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 Post subject: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:45 am  
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http://www.the-spearhead.com/2009/10/24/the-feminists-guide-to-debate-tactics/


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:21 am  
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You know, I had this feminist professor who insisted on reading back modern views on gender into the classical era. She began the class with a long lecture about "perspective" and "the elephant and five blind men", then of course spent the rest of three months arguing from the standpoint that gender equality = good and classical views on gender = bad.

One of her really interesting arguments were that Spartan women were more free than Athenian or Roman women. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until much later to fully digest this argument and understand why it's dead wrong.

Today, we remember the Spartans as a nation of invincible warriors. What we don't remember is why they came to be that way.

Sparta was a slave society, and the Spartans, who were not native to Greece, were outnumbered 10-1 by their subject peoples, whom they treated about as badly as blacks during slavery. To establish frame of reference, the best place and time to be slave was in ancient Rome. The worst was 19th century America. Athens was somewhere in between.

So in order to maintain control, the Spartans lived in a virtual state of siege. This was also a driving force in their dealings with other nations: they could not freely leave home to lay siege to foreign cities, as the Athenians or Romans could, because their slaves might revolt.

This is where women come into the picture.

Spartan women had a lot of freedom in their day-to-day lives, and physical fitness was very important to them. Enough so that other Greeks recognized Spartan women as the hottest in Greece: they were the jogger chicks of their day.

What modern feminist historians don't appreciate is:
1. Spartan women were physically fit for two reasons:
a. because their reason for existing was to pump out babies so the Spartans wouldn't get swamped demographically (we know as a historical fact this was a major concern for the Spartans because they panicked when they lost relatively small numbers of citizens)
b. because of the need for personal defense against disgruntled slaves (just like Southern women)

2. Spartan society actually gave women a lot less freedom for the same reason it gave men less freedom, which was that life was all about fulfilling one's predetermined role in life, whether baby maker or fighting machine. No woman could be a writer, courtesan, artist, merchant, etc., let alone travel abroad, because the free choice to opt for those paths in life had no place in their society.

3. Spartan women were given wide discretion over property and other legal matters because of the incredibly high mortality rate amongst men due to military service - and it's a very well documented fact that the Spartans had an all-consuming desire to die in battle (seen as bizarre and depraved even by the other highly militarized societies of their era). So, Spartan society by its very nature denied women the right to partake in society's supreme honor, but demanded they do what was necessary to support male indulgence.

4. Spartan women were frequently party to infidelity when their men would have sex with slaves, who would then bear their children. They were required to be okay with this. We know this is so because of how many half-slave Spartans pop up later in their history.

If a Spartan woman said, "I don't want to make babies", or "I want to be a soldier", or "I want to do something other than be a wife and mother", she'd have been flung off a cliff more surely than in any other nation, probably in the history of the world.

But feminists cling to these contrived and irrational arguments of reading back their values into the distant past, even when they get the facts wrong, because they are desperate to make this argument that the social place of women in nearly every society is purely arbitrary.

And if you confront a feminist with this kind of logic? Might as well argue with a wall.

Actually, I was thinking of sending this logic to that professor and asking what she thinks, just before this thread was made. I'll happily take bets on her response.

The article Usdk linked is mostly just inane internet rage, but I think one point the article makes, which is very prescient and a driving force in the role of women in society today, is the intense need of women to please authority figures. That is a major difference between men and women - women see the world in terms of perception, or social reality, and not objective reality. Women don't particularly care what is, they care what people say. And I think that emphasis on perception over fact is a bad thing - it leads women to create dysfunctional organizations and drags society down. This is also why women equate personal value with having huge numbers of friends.


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:37 am  
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Also, playing Fallout: new Vegas, it's interesting that the Legion is portrayed as violently misogynistic, when the historical Romans weren't that way at all - their women were pampered for most of their history, and women - all women - were free from hard labor, and spent most of their time weaving.

Legion women are portrayed as footbound (something the Romans didn't do, and would have seen as disgusting) and shoeless (we know as a historical fact that Roman women were shoe-obsessed). And of course we hear feminists all parroting that line about how women were "barefoot and pregnant" in ancient times.

They also treat women as sex objects / property / cattle, which is interesting because the Romans didn't - we have almost no evidence that the Romans committed infidelity with slaves (unlike some other slaveholding civilizations), for the ironic reason that Roman society was very family-based. The foremost importance to the Romans of being a family man meant that kind of behavior would have been socially unacceptable.

Feminists resent this because they don't like the fact that Roman family values ultimately served to protect and empower women.

It's bizarre because the designers of that game went to great lengths to make the allegory a very detailed one - anyone who's read Roman books then played the game can see the devs were heavily influenced by Roman authors. Obviously, it's a game, and the allegory is a very imperfect one in many other respects.

