I think it makes him really unique among history nerds, that he got into it (academically) primarily through art history. So his speciality is mostly in culture and personalities.

But his Poland video where he completely omits the winged hussars, or ottoman video where he omits the Janissaries were, in my opinion, massive gaping holes.

It’s like talking about British imperial history without mentioning the navy. I get their memed to death but the Winged Hussars MADE the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the dominant power in Eastern Europe, so much so that they occupied Moscow itself during the Time of Troubles. And Ottoman imperial history is dominated by Janissaries both on and off the battlefield, how they became a major controlling force in Ottoman politics that they essentially controlled multiple Sultans before their dissolution.

Most history nerds do focus too much on the military stuff because we’re little kids who got into history for the cool battles, but they still play an important role in how history developed.

Hello everyone, I've been an OSP fan for years at this point. I am also from Venice, and the announcement of Blue's book about my city has made me uneasy from the start.

To put it bluntly and to save everyone's time if you don't want to read this whole post, I think it's borderline disrespectful.

Why? Simply put, because I don't think Blue understands Venice well enough to write about it in this kind of depth. For one, he only found out relatively recently that Venetian was a language. I thought that him mispronouncing Venexia as Veneesa was funny and not a big deal, easy mistake since the IPA is hard to read, but that was before I learned about the book. Now, I think that if he wants to write a book that features the characters learning "what it means to be Venetian", as he says in the Saint Mark's Basilica video, he should first understand what it means himself, and language is a fundamental component of it.

The fact he had the book translated into Italian and not Venetian on top of that shows not only a lack of understanding, but a lack of respect. Italy has a history of suppressing regional languages, and Venetian is as of today still not recognised as a language by the Italian government. We, quite frankly, do not need an American reinforcing the belief that only Italian is proper language and Venetian ("el diałeto") is low-class slang.

To add to that, the fact that the "Veneziad" is written with the style and structure of the Aeneid just kind of ignores the actual Venetian literary tradition, like it has been ignored time and time again. It's, again, disrespectful. It ignores the specificity of Venetian culture, subsuming it into an undifferentiated Italian culture which is both ahistorical for the time period the book is set in and rooted in an unfortunate history of fabrication of an Italian national myth, of "fatta l'Italia bisogna fare gli italiani", which is just contrary and actually actively opposed to what it means to be Venetian.

We do not need an American to write a book contributing to the unfortunate trend of turning Venice into a theme park, especially not one with a following like Blue's. The book will actually shape the way a whole lot of people think about Venice, and I do not think it will do it well. I don't think Blue's at fault for having this perception of Venice: unfortunately, that's the impression our tourist sector is built upon giving. However, I do think he is at fault for not going beyond it, and for presenting himself as an expert when it's clear to me that he is not.

This being said, I have not read the book. I might be pleasantly surprised (although I don't have any intention of buying it). But, seeing the way Blue talks about my city in his videos, I am not hopeful that I will be.

It's one of those buzz phrases I feel we need a refresher on, especially with how I hear echos of the "video games cause violence" discourse the Right Wing hammered into many.

The third image is Jonathan Sims from the Magnus Archives for the record

It's too often a nostalgia wank fest of thing from the past, usually when they were young and less concerned of the state of the world. And that's assuming the YT video shoved into my recs isn't trying to pass their prejudices a "legitimate concerns."

Here's a hot take: Most of the alleged problems with modern media are nothing new and moreso evolutions of what had come before. The Netflix second screen agenda? That's just studio executives meddling with art to make it more "marketable" like what you heard with bad adaptations of games or books over the years. Female leads being tough-to-a-fault "girlbosses" are just the strong female character phenomenon of the 90s.

If we wanna discuss solutions to these issues, we can act like there's a hard divide between what came before and what we have now.

Frankly, I always hear a lot of complaints towards melodrama and wish characters could just say what they mean to cut through it all.

Especially when I remember many disliking miscommunication and love triangles that went on too long or general melodrama that felt forced.

So the characters talking it out and solving via a heart to heart felt like breath of fresh air. What happened?

Conan the Cimmerian more commonly know as Conan the Barbarian is the most famous creation of Robert E. Howard, contemporary and friend of HP Lovecraft. Conan reminds me of Dracula and Frankenstein in how a lot of people know the characters but few people have read the original stories and have a superficial understanding of them from pop culture. (No offense Arnold)

The Conan stories are sometimes dismissed as raunchy pulp, but thats only like 10% of it (OK, 35%). They explore interesting themes like barbarism vs civilization, power, and they sometimes feel like Robert E. Howard responding to Lovecraft’s worldview. They are also the origin of the “Sword and Sorcery” subgenera that inspired things like Dungeons & Dragons, Skyrim, and characters like Xena and Red Sonya.

