A female Marvel comics editor posts a milkshake selfie — and fanbabies throw a fit

@Scildfreja:
Where’s the subsaharan African culture? ? We always get left out. Ethiopians are something very different from the rest of Africa.

4srs though, it looks interesting.

@EJ, lol, I actually thought “Jees, I should do something with South Africa or EJ will comment” while I was working on it 😉

Subsaharan Africa is a very different pickle, and I didn’t want to just mush them in with some other culture! I do want to include them, though – the story of those cultures deserves it!

My intention is, if this is successful, to spread out from this one world into other colony worlds. As the Protagonist World regains spaceflight and starts exploring what’s happened in the thousand years since they were separated, they’ll meet up with the descendants of the USA, European powers, and all the other players that are “typical” to trope’y science fiction. Specifically, I’d like to portray the stereotypical sci-fi cultures (Space America! Space British Empire! Space Dynastic China!) as not being dominant. I want to use this story to reinforce the idea that the dominance of Europe in the modern world is due to a fluke of geography and ecosystem, and not due to any inherent superiority.

South Africa will show up out there! If you have suggestions on what might be good themes for that, I’d love to hear them. I had flirted with re-telling the story of the Boer War from a science fiction perspective, but I’m a bit leery of it, given how easily racist depictions can crop up in that. You’re far better placed to suggest things, if you have any ideas!

Objecting to angry fanboys calling you sjws because you are multiple women with milkshake – infantilising

Calling people sjws because multiple women drinking milkshake – not infantilising.

I don’t get how these people are calling these women infantilised while having a tantrum over a milkshake selfie without any self awareness tbh.
I’m sure there’s no sexism in that at all and that the reactionary ranters who claim to give a shit about comics actually do

@Axe,

But, like, that describes most of European history. Fuckin white people…

I know, right? That’s exactly the problem! Tribal extended-family groups in western Europe, pre-Rome? Noble precursors to great civilizations. After Rome? Why, them’s proper civilized! Same god-damn thing but it’s in Africa? Barbarian hooordes.

That’s actually one of the biggest reasons I made the Scandinavian nation semi-nomadic. They draw heavily from pre-Christian Scandinavia, and are going to be an inversion of expectations. (Though no, they aren’t going to be horn-helmeted vikings either. They’re going to be traders and explorers that generally prefer to avoid violence, more like modern day Scandinavians)

So yeah, it’s a big problem and I don’t really know how to approach it without being an insensitive clod. Womp womp.

After all is said and done, more people remember Michelangelo by his paintings than his inventions. Civilizations are the same way. A society is ultimately judged by its art ?

True! You’re exactly right. I had always intended for them to have magnificent art. One of the big differences between the cultures I’m writing and our modern-day cultures is that they see the inherent value in art for art’s sake – and they have the wealth and leisure to make it. Architecture will be as much about beauty as it is about functionality, clothing the same; everything will have a touch of artistry. I will do some drawing and thinking on the art traditions of my little petri dish and see what I come up with, thank you!

If I think of something, I’ll let you know. I do have a question tho. If this nation stretches from the Horn of Africa to the Subcontinent, why’s it called Ethiopia or the Selassian League? Conquest, I assume?

More just economic and cultural dominance. Plus – well, the setting isn’t Earth. A slice of the population of that region of the world went out and participated in terraforming /colonizing the planet where the story takes place, and it happened to draw mostly from Ethiopia, with smaller groups of South Indian and Arabian cultures. Add in a few ecological/political disasters to weld the groups into a single culture and you get the Selassians.

Overall, I’ve tried to avoid war as a heavy theme. It’s there, certainly – these are humans after all – but I want exploration and non-violent conflict to be more central. Call me an optimist.

Thanks again!

Most comics are sold at independent stores, and many stores have a lot of old or used comics and don’t report their sales to some central organization.

@Scildfreja Unnyðnes

I’ll go back to doing some basic research and history reading before I pile into that again. And if you have other thoughts, or things you might be cool to add that would make the cultures feel more right, I’d be happy to hear!

Well, I’m a Peruvian so I only have some general knowledge into the politics and history of the aforementioned countries. But I’ll try to shed a light regardless:

The main distinction that should be brought to light here is that Portuguese is the official language in Brazil. This is relevant because the colonizing countries of Spain and Portugal had clashes during the 18th century regarding the borders of their colonies, clashes which would then be carried over by the settlers who populated the Spanish and Portuguese colonies respectively.

