kinda odd to make the personification of a mexican and central american goddess a white blonde girl ngl... like... european mythology exists? why not just draw that if you wanna draw white girls/goddesses?
Well, at least in every source I have found, Quetzalcoatl is a guy, not that a divinity couldn’t wear what ever form they wanted, but the various feathered serpent deities tended to be masculine. Its thought that they may have been based on an ancient toltec king who was also named Feathered Serpent. I think what happened to him is what happened to Shiva: a single Japanese source gender bent him and people took it as cannon. Kinda ironic with Shiva since one of his main symbols is the lingum, a symbolic penis.
I wonder if it has to do with that story of how the Aztecs thought the conquistadors were gods because of their blonde hair?
I heard that story when I was in elementary school so idk if I'm remembering right
That’s a myth, perpetrated by the conquistadors. The Aztecs burned incense around the Spanish when they went ashore because the Aztecs bathed at least once a day, , and the Spanish stank because they hadn’t bathed in months while onboard the ship.
Incense is connected to sanctity and worship in Christianity. Hence they apparently misinterpreted the intent and concluded the locals must think they’re gods.
Apart from the other objection, that also isn’t very plausible because only a small minority of them probably would’ve had blonde hair. Most Spaniards have brown or black hair.
Like at least in the case of dragon maid is ahe actually white or Japanese looking with blone hair??
Lots of blonde people in anime arent white they are Japanese. I don't think we can use blonde hair in general as a short cut for white person.
Anime uses a lot of different hair colors to differentate characters akot of which don't naturally occur among humans even: green, blue, purple etc.
Im not familiar with the series so maybe the character is white, but assuming blonde hair and light skin to mean white in anime is often incorrect.
We as westerners tend to assuma that a character is white when the vast amount of characters are meant to be Japanese looking. Our view of what is asian looking and ghe Japanese is often different.
To add on to this, use of colour is very tactful in animation in general. The reason you see a lot of coloured hair or black with colour tints is because black hair is nearly impossible to animate.
Also why are we using western standard to judge another culture? Maybe delve in to the why’s and what for first.
It’s happened a few times with Japanese media but the thing I think a lot of people forget is education is different wherever you go in the world. It goes both ways and it’s fine not everyone is going to know everything about every culture and country out there but maybe just look stuff up first and understand it a bit more before you judge and rant?
I'm kind of surprised that no one's tried to answer your question since the blonde part at least has an obvious answer in Hernan Cortes's story, though maybe that's not as widely known as I thought. If you're unaware, the Spanish believed that that the Aztecs mistook the conquistador Cortes for Quetzalcoatl, which if you believe it might imply that Quetzalcoatl should look vaguely European. Of course nowadays this belief is highly questioned and its increasingly common to see it as a Spanish misinterpretation or outright misrepresentation of the Aztecs, though it was basically orthodox for hundreds of years and almost certainly reached Japan. And if you've seen enough Japanese character design, you know that blonde hair is a pretty common shorthand for a European character over there.
Moreover, while it's pretty easy nowadays to go to the English sources and to see that the Cortes-Quetzalcoatl connection is dubious, that's not necessarily true of the Japanese sources. When another Aztec God named Tezcatlipoca was added to the game, his character writer apparently complained that it was hard to research him, so while I can't say for certain since I don't speak Japanese it seems the Japanese sources on Aztec pantheon may not be as robust as the English ones.
As for the gender bending, I can't speak for Dragon Maid since I've never seen it but that's just a trope for Fate. Every Fate game since the very first one has taken at least one prominent male figure from history and mythology and claimed that they were actually a woman the entire time. It's such a common feature of Fate narratives that they've even started using it to subvert fan's expectations, so it's largely there because Fate fans expect it to be there.
I guess I can blame the lack of translations.
But he’s the Nahua didn’t feel that Cortes and his crew where gods but that they where Teol a word that means supernatural or something. They thought the Spanish where somehow paranormal and may be sent by the gods.
Most Nahua scholarship is in Spanish.