Yet this part singularly diverges from what the Roman character was actually like, even when the game tries to stick to a strict (even specious) parallel, purely because feminists have become a powerful force in society and established that evil = shoeless women.


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:49 am  
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I always thought The Legion was an adaptation based on the best knowledge Ceasar could gather. Like the devs purposely skewed it to make them more sinister or in more educated eyes, ignorant.

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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:57 am  
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Type "misandry" into your reply box, and if you don't have a shit browser, tell me what you see.

Spoiler (highlight to view):
You'll see a little line under it, marking it as spelled incorrectly. Meaning it wasn't put into the whatever dictionary the program references. Because misandry doesn't exist lol!


I always found that funny and disturbing. You can type it into most word processors, etc, and get the same result.

I find most (not all) feminism in the same boat as most (not all) pushes for equality. Most of the time they're creating a battle to fight.


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:41 am  
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Lucinth wrote:
I always thought The Legion was an adaptation based on the best knowledge Ceasar could gather. Like the devs purposely skewed it to make them more sinister or in more educated eyes, ignorant.


Lorewise, it's established that the Followers perpetuate Latin language and writings - Caesar was a linguist with the Followers, and Arcade can also read Latin, and he says he's read Roman writings (he says that both he and Caesar read Cato Senior, and makes reference to some Romans being "quite pleasant", implying he's read Cicero). Caesar states that he's read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (which was originally written in the 18th century).

The Legion's slave code is clearly based on Cato Senior's writings (which were extremely controversial in their own time, and the author was seen in many aspects of his general conduct not connected to slavery as abhorrent to Roman morality).

Interpreting his design of the Legion strictly within the context of Roman materials - again, lorewise, Caesar has obviously read both Julius Caesar and Livy.

Legion tactics and unit definitions are very heavily based on what Julius Caesar describes. The American/NCR equivalent to the centurion, the lieutenant, is a professional military officer trained at an academy, and upwardly mobile to any rank. The centurion, on the other hand, is a veteran enlisted soldier hand-picked based on experience, loyalty and disposition for a leadership role - but a centurion can never become a general, they are not upwardly mobile. A lieutenant has only a few years of military experience - fresh from the academy - but a centurion has at least a decade of front-line experience. These guys are the real "hardcore lifers" that you see in any army. That's how they're described by both Caesars.

The Legion also uses the same three-line tactical deployment the Romans did, putting the least experienced soldiers in the front line, then following up behind with increasingly experienced troops, the senior veterans kneeling down in the back row until the midday sun is high and their opponents' stamina wanes.

Same with other details such as the breakdown of Legion units into contubernii, literally, "shared sleeping tents". This is another Roman tactical element described vividly by Julius Caesar.

The Legion's culture is clearly based on Livy. When you ask a NCR soldier, "Why did you win the first battle of Hoover Dam?", they'll give the Courier an answer like "Because we had better tactics," "Because we're better with guns than the Legion," "Because of the Rangers". But when you ask the Legion, "Why did you lose the first battle of Hoover Dam?" they'll give answers like, "Because of the weakness and folly of our commander," "Because of panic and inexperience".

This is a very accurate depiction of a major difference between Romans and modern Westerners - the Romans always interpreted reality in terms of moral causes. That's a theme running through most Roman books, but it's most visible when reading Livy. When a battle is won or lost, or things are going well or badly for Roman society, it's always because of factors like unity, loyalty, courage, self-discipline, perseverance - it's never because the other side is physically more powerful, or has more troops, or because of natural disasters, or civil injustice, or luck, good or bad.

This is also why the Greeks and Americans have made much more progress technologically than the Romans - because the Romans simply didn't approach life with the premise that problems had material causes. The in-game Caesar understands this, and he explicitly says this is why he tries to keep the Legion technologically backward.

The Legion also does something the Romans did, which was invade or burn down random towns for no other reason than to terrify their opponents. The Legion also uses booby traps and small-scale raids - the Romans didn't do that because they saw that sort of thing as cowardly, and their tactics were best suited for large-scale engagements and not skirmishes.

There are, of course, a lot of places where the Legion starkly diverges from Roman manners. For one thing, the Legion does "cradle-to-grave" military training, like the Spartans - the Romans did not, they used the same scheme the pre-WWII Americans and NCR use, which is a professional army supplemented in times of need by vast numbers of hastily trained conscripts. Unlike the Legion, the Romans didn't fight in their own coliseums because doing so was suicidal and seen as undignified. I think the divergence there, like the thing about women, is a deliberate choice by the devs to make the Legion not necessarily scarier but more in accordance with modern stereotypes about the Romans.