It should also be noted that initially Argentina and Chile were in good standing. This considering the fact that Chileand and Argentinians formed part of a single liberating army under José de San Martin, which fought from South to North, trying to emancipate South America from Spain. The fighting from North to South was handled by libertador Simon Bolivar.

As far as racial identity and politics, Argentina and Chile have many parallels. For starters both have a strong presence of European settlers (Italians in the case of Argentinians and English in the case of Chileans). Both countries also have a history with fascism (Videla in Argentina and Pinochet in Chile), and both countries had a period where they decided to actively exterminate their indigenous population. This is sort of the reason why many Nazis decided to seek haven in Argentina after WWII, it’s a very White country.

To Argentina’s credit however, I haven’t found it nearly as racist or xenophobic as Chile. Now, this may be because Argentinians have some sort of soft spot for Peruvians considering we were the only country that aided them militarily during the War of the Falkland Islands but generally the only bad opinion we have of Argentinians is that they are notorious braggarts.

Chile on the other hand seems to have problems with nearly everybody. With a lot of recorded xenophobia against Peruvians, Bolivians and Colombians, who are on the darker side of Latinos.

Racially speaking Brazil is similar to Colombia, meaning you have a lot of Black Latinos and then a minority of economically privileged White Latinos. Very much like in the US, in other words.

Politically speaking, the current governments of Brazil and Chile are socialist, however there is some serious issues regarding corruption in Brazil being investigated so there is a lot of social tensions and clashes developping in Brazil, which has been more politically and socially unstable than either Chile or Argentina.

Chile has been, since its foundation, the most politically stable country of the region. The country’s liberals and conservatives came together in consensus during its foundation, to lay out a plan of governance on issues in which both parties could agree. Thus they had 4 presidents in a period of 40 years (two terms of 5 years each) in comparison to Peru’s 27 presidents (in the same 40 years) and Bolivia’s 32 presidents (in the same period).

Since Chile is an entirely coastal country it has always been reliant on trade, but this benefitted it inmensely considering the Valparaiso Harbor was the very first stop of traders coming in from Europe before the Panama Canal was built. This was obviously because, before the canal, traders from all over the world had to sail around South America to get to the western harbors in the Americas, thus Valparaiso was the first stop.

In regards to the economy there are several blocs and treaties in place between the countries. One of them being the free trade agreement of the Mercosur between Argentina-Peru-Colombia-Bolivia. It essentially lets us visit the aforementioned countries without a visa. Other economic and ideological blocs would be Venezuela-Ecuador-Bolivia, in regard to the advancement of the Bolivarian agenda, which is the integration of all Latin America.

Regarding that last issue it should be noted that the aforementioned Simón Bolivar, the libertador which freed Colombia, Venezuela, Peru (among others) from Spain, had a dream of unifying all of South America into a single country. He tried to work towards that end but his efforts were not very well received among the countries which wanted to retain their independence.

His vision was that a unified South America was the only thing which would protect it from invasion or colonization from Western powers.

Also, on the Chinese thing you mentioned: I’m not entirely sure about Chile’s case, but the Chinese have mostly developped investments in Peru, Bolivia and Brazil.

These are very random and loose precisions but hopefully they might help you with your world-building.

aaaaand saved. Thank you, @Diego! That’s exactly the sort of thing I would like to capture in microcosm. I was intending to have a Bolivar-esque character in the storyline, specifically with the goal of helping the various fractured cultures come together. Hadn’t decided on how successful that would ultimately be, though. I will look into the Mercosur, that sounds like an interesting first-stop for digging deeper into how a syncretic South American superpower might look.

You mention a history of fascism and committing genocide against indigenous populations; I wanted to include a little bit of this as a dark side of the story, too. Specifically, while the nation is fighting to liberate client states held under the major Imperial power that used to control them, they in turn are using their southernmost hinterland for raw resource extraction and are basically bulldozing the cultures that are living there, “for the greater good”. It’s something I want to approach carefully, though, because I don’t want to stamp them with a “these are the bad guys” label, and it’s very easy to do that with these themes.

You’ve given me a lot to think about, thank you!

@EJ,

My intentions with this are less to make an individual story for a small group of players, more to build a world from which others (and myself) could build stories. Less “I want to make a cool world to roleplay a thing with my friends” and more “I want to make a three hundred page hardcover product to kickstart and print ten thousand of.”

So there’s room for both!

