reading reviews for Assassin's Creed: Mirage, which has apparently been billed as a "return to roots" sorta thing and people are like "boring and repetitive" and I'm like my dude, you clearly did not play the original Assassin's Creed sounds about ac...

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] This was the impression I had, as well, based on what seemed like more trustworthy sources. Thank you!

I think I hate the "dreadlock" thing even more now, in this case.

datarama

@aud @xgranade The shock of a would-be king vowing to not comb his hair was so unusual that the skaldic poems about it have survived to this day!

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] jesus. Yeah, that's... I didn't really think this was an actual open question that anyone had. But like, I feel the "dreadlocked viking" thing is a very modern image of Vikings that did not exist when I was younger, and curiously arises at the same time a lot of white supremacists have tried to take old Norse culture as "theirs".

"suspicious", one might say, if it wasn't just outright easy to call bullshit on it.

datarama

@aud @xgranade For obvious reasons, this bothers me too. I'm not in any way affiliated with any of the modern faith societies around Norse paganism (I'm an atheist), but ... it's my cultural background they're claiming. I grew up in a Nordic country, it's my language, my history and a body of stories I grew up hearing (modern retellings of).

BTW, this isn't just neo-nazis. The 1940s German Nazis started it. (the SS logo is based on the Younger Futhark sól rune, to take the obvious example).

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] Well, that's not surprising, given their whole "blue eyed blonde hair" thing. Although I didn't know that about the SS logo.

Fuck, and I can only imagine. I feel bad even using names from Norse/Greek myths in relatively harmless contexts (program names, variables, etc) as I'm not from those cultures.

This ties into a (somewhat unrelated) larger point of white supremacy, which is that it tries to claim everything cultural and rob it from the original source. For instance, I couldn't tell you what my historical cultural background is. I grew up in a Mormon family in Utah; our "stories" were nothing but thinly veiled tales of murdering indigenous people and stealing their land. Anything that wasn't that was stolen from the Jewish faith.

There's some thread, in theory, that links me back to what my ancestors did before imperialism tried to scrub it all away, but I don't know what that is. I have no cultural heritage that isn't violence or theft. It's the same for people who claim the battle standard of the confederacy here in the US is "heritage, not hate". The heritage is hate. That's all we're given to fall back on, should we want to find some connection with roots. And don't get me wrong: this pales in comparison to the harms white supremacy visits on people who aren't part of the "in group". But it's a big ol spiky ball that hurts and destroys everything it touches, no matter whether you're given the soft or the hard end.

It'd be cool if I knew what my ancestors believed before imperialism took everything from humanity.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] (also! Thank you for chiming in and sharing! This is exactly the kind of insight I wanted!)

datarama

@aud @xgranade It seems to me that what the popular imagination holds Vikings must have looked like is whatever is associated with "badass" at the particular time. Dreadlocks (and perhaps shaven sides) and facial tattoos! Bodybuilder physiques! Lots of coarse black leather clothes!

When I was a kid, this was what the most popular rendition of Thor looked like (from the comic series "Valhalla"). A bit more like a gruff sailor than like a metalhead, wouldn't you say?

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] I am gay and trans, and that connects me to a much larger culture of found family, and I'm stupidly grateful for it; I think without some thread of commonality I'd feel lost. The thread of commonality that was "given" to me as a child is inherently racist, and I've done my best to reject it (well, I've tried, anyway; it's a process).

So, I have a community, and I have "roots" with people who have faced the same challenges and struggles (and have faced, and will face, worse), so I try to honor those. The shared humanity that's there. But... well, would I have been exposed to that if I wasn't gay? I don't really have an answer to that.

cthos 🐱

@datarama @aud @xgranade they appropriated a lot of runes and symbols and it’s very very frustrating.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] ah! Yeah, I feel like you're correct. Like, I feel the decision to give Vikings "dreadlocks" wasn't necessarily directly due to racist views held by developers of the game, but probably some marketing people who said "this is what people seem to think Vikings look like now and we want to sell VIKING".

cthos 🐱

@datarama @aud @xgranade for example, seeing a hammer necklace or tattoo. Is that a neo nazi or an Asatruar? (Not that those are necessarily mutually exclusive)

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] It's definitely another example of why it's necessary to reject their framing and claims. They're all lies, for sure, but if you even unknowingly give them an inch they'll piss on it so badly no one can take it back.

Maybe that's another reason why the "dreadlocked Viking" thing grates. It acts as a sort of validation to their theft.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Well, that, and the Assassin's Creed series has sometimes talked a big talk about how their games stick close to history. Obviously that's not the case and I'm certainly not going to suggest they be held to that (and it's all fiction so obviously a lot of leeway is allowed), but to give in to something that seems not only to directly contradict what is known AND is in line with racists... mmmmph.

datarama

@aud @xgranade Footnote: Nobody actually knows if Northmen in that time had tattoos. It's not preposterous; we know that even earlier people here practiced tattooing (there are a few Bronze Age bog bodies with tattoos). But prominent tattoos aren't mentioned by anyone who wrote about meeting them, and I kinda think the modern "badass viking facial tattoo" would have warranted at least a note along with all the stuff about their hair and personal hygiene.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] I think, in a larger context, maybe that's one reason why conservative groups tend to hate LGBTQ+ people: we can, and do, pop up in every human group and whether each person likes it or not, that connects us. So you have groups that people are very explicitly trying to separate and have one viewed as "lesser", and that shared element of sexuality or gender threaten that separation. It can humanize people in either group.

I wonder, then, if that isn't what a cultural heritage or set of traditions doesn't do in the first place: helps to humanize other people?

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] I have a slowly increasing number of tattoos across various parts of my body, and given the wide range of potential pain they can cause + uhhh, how shall we say, older sanitary standards? Good bet on few people willing to jam a needle in their face in the old days.

EDIT: you know, I should be careful to contextualize this. Given the risk involved with a facial tattoo in terms of pain and disfigurement it seems like the kind of thing you'd probably need to have a rich tradition of rather than just deciding to go all in on it is really what I'm getting at here, and little else.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] (not that I'm saying it wouldn't have been done! Except that since there's not really evidence the English were doing it either and it would feel like something you'd need a lot of cultural knowledge and history to do properly... I feel the same way is what I'm saying. Like. Probably... probably no.)

datarama

@cthos @aud @xgranade At least in Denmark, Thor's hammer specifically is actually common enough that little baubles with it are usually just considered innocent fashion objects.

cthos 🐱

@datarama @aud @xgranade I think it’s wildly variant depending on what part of the country you’re in over here but it’s rare enough that it’s questionable.

datarama

@aud @xgranade I once made an ill-fated MUD engine that I named "bifrost"! If I ever manage to pull myself together and make the fantasy console I want to make, I'll either recycle that name or take something else from Norse mythology.

(There was *a lot* of reawakened popular interest in Norse mythology here in the 1980s, largely because the cartoon adaptation of the comics I just showed a picture from became an absolutely wild runaway hit with both children and adults.)