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Also, i dont think discordia attracts any more sociopaths than say, atheism or satanism.

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PICS VIII: 10% LARGER THAN PICS VII

Started by Anna Mae Bollocks, April 12, 2013, 04:16:37 PM

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xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)

Quote from: Cain on June 29, 2014, 06:47:44 PM
I love how perfect that article is.  It's almost like it's striving to try and prove the creator of those comics correct.

If I didn't know better, I'd say "troll".

The best part is "apparently chuckling". Because of course they cant really find this fat shaming cishet trash funny.

The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.

Weevil-Infested Badfun Wrongsex Referee From The 9th Earth
Slick and Deranged Wombat of Manhood Questioning
Hulking Dormouse of Lust and DESPAIR™
Gatling Geyser of Rainbow AIDS

"The only way we can ever change anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy." - Akala  'Find No Enemy'.

Cain

Quote from: xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed) on June 29, 2014, 09:03:37 PM
Quote from: Cain on June 29, 2014, 06:47:44 PM
I love how perfect that article is.  It's almost like it's striving to try and prove the creator of those comics correct.

If I didn't know better, I'd say "troll".

The best part is "apparently chuckling". Because of course they cant really find this fat shaming cishet trash funny.

Anything that mentions anything which can possibly be used as an insult must, of course, be read as an intended insult.  Did Roland Barthes teach us nothing?  Authorial intent is so passe.

xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)

Quote from: Cain on June 30, 2014, 12:41:27 PM
Quote from: xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed) on June 29, 2014, 09:03:37 PM
Quote from: Cain on June 29, 2014, 06:47:44 PM
I love how perfect that article is.  It's almost like it's striving to try and prove the creator of those comics correct.

If I didn't know better, I'd say "troll".

The best part is "apparently chuckling". Because of course they cant really find this fat shaming cishet trash funny.

Anything that mentions anything which can possibly be used as an insult must, of course, be read as an intended insult.  Did Roland Barthes teach us nothing?  Authorial intent is so passe.

And of course, authoral intent is just another text about the text. No interpretations of a text can take precedence over any other. So not only can the text be read as an insult, it can also be read as a satire, a horror story, and a sexual proposition aimed specifically at me and only me.

ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

#2901
P E R   A S P E R A   A D   A S T R A

Junkenstein

http://imgur.com/a/YDGv7



Quotentroducing Wu Zetian, first and only Empress of China — seen here poisoning her infant daughter.

Now, that's actually a bit of a historical inaccuracy: the generally-accepted truth was that she *strangled* her young daughter, to frame the old queen and get her out of the way. It worked — both the old queen and the old queen's mother were executed, and haunted her from that point forward. I thought they'd make good comic relief characters in the movie adaptation.

From there, she ascended to be Emperor Gaozong's predominant consort, and set about eradicating all other claimants to the throne. Early on, her method of choice was a slow-acting poison made from silkworms. As time went on and her influence grew, however, she took to engineering treason charges for her opponents, summoning them to the throne room and making them kill themselves in front of her.

That's some cold shit.

Once the emperor died, her oldest son ascended to the throne, and proceeded to ignore her. She didn't take kindly to this, and had him drubbed out of office, and later forced to commit suicide. In his place, she installed her youngest son, whom she basically locked in his room, so she could rule in his stead. Before long, she dropped all pretense of being the queen regent, and formally declared herself the official empress of China.

Her reign saw the complete rearrangement of dynastic succession, as she systematically wiped out any and all claimants to the throne. In one year alone, she destroyed fifteen family lines, mostly through executions and enforced suicides.

How did she drum up her accusations of treason, you ask? By putting, essentially, anonymous comment boxes sprinkled throughout the palace. When someone pissed her off, she'd have her servant write a tattle-tail letter and place it in a comment box. Within days, they'd be but to the sword — usually their own. This is almost undoubtedly the most hardcore use of an anonymous comment box in history.

She also had an enormous network of spies and a secret police, who further kept any rivals at bay.

If you really got on her bad side, she would enact the "human pig" torture — wherein your arms and legs were cut off, your tongue was removed, and you were force-fed and left to wallow in your own excrement.

Empress Wu did not fuck around.

For people outside of political circles, her reign was peaceful and prosperous. She left the general population be, and opened up the civil examinations to a wider range of people, making for more diversity in the local and regional governments. As long as you didn't cross her, she was pretty cool.

She never remarried, although she did end up banging a Buddhist monk for a lot of her life, and took two younger fellas as lovers late in life. Hardcore lady.

Art note:

* The throne room is based off of ones in the Forbidden City, although it's a bit of a melange of several different rooms.
* Her outfit, as well as that of Emperor Gaozong, are simplified, but fairly accurate.
* The two queen ghosts hovering around her head are also based off of historical representations.
* The baby bottle she has in her hand is also based off of the oldest Chinese baby bottle reference I could find.
* The characters on the baby bottle spell "gold silkworm," a reference to the type of poison she likely used — a slow-acting poison made from the bodies of silkworms.



QuoteIntroducing the eleventh Rejected Princess: Mai Bhago, 18th century Sikh warrior-saint and only survivor of the Battle of Khidrana.

A quick bit of background, since it may be that you, like me, do not know a ton about Sikhs. You probably know that they're the guys who wear turbans, don't shave, and consistently get mistaken for Muslim — usually by ignorant morons who are trying to start something. Frustrating as that is, douchebags attacking them for virtually no reason is something that Sikhs have had to live with for the majority of the religion's existence. Exhibit A: the Mughal Empire.

The Mughals were badasses. Their founder, Babar, had quite the lineage to begin with: descendant of Tamerlane (an Uzbeki warlord known for constructing pyramids out of his enemies' skulls) on his father's side and grandson of Genghis Khan on his mother's. The Mughals continued and refined this legacy. On the one hand they did so militaristically, riding elephants into battle, redefining warfare, and expanding the empire until it encompassed all of present-day India and beyond.

On the other hand, they also advanced literature, culture, and the arts tremendously. They built the Taj Mahal, giant libraries, and had a tremendously multicultural empire. For more info on that, check out Akbar the Great, who — having brought together a huge number of disparate peoples in a surprisingly peaceful, literary, and secular empire, especially for the time — definitely earned the moniker.

Unfortunately, by the time this story begins, the Mughals were being ruled by Aurangzeb, who was neither peaceful nor understanding. He was particularly aggressive towards the Sikhs, partly because of religious reasons, partly because the Sikh weren't down with the caste system. In fact, the Sikhs were egalitarian in general, with women considered equals to men.

Which brings us to Mai Bhago. Sorry for the long intro, I just want you to know what she was up against.

Mai lived in a peaceful rural town with her parents. She spent a lot of time with her dad, who, in their daddy-daughter hangouts, taught her what any good father should: how to be a devoted Sikh, how to ride a horse, and how to kill anyone who starts shit with you. All of these came in handy just a few years later, when the leader of the Sikh, Guru Gobind Singh, founded the Khalsa — the warrior-saints.

You see, the previous Guru before Gobind Singh — and there were only ever ten of these guys to ever live, with Gobind being number ten — was executed by Aurangzeb when Gobind was nine years old. Rather than capitulating to Aurangzeb and living a quiet life, Gobind ordered his followers to eschew the caste system, forsake their family names, be baptized as warrior-saints, and kick ass for the lord.

Mai Bhago was one of the first to get down on that.

The following years were very difficult on the Sikhs, with the Mughals waging nonstop warfare on the Guru. As tough as it was on him, it was arguably tougher on his warriors, holed up in fortress after fortress, eventually subsisting on nothing but nuts and leaves. After months of this, with heavy hearts, forty of them forsook the religion and left the Khalsa, in order to return to their normal lives.

Mai Bhago was having none of that shit. Upon hearing about the forty deserters, she rode to every city around and got all of the women to refuse any hospitality to them. She even rounded up a group of women to take up arms in the deserters' place — telling the forty to either stay behind and look after the children or sack up and fight. Suitably ashamed by this, the forty deserters had a change of heart and decided to rejoin Gobind Singh's cause.

Just in time, too — because as the forty (plus Mai) were riding back to the Guru, the Mughals were making another assault on his stronghold. The size of the army is difficult to determine from historical records, with the only source I can find claiming the Mughals had ten thousand men, which seems a bit ridiculous. In any event, it is agreed that the Sikhs were massively outnumbered.

On December 29, 1705, the forty-one Sikhs rushed in to cut off the Mughals anyway. They did several clever things in and leading up to the battle:

1) Positioned themselves in front of the Khirdana reservoir, the only source of water for miles around, and defended it viciously.

2) Laid sheets  across bushes everywhere, giving the appearance of tents — and then hid in nearby bushes, ambushing the Mughals when they started attacking the empty "tents".

3) Kicked up a colossal amount of dust, attracting the attention of the retreating Guru — who proceeded to unleash an unholy hell of arrows from a nearby hill upon the Mughals.

Eventually the Mughals, battered and thirsty, withdrew. All forty of the deserters died in that battle, as did a large number of Mughal soldiers. Mai Bhago was the only Sikh survivor. From there, she became bodyguard to Guru Gobind Singh, last living guru in Sikh history. She outlived the old man and later died of old age herself. The Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb's leadership began a slow decline and died out a bit over a century later. The Sikh religion continues strong to this day. Her spear and gun can still be found in Sikh museums, and her house has been converted into a temple.

And lastly: although best known by the name Mai Bhago, technically her name, after converting to Khalsa, was Mai Bhag Kaur — Kaur being a surname all female Khalsa take, meaning, literally, "princess."

As an art note: she is depicted here not just wearing the traditional Khalsa clothing, but that of the Nihang, an elite warrior Khalsa sect. This outfit includes a variety of bladed weapons (the Guru was known to have five weapons on him at all times), electric blue robes, steel-wrapped turbans, and steel bangles about the wrist. I am unsure if she was technically Nihang, but for damn sure she had their spirit.

And yes, she is decapitating that guy. Follow the trail of dust to see the arc of her sword. She has her sword and shield on the same arm, up around her shoulder. Realistically, I should have put the shield on her other arm, but hindsight is 20/20.

Lastly: the Mughal being beheaded has period-accurate clothing, although his helmet is one of an infantryman and his outfit is that of a cavalryman. I wanted to be able to see his face.



QuoteLadies and gentlemen, I present to you undoubtedly one of the strangest Rejected Princesses: Corn Maiden, mythological Native American figure.

Corn Maiden figures into a vast number of tribe mythologies, all of which are slightly different from one another. This much is generally agreed upon across most of the stories:

* Corn Maiden was a pretty neat lady who settled down with the tribe in question, a long time ago.
* Somehow, whenever she was around, the corn storehouses would overflow! Corn for everyone! It was pretty great!
* But, she warned, never try and check out why or how that's happening.
* Eventually someone did, only to find Corn Maiden secretly rubbing corn off her skin in the most delicious case of leprosy ever recorded.
* In some versions, it's hinted that she was actually pooping it out into bucket after bucket, bag after bag, like a chunky firehose.

From there, one of two things happened:

1) The tribe chased Corn Maiden out of town, subsequently ran out of corn, realized their terrible mistake, and attempted to find her/make amends, or:

2) The tribe decided to kill her for witchcraft, at which point Corn Maiden was like, "Okay cool, but after you kill me, drag my gruesomely-murdered corpse around the field, and corn will pop up wherever you go. Taking one for the team here, guys!"

I probably don't need to tell you which one is my favorite.

The variations across this legend are innumerable. In the Arapaho tradition, to get rid of her, they tied her up and tossed her in the river. In the Zuni telling, instead of the tribe as a whole driving her off, she was frightened off by the erotic gyrations of the male dancers — only to be later found, after the head rain priest climbed a giant tree to look for them, hiding underneath the shadow of a duck's wing, deep in the ocean.

Undoubtedly the absolute zaniest Corn Maiden tale is the Tepecano version. Due to a lot of exposure to European cultures, their legend got warped into a sort of hyperactive medieval fanfiction that was easily twice as long as any other tribe's version. Try and follow me here.

This guy, let's call him Joe, is lazy and stupid. He finds Corn Maiden in a clearing and is like, "Hey God!" — yes, we're talking Christian Jesus here — "can I marry her?" and God is like, "Sure why not." So he marries Corn Maiden, despite never having seen her face or apparently talked to her. On the way to their house, a personalized cloud forms around Corn Maiden's head, obscuring her features. She then retires to a private room the first night in his family house, and in the morning, it's full of corn. How mysterious!

From there, it is a comedy of errors how poorly things go for poor Corn Maiden:

* Joe's mom makes some corn tortillas and burns the shit out of them, which in turn burns the shit out of Corn Maiden's clothes and skin.
* Joe starts cheating on Corn Maiden with a turtle, whom I cannot tell is actually human or a literal turtle. For hilarity's sake, I am imagining a literal turtle.
* The turtle makes some corncakes, burns the shit out of them, which, again, burns the shit out of Corn Maiden.
* Joe then cheats on Corn Maiden with a raven. Again, picturing a grown man screwing a literal bird here.
* The raven then steals some grain, which pisses off Corn Maiden some more.
* Corn Maiden, sick of Joe's shit, runs off.
* Joe goes to God on bent knee, promises he'll be better, and God is like, "Okay, I believe you. Hey Corn Maiden, get back with Joe." And she does. I mean, what you gonna do?
* At this point, Joe is pretty curious as to what Corn Maiden actually looks like. So, despite being told — by God — in no uncertain terms NOT to look at her face, Joe waits until she's asleep and lights a lamp. She is, of course, beautiful.
* Joe then drops the lamp on her face, again burning the shit out of her.
* Corn Maiden gets the fuck out of his house and runs off before someone else sets her on fire.

From there, it gets EVEN WEIRDER. Joe goes searching all over the world for Corn Maiden, but nobody has seen her, not even God. Eventually Joe finds her in the magical city of Merlin, where the wind does not blow. He then has to bust her out of Merlin prison, fighting off the palace guards in the process, alongside his buddy, Wind — who is an anthropomorphic embodiment of the concept of wind.

Told you it was like medieval fanfic.

Immediately after exiting the citadel of Merlin, Corn Maiden turns into a bunch of corn in a field, and says, "Hey Joe! Look after me for one month, I'll be back, I just have to do this one thing."

Joe makes it a whole fifteen days before getting married to some other girl. Who, presumably, was yet another form of wildlife.

At the wedding, Corn Maiden shows up, drags Joe up in front of God, and is like, "THIS GUY IS A TOTAL DICKBAG."

God finally agrees and turns Joe into a weird vegetable-man-thing, with his head planted in the soil and his feet dangling in the air.

Art notes:

* Her dress is designed to look like corn, with the skirt being the eaves and the shirt being corn-patterned. In many versions, she was responsible for blue corn more than other colors, so I made the kernels blue.
* Joe is visible on screen right.
* Ducks are flying overhead, as she was found underneath their wings in the Zuni version.

There's a bunch more and they're all fucking wonderful.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

minuspace

I also very much enjoyed the rejected princess stuff, Ty junk!
Quotehttp://imgur.com/a/YDGv7

Junkenstein

I'm loving them. I'd actually pay cash money to watch any of these films.

Latest one is good too:

QuoteSo, Khutulun: as you could imagine, growing up with 14 brothers in an old-school nomadic Mongolian household, she had no shortage of testosterone around her at any given time. She grew up to be incredibly skilled with riding horses and shooting bows — Marco Polo, history's greatest tourist, described her thusly:

"Sometimes she would quit her father's side, and make a dash at the host of the enemy, and seize some man thereout, as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father; and this she did many a time."

I mean, picture that. You're up against a horde of Mongolian warriors riding into battle. You're tracking the movements of this huge chunk of stolid soldiers, trying to read which way they're going. Suddenly, one of them — a woman, no less — darts out from the group, picks off a random person in your group, and runs back, before you even know what's happened. That's intimidating as fuck.

But all of this paled in comparison next to her skill with wrestling.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Cain

I usually just say people who are preoccupied with their pre-tax earnings are compensating for a small penis.

Reginald Ret

Quote from: Cain on July 02, 2014, 11:47:35 AM
I usually just say people who are preoccupied with their pre-tax earnings are compensating for a small penis.
:lol: Oh wow, that can be used for (almost) anything!
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

LMNO

Heh.  I remember that ad compaign.  There are a few more out there like it.