fiat_lux

Notice there is no double sig in there. Also note that Rodnovery is a neopagan religion, associated with nationalism. It’s the Slavic equivalent the Norse pantheon fetishism you see in the West in the form of Odinism.

You should assume they’re Nazi symbols because they are, even if Nazis stole a lot of symbols from everyone else. The sig was first adapted into the double sig in 1929 to be used as the Schutzstaffel logo

Sure, but they had an entirely different belief system, and those examples are up to a millennium later. Even the more voluptuous Graeco-Indian female statues from Gandhara got intricate drapery.

It’s possible that it is a more modern idea that we’ve attributed to being much earlier, that does happen a lot, but I’m inclined to think it’s not entirely baseless.

We know for example that the nude Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles caused enough of a stir to become a tourist destination, and even she had a conveniently positioned hand covering her goods. Kore statues always had clothes on too, unlike their male counterparts.

I could maybe buy the possibility that almost all of the nude women sculptures were stolen and later destroyed, either intentionally or accidentally, but that doesn’t quite work either. To not find any older nude sculptures in modern times, plus the odd detail that none of the nude ones we do have (copies, admittedly, and I don’t know all the statues either) have anything other than Barbie-smooth instead of even a delicate line suggesting labia… seems odd for an art culture that progressively got more caught up with hyper realism.

They did get nuder and more realistic with time, but we’ve got nothing from the archaic period without at least a skirt on, usually more.

Phrasing. But yes, some of them - they seemed to prefer making plaster and metal fig leaves thankfully. Michelangelo wasn’t thrilled about being told to change his work either. Some of them were whacked off earlier than the Catholics, and some were whacked off by the Vatican even as late as the 1850s in “The Great Castration”.

Many of the lost appendages were accidental though, natural disasters and the like did a lot of amputation and decapitation, to the point where there are entire catalogue methods for mismatched heads on statues.

I wish I had both any cool ancient things and any basement to put them in. I think the oldest thing I own is maybe 100 years at best.

I think I’d be terrified to own anything much older too, conservation is hard.

The penis thing is pretty hotly debated, but savagery comes pretty close to my understanding of the theory you mention. It’s not a hugely different concept from some of the manosphere stuff you find today though.

Basically the idea was (it’s theorized) that thinking with your dick leads to making hasty and bad decisions, but you want to be like the cool smart intellectual philosopher rhetorician dudes ruling society who are strong enough to control their urges. You want to be the civilized powerful master strategist, not the uncivilized weak-willed destructive glutton. So… because art needs to be about reality and be educational (there’s no place for that creative abstract shit), we’re going to de-emphasize the body part associated with urges that are difficult to control. These are powerful rational dudes afterall.

The biggest difference with modern manosphere bullshit is maybe the part where they shrunk the pps on the ripped marble dudes to make that point. Instead we get… social media statue and peacock “science” analogies.

I think Nemesis is Roman, but probably a copy of a Greek statue. I might have chosen to forget because the “restoration” work on her head breaks my heart - but I know that’s a common problem. Such a pity because the drapery is gorgeous.

Looking at this Diana/Artemis, who was much luckier than most statues by having her original head reattached, you can see how different it is. The proportions make much more sense.

Image text description below image:

Photo of a marble statue of Artemis (aka Diana), which lives at the Louvre. Artemis is mid-step reaching for an arrow in the quiver on her back. In her other hand she’s pulling on the antlers of a small deer that she has caught. She’s wearing a short and practical belted tunic (chiton) appropriate for hunting, functional sandals, and an equally pragmatic hairstyle with her wavy locks in an up-do. Her arms and legs are neither skinny nor super muscly, they’re very average looking. But, being a goddess, she’s got a tiara. Not an ostentatious tiara, a simple solid tiara. A utility tiara, if you will. And being a female goddess, you can still see her nips pushing on the intricate drapery of her chiton. She’s clearly got some sex appeal carved in, but the statue is of a capable person who is independently getting shit done.

I love her because she basically looks like the kind of woman a modern conservative commentator would condemn for subverting gender roles. Also with a proportional head.

Diane de Versailles - Louvre catalogue

Guess they’ve never seen all of the statues of Athena, Artemis and Aphrodite. You don’t get as many nude female statues because it was usually considered obscene for women to be naked in public.

But the Greek male statues were fully nude and depicted ripped mortal men because they were made in line with Aristotle’s idea of good art being educational. Those were arguably the marble version of “git gud, scrub”.

If there were more male “perfect” body statues at the time, which we can’t establish because many have been lost over the millennia, it might actually be evidence that men were considered less attractive and they needed more body shaming to fix it?

Strong disagree. Prevalent literary tropes are always worth dissecting, because they reveal a lot about the cultures that construct them, and provide us with insights into how to be better people.

In this case, the quantity of black lightning heroes may indicate that non-white skin color is / was perceived as such a defining feature of the character, beyond any potential personality facets, that any other power simply wasn’t considered.

If nearly every white comic hero were The Hulk, it would also be shit, and worth raising questions about.

It probably also helps that the dense clouds appear black, and dense clouds mean a more severe storm. I wonder if the ink contrast is more of a perk than the primary reason, compared to darkness being a convenient power metaphor for storms.

Peter dinklage doesn’t have a Twitter account. This is someone who just wants to keep using people with dwarfism as the butt of their jokes.

Trauma responses are hard. I think it’s great you’re actively working on it and are conscious of your own biases, that’s huge. Good luck!

Panel 3 and 4 aren’t quite right.

The guy in Panel 3 didn’t just remix it, he cherry picked the parts that would be most likely to rank for either a short or long tail keyword strategy depending on the size and business of his client or employer.

And that guy doesn’t have his paper taken away in Panel 4. He’s feeding as many papers as he can to the AI which are tailored for “Answer Engine Optimization” or “Generative Engine Optimization” (they haven’t settled on a catchy name yet for what is largely the same thing, even if some claim they’re different).

The techniques have changed slightly but SEO has been a filthy game for much longer than AI. Google made sure of that with their auction house, “featured snippet” sections and backlink authority ranking systems.