I think that the in-game Caesar was authored by a different (and less knowledgeable) person than the developer who authored the game ending. In the ending, Caesar is forgiving and merciful to the NCR, Vegas and the Followers, and more humane than Lanius. His reasons for being so generous are somewhat enigmatic. This is strongly consistent with Julius Caesar's personality, as depicted by Plutarch.

The way the in-game Caesar behaves - arrogant, petulant, profane, imperious, truculent - is more a stereotype and not at all the way Julius Caesar behaved. It's a major contradiction and even if you know nothing of the historical Romans, the contrast between game dialogue and game ending is striking.

So, what I think that indicates, is that different devs who wrote different parts of the game had varying levels of knowledge, and that is a major factor in the differing levels of consistency between game lore and actual Roman culture.

The biggest - and most amusing - divergence is that the Legion are portrayed as typically Anglic in their facial features and manner of speech (because most classical materials are created by the modern British), and are on average physically larger than NCR people. The Romans, on the other hand, were a diminutive people (about as large compared to their very tall adversaries as white Americans are to Asians). The Romans were olive-skinned, smaller and darker than modern Italians. Again, this is just a Roman stereotype chosen by the devs.

For want of a better example, Tuhl is a pretty good example of what a Roman person probably looked like, in terms of physical build and appearance.

So anyway, lorewise, Caesar had access to a pretty extensive library - as did the devs - but I think most of the divergence isn't so much due to ignorance or efforts to make them scarier or more evil (the historical Julius Caesar killed about two million Gauls in the space of a decade, mostly through starvation, or herding them into rivers like cattle with BSE) but more appealing to stereotypical views.

I think the bit about women is part of that.

Also, I really enjoy putting my knowledge to use. Might not be sufficiently obvious. Like the Caesar in Fallout, a lot of my in-game tactics in WoW were taken from ancient books.


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:53 am  
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Do you think the ending had anything to do with the Courier actually postponing Caesar's death if you followed the Legion story?

Maybe I've had too much to drink at this point but I'm stuggling to understand everything differently than my first impressions of the Legion and that particular ending and why I thought everything happened the way it did.

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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:09 am  
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The historical Julius Caesar was an exceptionally charming and personable man with a strong sense of gratitude and a tremendous capacity for generosity and forgiveness.

The in-game Caesar doesn't have that charm - at all - but the way he behaves in the endings is consistent with the historical Caesar, which is why I think the two parts were written by different people.

Quote:
The Courier, a mercenary at heart, helped the Legion achieve victory at Hoover Dam. Caesar honored him/her with a golden coin, minted in celebration of his/her contributions and distributed throughout the wasteland.


Julius Caesar always made a point of recognizing and respecting those who made great efforts on his behalf. His books about his wars often call out individuals by name who did something exceptional (you might notice that modern military propaganda books invariably do the same thing - Caesar was the one who really invented this military storytelling idiom).

Quote:
After the Legion's victory, Caesar, out of a strange respect for his old fellows, allowed the Followers safe passage out of the wasteland. Reluctantly, the Followers accepted the offer and abandoned Old Mormon Fort to the Legion.


Quote:
After the Legion's victory, the new Caesar learned the Followers had "defamed" the original Caesar's noble origins. The Followers of the Apocalypse were hunted down and exterminated, and Old Mormon Fort was turned into a pile of rubble.


This is again characteristic of the historical Julius Caesar. He was very merciful to those who opposed him as a matter of principle or obligation.

When he was captured by pirates, he made a point of joking with them at the campfire, then killing them with a minimum of cruelty because they had been decent hosts. When he fought Pompey, who used to be his mentor and brother-in-law, he made a point of trying to avoid killing him, then flew into a rage at the guy who made the mistake of thinking that betraying Pompey and presenting Caesar with the head would please him. When he fought the Senate, he made a point of writing letters of hospitality to his former opponents (rather than doing what most other Roman strongmen did, which was just having them all killed).

I don't think the ending between the Courier and Caesar was defined in the game by the Courier saving Caesar's life. I think it was more a deliberate parallel between the historical and game Caesar.

Also, you probably know the historical Caesar had that same sort of cranial injury - he had seizures, but unlike the in-game Caesar, he handled them with a lot more grace. The Romans, like the Legion, perceived that sort of physical impairment as a moral flaw making one unfit to command.


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 Post subject: Re: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:31 am  
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Aestu wrote:
The historical Julius Caesar was an exceptionally charming and personable man with a strong sense of gratitude and a tremendous capacity for generosity and forgiveness.

The in-game Caesar doesn't have that charm - at all - but the way he behaves in the endings is consistent with the historical Caesar, which is why I think the two parts were written by different people.