On the “cultural trappings” side of things, I want to keep from being too heavy-handed. I want these cultures to feel as if they are what you’d get if you took the parent cultures, shook them up, isolated them with each other, and then let the clock run for 1500 years. I want people to see hints of those original cultures, sometimes strong, but for them to feel as if they have their own identity. Like, what would a Saxon farmer think of modern England, what would they find that felt familiar? Not a whole lot, sure, but there would be some things.

I will certainly look into the Nguni though! The sort of landscape you describe is relatively uncommon on the planet I’m building right now, but it’s going to play centrally in one of the other colony worlds which is far more arid, with deserts and savanna separating pockets of water-rich forest and landlocked mountainous lakes. Sounds ideal. (I am also intending on drawing from the plains First Nations of North America for this, and I think the interactions between the two could be really interesting)

That sort of leads to the second part of your point, about retelling stories. I agree with you that the Boer war is a poor choice – it’s too familiar, leaning on that old Imperial English influence I’m trying to avoid. I’ll look into the collapse of the Karanga Empire instead – the story rings a bell for me but I can’t recall the details. Whee, story time!

The general story of the overall worlds-beyond-the-protagonist-world is one of disintegration and balkanization. Earth retreats from its colony worlds a thousand years ago due to some mysterious circumstance, leaving all of the colonies isolated from their major industrial source. Some worlds (such as the protagonist world, as of yet unnamed) fall off the map entirely, lacking ships capable of opening Rosen Bridges to travel between solar systems. Others maintain spaceflight, but are too focused on reconstructing local infrastructure to travel in an organized way. Wars between colonies spark off as they try to claim the infrastructure of lost Earth, try to subjugate one another for raw power, raid one another, etc. No organizing forces emerge to keep things together for some time.

This is the playground where I wanted the “Space America”, “Space British Empire”, etc, to emerge – just, in really non-standard way. Space America exists as a couple of spin-off worlds. The conservative, fascistic elements went off to colonize their own world on their own and are now a right nuisance to everyone. The progressive elements, along with Mexico, Cuba, Canada and a few other friends went off to make their own world, along with some orbital colonies that have become everyone-is-welcome freeports. Everyone else went through similar phases, with cultures splitting along ideological lines during the colonization era.

That’s the context in which Space South Africa would exist. I can see how the ideological split would form in SA culture, One group being relatively polyglot, peaceful, and syncretic, and another being more xenophobic and traditionalist. But I’m sure you have some better insights on that than I do!

Thank you!

@Grumpy

And this in spite of all the movies where the geek wins the gorgeous woman.

But that trope is never really portrayed as a geek finding the conventionally-attractive “girl” interesting as a person; as you say, she’s a prize to be “won” away from the Jock/Preppy. It’s as much an act of revenge as it is triumph (“Revenge of the Nerds”).

Furthermore, that “triumph” is typically portrayed as occurring after a long series of humiliating mishaps played off for laughs. The male ego is fragile at the best of times, so I can understand how looming that fear of rejection is, but

It doesn’t occur to them that an attractive girl might prefer to socialize with guys who have shared interests instead of guys that are merely high on the pecking order.

Exactly. Their perceived status on the pecking order has been so defining and ingraining that they can barely imagine somebody not like them even being interested in geek properties, let alone actually wanting to socialize openly about them. The “Fake Geek Girl” trope alone demonstrates how malignant this mindset can be. A part of me wishes I could sit these guys down in a room and tell them “Yeah, you know these stories you tell yourself about ‘nerd’ or ‘gamer persecution’… they’re all bullshit. People grow up liking different things. Some girls read comics just like you did. Others are just getting into it and that’s okay too. Grow up.”

Conventionally attractive non-geek women aren’t trophies and objects either, of course. But because they’re less likely to interact much with the aggrieved geek guy, he can still simultaneously pedestalize and hate them from a distance. Geek women in the same spaces, are close enough to seem like the real human beings that women are and that challenges their much simpler preconceived notions about women as non-human things. It’s a lot easier to try and drive women out of “their” spaces than it is to just adjust their attitudes toward women and treat us like three dimensional humans.

Bingo. Hence the overly aggressive gatekeeping. But there’s also the fear element: the fear that if too many women “invade” “their” space, that they’ll start changing things in a way that makes them uncomfortable. Anita Sarkeesian seemed to trigger that in GamerGaters something fierce: “OMG, she’s working with devs! She’s going to make all games SJWey! Exterminate! Exterminate!” Zoe Quinn was a dev herself, which was even more heinous a transgression, and not just a dev, but one who got mainstream attention.