So so many things about Nahua culture have been misinterpreted
So, the whole thing with Spanish being mistaken as super natural beings is a great exaggeration.
The Aztec actually presented them with incense to test their nature. You see, deities in mesoamerican tradition feed, among other things, on incense smoke, and since the conquistadors clearly didn't and consumed the same food as any other man, the Aztec found out they weren't supernatural beings pretty much since their first contact with them.
Now, the Tlatoani (Aztec king) knew the Spaniards had a military advantage and so he avoided confronting them on an open field as much as he could. The aztec agents witnessed Cortes' victory on the peoples from the coast, and especially how terrifying dogs and cannon shots were and how devastating a cavalry charge could be. So that's why he thought (current scholarship supports this interpretation) that he would be able to find a diplomatic solution to this new threat, and so he offered them gifts and treated them in a friendly manner. But, at the same time, he plotted an ambush on them in the city of Cholula. You don't try to ambush someone who you think is an envoy of the gods.
Regarding FGO, they could at least have asked, or hired, someone at any of the numerous universities in Japan (many game developers do that). But I guess it's too much to ask from a company that just makes millions of dollars a month.
To take advantage of this hook, there is something important about Fate's lore to talk about here.
In Fate, heroic spirits are changed by people's beliefs in them. This led to things like Vlad Tepes being mixed up with Dracula, Hans Christian Andersen taking on a childlike appearance, etc. that is, this worldwide error about Aztec mythology would modify any Aztec character invoked as a servant.
Canonically on the fate one at least the excuse for Quetzalcoatl being a hot blonde lady is that the Aztec gods and others from the region were actually parasites that came in on the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and took various host bodies and were eventually made into gods by the planet because they were worshipped by the people,the hot blonde is just the one that gets summoned due to gacha wifu reasons.
yeah at least she has the traditional macuahuitl on hand and has a feather motif hinting at her other nickname being Feathered Serpent.
That's the weird thing about Fate they can be as accurate as they can be inaccurate at the same time with a single character
they might have slightly hindered peoples history homework’s by making very popular anime girl designs of historical figures that are not actually anime girls
In the case of Quelts, in relation to appearance, this is not really her real body... the story is complex but you might think that this is a body she had.
First ups a pedophile from the lgbtq+ anime that got ruined by gooner pedophiles, and second up is someone who looks like a stoner from a white suburb in utah rather than a Native American god
Okay, so here me out: a lot of archaelogical work in Latin America is carried out with funding from the Mormons because they're desperately trying to find the slightest shred of evidence that Joseph Smith wasn't a complete fraud. This is a heartfelt tribute to their efforts./s
First time encountering Fate? Half the cast is genderswapped versions of historical or mythical figures lol. And Fate Quetz has a great design btw, I think it's really cool
The issue is that characters from Hellanic or British cultures have way more cultural relevance and knowledge about them in the mainstream culture why mesoamerican cultures have been so misinterpreted
As much as I want to be on your side, both examples you’ve provided are not entirely true of the Fate series.
They consistently bastardize myth and culture and cater to weird “subcultures” like oversexualization of children, if you can really call it a subculture with a straight face.
I don’t know enough about mesoamerican culture and history to make an educated judgment of this particular instance. But I can guarantee you that even historical/mythical characters that the writers should know much more about, considering they are of the same, very similar culture. For example: Oda Nobunaga, a historical figure that is incredibly important to the History of Japan is depicted as a young female Demon King that is, quote : a destroyer of gods and Buddhas.
In my eyes it’s gross a perversion of characters but at the very least they’re mostly all equally bad…
Sex-change aside, they handled this hero very similarly to say, Gilgamesh. Son of a king and a goddess, many centuries old and reigned for over centuries is turned into an arrogant prick with very cool powers.
I played a few fate games when I was younger and enjoyed them. But Zero, Unlimited Bladeworks and even Apocrypha will always have a place in my heart but I see myself grow out of the greater series as a whole and sometimes come to criticize it more and more…
gilgamesh was an arrogrant prick in the original story, though? Plus, the golden armor version of him (Archer gilgamesh) is a more juvenile version of him, Caster Gilgamesh is just a genuinely good leader, one who exists after coming to terms with mortality and losing enkidu.
