The Chat Thread (Read OP)

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

He got bit by a radio active spider.

[General Maximus]

Congratulation Max, I hope the two year exile paid off.

Thank you, mate. Having finished schools earlier already and having decided to join the college only next year, I finally get some resting time.

In the meantime I'll spend a lot of time on forums, hopefully this self-imposed exile has ended for at least a few months (I know how it annoys so many people when I repeatedly pop in and say 'greetings/hi/hello how are you' every once a while and then disappear). I'll be spending my days with Hearts of Iron 4 (once it comes out), CK2 and EU4 and other games. A few days ago I decided to intentionally poke my own huge phobia of deep water and bought Silent Hunter III. Awesome game as long as I play it in daytime.

Nice to see this thread is still continuing with intelligent debates.

[Inkie]

How can you stand horizontally like that?!

You're on a roll dude.

[Makrell]

How can you stand horizontally like that?!

Hes got mod powers

[Diamat]

Hes got mod powers

No. Space-time is different in Norway, where the true Valhalla, the gateway to the Asgard dimension, is located.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Ooooh Silent Hunter 3, I should probably get that.

Personally I though Star Gate SG1 ruined Norse mythology for me by making them those Grey aliens. Except in Star Gate they are called the Asgard who clone bodies and jump from one to the other when their time comes.

That's not quite correct though - Louis XVIII recognized that a restored monarchy now needed to adapt itself to meet the legal and societal changes affected by the Revolution, and so he attempted to create a balanced system which would maintain several of the positive legal and societal creations of the Republic. His rule was stymied by constant pressure from the resurgent ultra-royalists, and after his death by Charles X who subsequently attempted to ignore the administrative changes that the Revolution had brought about by restoring the older monarchy, undermining liberal trends where he could. This is why his reign failed - the Orleanist takeover was supported by people because it opposed Charles X's reactionary agenda and sought to preserve the gains acquired during the Revolution. So really, there's only continuity between the Revolution and all of the progressive movements after it, which were mostly about restoring the administrative principles of 1789+, while preserving those principles from chaos and tumult. Essentially an attempt to institutionalize them and maintain the rule of law.

I hope you understand my position I'm not saying that the French Revolution wasn't important or trying to say that it had no impact but I'm more towards pointing out how very short it lasted and was replaced by Napoleon and the Bourbons. As I am quite incapable at expressing myself eloquently without beating around the proverbial bush I had to make that statement. The Populace taking matters into their own hands and supporting a Republic however much they were misled or not was a big deal. But this is far from the first time it happened and there was little in the way of actual rule going up from the populace itself.
Of course there was plenty of things which survived in the form of ideas in minds of the people and in actual administration. Louis XVIII would have to be a fool to ignore all of that, he would have lost his head. But for the most part his rule wasn't all that positive for people and neither was having to live through the revolution itself.

As to whether France was being targeted or France was the aggressor I suppose it depends on the time and place. Mobs running down the streets and chopping people's heads is bound to turn heads quite negatively but because I'm a cynic and I don't believe in the "and they so loved France that they decided to save it by invading it seven times" I'll say it was mixed. Obviously something fishy was going on when Britain pays neighboring countries huge amounts at no interest just to invade France. But in some ways the early proponents of the Revolution also supported an exportation of revolutionary values, society and government by force which would have included armed revolts in other places as violent as in France and invasion of those countries.

When I look at the Bourbon restoration I always think of a foreign aristocracy being imposed on another people. To a lot of Frenchmen it must have been like that since very few of them wanted a king much less a Bourbon but accepted because they were beat and were tired of the past 25 years of constant bloodshed. When a foreign dynasty is imposed on a nation the foreign monarchs will impose their values to maintain the hierarchy but will more often than not try to adopt the customs of the locals. likewise the Bourbons had to make some concessions. Although you're not saying that the Bourbons were positive but I hope you get what I am trying to say.
The case of Louis Philippe is an interesting one though because he seemed far more liberal than any ruler since Napoleon. His accession was mostly possible because Charles X had no adequate heir which the populace would accept (I mean child monarchs are just the worst). I think if anyone gets your point across about the revolution living on it would be Louis Philippe.