There are so many ways to slice this irrationality, but it still adds up to textbook bullying. I feel for those on the receiving end of this barrage, it’s something nobody should have to put up with.

Even the more “harmonious with nature” cultural groups, such as various indigenous cultures, in fact became keystone predators in their ecosystems

They didn’t call it “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump” for nothing!

ETA: Image not rendering. Ah well, it still makes me giggle. “The Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site.” Buffalo lemmings!

I agree with you, @Surplus – we’re well past the point where we can just let nature “do its thing” here. We control something like 98% of the Earth’s biomass, it would be criminally (and suicidally) irresponsible to not consider ourselves as custodians of the planet.

But it’s still a good story, I think! It’s less about whether we need to do so in order to survive or thrive; I’m looking more at the ethical ramifications. Is there an ethical element to just leaving nature alone? Like in my story, there’s a low level tension between the Selassians (West African) and the Asgardians (Scandinavians). Both cultures recognize that their ancestors engineered the world they live in, and pretty much everything in the world is genetically engineered to fit a niche. Where they differ is in is how they see their responsibility to the ecosystem that’s at this point been around for almost 1500 years. The Selassians think that their role is to optimize the ecosystem – to repair damage, recover deserts into fertile land, etc. To make the world into a garden where life can flourish. The Asgardians, on the other hand, think that their role is to protect the ecosystem – to allow it to evolve and grow as it will without outside interference. They’ll clean environmental damage, but they’ll leave the desert alone, even if it’s spreading into fertile territory.

It also leads into questions of whether GMOs are good, and what humanitys’ role is as gardener. That’s the sort of thing I’m looking to explore. So, parallel to the comment you made! I don’t dispute any of that. Also, mmm, Cahokia. Dorset. I do loves me some neolithic culture. A very neat site you point out. I will go digging!

Regarding Head-Smashed-In, I don’t live far from there actually. Well, okay, a few hours. Still. It’s a fun sounding name, but it’s a horrifying place in my opinion. I mean, as a plains tribe it’s the most efficient way to get food and to just survive, and I totally understand how important it was to the Blackfoot, but wow. Buffalo runs in general are scary as heck. Not my favourite thing!

@Scildfreja Unnýðnes

Well, that’s the thing. The one point in history in which South American countries have seen eye to eye was when they fought off the Spanish. South American independence was very much unlike independence gained in other countries, where each country overthrew the rule of the colonial powers that be and then let everybody else handle their own problems.

No, South Americans understood that allowing the Spanish to remain in even a single territory of South America would allow them to launch a counterattack at a later time and reclaim their lost territory. That is why they went through so much trouble to fight for the independence of every South American country. What is more baffling and interesting is that this wasn’t a coordinated effort. It was spontaneous. People implicitly understood what it meant.

Thus you had two main libertadores fighting for the independence of South America on two different fronts, with armies made up of different nationalities.

It was so uncoordinated and the opposing visions were such that when Simon Bolivar and San Martin met in Lima, the former told the other “Two suns cannot shine upon the same sky”.

Bolivar wanted the unification of South America. San Martin wanted a independent countries.

In the end history proved Bolivar right: the lack of unity made South America vulnerable to colonialism and American and British interventionism. South America went from being a Spanish colony to a British and American colony (at least economically speaking although also military speaking at times).

Most of this isn’t even ancient history. I was 14 years old when Alberto Fujimori announced his third illegal mandate in Peru and Bill Clinton appeared on TV and endorsed him, on account of his libertarian policies. Pinochet and Videla weren’t so long ago either. And I was also alive when Menem was wrecking havoc in Argentina.

South America has only begun breaking away from American influence during George W. Bush. So you could say we’ve never actually had sovereignty. That could be a unifying point for South Americans in regard to the purpose of world-building.

As for differences in culture, there are many. Throw in soccer disputes and we become downright savages.

[W]hen Simon Bolivar and San Martin met in Lima, the former told the other “Two suns cannot shine upon the same sky”.

Someone should tell them about Kepler-16b. 🙂

So you could say we’ve never actually had sovereignty.

You did once, at least, as the Aztec and Inca civilizations, before Spain first invaded, and you may again quite soon. The US has kept other would-be colonial powers’ mitts off you, and now its own influence is waning. It will be an ex-empire by 2045, much as Britain was by 1945. Just don’t let China become too big an influence. Tax the heck out of foreign owned real estate and other foreign owned investments, before they drive your housing beyond affordability and locally-owned industries out of business; and create at least a mutual defense pact of some kind.