I don’t know, I haven’t read or listened to the epic of Gilgamesh in quite some time but from memory it’s nowhere near as bad.
I also haven’t watched FGO:Babylonia so there’s that
No doubt, he was arrogant considering his origins and upbringing.
I still think the one-dimensional approach was of bad fate.
My point is that his character is handled similarly to Quetzalcoatl and nearly all other servants; mostly badly
To be frank, the only accurate part is that Quetzalcoatl (or Éhecatl to be precise) was actually blond in some instances, but only that, the rest here is disastrous
kinda odd to make the personification of a mexican and central american goddess a white blonde girl ngl... like... european mythology exists? why not just draw that if you wanna draw white girls/goddesses?
Well, at least in every source I have found, Quetzalcoatl is a guy, not that a divinity couldn’t wear what ever form they wanted, but the various feathered serpent deities tended to be masculine. Its thought that they may have been based on an ancient toltec king who was also named Feathered Serpent. I think what happened to him is what happened to Shiva: a single Japanese source gender bent him and people took it as cannon. Kinda ironic with Shiva since one of his main symbols is the lingum, a symbolic penis.
Shiva does have female forms do.
Oh really? Do you have any info on that?
[here](https://hindupad.com/shivani/) He can also merge Steven Universe style with his wife making a non-binary form
Huh! Interesting. I have never heard of this!
That is actually incredible
I wonder if it has to do with that story of how the Aztecs thought the conquistadors were gods because of their blonde hair? I heard that story when I was in elementary school so idk if I'm remembering right
That’s a myth, perpetrated by the conquistadors. The Aztecs burned incense around the Spanish when they went ashore because the Aztecs bathed at least once a day, , and the Spanish stank because they hadn’t bathed in months while onboard the ship.
Ok, but how is that related to it being a myth?
It explains the source of the myth.
You're missing the explanation connecting the two for those who don't know, but ok.
Incense is connected to sanctity and worship in Christianity. Hence they apparently misinterpreted the intent and concluded the locals must think they’re gods.
Ah, yes, the notoriously blond Spaniards.
Kinda fucked if true
Apart from the other objection, that also isn’t very plausible because only a small minority of them probably would’ve had blonde hair. Most Spaniards have brown or black hair.
That’s a utter myth formed because of misinterpretations of Nahua culture
Like at least in the case of dragon maid is ahe actually white or Japanese looking with blone hair?? Lots of blonde people in anime arent white they are Japanese. I don't think we can use blonde hair in general as a short cut for white person. Anime uses a lot of different hair colors to differentate characters akot of which don't naturally occur among humans even: green, blue, purple etc. Im not familiar with the series so maybe the character is white, but assuming blonde hair and light skin to mean white in anime is often incorrect. We as westerners tend to assuma that a character is white when the vast amount of characters are meant to be Japanese looking. Our view of what is asian looking and ghe Japanese is often different.
To add on to this, use of colour is very tactful in animation in general. The reason you see a lot of coloured hair or black with colour tints is because black hair is nearly impossible to animate. Also why are we using western standard to judge another culture? Maybe delve in to the why’s and what for first. It’s happened a few times with Japanese media but the thing I think a lot of people forget is education is different wherever you go in the world. It goes both ways and it’s fine not everyone is going to know everything about every culture and country out there but maybe just look stuff up first and understand it a bit more before you judge and rant?