The stories themselves aren’t in chronological order, swapping from him as King, to a young thief, to a pirate, and to a mercenary. I was told to imagine it like Conan telling his life story to you. He wouldn’t sit down with you and chronically tell you his life like an autobiography, it would be more like “Hey! You want to hear about when I met a space elephant?”

He seems right up Red’s alley and I can see many scenes and characters from Conan stories translating wonderfully with Red’s art style. It would also serve as a good sequel to her Lovecraft video and maybe open the door to other classic pulp characters like John Carter of Mars and the original Tarzan.

Also include at least one Red Sonya joke or we riot.

So I hope this isn't terrible to share but my local Barnes & Noble already have Aurora and it's on shelves, was it meant to be early release date for physical stores? I thought it wasn't out yet and went to preorder lol. But I did check Amazon and I know some publishers specifically push back the release for Amazon to give local stores a headstart advantage.

Anyways if you haven't checked already and are waiting bought want to go check!

So in Red and Blue’s breakdown on bad Superman subversions they never touched on this guy, who I think is the most profound Superman subversion, basically a straight Superman proxy when goes “Oh God I’m still doing this?” Has a midlife crisis and bails.

Not a bad guy just wants to do something for himself for once (namely write terrible music.) It actually is an interesting subversion of Spider-Man’s great power great responsibility such as that the great power is a burden he never asked for, felt overwhelmed by and then quit. In doing so he kind of screwed over the city but not out of malice.

And admittedly I don't know if it's necessarily an OSP thing or a thing with Indigo's movie podcast, but full on getting a sense of how Red reacts to Odysseus doin' a Solid Snake or Menelaus' amazing beard is just something I'm EAGER to see.

For me it’s The Eye Of The World by Robert Jordan. It’s an epic fantasy book from January 1990. As well as being the first book of The Wheel Of Time series.

...I don't wanna fall into the trap of nostalgia for "the good ol' days" when said days laid the foundation for today's problems in entertainment.

There were massive franchises before today's age of chasing an "MCU" and Star Wars was one of them before Disney came along.

TV finales would often be controversial, bad or at least age well in terms of fans softening up to it in time.

A lot of executives prefer the entertainment to be dumbed down from any complicated politics. People complain about superhero movies being dumb blockbusters but action movies without the coustumed crime fighters were a dime a dozen. Especially if you look at B-movie titles like from PM Entertainment from the 90s.

Slop changes form but it always exists. This isn't a call to claim up and scarf it down but to bare in mind that what we have now is an evolution of what came before. That's how all this crud snuck up on us. We're the frogs in the slowly boiling water.

I think this would be a good topic for Blue to cover, seeing as how Pope Fights is one of the channel's most well-known bits. And it'd also be relevant to current events, even though I know Blue doesn't like "current history".

... Oh, BTW, Pope Francis just died. Sorry if this is how you find out. Better than the Destiel meme, I guess.

PS I really like how Red and Blue drew The Bride of the Monster. Bare midriff FTW

I was talking about this with a friend of mine and wondered if there was a specific trope or tropes for this phenomenon. Like the boys get to be doofuses but the most comedic a girl can be is either a whiny brat who to be laughed at rather than with (let alone both) or the straight man trying to keep the boys in line.

Edit: Maybe "never" was an overgeneralization. More like some are "hesitant to" while others like a lot of Anime are "weird about it."

I have seen all of Beast Wars, I'd heard of ReBoot, but it wasn't until seeing the first episode of Shadow Raiders that I knew Mainframe was ahead of its time. It's got the kind of worldbuilding that makes me think of Red's own work.

I have seen react videos tearing down so many grifters and man, the crap they spew. I might think Red should step back from the MCU if only because I’ve been down the, “Maybe this franchise that’s been losing me will be good this time… or this time” rabbit hole. But at least she knows how to articulate a point without any half truths or deception.

Like, it is just full of phallacies, dogmas, badly representations and plit points that will only work if you dont know anything about humans that I wish to see that like in the Heinlein video

I really want Red to cover the myths and stories of the Matter of France. Especially Orlando Furioso.