Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

@Charles Phipps To my understanding (and admittedly, I'm not an expert on the Middle Ages, and I definitely am not an expert on Game of Thrones), Game of Thrones is actually not a particularly realistic depiction of Medieval/Feudalistic societies. People often mistake it for being realistic by virtue of it being "gritty".

With the morality of the feudal system, it definitely has flaws and I would, naturally, call it inferior system to democracy. But, it also is worth noting a few things in its favor:

-Dystopia Is Hard and a king or lord creating too many problems for their subjects would ultimately be creating difficulties for themselves. They did, in fact, have some incentives to keep their subjects content.

-If I understand correctly, because kings and lords tended to be distant figures, your average peasants actually had a degree of self-rule and sometimes even local pseudo-democracy.

-Large scale democracy wouldn't be entirely workable back then, as the public was largely illiterate, long-lasting paper was uncommon (which was part of why literacy rates were low), and communications were rather slow due to a variety of factors, and much of the public was uneducated anyways.

I think a good way of looking at feudalism is that it compares to Democracy the way a Nintendo 64 compares to the +1000$ gaming PC I'm using to send this message. It's strictly inferior and primitive, but holds some nostalgic value and wasn't necessarily a bad thing given what was feasible at the time.

Ok, a better metaphor would be herbal remedies practiced by medicine men from less-advanced societies. Their herbal remedies might be inferior to modern medicine, but that's not really their fault. Someone proposing we exclusively use said herbal remedies in the modern day is stupid, and ironically has less in common with a tribal medicine man than a "modern" doctor does.

EH, it wasn't the king who ruled them.

It was the Duke

Who ruled over the Counts

Who ruled over the Barons

Who ruled over the Knights.

There's a whole system of oppression via pyramid.

Game of Thrones is a bit like hundreds of particular atrocities all stomped together but the thing about GOT is that it is atrocities that happened to ARISTOCRATS. Very little is shown of the day to day sufferings of the peasantry.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 30th 2020 at 10:09:09 AM

Still can't forget how Snyder told to everyone how it was "historically accurate".

Also, i kind of weird out on why Frank Miller (and his inspiration work The 300 Spartans 1962 movie for that matter) decide to choose Spartans (one of the most hardcore slavers in Greece) as "freedom loving heroes".

The spartans are also homophobes towards the athenians when spartan men practiced homosexuality about as much as the athenians from my recollection. Miller implied that the reason he did so is that the spartans were known to lie about their homosexual practices, but I don't think that's the case?

Knowing Frank Miller, i think its his bigotry on display as usual.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Mar 31st 2020 at 10:45:32 PM

At least in the movie, as far as I'm aware, they don't mock them for homosexuality - they mock them for pederasty. Which was also pretty common in Sparta at the time.

Ancient Greek views on male homosexuality were pretty toxic and very similar to Rome's, i.e. being the "passive" partner in a relationship was frowned upon, to say the least.

The aforementioned pederasty was actually the most common and "accepted" form of homosexual relationship - which is pretty screwed up in itself - and neither Athenians nor Spartans ever denied it because it was seen as a form of tutoring.

Though one thing worth pointing out: Miller basically grabbed some Ancient Greek propaganda and retooled it to stroke his hate boner against Middle Easterners. The Greco-Persian War had been framed as "Greeks good, Persians bad" for a long time because Europeans' primary sources on the war were - surprise - Greek.

In other words: The whole "evil Persian Empire invading freedom-loving Greece" narrative is Older Than They Think.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 31st 2020 at 10:28:37 AM

Best I can tell from my own research for D&D it was nowhere near that uniform, all the peasants had a lord of the manor (normally a noble, but sometimes a common acting on behalf of the king or another noble) and things went up from there, but it was nowhere near the uniform pyramid of power that games like Crusader Kings make it look like.

Noble titles didn’t, as best I can tell, to actually have corresponded directly to land ownership or lordship over other nobles, you’d have the title you’d have and the land you have, but they’re independent of each other, a duke might just rule a couple random villages, while a baron could rule half a county.

Case in point, the two Barons' Wars in England where discontent landowners (the Barons) overthrew King Henry III, creating the first ever Parliament in his place. The Barons were then defeated by the soon-to-be significant Edward I - most infamous for annexing Wales and Scotland and becoming the villain of Braveheart - who retained the Parliament for political expediency.

Well it was never uniform, every country had their variants on it but if you ever try to explain the rules of an entire age, you'll end up simplifying or mispreresenting something.

One of the things that I think is forgotten when dealing with Feudalism is considering its preceeding system and how Feudalism itself evolved and transformed during Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Era up until the French Revolution.

So I'm kinda annoyed on internet comments on manga on how lot of them basically bows down to "Boo, Main character is into monogamy instead of banging all of his harem, what an idiot"

Monogamy is a tease in a harem comic. "Oh, all these women want to bang our hero but he's admirable he only wants and will date/be with one." It's a bit of a Broken Aesop as if monogamy and seeking monogamy is the only valid relationship.

What manga?

Drunkennortherm: I think the main source was herodotus who kinda retool the fight in term of greek vs persian in order to share a main culture, back them some polis actually feel more in comon with persia in general.

and if I have to guess, mark used the spartan because they were close to whole uber macho marines appeal he wanted.

Edited by unknowing on Mar 31st 2020 at 2:45:42 PM

^^Its not even about harem comics though, just about ANY manga with multiple girls having crush on MC

There is also assuming that all girls would be happy with polygamy either

^Like I said, any manga applies, but if you want to know latest one that provoked my annoyance it was Tsuyokute New Saga(context: Its one of those "hero upon defeating demon lord with massive losses got mentally time traveled back to the past and is now trying to identify the demon lord before they rose to power and stop them to avoid all the losses". In original time line he was in love with her childhood friend who died in demon attack and later fell in love with his elf companion, but due to time travel and having them both alive he decided to not tell latter what his relationship with her was)

Edited by SpookyMask on Mar 31st 2020 at 9:53:57 PM

The most cynical reason I've heard that a male main character gets a harem is because its Wish-Fulfillment. The people who tend to read these stories involving harems are the type to fantasize being surrounded by cute girls because of how hard it is to look for girls to hook up with in real life.

Another reason is making these stories sell. These stories, whether be it light novel or manga, have a cute girl pertaining to a different appeal for lack of a better term, in a cover. Each girl in a harem is to pertain to a certain appeal and as a result, the more girls that each pertain to a certain appeal, the more money the story makes. How this plays out depends on the author.

Edited by HallowHawk on Apr 1st 2020 at 7:25:05 PM

Interestingly, there's an entire genre of indie books that do very well in the West for harem and reverse-harem.

Here's just some recommended alongside my books (that are not).◊

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 31st 2020 at 11:57:59 AM

I'm kind of on the opposite side of the fence, in that I'd like to see more series with healthy poly relationships (with genre-standard amounts of Will They or Won't They?, drama, etc., included, of course). The harem standard where it's just polygyny and all the women involved either ignore each other or just kind of accept that their harem king gets to have all of them at once is blatant wish fulfillment, and it's pretty awful.

There's a few different polyamory relationships in these novels. I've experimented with it in mine in Lucifer's Star and Wraith Knight but it's hard to tell when a book will contain multiple triang relationships versus Wish-Fulfillment.

Well Siren is good in that regard, with the love triangle being resolve by...having Ryn hooking up with both maddie and the other guy who name I cant remenber right now.

I admit, I have a few One True Threesome pairs for my favorite canon.

I love Rin/Saber/Emiya to any single pairing.

I also like the Dark Sun novels by Troy Denning where there's also a M/F/M heroic pairing.

the think with harem series is more than polymory is pretty much stright series but with wishfulliment, is not a bad thing but is not for everyone.

And I admit im trying to write polymory, both F/M/F and M/f/M is a intersting to write.

Then there's the Wheel of Time, where the (M) MC ends up with a Blonde, Brunette, Redhead harem of love interests, who are basically too close as friends to countenance fighting over him (two of them had already become sworn sisters beforehand).

High school dxd heavily implies polygamy if I remember correctly.

Honestly, if I were to write a story with a harem, there would be some things I would do first:

a) No bland protagonist: If the main character doesn't have a compelling personality then the likehood of attracting so much attention breaks the suspension of disbelief.

b) Avoid the Unfortunate Implications of overusing Because You Were Nice to Me: There was a phrase I liked that summed up one of the biggest problems with the harem genre: "Women are not machines in which you put kindness coins to get sex." Remember, being nice is basic decency and the story should adhere to that.

c) Acknowledge the issues with a harem: It bears to be noted that monogamy remains the norm to this day between straight and LGTB couples because humans in general tend to prefer to have an exclusive partner. A harem story must be willing to address this particular problem if it wants to avod being a Wish-Fulfillment tale.

I'm not sure if it even is possible to have a polygamous relationship that is successful but then again my exposure to polygamy is either harem anime or shows that play it for either comedy or drama.