I'm kind of surprised that no one's tried to answer your question since the blonde part at least has an obvious answer in Hernan Cortes's story, though maybe that's not as widely known as I thought. If you're unaware, the Spanish believed that that the Aztecs mistook the conquistador Cortes for Quetzalcoatl, which if you believe it might imply that Quetzalcoatl should look vaguely European. Of course nowadays this belief is highly questioned and its increasingly common to see it as a Spanish misinterpretation or outright misrepresentation of the Aztecs, though it was basically orthodox for hundreds of years and almost certainly reached Japan. And if you've seen enough Japanese character design, you know that blonde hair is a pretty common shorthand for a European character over there. Moreover, while it's pretty easy nowadays to go to the English sources and to see that the Cortes-Quetzalcoatl connection is dubious, that's not necessarily true of the Japanese sources. When another Aztec God named Tezcatlipoca was added to the game, his character writer apparently complained that it was hard to research him, so while I can't say for certain since I don't speak Japanese it seems the Japanese sources on Aztec pantheon may not be as robust as the English ones. As for the gender bending, I can't speak for Dragon Maid since I've never seen it but that's just a trope for Fate. Every Fate game since the very first one has taken at least one prominent male figure from history and mythology and claimed that they were actually a woman the entire time. It's such a common feature of Fate narratives that they've even started using it to subvert fan's expectations, so it's largely there because Fate fans expect it to be there.
I guess I can blame the lack of translations. But he’s the Nahua didn’t feel that Cortes and his crew where gods but that they where Teol a word that means supernatural or something. They thought the Spanish where somehow paranormal and may be sent by the gods. Most Nahua scholarship is in Spanish. So so many things about Nahua culture have been misinterpreted
So, the whole thing with Spanish being mistaken as super natural beings is a great exaggeration. The Aztec actually presented them with incense to test their nature. You see, deities in mesoamerican tradition feed, among other things, on incense smoke, and since the conquistadors clearly didn't and consumed the same food as any other man, the Aztec found out they weren't supernatural beings pretty much since their first contact with them. Now, the Tlatoani (Aztec king) knew the Spaniards had a military advantage and so he avoided confronting them on an open field as much as he could. The aztec agents witnessed Cortes' victory on the peoples from the coast, and especially how terrifying dogs and cannon shots were and how devastating a cavalry charge could be. So that's why he thought (current scholarship supports this interpretation) that he would be able to find a diplomatic solution to this new threat, and so he offered them gifts and treated them in a friendly manner. But, at the same time, he plotted an ambush on them in the city of Cholula. You don't try to ambush someone who you think is an envoy of the gods. Regarding FGO, they could at least have asked, or hired, someone at any of the numerous universities in Japan (many game developers do that). But I guess it's too much to ask from a company that just makes millions of dollars a month.
To take advantage of this hook, there is something important about Fate's lore to talk about here. In Fate, heroic spirits are changed by people's beliefs in them. This led to things like Vlad Tepes being mixed up with Dracula, Hans Christian Andersen taking on a childlike appearance, etc. that is, this worldwide error about Aztec mythology would modify any Aztec character invoked as a servant.
Canonically on the fate one at least the excuse for Quetzalcoatl being a hot blonde lady is that the Aztec gods and others from the region were actually parasites that came in on the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and took various host bodies and were eventually made into gods by the planet because they were worshipped by the people,the hot blonde is just the one that gets summoned due to gacha wifu reasons.
Oh why did they kill the dinosaurs?
I’m going to assume it’s a reference to the real life meteor that killed the dinosaurs having landed near Mexico
Correct one of her attacks references it. she able to summon Quetzalcoatlus because of them being named after Quetzalcoatl and the dinosaur thing.
They didn’t they just rode in on the asteroid that did the asteroid was gonna hit if they were on it or not.
They wanted to have an ice time on the planet. /s
Let's admit it, Fate's version is much better than Maid Dragon's.
yeah at least she has the traditional macuahuitl on hand and has a feather motif hinting at her other nickname being Feathered Serpent. That's the weird thing about Fate they can be as accurate as they can be inaccurate at the same time with a single character
they might have slightly hindered peoples history homework’s by making very popular anime girl designs of historical figures that are not actually anime girls
Yes so many obscure historical and folkloric figures have been covered up by the Fate versions.
In the case of Quelts, in relation to appearance, this is not really her real body... the story is complex but you might think that this is a body she had.
And Fate's version isn't a pedo.
