Jordan Ashley Moore

The one and only Ancient Literature Dude. Ancient Greek, Latin, Old Norse, etc. YouTube reader of ancient languages. Writer. Gamer. Translator.

[Jordan Ashley Moore @AncientLitDude]

Have a listen to some Ancient ASMR with my growing ASMR playlist. Relax, study, or meditate to the sounds of the ancient and medieval world. Ancient ASMR: https://t.co/GTxtTkG2NU

[Sarrah Bellus @sarrah_bellus]

These Black kids told these Latino neighbors to stay in their place because ICE was around looking for immigrants.

So the Black kids all armed themselves with buckets of water, water guns, all the water they could get & threw it all over the ICE “agents”, the agents got so soaked they left.

I love Black people, thank you for being protective of our community in the funniest way.

[Amir @AmirAminiMD]

I am Iranian and I wish these poor kids were still alive. I wish I could sit down with them, have a coffee and a conversation about their lives and their dreams.
I am sorry they had to die so that Benjamin Netanyahu avoids going to prison. I am sorry they had to die for AIPAC. I am sorry they had to die for Jeffrey Epstein. I am sorry they had to die for the depravity and stupidity of your politicians.

These poor kids were murdered by the same monsters that are still busy murdering children from Gaza to Minab.

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

BREAKING: Jake Tapper: “…why were you worried about offending people who support the Ayatollah?”

Abdul El-Sayed: “Jake, on a day where we’re mourning the loss of two more service members in a war we never should have fought I think all of us ought to step back and ask whether or not everybody in Michigan, frankly everybody in America shouldn’t be sad about the fact that this president backed by the prime minister of a foreign government took us to a war we had no business fighting in. So yeah, I didn’t want to comment on it then because it’s a ridiculous pretext, and now you’re asking me about the Ayatollah who’s dead by the way, and you’re not asking me about the service members who’ve died. You’re not asking me about whether or not this war should have ever been fought. You’re not asking me about whether or not the costs that are being borne by Michiganders in the tax dollars we pay or the gas prices that are insane right now, are worth it…”😳

[Katsuhiro Harada @Harada_TEKKEN]

For me, this is already a story from a career that spans the past 31 years.

I’m probably one of the people in the game industry who has traveled to the largest number of countries and actually met local fan communities in person. So honestly, I’ve been influenced by people and cultures from all over the world. More than race itself, I think I’ve always been influenced by “regional culture” and “organizational culture.”

One of the most fascinating moments involving your culture happened in 2019, when I revealed Leroy Smith. (The visual design wasn’t mine, but the original character concept was.)

Right after the reveal, I received this message from the American fan community:

“Can we… can we invite you to the cookout for making an awesome character like this?”

Now, as someone from my generation in Japan, I was actually considered relatively good at reading and writing English. By then I’d already been to North America over 50 times, had maintained the English I learned for university entrance exams, and had been communicating with people on Twitter in English long before translation apps became useful, let alone AI translation.

But honestly… when I saw that sentence, I had absolutely no idea what it meant.

In fact, my very first reaction was:

“Oh no… I’m finished.”

Here’s why.

Back then I was frequently arguing against articles spreading hate toward video games, and I kept seeing people replying with the word “cooked.”

As you know, “cooked” can mean you’re done, finished, or completely destroyed. I also often saw “roasted.” Because of that, I honestly assumed “cookout” was just an even stronger version of “cooked.”

So for one terrifying moment, I read it as:

“Hey… we… we… can invite you to a party where we’re going to beat you up and roast you?”

Even though I thought I knew America pretty well, I genuinely wondered if I’d somehow pressed some invisible cultural button that I wasn’t supposed to touch.

Later, I had another misunderstanding. People kept calling me:

“You are the fxxking GOAT.”

And for about two or three years I honestly thought,

“Damn… here’s another guy calling me ‘a fxxking goat… this animal bastard.’ Better ignore the bait.”

Some people even replied with 🐐 emojis, so I genuinely believed they were insulting me by calling me an animal.

Because of misunderstandings like that, I seriously thought:

“Man… getting our characters accepted by Americans is really difficult. They might actually be even more sensitive than Japanese people in many ways. We need to study their culture much more.”

Anyway, back to the cookout story.

Eventually someone explained that a “cookout” in the African American community is actually one of the highest compliments possible—basically saying:

“You’re someone we’d trust enough to invite to our close-knit family BBQ, where only real friends and loved ones are welcome.”

That explanation was a huge relief.

Then they started showing me BBQ equipment and ingredients…

…and I was absolutely shocked that everything was several times bigger than what we have in Japan.

Sure, I expected the smoker grills to be huge. But even the tongs and spatulas were enormous, and the meat looked like something I’d only ever seen as loot in an MMORPG.

