Probably gonna sound a bit weird here, but, anyone else just have a thing for Ezio's boots in the AC2 trailer?? Have some music playing as I write, and literally every video with Ezio shows the scene where he jumps off the beam at the end and kinda does a 'superhero landing', and I'm always just like 'ugh, those boots.' Everyone else has to have an aspect of an AC character's clothes they just can't explain liking so much, right...?
The boots in question:
I don't blame you, those are some sexy boots.
Also...
They seem to be based on Ezio's final concept art
Because his in-game boots in AC2 look like these:
I guess it could be the same boots if Ezio was to flip the collar?
As for... aspect of an AC character's clothes I can't explain liking so much... I was thinking of Hope Jensen's Assassin Robes but I can easily explain that as me having a soft spot for her kind of clothing design (the frills, it's the goddamn frills and ribbons).
And then I remember...
I really like the yellow fabric on Bayek's default outfit.
I don't really know why? It just looks... nice to me.
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July-August 1948. Long before Supergirl donned her controversial headband, stories set on Krypton had regularly shown Kryptonian men wearing headbands. The above panel from SUPERMAN #53 is possibly the earliest example, at least in the comic books. Not all Kryptonian men wore headbands, but many did, including Superman's father, Jor-El. In 1973, an installment of the "Fabulous World of Krypton" backup strip finally offered an explanation of this unusual custom. This story, by Elliot S! Maggin and Dave Cockrum, is also one of the most distinctly Jewish-coded stories in the Superman canon. Let's take a look under the cut …
There had been flashbacks and time travel stories set on Krypton going back to the earliest Superman adventures, but "The Fabulous World of Krypton" strip first appeared in SUPERMAN #233 back in 1971. These backup strips, generally running between five and seven pages, ran fairly regularly through the early 1980s; the last was in 1982. While many were narrated by Superman, who often appeared at the beginning and end to provide a framing sequence, this one, from SUPERMAN #264, is noteworthy in that neither Superman nor Supergirl is even mentioned, save in the logo:
This story is set on Argo City, home of Supergirl. Although Argo City survived Krypton's destruction (in fact, in pre-Crisis history, Supergirl wasn't born until more than 15 years after Krypton exploded), the red sky in the first panel indicates that this story takes place beforehand. Nim-Ed and his unnamed mother were created for this story and never mentioned again; they're just ordinary Argonians with no particular relationship to any of the major Superman characters.
A noteworthy point here is that while Nim-Ed is shown to be on his way to school, the following account is a story related to him by his mother at home — it's a folk tradition, not an academic history, although since Nim-Ed obviously knows at least part of the story (and his mother implies that he should already know the rest), we can probably assume it's part of Kryptonian school curricula.
Exactly when this story is supposed to have taken place is vague. The pre-Crisis history of Kryptonian civilization spanned almost 10,000 Kryptonian years (over 14,000 Earth years); we only get snippets of it, establishing any kind of sequence of events is difficult, and it's not always clear how literally some of these stories should be taken. (For instance, an earlier installment indicates that all Kryptonians can trace their lineage back to two stranded space travelers named "Kryp" and "Tonn"!) However, if you've ever been to a Passover seder or watched THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, it's hard to miss the parallels here. ("When Krypton was [space] Egypt land …")
An intriguing detail is that we're shown that headbands were already worn prior to these events for a different cultural purpose: as part of marriage ceremonies. The origin of that custom is left to the imagination, but it obviously suggests a longer history of which this is only part. (One segment of THE KRYPTON CHRONICLES #3, published eight years after this story, indicates that the Kryptonian marriage ceremonies of an even earlier era involved bracelets representing Krypton's two original moons, which implies that the marital headbands may have been an evolution of that older custom.)
Note also the presence of the priest, which is relatively unusual: Pre-Crisis Superman stories were generally very cagey about discussing Kryptonian religious practice, although other stories indicate that earlier polytheistic traditions were eventually subsumed by a monotheistic system of belief based around Rao, previously a sun god whose name remained Kryptonians' name for their red sun. Where this priest and his ankh symbols fit into that progression is anyone's guess.
Note also that neither Rik-Ar nor Jani is any kind of warrior; Rik-Ar is a healer and Jani is a teacher.
This bit of business with the fake plague doesn't make a great deal of sense, except to illustrate that Pharaoh, er, Taka-Ne, is a cruel tyrant who doesn't believe in sick days. However, many of these stories revolve around the characters contriving some kind of clever invention, and it's conceivable that editor Julius Schwartz insisted on it here. Also, Exodus involves 10 plagues, so perhaps Maggin figured a story that evoked the Exodus ought to have at least one.
