Vinland Saga - Ch. 212 - Thousand Year Voyage Part 21

[Kingkeal]

Man, every time I come back to this series I fucking despise what it became. It’s so stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t think anyone feels any sympathy for the natives at all in any way shape or form and it’s really weird because you should but you don’t.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy because they’re acting like the greedy Nords at the start of the series who can’t help but kill and ravage and assume they are heroes? Because it clearly isn’t working and they just come off as fucking monsters. Going for and woman and Children in the boats, wow… only can be seen as monsters

I feel like your missing a lot. It's not exactly the natives as a whole but the war chiefs. Plus the attack on the boats make sense, why would they let the nords potential bring an actual army. They also didn't specifically know it was just women and children on that boat. No one here are heroes, the Nords mishandled the situation due to petty bullshit and the native warchiefs want the nord weapons and valuables. It's not as black and white as heroes and monsters.

 

[RexNemorensis]

Man, every time I come back to this series I fucking despise what it became. It’s so stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t think anyone feels any sympathy for the natives at all in any way shape or form and it’s really weird because you should but you don’t.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy because they’re acting like the greedy Nords at the start of the series who can’t help but kill and ravage and assume they are heroes? Because it clearly isn’t working and they just come off as fucking monsters. Going for and woman and Children in the boats, wow… only can be seen as monsters

you're not really supposed to feel sympathy for anyone, or at least I don't think so. war is very stupid and brutal, that's the overall message if there even is one.

 

[Scoottie]

PLMK FAX MY BROTHER SPIT YO SHIT INDEED

 

[Luxonn]

It was good news for all the smaller tribes the mesoamerican empires were oppressing.

Can't blame them. Ritualistic sacrifices and bloody empires running on blood and drugs was soooooo 200 B.C. gonna update the whole region

 

[dsfargeg]

Man, to think that the Thorfinn from like, what, 100 chapters ago? Would have absolutely floored the Lnu

If you think about it, wouldn't that be the right play? If you kill a group horrifically violently enough, the rest of the group leaves you alone. This is why Vlad the Impaler impaled: it scared the hell out of the Turks and they left him alone. If the Nords were horrifically violent every roughly 80 years, they could keep the Lnu too scared to make war.

 

[theamatuer]

If you think about it, wouldn't that be the right play? If you kill a group horrifically violently enough, the rest of the group leaves you alone. This is why Vlad the Impaler impaled: it scared the hell out of the Turks and they left him alone. If the Nords were horrifically violent every roughly 80 years, they could keep the Lnu too scared to make war.

you're saying that as if the Nords would have a chance at all out war though. the Lnu far outnumbers them 6:1, and most of the Nords left arent even trained soldiers. They are not winning this fight.

 

[ThatGuy]

I mean, yeah? That's what happens. If you lose you usually get wiped out unless the winner benefits from you staying around. This was true both before and after the Spanish arrived.

Very few wars have been fought until one side was wiped out. You believe it's common because of media, but in reality not even Rome wiped out the Carthaginians after winning 3 wars.

 

[Gem-Bug]

Every chapter is just "Yeahhh, so that's not ideal"

 

[Zobralolz]

If you think about it, wouldn't that be the right play? If you kill a group horrifically violently enough, the rest of the group leaves you alone. This is why Vlad the Impaler impaled: it scared the hell out of the Turks and they left him alone. If the Nords were horrifically violent every roughly 80 years, they could keep the Lnu too scared to make war.

Rule through violence lacks longevity, as good as Thorfinn is he can’t deal with a whole army on his own, logistically any attempt to fight them would be moot, he’d need a whole army of colonists who were able to fight and even then it would be a mess. The main reason the conquistadors took Mesoamerica is because they had support from the Spanish crown, and they got cucked hard the first time around. Also Vlad was deposed soon after, and while his tactics may have worked, it wasn’t just the scare tactic.

 

[phil777]

Rule through violence lacks longevity, as good as Thorfinn is he can’t deal with a whole army on his own, logistically any attempt to fight them would be moot, he’d need a whole army of colonists who were able to fight and even then it would be a mess. The main reason the conquistadors took Mesoamerica is because they had support from the Spanish crown, and they got cucked hard the first time around. Also Vlad was deposed soon after, and while his tactics may have worked, it wasn’t just the scare tactic.

