The Ravages of Time

Posting this mainly so that the Ravages comment section reaches at least 300 responses before Batoto ends.

So it seems that about a week from now this site would initiate the process of shutting down. Although I don't read much here anymore (I used to, back as a lurker, when other sites with scroll-down functions weren't in vogue yet, and back when Batoto didn't require people to register) I enjoyed perusing underrated pieces that I won't easily find anywhere else, plus I appreciate that, in the case of Ravages, this space is one of the few remaining hangout spots for veteran holdouts and the occasional newcomer. It is for these reasons that I feel sad about the impending departure, even though I hardly show up here anyway nowadays.

As some may already know, there's now a discord server for Ravages fans, but since it's fairly new, I think it might take a while before people would start joining it en masse (and staying there long to help rekindle a fan community in decline). There remain of course Ki Shodar's cbox and Merc's blog (and the MAL forums, and the sporadic Ravages discussion gimmicks in Kingdom sites) for the community to congregate and communicate in a more old-fashioned style, though it seems not a lot of people comment there nowadays (partly due to the discussions slowly shifting to discord, not that discussion over there is particularly intense at this point).

I was expecting that a chapter would come out this week to give the scanlators the opportunity to issue a rallying call, but alas it isn't fated to be the case.

Anyway, just dropping by to bid the site adieu, and hopefully to encourage fellow Ravages fans hanging out here to somehow find a way to... continue (to use the Sun clan's favorite principle, haha)

So they're going to get rid of Zhou Yu.

And that would be the explanation for his early death in this story.

So they're going to get rid of Zhou Yu.

What's the name of the old guy at the end of chapter 493 ?

I believe that we do not know his name (yet).

What's the name of the old guy at the end of chapter 493 ?

For no reason in particular, about what year is it in story?

chapter 480 mentions that Liu Du surrendered to Liu Bei in 209, so I think we're still in that year

For no reason in particular, about what year is it in story?

Hmm... Well, first I have to clarify that I deliberately used a broad term 'cerebral' mainly because it covers a variety of aspects such as the complexity of schemes, textual layers, philosophical discussion, social commentary, and so on.

 

Now as for the case of Shoukoku no Altair, I agree that making sense of what's going on in that series (and spotting easter egg details along the way) demands some familiarity with what various areas of study have to say about the periods and places the series draws inspiration from (with the extra challenge of having to deal with a much greater diversity of cultural elements). That being said, by saying that Ravages is arguably more cerebral than what Altair has to offer, I mean that although Ravages tends to gloss over many operational details, Ravages still has the more convoluted stratagems and invokes/involves (without necessarily going into much detail on every point) more aspects of warfare and statecraft, still features more incisive philosophizing (the point you highlight) and more pointed socio-political commentary (whether explicit or implied), and as far as intertextual weaving goes, still makes use of more allusions, quotations, word play, and so on. Plus, Ravages seems to play around with its sources more extensively and intensely than what Altair does, even though the latter by invoking an alternate fantasy setting was able to set up a good number of interesting scenarios and ironic echoes.

 

As for the point of universality, the thing is that every period piece (or rather, every story from every period regardless of setting) has a contextual background and so does not exhibit pure abstract universality. Moreover, calling the whole Ravages cultural package 'Chinese' tends to simplify matters and neglects the internal diversity within the central plains before a semblance of uniformity (and assimilation) was imposed by certain dynastic regimes beginning with Qin. But yes, it's understandable that outsider readers of today would see Ravages and think it as a bundle of hard-to-understand Chinese stuff.

 

On a final note, I use 'Anglophone' or 'English-speaking' instead of 'Western' when referring to the broader international fandom mainly because varieties of English have collectively become the global lingua franca, and I can't assume that an English-speaking reader is also an American or European... Because of that, I don't think a lot of English-speaking people actually have a solid enough grasp of what medieval feudal society is about (although I can concede that as a whole we're more exposed to medieval-esque images and fantasies than the broad strokes of 'ancient oriental civilization')

This very nicely illustrates the disconnect between us and Anglophonic readers of Ravages and just how distant the cultural gap is. You aren't even able to comprehend how alien the concept of Ravages is to Westerners and they can't even comprehend how you're comprehending the things you do.