The guards' reaction to the headbands is nonsensical: The guards saw the rashes themselves and were frightened of them, so why would they assume the plague was psychosomatic? Of course the point is that Taka-Ne doesn't really care so long as it doesn't trouble his slave labor force, but it's an odd digression.
Another point of note: ALL of the slaves are wearing the headbands, not only the men.
Here we segue from Exodus to Spartacus, as the slave laborers take their liberation into their own hands. For a Superman story of this time, this is unexpectedly violent, and it's a little surprising that all the strangulation passed editorial muster — comic book editorial standards of the time, not to mention the Comics Code, tended to frown on types of violence that readers might readily imitate, and this would seem to qualify.
Faced with the threat of imminent bloody retribution, Taka-Ne doesn't harden his heart, but seeks instead to cut a deal. The narrative captions would seem to emphasize that there's a lot of lethal violence taking place — not surprising in context, but unusual for a Superman story in 1973. Note that we see women as well as men attacking and presumably killing Taka-Ne's guards.
Note again that in the celebratory scenes, women as well as men are wearing headbands, just as we previously saw women using their headbands as weapons. However, Nim-Ed's mother then describes the headband as "the symbol of a free man on Krypton." The story she's just described took place thousands of years earlier, so the chauvinism of this tradition's modern practice presumably evolved in the interim. Combined with the fact that the headbands previously had a quite different ceremonial significance, it emphasizes that Kryptonian culture is not static, with such signifiers taking on distinct meanings at different times. In that light, Supergirl's later decision to adopt the headband herself makes perfect sense, representing both the liberalization of a current cultural practice (which is how she describes it in SUPERGIRL #17) and a hearkening back to the folkloric tradition from which it emerged.
This story doesn't delineate any specific cultural or tribal divide between Rik-Ar's people and Taka-Ne's, although it's clearly implied that the overthrow of Taka-Ne occupies a similar cultural space for modern Kryptonians as the story of the Exodus does for Jews and Christians. In that regard, it's also noteworthy that this is presented as the story of a secular liberation; it may also hold religious significance that's not mentioned here, but this is a cultural tradition rather than a specifically spiritual one. (The Adam Strange story in MYSTERY IN SPACE #76, also edited by Julius Schwartz, though written by Gardner Fox, presents a comparable historical liberation as part of the story of the foundation of Ranagar City, the home of Adam's girlfriend and later wife Alanna.)
Finally, the actual use of headbands among modern Kryptonians seems at least broadly analogous to the practice of wearing kippot (yarmulkes). Nim-Ed's mother's remark about wearing headbands to dress up might suggest that the headband is more comparable to a necktie, but that isn't really borne out by the stories in which the headbands appear, which show some Kryptonian men wearing headbands even in casual surroundings and others going un-headbanded in quite formal situations. Consider for example Jor-El's fateful meeting with Krypton's ruling council in SUPERMAN #53:
These are Krypton's highest officials in an official proceeding, and their garb otherwise seems quite dressy, but only Jor-El has a headband, so the choice to go headbanded seems dictated by something other than just the formality of the occasion. There's no specific indication that it's a matter of religious expression, but that would explain most of the variations in practice.
(It should be said, however, that headbands appear much more commonly in Bronze Age depictions of Kryptonian culture — particularly in stories published after "The Headband Warriors of Krypton!" — than in stories published in the 1950s or 1960s, and later depictions of the same events will sometimes show characters wearing headbands who were not in previous versions. However, there are still characters who rarely if ever wear one, including Superman himself.)
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My Incredibly Hetero best friend came to visit me on Sunday for the first time since Sept of 2019. Whilst he was helping me load out all the items for donation I've been emotionally breaking up with for the past 3+ years, a Visibly Queer (and Quite Dashingly Attired) person came directly to my open door and asked me directions to a specifically named tattoo shop. I chatted with them briefly, (there are no tattoo shops around here) and said if it was on this road it was rather far away. They thanked me and left.
My friend was baffled at the "confidence of the strangers around here" to just walk right up to my door, and commended me on treating them kindly and without fear.
What I said next absolutely was one of those EyeOpeningMoments:
"I have an enormous queer flag in my window and 3 visible flags when you walk up to the door; that person knew I was safe to ask questions of."
That flag is a flashing beacon.
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