Looking back now, I honestly regret not immediately flying to the U.S. and accepting an invitation to one of those community cookouts.

That really was the perfect opportunity.

Anyway… I’ve wandered way off topic.

Of course I can’t claim that I fully understand what you call Black culture. But if we’re talking about the parts that have genuinely influenced me, the cookout story is certainly one of them.

And the people in these photos have also had a significant influence on me. (I’d like to include many more, but I’ll limit it to four photos.)

[Ana Kasparian @AnaKasparian]

I love how people who’ve normalized celebrations of death are clutching their pearls today.

Just pretend I’m talking about a Palestinian toddler. Maybe then you can relate to my post.

[Hobbes 🌧️ @HomesliceHobbes]

This list has made me realize why no game with the Metroidvania tag on steam has come close to giving me the feeling of Metroid games

No one has to like Super Metroid, but if people call themselves fans of the genre and say it has terrible gameplay we need a genre schism or smth

[Jedi @dhe3g]

No matter how much time passes, I think getting one-shot by a white Mormon kid while blaming gun violence on black people will forever be the worst debate loss. It will never get worse than that. Ever.

[Drainmaker @TheDrainmaker]

AEW has officially launched shirt/bracelet merchandise for Rebel. ❤️

With 100% of profits going to ALS research and treatment. An extremely great cause.

[I AM ALS @iamalsorg]

I am Tanea Brooks. I am Rebel. Now, I AM ALS.

ALS may be terminal, but I'm showing up to fight as an Ambassador for I AM ALS, a patient-led movement pushing for real progress. I’m proud to join I AM ALS & I’m asking you to step into the ring with us → https://t.co/RVHbWz6I52

[Jimmy Palmiotti @jpalmiotti]

Quite the stupid mistake and extremely disappointing to hear. We have amazing Storyboard artists working in Hollywood- that are fast and brilliant and understand the craft.
He is so tone deaf doing this- a guy that makes millions taking away a job that pays 10-30k a film. This move and doing publicity about it- what a really stupid move, honestly.
Shame on him.
Martin Scorsese Backs AI Company and Says He’s Using It to Storyboard Movies: ‘We Have to Be Open to How’ Cinema Can ‘Evolve’ https://t.co/RWpi7xoHhw via @variety

[Jimmy Palmiotti @jpalmiotti]

IT CAN AND MUST BE DONE EVERYWHERE.

[Super_Yan ➜ CEO @Super__Yan]

I unfortunately know a lot of women who can make a list this long of incidents with men except instead of the men being cringe like most of whatever this is, it's men committing assault or harassment.

And we don't publish shit like this because we need to be taken seriously.

[sententiae antiquae @sentantiq]

No. Homeric epics may have historical aspects but they are not history

[sententiae antiquae @sentantiq]

3. The ancient audiences conceived of the heroic world as one big interconnected family, Dannaus, Aegyptus, Agenor etec knit Persians, Greeks, Egyptians, and Phoenicians into one family. Hektor and Memnon were cousins!

[Jordan Ashley Moore @AncientLitDude]

@rhovanielle Absolutely.

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

Metatron called me a "traitor". The accusation came after I made what I thought was a straightforward point about consistency: if we reject a Black actress as Helen on accuracy grounds, we must also reject Matt Damon as Odysseus on the same grounds. If we accept Matt Damon, we must accept the Black actress. You can't have it both ways.

Nolan said explicitly he's not making a historically accurate film. So the entire casting controversy is a bit beside the point. If the director isn't claiming accuracy, why are we policing it?

That said, since we're arguing about Homeric accuracy, let's actually look at what Homer says.

What Homer Actually Describes
Homer's Odysseus is not described as a pale Anglo hero. In Odyssey 16.175, when Athena restores him from his beggar's disguise, the line is: «ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο, ξάνθυσαν δὲ παρειαί...» He becomes dark-complexioned again; his cheeks regain colour. Homer also gives Odysseus curling, hyacinth-like hair, and a dark beard around the chin.

Telemachus is recognised by Helen and Menelaus as looking strikingly like his father (Homer, Od. 4.141–150; 6.229–235; 16.175–176). So no: Tom Holland does not look, like Matt Damon, especially Homeric either.

Now, let's talk about treason and betrayal, we should at least know the history. Because for most of the last thousand years, it is not Greeks who betrayed "the West"; it is the self-appointed West that repeatedly gatekept and downgraded Greeks.

1) In the Middle Ages, Latin writers described Byzantines with open contempt. Liutprand of Cremona mocked the emperor of Constantinople in grotesque physical and moral terms, and portrayed the court as decadent, deceitful and quasi-Oriental (Liutprand of Cremona, Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana).

