Recent content by Nameback

Guys. This looks incredible. Apparently it was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and early reviews from there are quite positive. The director is very acclaimed in Australia but I've never seen any of his stuff. Still, Fassbender and Cotillard look incredible and the visuals are stunning...

This may be a really silly question, but have you tried spelling it Axum when you do searches? I figure that you probably have but since I've only seeing the Aksum spelling in this thread I wanted to make sure. I've seen both spellings.

Bringing in outside context is of course important--part of the reason I defended Jab is because I've always thought he was pretty darn invested in rebutting white supremacy, especially in historiographic terms. He's always made a point of rendering Ancient Egyptians as black, talking about the...

This seems unnecessary? I kept it 100% civil in my post and didn't impugn you personally in any way so I don't understand why you are registering indignation that I disagreed with you. You seem to be suggesting that I did something rude just by disagreeing with you, which I don't get, nor do I...

Tom, I don't think your criticisms are particularly well-founded. Jabrosky's female characters usually do have (often elaborate) backstories, and it seems to me that they usually are presented as having agency in said backstories. The idea that they're somehow totally lacking in agency or...

I got into so many arguments with people about this map on twitter. Plus I have a history prof who just gave a lecture he called "a defense of the British Empire." He actually said that, out loud. Anyway, I do agree with Devor that presumably some larger states would have formed, but obviously...

Yeah, and it is fantasy after all! Definitely a nitpick of the narrowest kind.

Nihal, I agree that the issue of a male default is something to combat in one's writing, and I think most of us are susceptible to it regardless of ideology. It's the same thing with the white default (although that one is probably even more pronounced). To repeat myself a bit, this is why I...

I'm not sure if this is directed at me, but I think it might be? If so, I just want to clarify that I wasn't suggesting women as a whole deviate from a male norm. I was saying that, e.g. women in combat deviate from a modern, Western norm of female behavior and a norm of soldiery (although that...

I don't understand this at all.

Well, if your point is that people should write male and female characters a particular way that is representative of the norm, then it does invalidate your point. There's nothing stopping anyone from writing about the exception--in fact, that's usually what we write about: exceptional people...

True! Although I do think there's something to be said for having representation of a diverse array of real-world types of people in fiction--even in SFF. Now, I do think that includes highlighting modes of gender relations that characterized real historical cultures, and obviously many of them...

I'm not saying that men and women are the same. I was addressing ascanius to point out that the aggregate differences between men and women (and there are many, including political beliefs, wages, educational attainment, risk-tolerance, communication style, illness prevalence, life expectancy...

More relevant to the OP's concerns, I have deliberately changed the gender of characters to make sure I keep what I see as a desirable gender-balance. I don't see this as "trying not to offend people" and I believe that's a poor way of thinking about it. All texts, I would argue, are political...

Nope, you're still in the realm of "averages" and "usually" in this case. I think I can explain this best by example: it's a "scientific fact of biology" that human beings have more neurons in the cerebellum than in the rest of the brain, despite the cerebellum's far smaller volume. Except, you...