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] but then, you know, also the femme variant of the Valhalla hero was gaaaaaaaaaaaaay (Audrey headcanon and/or technically an option in the game)

so that sort of helped

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] I think it's more to do with like, the hair styles and tattoos and such. Like, you can give the main character dreadlocks. Which.

Ugh. The thing about that is. I'm not a hair expert, but the impression I get is that A. there's no proof or hint they had them, B. I am not necessarily sure that the texture of hair typically associated with that area of the world would have lent itself well to forming dreadlocks, and C. it seems to largely be brought up in a context of "this is why it's not appropriation! Vikings had them!" which is just a justification for appropriation, which is itself racist and part of white supremacy's attempt to steal everything it can't obliterate.

So I'm pretty uncomfortable with that one, because even if it is somehow a question historians wonder about (:doubt:), the choice to include many dreadlocked styles on a white protagonist veers sharply into "why did you do this" territory for me. I dunno.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] Maybe the attempts by neo-nazi groups to claim older Norse culture as "theirs" has just made me uncomfortable with anything that seems to lean in towards those claims, even a little. I am not an expert and this is just my sort of... impression and feelings, so to speak. It was a fun game (but definitely not an AC game in the style of other ones, for sure) and I liked stomping around England in that period.

But... yeah. It's also possible the game has other stuff that I totally missed, obviously. I never finished it.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] oh my god, yeah. To be honest, I was sick of it already by that point, so I never got too far into it... and the further I got in, the more I disliked the story and how you're just straight up a white savior. Not that I expect nuance out of the Far Cry series or anything but.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] For the record I just ignored it and shaved my femme Eivor bald and she rocked that look the whole time. 0 regrets, 10/10 queer husky voiced femme experience.

Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

@aud OK, that's just amazing.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] uggghhh I was trying to find a picture and of course, while there's cool stuff like hand drawn fanart (yay!) there's also a ton of AI crap. why. argh.

datarama

@aud @xgranade Norse dreadlocks are almost certainly a modern invention. They were notably *fabulous*, and we know from contemporaries that they washed and combed their hair meticulously and often wore it long with elaborate braids.

The example sometimes given is the Norwegian king Harald Hårfager who swore to never cut or comb his hair until he gained the throne. But the descriptions of his hair usually just say that it was very long and very, very tangled and messy; nothing about dreads.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] I wanted to say this! But didn't feel confident I had enough unbiased knowledge or sources to say it. So thank you!

I recall hearing that early Anglo-saxon types were pretty grumpy about how clean and well kempt vikings were compared to uhh... early 9th century England folk, or thereabouts?

datarama

@aud @xgranade The name for Saturday in all current Nordic languages is derived from "laugardagr", which means "bathing day". Bathing weekly was unusual for Late Iron Age peoples, and the English considered it a decadent custom ... in fact, one Anglo-Saxon cleric was convinced it was a devilish ploy to seduce Anglo-Saxon women!

We also know they combed (and often braided) their hair daily, frequently changed clothes and liked to wear lots of accessories.

datarama

@aud @xgranade Obviously we don't know exactly what they looked like - they didn't exactly snap selfies or sit for portrait paintings.

It's not necessarily absurd to imagine them coming up with all sorts of braid-based hairdos that modern people might associate more with African people (*many* historical sources mention all the braids!), but specifically dreadlocks would be pretty much the opposite of what we know about how they treated their hair.

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.