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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1736 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 9, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Imagine if Count of Monte Cristo had ended with a botched assassination and getting thrown back in prison. Then Dantes slums it for years before a Crime and Punishment finale. Sequel hook, maybe, but surely infuriating to readers.

They should make it a movie. For once I think the social justice spin would hit the mark, netflix if you’re listening. All along the way, innocent poor people get publically executed like signposts while the 1 % indulges in highly entertaining madcap monstrous buffoonery with no consequence.

Meanwhile, the people were also getting raped and pillaged and starved by the english, and the entire aristocratic warrior class was even more delegitimized by getting its ass repeatedly handed to itself on the battlefield by the commoner english longbowman, and their own stupidity.

For another anecdote: At the first big battle of the hundred years war, Crecy, the french king had brought genoese crossbowmen. Partly because of the rain, they were outranged and outshot by the english longbowmen, so they retreated. The glistening french sons of the aristocracy on their horses, thought this was treason or cowardice and cut most of them down, before charging into the fray and losing horribly (usually ransomed if they survived the battle, unlike commoners). A few days later, the king signed an order that any surviving genoese crossbowmen found on his land should be executed.

I see Craon more as a barry lyndon / becky sharp type zany amoral protagonist, lost in a cruel world, crumbling into the absurd. I do love the end, when the valiant hero finds redemption by the ever-lasting good deed of providing a monk so he can listen to the confessions of a bunch of other monks before they get their heads chopped off for casting a spell on the murderous madman ruling the country by divine grace.

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