This is what I thought but I remember after the courier aquires the components or convinces Arcade to save Ceasars like he no longer threatens to kill you at every turn.

Recall that if you asked him too many questions pre surgery he would aggro you almost instantly. It's been some time since I explored all 4 endings to the main story but I recall him being far more reasonable post surgery.

It was the only silver lining I saw with the Legion ending. I was more inclined to side with House or a true free wasteland if anything. Of course I've been drinking so excuse me for not writing anything of any depth on why. That's a job saved for morning.



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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:45 am  
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Suetonius wrote:
74. Caesar was not naturally vindictive; and if he crucified the pirates who had held him to ransom, this was only because he had sworn in their presence to do so; and he first mercifully cut their throats. He could never bring himself to take vengeance on Cornelius Phagites, even though in his early days, while he was sick and a fugitive from Sulla, Corneiius had tracked him down night after night and demanded large sums of hush-money.

On discovering that Philemon, his slave-secretary, had been induced to poison him, Caesar ordered a simple execution, without torture...

75. Nobody can deny that during the Civil War, and after, he behaved with wonderful restraint and clemency. Whereas Pompey declared that all who were not actively with him were against him and would be treated as public enemies, Caesar announced that all who were not actively against him were with him. He allowed every centurion whom he had appointed on Pompey's recommendation to join the Pompeian forces if he pleased.

At Lerida, in Spain, the articles of capitulation were being discussed between Caesar and the Pompeian generals Afranius and Petreius, and the rival armies were fraternizing, when Afranius suddenly decided not to surrender and massacred every Caesarean soldier found in his camp. Yet after capturing both generals a few days later, Caesar could not bring himself to pay Afranius back in the same coin; but let him go free.

During the battle of Pharsalus he shouted to his men: `Spare your fellow Romans!' and then allowed them to save one enemy soldier apiece, whoever he might be. My researches show that not a single Pompeian was killed at Pharsalus, once the fighting had ended, except Afranius and Faustus and young Lucius Caesar. It is thought that not even these three fell victims to his vengeance, though Afranius and Faustus had taken up arms again after he had spared their lives, and Lucius Caesar had cruelly cut the throats of his famous relative's slaves and freedmen, even butchering the wild beasts brought by him to Rome for a public show!

Eventually, towards the end of his career, Caesar invited back to Italy all exiles whom he had not yet pardoned, permitting them to hold magistracies and command armies; and went so far as to restore the statues of Sulla and Pompey, which the City crowds had thrown down and smashed. He also preferred to discourage rather than punish any plots against his life, or any slanders on his name. All that he would do when he detected such plots, or became aware of secret nocturnal meetings, was to announce openly that he knew about them. As for slanderers, he contented himself with warning them in public to keep their mouths shut; and good-naturedly took no action either against Aulus Caecina for his most libellous pamphlet or against Pitholaus for his scurrilous verses.


Lucinth wrote:
This is what I thought but I remember after the courier aquires the components or convinces Arcade to save Ceasars like he no longer threatens to kill you at every turn. Recall that if you asked him too many questions pre surgery he would aggro you almost instantly.


That's the thing. The historical Julius Caesar would never threaten to kill someone for annoying him in the first place. That is obvious to anyone who knows Julius Caesar as well as some of the other devs clearly do.

I didn't play through the Legion questline to the surgery - maybe I should, but I prefer the benefits the NCR gives, and I personally can't do the Legion, House or NCR endings because I have to have EVERY perk (including Meat of Champions), and I'd rather be first in Vegas than second in Rome. I'm not interested in fighting for anyone's dominance but my own.

Point stands though, that Julius Caesar didn't need his head fixed to be a cool guy.


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:50 am  
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This is another retard vs retard.
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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:33 am  
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Joklem wrote:
This is another retard vs retard.


Are you referring to the discussion about the Legion and the Romans or the initial post about misogynists versus misandrists?


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 5:24 am  
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Weena wrote:
Type "misandry" into your reply box, and if you don't have a shit browser, tell me what you see.

Spoiler (highlight to view):
You'll see a little line under it, marking it as spelled incorrectly. Meaning it wasn't put into the whatever dictionary the program references. Because misandry doesn't exist lol!


I always found that funny and disturbing. You can type it into most word processors, etc, and get the same result.

I find most (not all) feminism in the same boat as most (not all) pushes for equality. Most of the time they're creating a battle to fight.


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 5:32 am  
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I'm all for equal rights for genders and races, but equal rights does not = more rights than white people / men.


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 Post subject: Re: @jubbs and turnal
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:57 am  
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How do we go from an article where a woman admits a portion of her gender is completely retarded to Spartans? We sure as fuck better hope Ethan never gets a fucking job with Amtrak.

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