But also I think that we should not underestimate good organization being placed into administration and officials which can make level headed decisions. Someone had to make concessions to the lower classes but if it had been the horrible disorganized mess from before then no amount of liberal ideas and concessions would have made any government bearable. It's kind of like Marx saying that the bourgeoisie will always oppress everyone but then the bourgeoisie realize that they have to keep up with everyone else and makes conditions better, what reason is there to rise up then? That's basically what everyone started doing rather than spouting lines from the Universal Rights of Man. Which I would say was the reason why there wasn't a revolution every year in areas as diverse as Germany/Prussia or France itself (although France came close ) or Italy etc.

Anyway fun discussion yall but my hands hurt now.

[Påsan]

Te revelation of the Thor comic book characters almost ruined it for me, but then I got over it.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Yes Thor comics are... interesting? I like some of it but it's just murdering mah mythologies.
Much like DC ruined Hercules except no one read that so it's not main stream thus easy to ignore.

[Påsan]

Thor is designed by someone who has read our mythology but has no understanding of Scandinavia or its culture. Hence the rather weirdo golden city valhalla and all the other gizmos that sets Comicthor apart from the mythological Thor.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

That sort of stuff is what I find most interesting about Marvel's Thor as a sci fi world but in fantasy it doesn't really work especially that over the top. But there are so many other things I dislike about it as well. I tend to stay away from super hero comics and I never really had such an interest in them to begin with.

[Påsan]

Yea its something that just dont work with the whole thor thing when it comes to technology. But whatever as long as they keep making 'aight movies.


Superhero premise in itself is fundamentally stupid (Dude in a stupid costume runs around and fights bad guys). But they dominate the movie world right now so I just go along with it since I love good action movies.

[Inkie]

I hope you understand my position I'm not saying that the French Revolution wasn't important or trying to say that it had no impact but I'm more towards pointing out how very short it lasted and was replaced by Napoleon and the Bourbons. As I am quite incapable at expressing myself eloquently without beating around the proverbial bush I had to make that statement. The Populace taking matters into their own hands and supporting a Republic however much they were misled or not was a big deal. But this is far from the first time it happened and there was little in the way of actual rule going up from the populace itself.
Of course there was plenty of things which survived in the form of ideas in minds of the people and in actual administration. Louis XVIII would have to be a fool to ignore all of that, he would have lost his head. But for the most part his rule wasn't all that positive for people and neither was having to live through the revolution itself.

It 'only' lasted a decade, but those first years were almost certainly the four/five most politically/legally/socially active and transformative years any European country had ever seen. If you look at the actual frenzy of activity and how things were changing from one day to the next, it's hard to compare the short time the Revolution lasted with any similar period of time before it.

Moreover, sure you can talk about the earlier Peasant Revolts, or the Dutch Revolt, the formation of the Swiss Confederacy, the Three Leagues and the like, but this was the first time in Europe such a large country had undergone such a massive democratizing/modernizing transformation in such a small amount of time. I also disagree with the notion that there was little in the way of actual rule going up from the populace itself. In almost every community people started to elect representatives and meet in committees to discuss political and other matters. Federalism didn't manage to take over the tradition of centralized Parisian rule, but it had a strong influence on the way early Revolutionary France was run. Moreover, in Paris itself and almost every other city, popular mobilization was massive - to an extent not really seen since. One can dismiss the sans culottes as a mere mob, but in fact they and other sometimes violent groups were about expressing their political voice, which is why they were constantly crowded around the National Assembly, and widely read (or had read to them) the daily pamphlets and news of political events around the country. They were not politically articulate for the most part but elected people from among them who were, to speak for them and promote laws which they favoured.

The bolded part is pretty much the argument I'm making, as you had earlier said that it didn't have much administrative impact. Living through the Revolution, or through Napoleon was hard (or impossible) for many and both had lots of enemies, but in the case of the Revolution I think you'd need to look some more at primary sources from 1789 to 1793 to understand people's mindsets at the time, seeing as the secondary narrative will generally always be a collective, top-down model which focuses on the big political events and violence, rather than on the reality of people living in their communities and the thoughts of unremembered individuals.

As to whether France was being targeted or France was the aggressor I suppose it depends on the time and place. Mobs running down the streets and chopping people's heads is bound to turn heads quite negatively but because I'm a cynic and I don't believe in the "and they so loved France that they decided to save it by invading it seven times" I'll say it was mixed. Obviously something fishy was going on when Britain pays neighboring countries huge amounts at no interest just to invade France. But in some ways the early proponents of the Revolution also supported an exportation of revolutionary values, society and government by force which would have included armed revolts in other places as violent as in France and invasion of those countries.

Not sure where this point is from as I don't remember debating whether or not France was an aggressor/victim. In my view it's pretty clear that it was an aggressor. Sure, most of the old régime states would have eventually turned on the place, but at the time the UK didn't really want to get too involved, Spain wasn't militarily confident enough, and all of the eastern powers were involved with the partitions of Poland and/or war with the Turk and had little interest in a war in the west, despite what one could (and lots of French people did) believe when they heard the Brunswick Manifesto, which in reality was as stupid as the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum prior to WW1 - essentially threatening war when you have very limited means to actually wage it on a large scale yourself. Both sides heavily underestimated each other, but the French especially - hence why as you said they were all into being 'armed missionaries', and they clearly became the aggressors by declaring war against Prussia and Austria in 1792.

When I look at the Bourbon restoration I always think of a foreign aristocracy being imposed on another people. To a lot of Frenchmen it must have been like that since very few of them wanted a king much less a Bourbon but accepted because they were beat and were tired of the past 25 years of constant bloodshed. When a foreign dynasty is imposed on a nation the foreign monarchs will impose their values to maintain the hierarchy but will more often than not try to adopt the customs of the locals. likewise the Bourbons had to make some concessions. Although you're not saying that the Bourbons were positive but I hope you get what I am trying to say.
The case of Louis Philippe is an interesting one though because he seemed far more liberal than any ruler since Napoleon. His accession was mostly possible because Charles X had no adequate heir which the populace would accept (I mean child monarchs are just the worst). I think if anyone gets your point across about the revolution living on it would be Louis Philippe.

Actually though, among some regions, also the peasantry and artisans, and with the return of many nobles and other royalists, even during the revolution, there was a significant body of royalists in France. Yes, that was my point though, and also that Charles X failed precisely because he didn't recognize that France had permanently changed and kept on trying to undermine the liberal laws of his kingdom.

But also I think that we should not underestimate good organization being placed into administration and officials which can make level headed decisions. Someone had to make concessions to the lower classes but if it had been the horrible disorganized mess from before then no amount of liberal ideas and concessions would have made any government bearable. It's kind of like Marx saying that the bourgeoisie will always oppress everyone but then the bourgeoisie realize that they have to keep up with everyone else and makes conditions better, what reason is there to rise up then? That's basically what everyone started doing rather than spouting lines from the Universal Rights of Man. Which I would say was the reason why there wasn't a revolution every year in areas as diverse as Germany/Prussia or France itself (although France came close ) or Italy etc.

Anyway fun discussion yall but my hands hurt now.

But that's just it, the governments of the Revolution affected some of the most rationalizing and modern laws and administrative changes the world had ever seen. Feudal, aristocratic and ecclesiastical regions, laws, taxes and such were thrown out in favour of things much more efficient and recognizable to us today (and not for nothing ). Although it was chaotic in that the people in charge were often changing quickly and through violent means, there was a lot of continuity between the laws and reforms they enacted, which definitely pulled France ahead of many of the other states still mired in the confused chaos of old régime laws, administration and protocol. The military was also modernized, and Napoleon pretty much inherited the army which changed warfare forever, more than creating it himself. It's for this reason that after the Revolution France quickly became the most powerful state in Europe and managed to fight against basically everyone else for as you say the best part of 25 years.

People didn't rise up throughout Europe while the Revolution was on for many reasons, but the legal/administrative changes of the Revolution were not among the many valid reasons for them not to.

Yea its something that just dont work with the whole thor thing when it comes to technology. But whatever as long as they keep making 'aight movies.


Superhero premise in itself is fundamentally stupid (Dude in a stupid costume runs around and fights bad guys). But they dominate the movie world right now so I just go along with it since I love good action movies.

Yeah, but although there's likely no escaping the genre for the time being, we're probably going to be seeing more edgy things like Watchmen getting adapted into movies soon, as people start to think things are getting stale. I for one really enjoyed the Marshal Law graphic novel.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It's great, because instead of the unhesitating acceptance and indulgent praise we get of the notions of the everyday guy becoming a superhero and being an excellent paragon of justice, Marshal Law examines all of the more sinister outcomes that could happen in such a world where people could become a 'hero'. Many of them are lonely or have low self-esteem and do it for more or less selfish reasons, others already have or acquire supremacist beliefs as a result of bitterness and to justify their feeling superior over people who reject them as freaks. Superheroes were either underpowered (like shooting webs at people and stretching their limbs around) to the point that they had no real ability to do superhero work and only served a propaganda role to get people to enlist and fight real wars, or in the latter case they were overpowered to the point that they were prone to become killing machines indifferent to life or violence (many being unable to feel pain). Serving abroad in grisly wars they came back often suffering from PTSD and formed into gangs of vigilantes looking for reasons to make use of their powers and bashing heads with each other, mostly using the fact that they're superheroes to take what they want. There's a lot of ugly egocentricity, self-righteousness, supremacism and genuine insanity to be found among the 'heroes' populating Marshal Law's world. He's the 'hero killer' villain wearing a grotesque masochist style suit who goes around capturing or killing superheroes every day. He also makes heavy use of guns

I don't know, along with the generous satire within, I found it refreshing.

[AqD]

The golden Valhalla looks amazing! Jupiter Ascending has a better one through.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I haven't seen Jupiter Ascending, I want to even though I know that it's so bad it will sting. But just to see all the sci fi visuals I would watch it.
Oh and Thor 2 despite that when I saw Thor 1 I thought that it sucked.

[AqD]

But you already missed them! Nobody would play them on large theater anymore

[Diamat]

I haven't seen Jupiter Ascending, I want to even though I know that it's so bad it will sting. But just to see all the sci fi visuals I would watch it.
Oh and Thor 2 despite that when I saw Thor 1 I thought that it sucked.

I agree with Pasan, all that superhero stuff is stupid. I refuse to watch any type of superhero movie. I hate them all. I hate superman, thor, x-men, ironman, batman, and whatever other men there are. I mean, even the term "superhero" is so corny.

[Derpy Hooves]

I hate batman

[AqD]

I agree with Pasan, all that superhero stuff is stupid.

Life is worse than stupid. You must hate life too!

[Spartan999]

^Totally, who wouldn't hate life, the board game that is

I haven't seen Jupiter Ascending, I want to even though I know that it's so bad it will sting. But just to see all the sci fi visuals I would watch it.
Oh and Thor 2 despite that when I saw Thor 1 I thought that it sucked.

Just watch a review on it instead of wasting 100+ min on watching a god awful movie.

Or you can always play the shut up meg game to pass the time

Finally, I turned 18 today! Greetings, everyone, it's been almost two extremely busy years since I could join the chat thread.

Happy late birthday.

Here is mine gift

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It's a anime you would prob enjoy

[Påsan]

Well thats not creepy at all.