity differentiates the game's setting from the Empire; same as, of course, the lack of priesthood class in its entirety.

There are other classes missing, naturally, but the reasons for that, I believe, have more to do with establishing the game's themes, as discussed in the intro part of my blog post series. Peasants cannot be shown, because fields, gardens and orchards stretching for kilometers around the Town-on-Gorkhon would undermine the theme of contraposition between the Town and the Steppe, removing the latter physically well out ofsight. Similarly, cossacks, ever present during the Empire's forays into the Eurasian steppes, cannot be present in the game: they did agriculture just as much as peasants; their presence as an organized fighting force in the Town would undermine the othering of the Army; and their styles would be too distinctive to maintain plausible difference from the historical Russian Empire.

The one class that's left to discuss are the commoners: the townsfolk and the factory workers. And they look and feel passably close to the commoners in the Empire, to a surprising degree; except, perhaps, for the shortage of facial hair and headwear. Perhaps they're even a bit too well-off for the underclass in the times when its exploitation was at its worst. Then again, the game design documents state they're meant to be "depersonalized in the utmost, a many-headed hivemind. Not a collection of individuals but a mass, devoid of color and personality. Soulless". Which is an impression of the common man normal enough for the Russian intelligentsia throughout time, yet one that I personally deeply despise, due to being a morlock myself (see also Lev Gumilev with his "what kind of intelligenstia am I when I have a profession").

So, to sum this part up: the social structure of the Town is passably Russian, the most significant difference being the lack of priesthood. The lack of the more distinctive classes, the ones that most differentiated Russia in the early XX century from the other European states of the time, can mostly be explained away by the game needing to maintain is themes and creative vision in the areas well outside of sociology.

[theophan-o]

Cossack with a banner

[you-cant-fuck-megaman]

I've not fully read the Megaman IDW comics but i really really liked how much spotlight and personality they gave Cossack, i wish that the mainline games also gave some attention to Cossack properly (other than mentioning him by name for creating Tundra Man and other stuff)

What's your take on Cossack?

cossack owns, he's my favorite of the classic trio of doctors.

out of the three, we know the absolute least about him for the reasons you already mentioned--most of what we know is from the expanded verse in the Archie/Megamix comics. but it's clear he's a decent guy.

a lot of his appeal for me lies in the fact that he's clearly coded as a villainous mad scientist archetype. there's a lot of things to be said as for why the bad guys tend to be more appealing to fans than good guys. there's a frequent psychological pull towards the antagonists or edgy rivals as opposed to the straight-laced heroes.

meanwhile, right in the middle of the 90s, Russia and Russian characters were pretty clearly the designated go-to antagonists of choice for the yanks, and everything about Cossack plays into that archetype. his castle is an onion dome, the C logo is reminiscent of a star-and-sickle, his design is based on the revolutionist Trotsky, his music is stylized after traditional Russian music emphasizing the staccato notes interspersed between mournful melodies, and his fortress is set in the grim deathly russian snow. he clearly is designed after every single stereotypical antagonistic beat possible, the eeeeeeevil Russian bad enemy guy. hell, his original name was apparently going to fucking be Dr. Vice.

and yet, he's a hero. not just that, he's a personable hero. he loves his family. he loves his daughter. he wants to do right by her and take care of her. he's clearly just as into design as Wily is, but without the copy-paste of other people's robots. he's a self-made man, a man's man, who worked to get to his position and now works for his family. he's had tragedy befall him and yet pushes on through and helps Light.

having someone clearly leaning into the villain #aesthetic but still be a stalwart good guy is 2000% my jelly and i am all here for it. i'll take five with a side of pirozhki and vodka.

oh yeah and megaman 4 was a good game

[vintagegeekculture]

Where can I read pulp novels like The Shadow and Doc Savage?

Archive.org is so much, much more than just the Wayback Machine. For posterity, they have completely digitized a tremendous amount of scifi and horror and adventure pulps, all available for reading and downloading in PDF, including the following:

Adventure. Of the big two pulps, they have the entire golden age of possibly the greatest pulp mag of all time, Adventure, from 1914-1930, when they had Talbot Mundy's mystic adventures in Central Asia and India, and Harold Lamb's tales of the Mongols and Cossacks. It's incredible to just flip through them and find things like articles where people talk about what it's like to be bitten by a snake, or a firsthand account of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, or polar exploration from the air. The stories are just the beginning, and in reprints, they don't include the fact they have wonderful maps of where the story is set.

Argosy is also available, the very first pulp magazine ever made starting in 1896. So you can read, among others, the first stories of Zorro, Tarzan, and fantasy novelist A. Merritt, as well as find letters pages where you see the weird prose H.P. Lovecraft, who the other letters that wrote in response did nothing but make fun of him. It's like witnessing cyberbulling in 1914 mixed with crank youtube comments.