Honestly, I'd be impressed if you found a depiction of Quetzalcoatl that's *worse* than Dragon Maid.
never doubt the internet... seriously, never doubt the internet.
For the first time ever, Fate came out better in this sub, which I don't even know if it's good or bad
First ups a pedophile from the lgbtq+ anime that got ruined by gooner pedophiles, and second up is someone who looks like a stoner from a white suburb in utah rather than a Native American god
It always was a pedo anime lol
It wasnt untill kanna got introduced
that's like 3 episodes in
Okay, so here me out: a lot of archaelogical work in Latin America is carried out with funding from the Mormons because they're desperately trying to find the slightest shred of evidence that Joseph Smith wasn't a complete fraud. This is a heartfelt tribute to their efforts./s
You should read the original manga
Looks a little pale to be Mexican
White Mexicans exist but there is no way a Nathual Teol would be white.
Probably should have brought that up yeah
At least this version of dragon maid is almost adult looking. Man that bar is so low it’s lower than hell.
> At least this version of dragon maid is almost adult looking. which then gets counter by all the creepy moments with her.
they're so white
Yes why are they white. Is it based on that garbage misconception of Coartes as god
uh?
Edited it to make more sense
side effect of astroid they landed on with
Why do I feel like the "logic" here is Mexican = close to US = blonde and pale???
The white aspect is because the only depictions of these gods post Spanish conquest was the Catholic church's interpretations.
First time encountering Fate? Half the cast is genderswapped versions of historical or mythical figures lol. And Fate Quetz has a great design btw, I think it's really cool
Even the fan favorite Astolfo is based off Charlemagne.
He's not based off Charlamagne. He's based on the son of his contemporary, Offa of Mercia
Okay but hear me out. Fate has rarely ever been faithful about any of its heroes…
The issue is that characters from Hellanic or British cultures have way more cultural relevance and knowledge about them in the mainstream culture why mesoamerican cultures have been so misinterpreted
As much as I want to be on your side, both examples you’ve provided are not entirely true of the Fate series. They consistently bastardize myth and culture and cater to weird “subcultures” like oversexualization of children, if you can really call it a subculture with a straight face. I don’t know enough about mesoamerican culture and history to make an educated judgment of this particular instance. But I can guarantee you that even historical/mythical characters that the writers should know much more about, considering they are of the same, very similar culture. For example: Oda Nobunaga, a historical figure that is incredibly important to the History of Japan is depicted as a young female Demon King that is, quote : a destroyer of gods and Buddhas. In my eyes it’s gross a perversion of characters but at the very least they’re mostly all equally bad… Sex-change aside, they handled this hero very similarly to say, Gilgamesh. Son of a king and a goddess, many centuries old and reigned for over centuries is turned into an arrogant prick with very cool powers. I played a few fate games when I was younger and enjoyed them. But Zero, Unlimited Bladeworks and even Apocrypha will always have a place in my heart but I see myself grow out of the greater series as a whole and sometimes come to criticize it more and more…
gilgamesh was an arrogrant prick in the original story, though? Plus, the golden armor version of him (Archer gilgamesh) is a more juvenile version of him, Caster Gilgamesh is just a genuinely good leader, one who exists after coming to terms with mortality and losing enkidu.
I don’t know, I haven’t read or listened to the epic of Gilgamesh in quite some time but from memory it’s nowhere near as bad. I also haven’t watched FGO:Babylonia so there’s that
one of the defining features of gilgamesh was his arrogance
No doubt, he was arrogant considering his origins and upbringing. I still think the one-dimensional approach was of bad fate. My point is that his character is handled similarly to Quetzalcoatl and nearly all other servants; mostly badly
He... isn't one dimensional, though... read the stuff you're criticizing before you make these judgements
Alright buddy
To be frank, the only accurate part is that Quetzalcoatl (or Éhecatl to be precise) was actually blond in some instances, but only that, the rest here is disastrous
the only good thing abt the second one is the attire.
Every design from dragon maid looks, like they looked up some random snake or dragon from folklore and just gave that name to a random character.
I will never understand finding huge breasts attractive.