This also goes into the cerebral aspect we were talking about. Think about an American white guy reading Ravages for the first time (I'm using my ex college roommate as an example). When Guan and Zhang propped up Liu Bei in the fight against Lu Bu, his response was literally to think Liu Bei was awesome. The whole concept of propping up your master's reputation by lowering your visibility is COMPLETELY ALIEN to him. We see at least three examples of this going on in the early story, and the American kid misses every single one of them. This is the same guy who, when reading Shannara, instinctively understood why the Sword of Shannara (whose only power is to reveal truth) was the perfect weapon against the Warlock Lord (who is a magical construct of twisted imagination), or why Achilles MUST lead his Myrmidons to Troy despite all the portents of his doom ('coz heroic glory trumps all - heroes get worshiped as demigods after all).

The problem here is that, if a reader is completely blind to the philosophical aspects of the story of Ravages due to not sharing the same Chinese cultural millieu, then you strip it bare and Ravages is basically a very slowly-paced Kingdom: An action series with superhuman warriors beating each other and supposedly smart dudes playing nine-dimensional chess that you don't care about because you have no grasp of the cultural ideas behind their moves. We can quickly grasp what Zhou Yu is doing in the latest chapter because he speaks in shorthand we can understand, but an American not steeped in the same culture would have never heard of the original sayings the shorthand is derived from and just focus on the beatdown as the core of the manga. This may be very shocking to people from our culture, but to an "Anglophone", Ravages is NOT "cerebral" at all. It's basically Naruto.

When I mention universality of narrative, it doesn't have to do with any cultural baggage. It's the way historical fiction worldwide is written today, which Ravages actually avoids with a vengeance. Let's compare Altair to Ravages.

First we have the world-building, exposing the Stratocracy and Balt-Rhein as opposing states with very different organizational structure and ideology. The fact that the state structure and ideology are emphasized is because that's how we break down the identity of states all over the world today. It's the UNIVERSAL way we understand nation-states: China is a communist country with a capitalist economy structured as a consensus-driven dictatorship; the US is a republican democracy with a capitalist economy governed by an elected elite. No such exposition is given to even the Han Dynasty in Ravages. What's the difference between the Cao and the Liu? No idea. UNLESS you know the philosophical context of each faction's struggle. 

Second, we have the motivations. Balt-Rhein seeks to expand and stop the growth of Turkiye, the latter wants to expand because they believe they have the right, divine and popular, to do so. In Ravages, what is the motivation driving Lu Bu? Or Liu Bei? Or Cao? Unless you know the philosophical context driving each man (military right for Lu, continuity for Liu, legalism for Cao) it seems like everyone is just acting out blind ambition. 

Finally, we have the protagonists. Altair has a very clear protagonist in Mahmut. In Ravages, EVERYONE is a protagonist of his own story, even Lu Bu the great unfilial betrayer.

So, from a narrative standpoint, it's easy to quickly pick up on Altair because it's written in the universal style of modern stories. This is also the same for Game of Thrones, although the protagonist may change from time to time (with Jon Snow being The One all along). Ravages is deliberately written in the old Chinese narrative style used for chronicles and wuxia. Therein lies the problem.

WE know that all wuxia are philosophical in nature. It's not about Guo Jing mastering the 18 Dragon Palms, but what each stance meant and why he needed to live through the stages of emotional growth he went through in order to comprehend the Palms. It's not about how awesome the Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre are as weapons, but about what they represent in terms of Yin and Yang and why they need to eventually destroy each other. It's not that the Bride with White Hair is evil, but that she's the incarnation of twisted justice for her unjust time (yes, I'm a Jin Yong whore). People who don't know? They completely miss the philosophical basis and we have kung fu movies. If you talk to even the most devoted American fan of wuxia, what they see is just the kung fu, not the philosophical basis for the narrative. In working through that style of wuxia narrative, Ravages loses that element of universality that a work like Altair has ingrained in it that make it easier for non-Chinese (or people steeped in Chinese cultural zeitgeist) to enjoy.

Also, you kind of miss the deeply-ingrained shadow of medieval feudalism in even American culture. The Kennedy White House was Camelot and Leia Organa is a princess first, senator second. Americans secretly love feudalism (or rather, what they think it is) and medieval feudalism is the basis of ALL Western fantasy work. This is even more true across the pond. Game of Thrones works for all audiences because it sticks to that imaginary feudal model. Kingdom, ironically, is written like a Western fantasy despite ostensibly being historical fiction based on Chinese history. If you read Kingdom, there isn't a shred of Chinese philosophy to be found in it. They got the Mandate of Heaven wrong. They got Tian Xia wrong. They even got Sun Tzu completely off. That's why it also works for a Western audience. It's a fantasy written in the universal style of the genre which just happens to be set in ancient China. Even the kind of historical accuracy opted for in Kingdom is universal, with fictional battles interjected ONLY when the official records are silent. Ravages tries to be historically accurate in the Chinese way, so Taishi Ci still got killed in battle despite all official records clearly saying he died from illness. 

So why is Dong more philosophically solid than Yuan? Because the Yuan lack refinement. Both Dong and Yuan (in Ravages) are Confucianists. The Yuan believe in following the core Confucianist doctrine of returning to the virtues (and ideology) of the Zhou rites. Thus the ultimate conclusion of the decline of the Han was that the Mandate of Heaven was slipping away from the Liu and the Yuan should grasp it because only they could. In doing so, they would achieve the betterment of all because stability could then return. The Dong follow instead the refined Confucianism of Mencius, whose great contribution was analyzing the true form of the Mandate and tracing it to the Will of the people. The Dong realized that chaos was not to be tamed but channeled into a gestalt of the Will that would then give birth to a new Mandate. Thus with their refined understanding of Confucianist doctrine, they rejected forced stabilization and instead pushed the people to make a choice. 

Why then would the sacrifice of the Dong heirs be justified? Confucianist filial piety demanded vengeance towards the betrayer but, more importantly, it was more righteous to destroy the mighty Dong faction than let its power fall into the hand of one not sharing the same principles and refined understanding of philosophy.

And all that would go well over the heads of people not steeped in our culture. You need to be raised on these philosophies to comprehend even that much from just the first arc of Ravages.

On the one hand I can partly relate to that, since for years I was also a silent chapter reader and forum lurker, not really knowing how to get discussion rolling in things I'm fairly familiar with, and being stunned into silence about things I'm not so familiar with. And yes, Ravages isn't the only series where such instances happen...
 
On the other hand, it boggles me why the broader international Anglophone Ravages fandom tends to keep silent even as the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai fans are somehow able to find a way to keep discussing on a relatively regular basis in their respective communities and sites. Plus it pains me to see that whereas other series dealing with some of the stuff touched on in Ravages (say, something like Kingdom or Shoukoku no Altair or Game of Thrones) are able to elicit much dissection and commentary, Ravages despite arguably featuring more cerebral stuff than the ones I've mentioned is routinely passed over and consumed in silence by fans, or ignored and superficially bashed by others...

Ravages isn't particularly cerebral so much as it is philosophical. Altair is a great example of a very cerebral manga in that it requires good knowledge of history, physics, and economics to understand what is going on most of the time, and it is very universal in its presentation of narrative. In Ravages things like these are actually glossed over. What Chen Mou focuses on are the philosophical aspects of warfare and ideology, and this is CHINESE philosophy to start with. As such, the story is simply not universal enough for English readers to discuss, because the cultural basis isn't there. East Asian readers share the same cultural zeitgeist so discussion is easy. In a similar way, all Anglo-speaking peoples share the same cultural understanding of European feudalism that make Game of Thrones compelling to them.

Hmm... Well, first I have to clarify that I deliberately used a broad term 'cerebral' mainly because it covers a variety of aspects such as the complexity of schemes, textual layers, philosophical discussion, social commentary, and so on.

Now as for the case of Shoukoku no Altair, I agree that making sense of what's going on in that series (and spotting easter egg details along the way) demands some familiarity with what various areas of study have to say about the periods and places the series draws inspiration from (with the extra challenge of having to deal with a much greater diversity of cultural elements). That being said, by saying that Ravages is arguably more cerebral than what Altair has to offer, I mean that although Ravages tends to gloss over many operational details, Ravages still has the more convoluted stratagems and invokes/involves (without necessarily going into much detail on every point) more aspects of warfare and statecraft, still features more incisive philosophizing (the point you highlight) and more pointed socio-political commentary (whether explicit or implied), and as far as intertextual weaving goes, still makes use of more allusions, quotations, word play, and so on. Plus, Ravages seems to play around with its sources more extensively and intensely than what Altair does, even though the latter by invoking an alternate fantasy setting was able to set up a good number of interesting scenarios and ironic echoes.

As for the point of universality, the thing is that every period piece (or rather, every story from every period regardless of setting) has a contextual background and so does not exhibit pure abstract universality. Moreover, calling the whole Ravages cultural package 'Chinese' tends to simplify matters and neglects the internal diversity within the central plains before a semblance of uniformity (and assimilation) was imposed by certain dynastic regimes beginning with Qin. But yes, it's understandable that outsider readers of today would see Ravages and think it as a bundle of hard-to-understand Chinese stuff.

On a final note, I use 'Anglophone' or 'English-speaking' instead of 'Western' when referring to the broader international fandom mainly because varieties of English have collectively become the global lingua franca, and I can't assume that an English-speaking reader is also an American or European... Because of that, I don't think a lot of English-speaking people actually have a solid enough grasp of what medieval feudal society is about (although I can concede that as a whole we're more exposed to medieval-esque images and fantasies than the broad strokes of 'ancient oriental civilization')

 

On the other hand, it boggles me why the broader international Anglophone Ravages fandom tends to keep silent even as the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai fans are somehow able to find a way to keep discussing on a relatively regular basis in their respective communities and sites. Plus it pains me to see that whereas other series dealing with some of the stuff touched on in Ravages (say, something like Kingdom or Shoukoku no Altair or Game of Thrones) are able to elicit much dissection and commentary, Ravages despite arguably featuring more cerebral stuff than the ones I've mentioned is routinely passed over and consumed in silence by fans, or ignored and superficially bashed by others...

Ravages isn't particularly cerebral so much as it is philosophical. Altair is a great example of a very cerebral manga in that it requires good knowledge of history, physics, and economics to understand what is going on most of the time, and it is very universal in its presentation of narrative. In Ravages things like these are actually glossed over. What Chen Mou focuses on are the philosophical aspects of warfare and ideology, and this is CHINESE philosophy to start with. As such, the story is simply not universal enough for English readers to discuss, because the cultural basis isn't there. East Asian readers share the same cultural zeitgeist so discussion is easy. In a similar way, all Anglo-speaking peoples share the same cultural understanding of European feudalism that make Game of Thrones compelling to them.

To give an example here, why is Dong Zhuo philosophically more solid than any of the Yuans and why is the sacrifice of his sons and nephews justified when such sacrifice ended his faction? 

Sometimes I wonder... Maybe this manga has quieter forum discussion or comments (compared to other harem series) not because of fewer fans or reader, but because most of chapter left us dumbfounded with its amazing story telling. We can't speculate either because in general we already know the history, while the detail is too complicated for us to speculate... So it's like watching an episodic movies, n everytime we r done watching we can't share anything to others except, "well, it's an amazing movie". N we can't put that line to this comment section per chapter anyway... Since we all already know it. Hence, there's so few comments for each released chapter...

On the one hand I can partly relate to that, since for years I was also a silent chapter reader and forum lurker, not really knowing how to get discussion rolling in things I'm fairly familiar with, and being stunned into silence about things I'm not so familiar with. And yes, Ravages isn't the only series where such instances happen...

On the other hand, it boggles me why the broader international Anglophone Ravages fandom tends to keep silent even as the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai fans are somehow able to find a way to keep discussing on a relatively regular basis in their respective communities and sites. Plus it pains me to see that whereas other series dealing with some of the stuff touched on in Ravages (say, something like Kingdom or Shoukoku no Altair or Game of Thrones) are able to elicit much dissection and commentary, Ravages despite arguably featuring more cerebral stuff than the ones I've mentioned is routinely passed over and consumed in silence by fans, or ignored and superficially bashed by others...

Just reread the chapter now and noticed that page 2 and 3 are supposed to be a spread so I reuploaded the chapter with a fix.

Spoiler

Man, he just had to say that huh ;; 

Quote of the Chapter (490) - Anyone who celebrates privately after the official award ceremony can never be trusted with important tasks.

> Repeating Xbow

I'm no expert on the subject, but that repeating crossbow seem kinda anachronistic, I do realise that Zhuge Liang is often credited with improving and popularising the repeating crossbow, but as far as I've understood it his version seem more likely to have been around 2-3 bolts rather than the 10-20 bolt versions used in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The weapon Zhuge created was a battlefield ballista firing 3 to 5 javelin-sized darts at the same time. It was used to break cavalry charges. The repeating crossbow wasn't even a Chinese invention. One of the minority nationalities came up with it back in the Tang dynasty before they were incorporated into China proper. It was developed from a simple crossbow that didn't need metal trigger parts. Proper Chinese crossbows were made with bronze locks.

I'm no expert on the subject, but that repeating crossbow seem kinda anachronistic, I do realise that Zhuge Liang is often credited with improving and popularising the repeating crossbow, but as far as I've understood it his version seem more likely to have been around 2-3 bolts rather than the 10-20 bolt versions used in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Too busy I only saw the raws this morning. That said, this chapter was awesome! If only Chen Mou stayed in this battlefield for a while.

I haven't started reading this yet, but is that cover for this manhua perhaps
the scene where Zhao yun rescued Liu bei's son?