Weird Tales. Speaking of Lovecraft, they also have almost the entirety of Weird Tales. Unlike Adventure and Argosy, which sold in the millions, this one was a low seller, but through Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) and the incredible worlds of Clark Ashton Smith (the true genius of Weird Tales), and the space adventures of C.L. Moore.

The first ever scifi pulp magazine, Amazing Stories, is available for reading. It created geek culture as we know it as he encouraged fans to message each other. So geek culture as we know it started in 1928 so a Luxembourg American weirdo could sell radio parts.

Don't sleep on a few of the minor ones. My favorite is Unknown, which has amazing work by L. Ron Hubbard, one of the best early fantasy and horror novelists. There's also A. Merritt's Fantasy, a reminder of a time he was THE name in Fantasy.

Unfortunately the hero pulps were mostly published by Street and Smith and are therefore not in Public Domain, but for those, there are great, cheap collections available that I recommend, especially as they have great historical material added by William Murray, pulp historian.

[kobzars]

Cossack Mamai is a folk painting depicting a Cossack bandura player, one of the most widespread folklore heroes in Ukraine. The painting was created according to the traditional scheme: a Cossack with a bandura sits in the center in a static pose. Paintings of later times increasingly depart from the original single-figure compositions, but the traditional pose of the main character remains unchanged.

The photo shows a painting by Petro Boyko

[tenebraevesper]

I got a question. Why is Shadow your favorite character?

That's something I haven't really thought about. Usually, when I declare a character my favorite, it's kinda like a gut feeling - I see X Character and I instantly know they'll be my favorite. Nevertheless, I'm sure you'll probably want a more in-depth explanation.

Shadow the Hedgehog definitely fits the character archetype I tend to gravitate to, which I tend to describe as Troubled, But Cute (put a pin on the ''cute'' part tho), Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain type of character with a tragic backstory, who has an intimidating or untrustworthy presence, or is just a jerk, but deep down, they are sweet and/or genuinely care about the other characters in their own way.

If you want more examples, here is a list of my favorite characters from other franchises:

Impmon/Beelzemon from Digimon Tamers, initially a mischievous Digimon who caused trouble for the main cast, his traumatic experience with his own Tamers and his desire to become stronger led him to a path of destruction, followed by one of the most incredible and heartbreaking redemption arcs I've seen.

Bass.EXE/Forte.EXE from Rockman.EXE/MegaMan Battle Network/MegaMan NT Warrior. Bass is a Solo NetNavi who had been created by Dr. Cossack to improve internet security, but was betrayed by the humans when the internet at the time, Alpha, went berserk, causing Bass to be mistakenly blamed for that chaos. Believing that humans are monsters, Bass has set the goal to become the strongest and destroy humanity once and for all. He is also MegaMan's strongest rival, and I especially love how their relationship is portrayed in Ryo Takamisaki's MegaMan NT Warrior manga, where they both show deep respect for each other and it is acknowledged that MegaMan is the first person Bass allowed himself to bond with. Huh, when you think about it, Bass and Shadow are kinda similar, especially when the latest chapter that focused on Bass had him finally make peace with his past.

Darkrai from Pokémon, specifically Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time, Darkness and Sky. To quote the Pokedex: ''Folklore has it that on moonless nights, this Pokémon will make people see horrific nightmares.'' Darkrai is a Pokémon who is capable of causing horrible nightmares, but the truth is, he cannot control this ability and isolates himself on Newmoon Island. In Rise of Darkrai, he is portrayed as a misunderstood anti-hero who wanted to defend his home from Dialga and Palkia, and in PMD: Explorers, he is a maniacal tyrant who wants to plunge the world into eternal darkness, and these two different portrayals are one of the reasons why I adore Darkrai so much. And yeah, he definitely isn't the conventionally ''cute'' type, but I always had weird tastes.

Félix/Chat Noir from Ladybug PV, who I consider to be a different character from the CGI show. Having been cursed with bad luck, Félix needs to find ways to convince to Ladybug to kiss him while working together with her against the main villain and also dealing with Ladybug's civilian form, Bridgette. I'm certain that, if his character had been developed further, we would see a different side to him, show that there is more to Félix/Chat Noir than what is on the surface.

[vintage-ukraine]

Cossack Mamay the Folk Hero Sings a Ukrainian Ballad by Oleksandr Sayenko, 1926

[mo-ok]

Cossack II 🤝 Stinger 🤝 Genba - feeling alienated from your team because you're being driven by revenge and you know its not why a hero should be fighting but you cant and dont want to stop