Let's also not forget the Spanish's military technology and tactic were ahead of the Meso-american civilizations, sadly. Also, they were driven by this nasty religion thing.

 

[danbellucci]

Man, every time I come back to this series I fucking despise what it became. It’s so stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t think anyone feels any sympathy for the natives at all in any way shape or form and it’s really weird because you should but you don’t.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy because they’re acting like the greedy Nords at the start of the series who can’t help but kill and ravage and assume they are heroes? Because it clearly isn’t working and they just come off as fucking monsters. Going for and woman and Children in the boats, wow… only can be seen as monsters

You're very ignorant about world history.
This is normal and reasonable conduct for the pre-modern world. They have reason to believe that the nords are spreading a deadly plague to them , the nords have extremely valuable technology that if they don't get their hands on then the other tribes that are usually competitors will get their hands on then they'll be at risk from those rival tribe. Making war on the nords similar to how they'd make war on other hostile american tribes makes perfect sense and is hardly gratuitous or monstrous. You wouldn't just let nords sail away with their valuable technology to potentially regroup either, they could get reinforcements later so you're just risking your wellbeing by letting them sail away. You don't have time to analyse the population on board a long boat from inside a canoe much lower to the water when you decide to capture the boat anyway.

It's like you expect 10th century people to behave like 20th century liberals.

 

[Swagner]

 

[Swagner]

When the culture you had was about killing your own, you kinda are ok with changing it with something else even if it's still bad.

Nah, I'm pretty sure "well at least it's a different group killing and enslaving us" has never brought anyone much comfort.

 

[Asrahn]

It was good news for all the smaller tribes the mesoamerican empires were oppressing.

lmano, no it wasn't. They got killed all the same by the colonists.

 

[Theozilla]

Nah, I'm pretty sure "well at least it's a different group killing and enslaving us" has never brought anyone much comfort.

Especially when the diseases the Europeans brought to the Americas decimated indigenous populations regardless of allegiances.
Like so many populations of the Americas were decimated thanks to disease during the 16th and 17th centuries, the ecosystems the various civilizations had been managing changed environmentally and contributed to the myth of the Americas being this "untouched" wilderness

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/the-pristine-myth/303062/

 

[sixtem]

Wouldn't be a Vinland Saga comment section without people justifying genocide, acting racist, and being bloodthirsty. This series has a weird fanbase.

Either way, good chapter. I like that despite how bleak everything is, there are still people questioning whether it was actually inevitable. Is there really no other choice? Even if they can't avert catastrophe, knowing that people are questioning the state of things is a glimmering hope for the future.

 

[sixtem]

If you think about it, wouldn't that be the right play? If you kill a group horrifically violently enough, the rest of the group leaves you alone. This is why Vlad the Impaler impaled: it scared the hell out of the Turks and they left him alone. If the Nords were horrifically violent every roughly 80 years, they could keep the Lnu too scared to make war.

It didn't work, though. Vlad was raised by the Turks, worked for the Turks, and was repeatedly captured and imprisoned. He was such a vicious cunt that he lost one of his bids to rule because people kept defecting to his Turkish-backed brother just because that guy wasn't a lunatic. Besides, Vlad had made a coup attempt years earlier with Turkish backing, so he wasn't some champion of Wallachia, either. He died in battle and Wallachia remained a Turkish vassal for four hundred years.

The guy had a cool mustache and a scary reputation, but he was an utter failure.

 

[Makenai]

Reading through the comments I feel like many people here are either too young or just don't understand the nuanced storytelling. The manga was always about war not being good against bad but humans being humans. Either side has people yearning for war and people trying to understand the other group.

 

[Panino]

It was good news for all the smaller tribes the mesoamerican empires were oppressing.

...they all died equally.

 

[Grimmycoffee]

If you think about it, wouldn't that be the right play? If you kill a group horrifically violently enough, the rest of the group leaves you alone. This is why Vlad the Impaler impaled: it scared the hell out of the Turks and they left him alone. If the Nords were horrifically violent every roughly 80 years, they could keep the Lnu too scared to make war.

I feel like this is too narrow of a view, considering Vlad iii seems to be politically outmaneuvered by his brother, Radu III of Wallachia - who is said to have been a commander of the Jannisaries, isolating Vlad from his own boyars and ally (Matthias Corvinus - King of Hungary and Croatia) in less than a year after Vlad's famous night attack against the Ottoman.