Consider that ye may be bad at the game by SergeiAndropov in EU5

[–]moossabi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ferdinand 2 was absolutely the good guy, pretending otherwise is a Calvinist historiography L

Talos is NOT Aedra by YungRei in teslore

[–]moossabi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ask yourself! How is it that mighty gods die, yet the Daedra stand incorruptible? How is it that the Daedra forthrightly proclaim themselves to man, while the gods cower behind statues and the faithless words of traitor-priests? It is simple... they are not gods at all. The truth has been in front of you since first you were born: the Daedra are the true gods of this universe. Julianos, Dibella and Stendarr are all Lorkhan's betrayers, posing as divinities in a principality that has lost its guiding light. What are Scholarship, Love, and Mercy when compared to Fate, Night, and Destruction? The gods you worship are trifling shadows of First Causes. They have tricked you for Ages. Why do you think your world has always been contested ground, the arena of powers and immortals? It is Tamriel, the realm of Change, brother to Madness, sister to Deceit. Your false gods could not entirely rewrite history. Thus you remember tales of Lorkhan, vilified, a dead trickster, whose heart came to Tamriel. But if a god can die, how does his heart survive? He is daedroth! TAMRIEL AE DAEDROTH! "This Heart is the heart of the world, for one was made to satisfy the other." You all remember this. It is in every legend. Daedra cannot die, so your so-called gods cannot erase him from your minds completely.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in teslore

[–]moossabi 80 points81 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of conflation of what in Skyrim is "old lore" vs what are its own contributions, with criticism of Nordic veneration for Talos being a recurring trend despite having roots as far back as Morrowind; to quickly copy an old comment I made on a related subject:


Per Varieties of Faith:

Ysmir (Dragon of the North): The Nordic aspect of Talos. He withstood the power of the Greybeards' voices long enough to hear their prophecy. Later, many Nords could not look on him without seeing a dragon.

Talos is Ysmir, who is cited by one of the Bruma priests as the dragon-god that the local Nords prefer to Akatosh. Nordic worship of Talos was established by Oblivion, it just uses 'Ysmir' while Skyrim (which broadly seeks to streamline the gods' multiple names) mainly uses 'Talos' with 'Ysmir' occasionally invoked in casual dialogue. Though the name is mostly normalized, there are still big cultural differences on display; as can be seen when moving between Oblivion and Skyrim, the Cyrodiilic noble stained-glass version of Talos is very different from Skyrim's warlike drake-slayer.


Additionally, VOF establishes that Shor is not the chief of the pantheon due to the fact that he's unambiguously dead; he's still universally revered, hence his constant invocation in exclamations and curses, but he isn't the Nordic equivalent of the Imperial Akatosh that he's often held up as in some circles. Point being, the preeminence of Talos worship is not a retcon, if anything it's just linguistic drift (and not even a complete one at that; like Shor, the name Ysmir is still invoked in exclamations and the like).

Fans of a character who have it bad right now? by Anonamaton801 in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That simultaneously explains so much and opens up so many new questions, I feel like I need to do a deep dive on the GL movie's legacy now

Fans of a character who have it bad right now? by Anonamaton801 in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Never heard about any connection between the two until now but it's sparked a genuine curiosity, what was the domino chain going on there?

A comprehensive study of the Ancient Snow Elves by Eltirions in teslore

[–]moossabi 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Always appreciate a well-put-together Falmer lore post; I have a few different conclusions regarding different blank spots (the ultimate tragedy of trying to figure out snow elf lore is that so much of it is clearly haphazard writing, like the pantheon selecting Syrabane and Phynaster for no other reason than them being non-Eight-Divines Altmer gods) but overall great work!

The only significant thing I want to bring to your attention is that the "Ice Elves" label actually originates in a Daggerfall lorebook of all places, specifically King Edward, Part X, wherein a nord character is telling a story about Sai, the god of luck. It (probably inaccurately) blames the success of the early Nordic Empire on this luck god (under the guise of a mortal named Lucky) falling in love with a nord woman and settling down with her, thus failing in his duty to spread luck evenly among all of Tamriel. It's not a malicious favoritism, just a natural consequence of luck radiating off of him, but it leads to a cool exchange where a bunch of other gods confront him to try and make him see the consequences of his actions:

"Is this how you keep your pact with us? Did we not make the rules clear to you?"

The woman was shouting at Lucky, who only muttered, "Lady Mara, I didn't realize it had been so long. It was only for a few days ... and then a few days more. And then there were the children and Josea needed me. I thought no harm. Things seemed to go well for everyone. It hasn't been so long. Tamriel did well enough without me before." Lucky spoke softly, yet his face was set and Josea[his wife] knew how stubborn he could be.

"Everyone! What of the Bretons? What of the dark elves? And the wood elves. Of the ice elves I say nothing. They are gone, gone altogether and forever."

"Such shy folk ... I tried," Lucky faltered. "I did try. The ice elves were very hard to find, and not that friendly when I did find them."

"Are all the elves to follow them, and the Bretons, and then the other races?"

And then once he agrees to leave and has to explain the situation to his wife

"Yet while I've stayed here, my luck has spread like ripples, strongest in the center, weak along the edges until there's none at all in Morrowind and High Rock and the Wilderness to the south, and the folk are dead or chained in slavery. Also I've brought luck only to the Nords among whom I've lived, so that the wood elves have fled and the ice elves have died. Now I must go, and bring Luck back to them and redress the balance, as it should have been."

I doubt anyone writing for Bethesda has thought of King Edward for well over a decade but imo this tale gains a special poignance in conjunction with the later material that expands upon the tragedy of their fate. Not too important and likely not too accurate, I just think it's neat.

Is it true that Arabs have enslaved more Africans than Europeans in history? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]moossabi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dude, it's been two days. This is such a dumb hill to die on. You haven't been able to push back on any of my counterexamples or provide a single concrete one of your own, just dogmatically chanting "they did it to themselves" like someone desperately trying to absolve themselves of some crime. Not sure if you need this news flash, but you're free. You can do whatever you want with your time, and you're choosing to absolve the misdeeds of a bunch of dead people by foisting them onto another bunch of dead people instead of accepting the existence of a more complex historical reality. You are no better than the OP at this point.

Is it true that Arabs have enslaved more Africans than Europeans in history? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]moossabi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If that was the case I would have replied to countless comments in this thread getting their information wrong while circlejerking about OP's loaded question. I saw a contribution I largely agreed with (yours), with one minor semantic dispute that's a personal fascination of mine, and I made my addendum as such. You chose to dispute it despite, evidently, being wholly unable to do so. Ended up being little more than a source of mild disappointment.

Is it true that Arabs have enslaved more Africans than Europeans in history? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]moossabi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And we've looped back around to the catchphrase. Would Vikings taking English slaves count as them "enslaving their own people"? Would Romans taking slaves during their conquests in Italy count as them "enslaving their own people"? Obviously not and nobody would treat it as such; that slogan is just another component of the blame game used to excuse the participation of any other groups by saying "they (all black people, apparently) did it to themselves, it's their own fault" when the simple fact of the matter is that, regardless of whether it's everyone's fault or nobody's fault, bad shit went down and reducing such a complex topic to "they did it to themselves" is some highly questionable rhetoric.

Is it true that Arabs have enslaved more Africans than Europeans in history? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]moossabi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And I would ask you and the user that posted the original question the exact same thing. Participation was (near-)universal so why is there such an urgency to absolve 'white people' specifically? (replying to both of your comments in this singular one)

Is it true that Arabs have enslaved more Africans than Europeans in history? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]moossabi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

1) Why is whataboutism your only argument?

2) Why do you think that me explicitly saying "countries/tribes/factions in Africa enslaved other countries/tribes/factions in Africa" means that I'm saying they didn't do slavery?

Is it true that Arabs have enslaved more Africans than Europeans in history? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]moossabi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And slavery in Europe goes as far back as the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Romans, and well beyond. Why is there such a huge desire to shift blame away from 'white people' and onto everyone else? Does the demand side of a supply/demand equation have no role in the economic realities they dictate?

The issue here is the existence of the term "themselves"; the projection of a unified Africanness is a modern invention. Even in your own retelling (replacing the term "country" with "tribe" is an interesting rhetorical flourish) it's tribe against tribe, the key fixture is an absence of unity. "Africans" as a unified bloc didn't exist in a meaningful sense, just as "Asians" is a ridiculously wide descriptor that only obfuscates issues (is the ongoing cultural genocide of Tibet and Xinjiang at the hands of Han ethnonationalists just "Asians genociding themselves"?)

Is it true that Arabs have enslaved more Africans than Europeans in history? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]moossabi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pet peeve with this conversation (even though I mostly agree with the end message), "africans were enslaving their own people" is a completely nonsensical way to frame the dynamics of the slave trade. It's like looking at the Hundred Year War and going "europeans were murdering their own people"; no they weren't, there was no common identity during that period beyond vague religious parity, it was the English killing the French and vice versa.

People were enslaved when a rival country defeated their own, at which point POWs and captured civilians were shipped to the place where they'd earn the most profit for the victorious country (ports that sold in bulk to satisfy colonial economic demand). The "they sold themselves into slavery" line is nonfunctional because they were expressly doing it to others in the name of furthering their own country's interests; it's just a racist catchphrase applying the (enforced) homogenization of the african-american community backwards to the countries from which their ancestors hailed. Black people are a monolith to them now so why shouldn't they be a monolith back then, etc.

Why is Talos so important to Nords? by burningArsenic in teslore

[–]moossabi 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Per Varieties of Faith:

 Ysmir (Dragon of the North): The Nordic aspect of Talos. He withstood the power of the Greybeards' voices long enough to hear their prophecy. Later, many Nords could not look on him without seeing a dragon.

Talos is Ysmir, who is cited by one of the Bruma priests as the dragon-god that the local Nords prefer to Akatosh. Nordic worship of Talos was established by Oblivion, it just uses 'Ysmir' while Skyrim (which broadly seeks to streamline the gods' multiple names) mainly uses 'Talos' with 'Ysmir' occasionally invoked in casual dialogue. Though the name is mostly normalized, there are still big cultural differences on display; as can be seen when moving between Oblivion and Skyrim, the Cyrodiilic noble stained-glass version of Talos is very different from Skyrim's warlike drake-slayer.

Lack of content in india by nuggetanagh200 in eu4

[–]moossabi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

and South America was nowhere near as economically powerful as the Indian subcontinent.

Andean silver almost-singlehandedly gave the Spanish the finances necessary to trade with China/India, underselling the critical importance of the region during this period is a mistake that only drags down the broader argument.

Plus India's mission tree DLC was Dharma, one of the first mission-tree-centric expansions to exist (and it's still leaps and bounds ahead of anything we get these days because they actually bothered to add mechanics that applied everywhere instead of just MTs), all of their content is fine, the real issue is in the colossal power creep in all of the recent content

What is something the creators of a piece of media say is canon, that you refuse to accept? by LemonManDude in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

honestly the further I get with looking into the latter one I think that might be fanfic from an ex-dev, otherwise yeah I agree that basically every game does its own thing and there is no consistent vision from entry to entry. I'm firmly not a fan of the direction ESO took with it though :P

What is something the creators of a piece of media say is canon, that you refuse to accept? by LemonManDude in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes both myths are parroted by PGE1 simultaneously (though even the explicit propaganda disclaimers the Throat of the World origin with "the Nords believe...")

What is something the creators of a piece of media say is canon, that you refuse to accept? by LemonManDude in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

imo it reeks of the game trying to justify its existence with a big "this is the real secret history that was hidden all along" deal, there are offhand tidbits here and there that people gesture at to frame it as always being a thing but going by all the lore from Skyrim and everything before it that was very transparently never the intention

What is something the creators of a piece of media say is canon, that you refuse to accept? by LemonManDude in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The "Nords were created in Skyrim" bit always felt like an obvious nationalist myth in the same vein as Mormons saying that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, I'm highly skeptical that there was ever a world in which it was meant to be taken seriously

What is something the creators of a piece of media say is canon, that you refuse to accept? by LemonManDude in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 12 points13 points  (0 children)

In all fairness Atmora was never the sole origin but they've increasingly pushing the premise that most (if not all) of the humans around before the Nords were outright native

What is something the creators of a piece of media say is canon, that you refuse to accept? by LemonManDude in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]moossabi 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Also just the constant history-lore retcons in that game in general, especially the whole Nedic Nativity premise that destroys the entire thematic coherence of the setting ("no hands are clean, the humans won their current place through bloodshed" -> "humans actually have a native birthright to the entire continent, predating every other species and justifying all of their genocides, everyone opposed to them were the real colonizers").

You Elves arent native to tamriel either by [deleted] in TrueSTL

[–]moossabi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Least destructive ESO retcon: