Hey! I was really into Greek mythology in middle school. And high school. Even got a minor in college. I even have a set of Greek/Roman mythology tattoos!
Oh wait... I am gay. Fuck.
You're in good company buddy. Don't have the tattoo but I did have one planned. How can they blame us when half the mythological Greeks are just half (at least) naked hunks?
"I just like the stories, Mom!!!!" Lol
TIL I'm gay? I actually carried around a copy of D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths in my backpack, and I have basically zero attraction to other men. Then again, I was over it by high school, so maybe that's why I'm not gay.
I love that book. I still have a copy. That said, it is an incredibly sanitized version of what the Greeks actually believed because every bit of the sex is cut out and it's basically 90% sex.
For me it just happened to be the same time that the percy jackson series came out
Roman history is amazing. Everybody hears of Julius Caesar and maybe Trajan and Hadrian but then pretend that nothing happened after that. Like poof, it was dead, inevitable, Franks and Caliphates are now a thing.
Then when you realise how much Rome had to screw itself over to even get to that point while being struck by famines, massive migratory invasions, the huns while still being in a moderately good shape... That's the good stuff. The story of the fall is a marble being chipped away slowly while telling a beautiful story until there is nothing left of the Western Roman Empire. If Rome had a favorite hobby it would be waging war on itself.
Eastern Roman Empire was alive and kicking until the 1450's and if you think there's not much there then look up Justinian's restoration. They even had horseback archers like the mongols and huns for a while that had to train for many years. Hell, even look at a map that goes back some years pre-caliphate period.
Even as recently as 1912 there were people in the Aegean islands that identified as Roman. I wish there would be a series that would cover the history of Rome properly and not just "CaEsAr KiLlEd gAuLs aNd sExEd cLeOpAtRa" for the billionth time.
It's really a shame that even figures such as the Gracchi brothers (or really any of the pre-Caesar Populares figures) are hardly ever brought up as well, although I guess I can't be too surprised that radical social reformers are being left out.
I've always thought the mid-late Roman Republic was more interesting than the imperial era, and the Gracchi are easily the most fascinating chapter. Noble aristocrats becoming populist ideologues, the increasingly bitter struggle over creaky governmental norms (like their weaponization of the tribunal veto to shut down the city), the introduction of political violence. Very instructive for our current era, imho.
I want an HBO miniseries on Scipio Africanus vs Hannibal.
Then I want another HBO mini-series on the Flavian dynasty. The eruption of Vesuvius, the first (?) Jewish rebellion, and the questionable conquest of Brittania all happened under Titus. I would love to see a dramatic reenactment of the Romans absolutely losing their minds at how fucking cursed their empire suddenly was.
If it's "Game of Thrones"-like intrigue the people want, a miniseries about the Severan dynasty would kick ass. Let's see what we get in just three generations or so:
-Year of the five emperors, with Septimius Severus coming out the victor and establishing the dynasty after a five-way civil war.
-Two brothers, co-emperors, who can't stand the sight of each other with their mother mediating between them, with one eventually killing the other WITH THEIR MOTHER IN THE ROOM.
-Caracalla then gets killed while on campaign by the brother of a soldier he had executed.
-A grandmother putting a specific grandson on the throne, then changing her mind, having him and her own daughter KILLED and replaced with another grandson & his mother.
-The first grandson being, quite probably, the first trans emperor/ruler in ancient history, with immensely, uh, interesting consequences.
-The "Good" grandson becoming a successful and celebrated emperor, only to be killed by his own troops after trying to buy off peace with the Germanic tribes, thereby kicking off the crisis of the 3rd century which would need several miniseries in and of itself to really tell all its tales...
British history podcast is very nice for the history of Brittania. It covers the whole period and is very accurate.
Like poof, it was dead
I wish, so much of history (and especially people talking about history) is just recounting Greco-Roman history or trying to embody it. Even American nationalism feels like Roman nationalism v4.3.
I'm rather sick of everyone and everything trying to connect themselves to something roman or greek, then stopping dead. Everyone and their dog has a latin motto, multiple fields are all but written in latin, and that pantheon is the first and often only stop for mythology names; you'd think Caligula was still out there banging his worries away.
Anyway, y'all should look up my boy Gilgamesh.
Even during "the Decline and Fall" there was plenty going on that was just people living their lives -- it's not like every place was being pillaged and everyone was being slaughtered all at once. And there were plenty of centuries before then full of fascinating history with lessons for today, and that's just the stuff that we know about.
Shared this with my wife whose field is classical anthropology
Idk how im going to tell my wife im gay
She knows man
Welcome to bisexuality
Get your boyfriend to tell her boyfriend.
Can't tell if it's funnier if you're a guy or a gal
I don't know how to tell my wife I'm a swan.
If her name is Leda, she’ll be cool with it.
But babe, you said you were a carbonari sandwich!!
"I like Viking stuff"
Might be just into Norse mythology. Might be into Nazis.
I loved all the Viking / Norse shit when I was younger. Comics, games, etc, I couldn't get enough.
But then I started talking to people who followed that aesthetic and was disappointed by exactly 100% of them.
Still love the games. Lost Vikings, Rune, GoW, etc
Maps to the west, assicles, etc.
I like this band named Heilung, which has some Viking-ish costumes and lore etc. (although more like Conan's Hyperborea). They have to put a disclaimer at the start of their videos which is basically a politer version of "Nazi punks fuck off".
disclaimer at the start of their videos which is basically a politer version of “Nazi punks fuck off”.
The whole scene has been doing that since what 70 years or so now. After the war some groups of people started seriously wondering about what civilisation is, how it's very much not rooted in whether or not you wear a suit or not, and started looking for roots. The old Germanic roots were at that time actually out of the question: The Nazis had appropriated and bent them to their brand of insanity, but Karl May existed and with the US there were actual Indians in Germany in the form of GIs. Cultural exchange happened, pretty much unnoticed by the general population, and with that came knowledge: Tradition is not the praying to the ashes, but the passing of the fire, that exchange helped people find genuine embers, small as they were. Once people started to flame the symbols of those embers Nazis came along and wanted to be part of it and promptly were told to fuck off -- not just out of a general antifascist stance but also because Nazis, in particular, were the ones who poisoned the little that was left after Christianisation. Then time moved on and a lot happened. Baudrillard, for one. Bear with me:
You might've noticed that Heilung doesn't have Germanic symbology front and left and centre -- it's not about the, or any, symbology. They're not Asatru or something, their costumes and historical references go back further than the Norse (pretty much as far as they can). About the closest you get is song titles written in runic alphabet and some consistent choices in graphic design looking quite like Nordic carvings -- but none of that is religious stuff as-such.
From what I can tell Nazis don't actually try to get a piece of that particular pie: It's not to their liking. They like their symbols, their flags to rally around, their fetishes, to distract themselves from realising what they're actually doing. The "Nazi punks fuck off" part is there for people stumbling across it, vibing with it, and wondering whether it's kosher. Yes, yes it very much is. They're plain and simply modern shamans who happen to be history nerds, and western esotericism has been post-structural for long enough now that the lack of symbolic system shouldn't really surprise, c.f. e.g. Chaos Magick. They write and perform rituals to speak to parts of the psyche that what we call civilisation may have forgotten, but certainly not the genome. That, you know, one great being that was always there.
Check out Brothers of Metal!
Or Norwegian were this is legitimate part of our culture and thought in primary school.
I am ex Norwegian Army, and we still use Norse imagery on unit insignias. And half sport tons of Norse ink.
100% into metal and might have poor hygiene.
"I'm really into WW2 artifact collecting!"
Only collects things associated with Wehrmacht / SS
Yeaaaah, buddy, collector you are!
What's crazy is I have a Jewish coworker just like this.. and I'm not sure what to make of it. But he voted for trump, so now I'm like... "Ehhhh. I don't think I like this guy".
I used to date a girl that had basically grown up in the antique shop that her father owned. It was amazing - we would watch Antiques Roadshow and she knew what everything was and almost exactly what the experts would say it was worth every time. After her father died she ended up with a ton of stuff in her house, and one day I went over there to find she had put up an "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!" poster from the 1930s featuring good ol' Adolf above the fireplace. She wasn't pro-Hitler or anything, just thought it was an interesting bit of history. I was like "babe, c'mon, we want to keep our friends".
The opposite is kind of weird too. My late Jewish father was absolutely obsessed with the Holocaust. He had virtually every book ever written on the subject. There was a room in the house my mother and I called (much to his chagrin) 'The Holocaust Room' because of the vast number of books on the Holocaust there were inside it.
He did have sort of a reason for his obsession. He was in London from age 7 on through the war because his parents didn't evacuate him and he spend the years 1939-1945 waiting for the Nazis to invade and put him in a concentration camp. So it made sense to me, but it was still going pretty overboard.
He saw Shoah more than once. It's 566 minutes long.
My last boss was like this.
I loved listening to him when he brought up how his family was in WW2, his stories about his dad was a pilot in WW2 fighting Japan, and all the various battles in Europe.
Then after a few years of trust, he showed me all of the "nazi memorabilia". On one end, I'm a color person, so he must have really trusted me. On the other, wtf. Kinda feigned interest after that and moved jobs after a year.
"The sengoku period is so interesting": this person is a massive weeb. I would know.
*sweating* Haha yeah, I also enjoyed that new Dragonball z movie.
Me learning the names of the involved warlords with Pokémon...
"I've read the Book of Five Rings"
This person is a weeb who likes swords
OK hear me out, what if the reason I like WW2 history is because there's a lot of kicking nazi ass
Summary of WW2: "Nazi punks fuck off".
I like reading about all the spy shit and codebreaking that went on. WWII is really interesting if you're into the history of computer science and encryption.
WW1 enthusiasts waiting desperately to be referenced just one time ever:
There, now they've been referenced. Never again.
WW1 was discussed a fair amount last decade during its 100-year anniversary. There was also the recent film 1917 which was well-received.
As a history student I was really afraid that I would meet a ton of right wingers. But I must say the worst kind of people so far are history students that only study history to become teachers. They keep laughing at me saying that at least they have a future and that I will eventually switch sides and become a teacher too, I just don't know it yet :(
You may have met a ton of right wingers. In hindsight, most of my high school history and civics teachers had a right wing slant to their anecdotes.
Yeah, it wasn't necessarily in civics or history class for me, but I do remember a few transphobic and sometimes racist things that my teachers said or did in elementary and middle school. I remember one time all the 7th graders were gathered together and explicitly told to not use the internet for research because someone found that men could get pregnant. Mind you, they didn't mention transmen at all but presented it in another way. I left feeling so hung up on how one would go about transplanting a uterus into a male and why they made a scandal of something I had never heard of that seemed impossible and impractical. I only had the epiphany of what that was really about a couple years ago. /tangent
"I'm really interested in the history of the great flood and how it explains how dinosaur fossils are so many layers down in the geologic column even though dinosaurs lived alongside humans only 6,000 years ago. Plus the the flood formed the Grand Canyon in only a few weeks."
If humans and dinosaurs did not coexist, how could Jesus have won the first Kentucky Derby and tripple crown riding his trusty velociraptor.
I've noticed that, after a relative lull, people are getting bullied for traditional reasons again. However the bullies code those reasons as deplorable, so that they can imply their targets are just assholes.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Are you suggesting that telling people to be wary of history buffs (after decades of examples of "history buffs" being code for wild bigot/racist) is actually just bullying people who like history? Because if so that's a gross over exaggeration of what the post is saying. Or are you talking about the Greek mythology thing? Because the tumblr user who posted it is queer and so am I so that conclusion would also be pretty heavily flawed and wrought with heterocentric thinking.
This post is laying the groundwork to say someone is somehow morally compromised for having certain interests. Those interests have been common interests for decades.
Right now, there's 100 percent a mood that people who are morally compromised deserve to be mistreated.b
The end result of posts like these is nerds being bullied in the same way they used to before the whole anti bullying attitude started. Only this is even worse because the victims get told they are POSes who deserve it.
The Roman one specifically applies to basically every male history nerd. Same with WW2.
As someone who just really thinks its cool how an ancient civilization was able to become such a superpower with roads and infrastructure and then fall so harshly. 😢
2024 looks great, right?
It is. It's impressive to me that the real founders of Christianity were 5 centuries behind their time. St. Paul was 5 centuries after Epicures, Aristotle, and Plato. This is really mind boggling. Imagine if someone from the Columbus voyages time traveled to modern times and within 4 centuries all of Western civilization was in flames mostly due to their actions. Over 99% of the written word of the Greeks and Romans were destroyed by the Church. Is there anything remotely comparable in history?
What about history pf philosophy? Im on episode 326 of the history of philosophy without any gaps podcast and I really enjoying it. We're just finishing Byzantine philosophy and getting ready for the Renaissance.
Depends on your opinions re Ayn Rand.
She has no place in any history of philosophy
That someone needs to set aside six hours, some strong alcohol, and a barrel to live in before engaging.
I’m a simple plucked chicken, I got no time for that philosophizing.
Sounds like you’re ready for a lecture on the Philosophy of Cynicism as practiced by Antisthenes and his student Diogenes. The latter of whom famously lived in a clay pot…
Sorry, I fell asleep halfway through reading your comment.
I'm interested in the subjects that I never learned in school, like Asian history or ancient Mesopotamian history. African empires seems interesting too, and I'm very curious about how the Polynesians came to be, seems wild.
I binged this History of Africa podcast last year, and it's pretty good History of Africa Podcast
Thanks for the recommendation, looks interesting
Scrolling through the comments.
I like OP, this is my kind of person. Knowing stuff because it's just fun and interesting to know stuff, and being willing to engage, share, and correct.
I need more of this on the fediverse.
Hey... I'm not gay...
Sorry you had to find out this way
i was into greek mythological as a kid cuz of percy jackson but it just made me extremely horny
People call it mythology, but it was really Greek and Roman religion.
No, actually, it wasn't. It is categorically called mythology and not religion for one very simple reason. A religion requires an overarcing system of formal beliefs or dogma that it teaches. Mythology establishes faith through stories and epics. There is no dogma or belief system that's taught hand in hand with these Greek stories. You're expected to gain basic lessons through the folly of others.
Religion and mythology are not the same. Things aren't suddenly called mythology once they're not believed by a lot of people. It is called mythology because that's what it is.
Things aren't suddenly called mythology once they're not believed by a lot of people.
No...that's pretty much exactly how that happens.
Religion is ritual devotion to a higher being. Full stop. The fact that the Greeks and Romans worships a pantheon instead of a single god makes no difference whatsoever.
I majored in Near Eastern Classical Archaeology and that came with a heavy does of anthropology. What you're saying is meaningless pedantry that ONLY comes from people who are too insecure to admit that their own Monotheistic religion is in fact just a made up mythology like every other faith that's ever come and gone on the planet.
I'm just curious, but the definition sounds like distinguishing between religion and faith not exactly religion and mythology. Animism or shamanism doesn't always have overarching dogma to teach nor actively ask other people to believe in them. Ancient Greek people did some rituals and sacrifice, that practices they did doesn't count as religion?
Religion and mythology are the same. I don't trust people who, like yourself, claim to be buffs.
And it was sooooo gay.
Which Treaty of Versailles?
Yes.
