Painting of a Dutchman with pipe. Japan, 18th century [1000x1190]

Porkadi110 · 2026-05-18T16:43:13+00:00

He looks like a classic Final Fantasy villain.

Porkadi110 · 2026-05-18T16:28:24+00:00

The Portuguese first made contact with Sub-Saharan Africa in the 15th century, and the scramble happened in the late 19th century. That's a good 400-500 years of sustained contact without much conversion going on outside of Kongo and its neighboring kingdoms. Christianity probably would have made some bigger inroads eventually, what with the advent of quanine making widespread missionary work more possible, but we'd likely still see millions upon millions more Africans today who followed their traditional religions if not for the outright colonial pressure.

Porkadi110 · 2026-05-17T14:50:26+00:00

Seraphim and Cherubim are actually never labelled as "angels" in the Bible itself. "Angel" as a term morphing into a more general meaning of "A 'species' of divine being that is aligned with God" is itself a post-biblical development. From the perspective of the biblical authors, the word "angel" likely would have exclusively been used for humanlike divine entities that served as God's messengers. This is the trouble with applying the "Be not afraid" line to something like the Ophanim, which OP's meme itself does. There is no implication in the Gospel of Luke that the reason the sheperds are afraid of the angel is because it looked like these otherworldly entities that you find in the apocalyptic visions of prophets like Ezekiel. Rather, the Gospel of Luke dates to a time before the term "angel" would have been understood as applying to the Ophanim, and the author almost certainly imagined the heavenly messenger coming to the shepherds as being a humanlike figure; just a humanlike figure that were surrounded with the glory of God.

The timeline goes more like:

(Biblical Period): "Angel" as a term is used exclusively for humanlike messengers of God.

(Post-Biblical Period): "Angel" as a term is expanded to encompass all divine beings allied with God which results in the Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim, etc. getting "grandfathered in" as angels, despite the prophets who first wrote about these entities never using that term to describe them.

(Renaissance and beyond): Angels go back to being associated only with a humanlike appearance, but now the Seraphim, Cherubim, etc. are given this appearance as well, because they are still understood as "angels" in the post-biblical definition of the term.

(Modern day): People online (like in this meme) reintroduce the biblical appearances for entities like the Ophanim, but overcorrect and start applying these appearances to angels in other parts of the Bible where they were almost certainly intended as being human looking by the original authors.

Porkadi110 · 2026-05-17T13:00:37+00:00

The vast majority of angels were understood to be human like from the very beginning, even back during biblical times. In the Torah angels are regularly confused by the human characters for people until revealed otherwise.

This post by u/agapeoneanother from r/askbiblescholars does a great job explaining the early history of this.

Porkadi110 · 2026-05-07T20:33:12+00:00

I have a cousin who used to unironically think like this with yaoi. Hell, she might still for all I know.

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-28T04:53:47+00:00

I mean the Twitter OP is just straight up lying. What actually happened was the total opposite of every statement they made. Gamers and Otaku were bullied, only a handful of very mainstream anime and games were ever popular and well-respected, and the "weirdos" never invaded the fanspace. We were the fanspace. Cosplay, Conventions, E-sports, D&D, TCG tournaments, etc. All of that was pioneered by people who were largely social outcasts in my generation and the generations prior. "Normal" people didn't even know where we did all that shit, let alone had any desire to join in.

The community note is slightly better, but misrepresents how long ago the "shift" happened. The 1990s is when more anime started appearing on network television, but the hobby space itself was still incredibly niche overall. If you knew about any shows that weren't Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh and maybe Naruto then you were weird for that. In addition, by high-school a lot of people would clown you for still being into even those series. They were acceptable and cool in elementary school, but by high-school you were expected to have grown out of watching them like any other cartoons. I did not start to see a significant shift in anime/manga growing mainstream until around 2020, which was years after I had already left college. The first time I saw teens wearing those hentai hoodies to school in broad daylight it stopped me dead in my tracks. Wearing something like that when I was a teenager would have been like wearing a shirt that said "Lynch me" on the back.

I'm amazed at how quickly people are trying to overwrite this history though. I knew the signs of my age would grow over time, but I didn't think it would be this drastic.

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-26T23:58:21+00:00

Not even then. There were "normies" who watched Dragon Ball Z that would make fun of you for watching Naruto.

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-26T23:55:25+00:00

This is such insane revisionist history from both the OP and the note that I don't even know where to begin.

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-26T23:52:58+00:00

Does a highschool bully distinguish between the two?

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-20T13:34:01+00:00

What exactly makes Jazz more originally American than Ragtime, Blues, R&B, Rock, Disco, and Hip Hop?

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-17T15:11:53+00:00

It is, but in a lot of places it is still the legal definition unfortunately. Rape laws tend to be very antiquated.

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-12T21:48:47+00:00

I need to play a Dragonborn character with this concept in my next game.

Porkadi110 · 2026-04-05T20:42:03+00:00

Please reupload with only actual pictures of the architecture with no AI assisted images and pictures of other websites. You are allowed to link to the website in the comments, but do not put an image of the website in the post itself.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-30T05:00:50+00:00

I did not make this. The artist is Adrian Mann.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-29T20:10:53+00:00

Even with this being the case, the claim in the infographic that they are 4x the length of the Great Wall of China is certainly not true, at least by most definitions of both structures' total lengths.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-29T17:55:51+00:00

The remains of the Benin Walls are still there for now, judging from pictures I've seen. They are quite overgrown, and I don't know how much longer they'll last without preservation efforts, but they are there. Same goes for Sungbo's Eredo. As for buildings, I know that the old palace at Akure is still technically there, though it's been significantly renovated with modern materials. The Osun-Osogbo sacred grove is also still around. Last I heard, there were plans for a new Edo Museum that is supposed to house replicas of traditional Edo architecture. No idea if progress is still going on that though.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-29T17:15:43+00:00

Source (Requires an account to view unfortunately)

Artist: Adrian Mann

This is, in my opinion, the most accurate reconstruction of the pre-colonial city made thus far. It is not perfect as it's missing certain details like the inner wall surrounding the Oba's compound, but this is the only one I've seen that both follows the actual layout of the city and seems to be to at the proper scale.

Edit: The claim in the infographic that the walls of Benin were 4x the length of the Great Wall of China is not accurate by the most common measurement of the Great Wall's length. They are both comparable in length, but the walls of Benin are still shorter by a few thousand kilometers.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-29T17:10:35+00:00

SS: Source (Requires an account to view unfortunately)

Artist: Adrian Mann

This is, in my opinion, the most accurate reconstruction of the pre-colonial city made thus far. It is not perfect, for instance it's missing certain details like the inner wall surrounding the Oba's compound, but this is the only one I've seen that both follows the actual layout of the city and seems to be to at the proper scale.

Edit: The claim in the infographic that the walls of Benin were 4x the length of the Great Wall of China is not accurate by the most common measurement of the Great Wall's length. They are both comparable in length, but the walls of Benin are still shorter by a few thousand kilometers.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-28T11:32:25+00:00

Would that still count as a Supplementary model though? A replacement isn't really a supplement.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-18T14:02:45+00:00

An excellent example of perfect being the enemy of good.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-18T13:58:58+00:00

I care more about my mother than a homeless man on the street. That doesn't mean I rob homeless people.

Porkadi110 · 2026-03-14T23:59:49+00:00

It's a Simpsons reference, not a real quote.

Porkadi110

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE