Therobishow - The Robi Show

Man, Dark Academia as a literary subgenre is something that I have struggled with.

On paper, it ticks all the boxes. A heavy focus on academic life, learning for the sake of learning, a love of history, linguistics and myth, the cutthroat nature of elitism, the hollow feeling of disillusionment. Just everything that should make me absolutely love it. Seriously, compiling all of those things together into a book should make that my favorite book.

AND YET.....every dark academia book I've read as been absolute garbage. Books so bad they made me forget why I love reading.

Donna Tartt, Alex Michaelides....it's on sight with these fuckers. I get genuinely angry thinking about these books. I was not even able to write actual reviews of them because I got so fucking angry whenever I tried.

Other DA books I've read have been mostly just meh. So forgettable that I couldn't even give a synopsis of them.

It's a subgenre that I want to love, but all of my attempts have failed so miserably.

I'm currently reading The Cloisters and Babel right now and if these are bad too, I'm just giving up.

I've heard a lot of praise for Babel so I'm hoping it's going to be a light in the darkness for me. But I also heard people praise The Secret History to the moon and back and that book's so horrible in every way that I literally want to burn it.

Please let there actually be good Dark Academia books out there. I can't take anymore disappointment

Okay I need to talk about Dragon Age.

Specifically, I need to talk about Cailan and Loghain.

So Cailan is presented to us as, well, a glory-seeking dumbass who refuses to listen to the advice of those around him. And that's how he's seen and treated by fans. I'm going to say that's wrong, but I do think it's incomplete.

There's some crucial information that we're given at Ostagar that tends to be overlooked. Ostagar is the fourth battle against the darkspawn. So Cailan has already fought three battles against them by the time we meet him. And nothing in those battles suggested any actual intent or tactics from the darkspawn. No signs of organization. Nothing to suggest an archdemon.

So to me, it does make sense that Cailan isn't taking the idea of a Blight too seriously at this point. All he has to suggest a Blight is Duncan's word. And Grey Wardens have been shown repeatedly to be secretive almost to the point of self sabotage. No one outside of the Wardens knows how they are connected to the darkspawn and can literally hear the archdemon.

We also see that Cailan's other advisors are telling him that it isn't a Blight. There's also the fact that the Wardens were banished from Fereldan for years for revolting against the king. It's only relatively recently that they've been allowed back.

So, while yeah, Cailan's kind of a dumbass, it makes perfect sense that he isn't buying into the idea of a Blight. If you remember that he is operating without the information the audience likely has at this point, he doesn't really have a reason to think it's anything more than an unusually large hoard. And he is taking the perceived threat seriously. He has only seen evidence of a large hoard, and he is responding appropriately to the threat of a large hoard.

It was not his fault that the Wardens won't tell anyone anything.

Now, onto Loghain. First off, fuck this guy. I hate this character so much. He's so fucking boring and I couldn't stand it.

With that out of the way, he fully and intentionally betrayed Cailan at Ostagar.

I will agree that retreating was the most tactical choice and that sending in his troops would not have swung the battle. It would have just been even more slaughter.

But I don't think that's why he retreated. He retreated to ensure that Cailan would die, and that he would be the one who got to control the narrative of what happened. It also made sure that he would still have all of his troops, giving him the advantage in the civil war since the other nobles lost so many troops at Ostagar.

He was also pretty fucking stupid. I mean, the guy went and found the one noble that absolutely everyone else hated and fully allied himself with him. Dumb. Just fucking dumb. Literally everyone other than Cousland hates Howe, and Loghain chooses him to be his right hand man. Honestly, dude probably would have won over a lot more nobles if he hadn't done that.

I don't really know how to end this. But, yeah, Cailan isn't as stupid as he's treated, and Loghain sucked so hard.

I was hoping to stream Final Fantasy XV tonight, but it is taking for facking ever to download.

Luckily, State of Decay 2 just got a huge update! So tonight at 10:30 EST, you can join me in hunting down zombies and trying to keep the survivors (and myself) sane

Why am I laughing so much at this

I'm sorry I was gone, but look, I made you some content. Dragon Age 2 content specifically.

https://www.twitch.tv/therobichaud

Juliette x Roma @ these violent delights by Chloe Gong

I might be sick, but I'm still going to be streaming Diablo III on twitch.

Please join me! I'm so lonely!

I think I'm done with podcasts made by men

I love listening to podcasts while I work. Especially ones related to history, film, and literature.

And damn near every time I try listening to ones that are made by men, I end up hitting a point where I have to stop listening and switch to something else. There's always a point where they say something that is so ignorant, blatantly sexist, etc., that I just can't take it.

Often times it's the host buying into a very male-centered lens of interpreting whatever it is they're discussing. And, you know, that's kind of expected. They're men. They're viewing things as men. I get that and I'm usually willing to just roll my eyes and move on. But then it keeps happening, or gets much worse than what can be excused by simple ignorance. And then I can't just roll my eyes anymore. I just want to start yelling. And that's not a good energy to have while I'm trying to do my job. So I switch over to something else.

A good example of this happened today. I was listening to a podcast called History by Hollywood. I found it because I'm a huge fan of History Buffs on Youtube. Comparing historical fiction to the actual history is fascinating to me. I love learning about the real event and how it's translated into fiction. But...it got bad. Real fucking bad.

Now, I can't place all the blame on the creators of HbH. They had guests who do a podcast that I think is called Green Screen, which discusses films through an environmental lens. And I definitely will not be listening to that podcast after hearing them today.

The episode was about Gorillas in the Mist, which is biopic about Dr. Dian Fossey. If you don't know who Dian Fossey is, look her up. She was one of the group known as the Trimates, sometimes called Leakey's Angels. The group consisted of three women who were expert primatologists: Birute Galdikas, who studied orangutans; Jane Goodall, possibly the most well known of the three, who studied chimpanzees; and Fossey herself, who studied gorillas. I would love to write hundreds of pages about how awesome and unbelievably badass these women are/were. Seriously, learn about these women if you haven't already. They are amazing.

Anyway, the episode was about Dr. Fossey. My first issue is that, despite her PhD, they never once referred to her with her proper title. This is upsettingly common with women who have earned doctorates. Men never want to call them Doctor. It frustrates me to no end. But that's not nearly the worst of it. They went on to discuss how she became pregnant twice during her time in Rwanda. She chose to abort both pregnancies because she did not want pregnancy or motherhood to interfere with her work with the gorillas. One of the GS guys commented on this saying "I suppose her reasons could be considered valid." Um, excuse me? First of all, why do you think that you get to decide whether or not she had valid reasons? You don't. Second, of course her reasons are valid. Whatever a woman's reasons are for having an abortion are valid. She's the only one who gets to make that decision. So fuck right off with that. Sorry for getting a bit heated here, but that really pissed me off. There was no need for a comment like that. Especially since it makes it sound like he doesn't actually think her reasons are valid, but is scared of catching heat so tried to sugarcoat it.

Moving on, TW: rape, they also got into the fact that Dr. Fossey stated that she was repeatedly raped by soldiers in 1966 over the course of two weeks. People freaking love to claim that this is "disputed" or "exaggerated" and some go as far as to claim that it was an outright lie. Why? Because she originally claimed that she was treated well and then escorted to the border. Later on, she admitted that she was actually beaten and raped. I'm not going to delve too far into this because a) this post is already way longer than I intended, and b) I will get SO MAD. For the sake of brevity, I'm just going to say that I believe that she was raped, and that she initially lied because she was not ready for this information to become public. The hosts however...well, they'd like to claim that they didn't come down on either side of this "debate" and simply presented facts. But they totally don't think she was raped. They went on and on about all the reasons that she would have lied about being raped, such as political clout, publicity, propaganda, and other dumb reasons. But just couldn't seem to think of any reason that she would have lied about not being raped. Gotta love how men are always able to come up with fifty million reasons why women would make false accusations. It's absolutely not in any way revealing how they think of women.

They also got into the admittedly shitty things that Dr. Fossey did during her time in Rwanda. She wasn't perfect, and she did do some rather bad things. Her approach to conservation work was very much steeped in a colonialist mindset. I'm not about to deny that. And they did do a good job of explaining some of the more overlooked facts of poaching--most African poachers aren't cartoon villains who want to destroy nature. Many are farmers who are killing animals that threaten their crops and/or livestock. And then they get offered lots of money to do it. It's not a simple issue, and doesn't have a simple solution. I don't have a problem with them addressing this, and I'm glad that they did. However, and this is a pretty big HOWEVER, they also didn't discuss any of the great things she did. She saved a huge number of gorillas. She helped improve the Rwandan economy. She fought against multiple colonialist organizations trying to exploit Rwanda and it's wildlife. She helped to revolutionize the field of primatology. There's so much that we know now that we only know because of her. They also decided that the fact that she's a heavily revered and respected figure in Rwanda was worth a few sentences and that was it.

They referred to her as cold and unfeeling multiple times, largely due to her relationship with Bob Campbell, who was married when they met. Apparently the fact that she didn't stick with him for her whole life means that she's cold and uncaring. Ugh. I just fucking can't with this.

And the cherry on top, they made jokes about her murder. Yep. Dr. Fossey was horribly and brutally murdered with a machete in December of 1985. And they apparently think that's funny. Now, I know that some of the people who were close to Dr. Fossey have also made jokes regarding her death. However, there are several Grand Canyon-sized differences between someone using humor to cope with the death of someone they loved, and some assholes with a podcast making jokes about the brutal murder of a woman they never met. They also said that it doesn't matter who killed her or if they're ever caught. Which...no? It very much matters who snuck into this woman's home in the middle of the night and used a machete to brutally murder her. It very much matters if this person is caught. I can't even imagine trying to say that it doesn't matter if an actual murderer is ever caught.

All of this goes into a huge problem when it comes to studying history, especially the history of science. Women are always scrutinized more heavily, always criticized with more vitriol, and always have their enormous accomplishments either left out entirely or pushed to side. I almost never see male scientists given this treatment. Edison comes close, but he always gets quite a bit of "Yeah, he was awful, but let's not forget all the awesome things he did!" Women however get "Yeah, she did a few cool things for science, but let's not forget that she had an abortion!"

I just can't handle this shit anymore. If you managed to get all the way to the end of this wall of text (yay) please recommend me some good history/literature podcasts created by women. I will love you so much.

I hated Percy Jackson so so much. It was boring, the story telling was mid at best, all the characters had no personality or were really annoying and the author has literally never made a good book. All of my friends say that it was so much better than Harry Potter and this and that, maybe I’m biased cause I used to like Harry Potter but I can not stand Percy Jackson. IMO. lol

This one is testing me, not gonna lie, but I hold true to my word and accept your offering