And then he immediately says the one character is part Native American and must have had cannibal ancestors.
Human cannibalism is bad, and not just for social reasons. Namely diseases, both common and horrifying, such as prion diseases. The very few cultures that do things like eat their dead tended to have long histories of diseases like Kuru, which you really, really don’t want to risk. (and, in case you're wondering, prion diseases can't be neutralized via cooking and some can jump species very easily. It's why if you live in Wisconsin/Michigan/Minnesota/Iowa or the vicinity, you really, really, really don't want to eat wild venison, especially if it might not have been prepared very well. The deer in that area have one hell of a prion disease and a few hunters have started to show it too)
The issue is that the book doesn't make the argument that Martian cannibalism is okay and then stops there, Heinlein actually does try to make the argument that it's fine with humans if it's part of the culture too and there's no problems. And then he makes it really damn racist by insinuating all Native Americans practiced cannibalism at some point or another. Which is just flat out untrue.
Stranger in a Strange Land has this really weird issue where it's partly this interesting story about how someone raised by aliens with special powers might interact with a particular future Earth, but it's also obviously got shades of what Heinlein himself thought of as a utopia, with his own thoughts and desires mixed in. In the actual book, stuff like the voyeurism thing and the homophobia is obviously his own thoughts, and the cannibalism thing is kind of presented in exactly the same way as the clear personal beliefs and biases. From my reading, I think Heinlein literally thought cannibalism was fine and thought the dislike of it was primarily a social thing, without knowing about how nasty the diseases can get.
Edited by Zendervai on Aug 30th 2020 at 8:19:13 AM
I've heard his other stories can kinda contradict each other thematically, at least from people in the comments, and so they argued that he wasn't trying to say one of the given view points was legitimately better but explore different science fiction societies and satirize them. I haven't read his works, but I dunno if this is people defending questionable works with "it's satire" the way it sometimes happens, or if its a matter of his bibliography as a whole makes it clear he doesn't directly believe this stuff, and just wants to explore it to poke at ideas in society.
Given what I know of the internet, I'm leaning the former and Heinlein, whatever his skill at writing a variety of works, probably legitimately believed some of the stuff in here because it seems unlikely the rampant misogyny and homophobia was somehow exploratory or would be counteracted by another work. I could be wrong, as I mentioned, haven't read his stuff, but experience with the internet as a whole makes me wary of trusting "it's satire" as an excuse.
Edited by Alfric on Aug 31st 2020 at 9:41:25 AM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/lb_i.php?lb_id=13239183440B34964700 Alfric's Fire Emblem Liveblog Encyclopedia!Heinlein's a real pain to analyze because at least some of his stories were literally designed to needle specific people and groups, like Starship Troopers. His juvenile stuff is usually on the okay side, if only because the word-count constraints meant he wasn't able to cram lectures in there, but there's a lot of weird crap mixed in his books. He's really important as a sci-fi writer, but the sheer frequency of like, incest, showing up in his books is kind of concerning. All You Zombies has an example of that taken to a really messed up extreme, albeit at least partially it seems to be a joke.
Heinlein was a hard-core individualist libertarian later on, and there's shades of the same ideas in his earlier books, but it means that some really strange and messed up ideas creep in there because when your primary rule for life is you should be able to do whatever you want and you think you're a brilliant philosopher and there's no one who wants to tell you "no", your thoughts drift in some strange directions.
I will give Heinein a lot of credit for deliberately making a ton of his protagonists very clearly not white though. He had some really blunt racism, mostly against First Nations and Native Americans, but he did try and push back against the idea that only white people could be heroes, which was predominant at the time.
Edited by Zendervai on Aug 31st 2020 at 1:12:48 PM
All You Zombies was...a bit of a headache to try to comprehend. Time Travel is like that. Anyone looking for nuanced or respectful discussion of Intersex folks and Gender Identity Issues, steer clear. Also, there's a lot of casual sexism, which...you know, not entirely uprising.
...Which means it would be a perfect story to try to hear Red attempt to summarize, if she wanted to do another compilation like with Poe or with Lovecraft.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerIn History Summarized, Blue talks about the Viking Age:
Today's episode is talking about Ares. It talks about how there surprisingly aren't too many stories about him, and talks about one of the more famous one involving him: when the giants known as the Aloadae stuffed him in a jar.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Oct 26th 2021 at 5:16:44 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."I'm pretty sure Ares is pretty much an asshole, it's just that his getting no respect is pretty funny. That and, you know, the image of this big bully stuffed into a jar because he rushed into battle without thinking.
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."It strikes me as hypocritical to lump all the negative and positive aspects of war into two different deities so that you can still glorify it without having to really acknowledge it's bad side.
He's one of the few greek gods who isn't a rapist and generally treats women with respect, so there's that at least.
Edited by Kaiseror on Sep 11th 2020 at 10:46:55 AM
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Beside his job description, there barely myth about Ares and he barely done anything bad. Someone have to take on the worst aspects of war. He worst crimes probably sleep with his brother's wife. his other myth include involved in the founding of Thebes where i guy have to atone for killed Ares' dragon and the Trojan war where he sided with the Trojan.
Edited by BattleRaizer on Sep 11th 2020 at 10:52:20 PM
E.T technically is a Isekai movieThe guy has been described as "overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive, and man-slaughtering" and going into battle accompanied by Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Terror), and Enyo (Strife?), which paints a pretty clear picture on the sort of warfare he's drawn to. Definitely not someone you'd want to meet if you could help it, and I'd hesitate to call him one of the "least asshole-ish" of the Greek pantheon.
Probably also unsurprising that he'd be villified in stories. It's not hard to turn the god who revels in the brutality of warfare into a villain.
I do find it interesting that, for someone who's said to enjoy bloodshed so much, he's been characterized as someone who reacts badly to slight injuries. It's definitely something that really contributes to the bully image he has, though I have to wonder if that bit was added by people who didn't hold Ares in very high regard.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Sep 11th 2020 at 10:01:54 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Hephestus tends to be the other one on the "least asshole" list, mostly because it's hard not to pity him for the horrible treatment he receives due his deformed nature.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Yeah Ares is probably more of an Asshole Victim at best. And prolly would be as far from a Jerkass Woobie as it gets.
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Sep 11th 2020 at 10:18:37 AM
One take on Ares I especially like is in second edition Scion.
In Scion, gods have this thing known as the "mantle of divinity" which is a sort of divine identity and a way for the game to bring about different incarnations/interpretations of the same god. For example, Ares has two mantles as the God of War: he hacks and slashes with abandon as Ares in battles where chaos and strife run rampant, and he watches with a cool gaze as Mars when war becomes a thing of industry and precision.
Though despite the respect he gets from the Romans as Mars, he's still considered Minerva's lesser when it comes to strategy, something that irks him even till modern day.
One thing I found kind of funny is that Scion Ares is mentioned to hold things like armed drones in contempt, probably because even as Mars he thinks warriors should be out on the battlefield getting their own hands dirty.
Ares is pretty much the asshole that you can kind of feel sorry for, yet also kind of laugh at because come on, an edgelord getting stuffed into a jar cursing and screaming makes for a funny sight.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Sep 11th 2020 at 10:23:30 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."My interpretation of Ares is like plague, death or disaster, it a natural part of war, an unpleasant part but still an aspect of it. You might not want to deal with it but someone have to. This reminded me of Warhammer pantheon, the Empire have 3 war gods but all 3 represented positive traits of warfare and warriors, yet in the end war only fuel their greatest enemy, Khorne, who govern over the more brutal aspect of warfare.
Edited by BattleRaizer on Sep 12th 2020 at 1:03:49 AM
E.T technically is a Isekai movieYou have to remember that most of the surviving Greek stories come from Athens, whose patron deity was Athena and whose main rivals for control of Greece were the Ares-worshipping Spartans. The Spartans meanwhile loved Ares but barely wrote anything down. If their stories had been preserved like the Athenians, we'd probably have more tales about how the strong and brave Ares bests the cowardly and scheming Athena.
Edited by Druplesnubb on Sep 17th 2020 at 9:56:26 PM
Except despite her probable origins as the tutelary deity
of Athens, she was apparently fairly popular in Sparta as well for her warrior aspect under the epithet Promachos.
The previous History Summarized-videos related to Roman history(The Roman Republic, The Punic Wars and Julius Caesar and the Fall of Republic) are combined and remastered to one video, History RE-Summarized:
Edited by jouXIII on Sep 18th 2020 at 6:52:27 PM
I assure you, I'm perfectly trustable person@Knightof Lsama. Wait Promachos? That seems so filled with Testosterone Poisoning that has me wonder if that was why Athena sided with the men a lot
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Sep 18th 2020 at 11:55:40 AM
Something to bear in mind is that there was more to ancient religions than just their myths. Much what people were taught about the gods didn't come in the form of a narrative. So there's no contradiction between the ancient Greeks largely believing Ares was a pretty bad dude and them not having many stories about Ares being a bad dude, especially since (at least in surviving texts) he's just plain Out of Focus.
Also helps to remember that we kinda only have the footnotes of old myths and religions, even for one as well recorded as the ancient Greek one. Aside the whole "Only Athens recorded that much stuff" thing, there's plenty of things even they recorded that just didnt make it. Even the most religiously recorded of their works like the Trojan Circle didnt survive whole. We got the major bits sure, but the rest not quite.

Re-watch Red video about Stranger in A Strange Land, i disagree with her view on the cannibalism thing. The author kinda right that it was a social construct, a human social construct base on survival instinct (human corpse have a lot of disease so it would be best to not eat). However the Martians aren't human, their social construct and biology are difference from human. It a good case of Blue And Orange Morality. Of course a boys who was raise by Martians would take from them their value and feel okay with cannibalism. The professor was right, different races have difference values so we can't judge it base on our own value. Like for the Martians it's a sign of respect.
E.T technically is a Isekai movie