In was way WAY deep into Greek and Roman Mythology in middle and highschool. I read so many books and stories about them. I'd consider myself straight.
I'd consider myself straight.
Reconsider
I read Metamorphoses by Ovid in middle school. Not in the original Latin, but I still read it. I also read any and every Greek myth I could get my hands on, and consider Apollo to be the true villain of Oedipus Rex.
And yeah, I'm a fairly firm 0 on the Kinsey scale. You know that Ron White bit about porn? Yeah, I'll admit to only really liking soft core, and predominately solo models. Also, that side of the business is apparently slightly less toxic, which is a bonus.
I am really interested in WW2 but that is because I think space is cool asf
off topic.
V2 by Robert Harris. A novel about a German engineer and a British codebreaker in opposition.
This is a pretty pessimistic way to view people who have an interest in.. anything tbh. People view video game players in the same sort of negative light and it's not healthy there either..
Yeah...I guess I shouldn't have expected any less from a Tumblr x Lemmy post and comments, but here we are.
Leave it to Tumblr to read so much bullshit into a situation that it's distorted to the point of unrecognizable then use it to classify people.
Leave it to Lemmy to take one look at said dumpster fire, be incapable of nuance or reason, and jump on the bandwagon of idiocy.
Basically if you reduce this down to a point that actually makes sense and holds up, all it's saying is, "People who are obsessed with Nazism are to generally be avoided."
But that's too simple and obvious to go viral, so they gotta chuck a few reasonable but adjacent groups into the flames as well, then dogmatically stick to it.
Amazing how people on Lemmy are unable to understand an obvious joke post. Do we need to flag every satirical piece with a giant red "JOKE" button for you guys not to take it seriously?
So you're saying I'm weird because I love history for history's sake and not any particular political reason?
I am interested in the world wars, among many other things. Everything from 1940s/50s Hollywood scandal and crime to The Bronze Age Collapse and lots of other stuff in between.
I majored in Near Eastern Classical Archaeology, but I never equated any of it with particular personal beliefs.
So you’re saying I’m weird because I love history for history’s sake and not any particular political reason?
Literally no. The first group of people is exactly what you're describing.
DID SOMEONE SAY CRUSAID???
How about we stop demonizing people who want to be smart and focus on their actions and beliefs that actually matter?
Get out of here with any sort of a reasonable take on anything, they don't welcome that sort of dangerous thinking around these parts, apparently.
^^ NERD ALERT! ^^
/s
How about we learn to recognize satire and joke posts.
It's just a joke bruh
What's point 2 about? What historical subjects would still be considered questionable, p
Suspicious interest in the Wehrmacht is a big one.
What about Interest on the Red Army?
I'm into a bunch of different periods of history and historical fiction.
Was also into Greek mythology in middle school and am pansexual.
What if you like OSP?
What OSP are you talking about? Because even googling OSP WW2 returns four (arguably three) different results.
- Offshore Patrol: A military contingent from the Philippines that was active during (and after) WW2
- Osprey Elite: A book series
- Osprey Publishing: Published the aforementioned book series. Also published another book series that revolved around WW2. All series seemingly being factual/historical books.
- OSP-26 model flare gun from Russia?
I am really starting to hate acronyms the older I get.
They're a YouTube channel that presents over views of different historical times in a fun way, as well as different chunks of media analysis.
Good for "I want 30 minutes of learning about some of the historical forces at play in the fall of the Byzantine empire, but I don't want to learn the intricacies of their tax collection hierarchy" type days.
It was for Overly Sarcastic Productions my bad
It's not widely considered due to how the second half of WW1 ended up going, but Germany really wasn't the bad guys in WW1. It was like every other war except WW2, both sides were kinda shit and kinda okay. And given that fact, it was clearly a mistake to let the victors write the treaty of Versailles to be so harsh, while the losers were still a quite formidable force. Though as a 21st century person, it's hard to say how many of the German complaints about it were legitimate vs how many were an excuse to be fascists.
Asinine