Crusading texts painted Greeks as treacherous, cowardly and theologically suspect. The "perfidy of the Greeks" became a stock phrase, even as those same writers happily took Greek manuscripts and learning when it suited them (Gesta Francorum; Odo of Deuil; Neocleous 2010; Spencer 2019).

Byzantine authors such as Anna Komnene and Niketas Choniates returned the favour. They call the Franks "barbarians", accuse them of greed and sacrilege, and describe the sack of Constantinople in 1204 as an act of Christian-on-Christian desecration (Komnene; Choniates).

2) Move to the 19th century. At the exact moment of Greek independence, Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer argued that the "race of the Hellenes" had been wiped out and replaced by Slavs and Albanians; modern Greeks, he said, had no real ancient blood left (Fallmerayer 1830).

Racialist ethnogeographers wrote about Greece and the Balkans as zones of "mixed" populations; Greek, Slav, Albanian. The implication was that the clean, classical Greek of schoolbooks existed only in marble and text, not in the living population (Ripley 1899; Todorova 1997; Herzfeld 1987).

So when someone today tells me that Nolan's Odyssey "betrays Western civilisation", I remember that large parts of that same "West" spent centuries saying that modern Greeks are racial and cultural half breeds, not proper heirs of Hellas.

3) Across the Atlantic, early Greek migrants to the United States were technically classified as "white" in law, yet were treated as not quite white in daily life. They faced riots, boycotts and a 1909 pogrom in South Omaha in which an entire Greek district was destroyed (Bitzes 1970; Anagnostou 2004).

In those newspapers, Greeks were lumped together with "Japs and Italians" as a menace to the American worker. Police often looked the other way; Greek Americans responded by forming organisations like AHEPA to defend themselves against the Ku Klux Klan (Roediger 2005; Anagnostou 2004).

1/

[LBark @franzsherbert]

It rules that the big epic right-wing anon accounts on here champion this obviously totally illiterate guy because he owns le freaking woke academics (by refusing to know or learn anything)

[David Miano @DrDavidMiano]

When your political ideology governs your thoughts, you produce braindead takes like this. This is an example of a "historical" analysis from a reactionary political activist who poses as an archaeologist and historian. Let's talk about the sheer ignorance of just the first paragraph of this post...

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

Wilson never used the term “non-White”. Not once. Her analytical term throughout is “non-Greek”aka the Greeks' own civic category, defined by language and custom. You introduced “non-White”, built your argument on it, and are now citing her three pages as proof you were right. You were not. You misquoted her framework and argued against the misquotation.

What Wilson actually argues is grounded in the Greek text. Homer calls the Cyclopes ἀθέμιστοι (athemistoi) at 9.106, a term (deriving from the goddess of Justice Themis) meaning “without divine law and social order”. He calls them ἄγριοι (agrioi) at 9.175, the same word he uses for wild animals and storms. He calls them ὑπερφίαλοι (hyperphialoi), meaning overbearing and arrogant. Three distinct concepts. “Savage” collapses all of them into one English word that became systematically associated from the 16th century onward with European descriptions of indigenous peoples across the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific. That history is not in the Greek. Translating ἄγριοι as “savage” adds meaning Homer did not write.

When Wilson flags how non-Western peoples are rendered in the text, she is speaking from the perspective of modern readers, not making a claim about how ancient Greeks categorised the world; we know how: Greeks and non Greeks. A modern English reader does not encounter “savage” neutrally. They carry five centuries of its use with them. That is a reception history argument. Wilson is translating for modern readers. That is her job.

Her framing is well grounded too. Thucydides in Book VI names the peoples the Greeks displaced in Sicily: the Sicani, the Sicels, the Elymians. Pithecusae was founded c. 770 BC, Naxos on Sicily in 734 BC, Syracuse in 733 BC. Ephorus, preserved in Strabo, records that Ionians were among the earliest settlers at Naxos. Diodorus Siculus, himself a native Sicilian, records in Book V that the pre-Greek peoples of the island lost not only their land but their speech and their name under Greek settlement, all of them eventually called Siceliotae. He is not an outside commentator on this process. He is its product

The Ionian cities of western Anatolia are also the region scholars most consistently associate with the composition of the Homeric epics. The Odyssey was composed c. 750-700 BC. Homer and the colonists came from the same cultural world, at the same time the colonists moved into the same waters Homer used in his poem. The historical facts show that Wilson grounds her argument in the recorded accounts of the ancient Greek history.

For the record: I do not like Wilson's politics. I do not like Aristotle's politics either; he defended slavery and thought women were defective men. I do not like Plato's politics; he wanted poets expelled and philosophers to rule as kings. None of that stops me from engaging with what they wrote and assessing it on its merits. That is what Wilson did.

That is what you refuse to do.
You dislike her politics, so you reject her entire work. That is the thing you accuse me of. Oh, the irony 😂

[Jordan Ashley Moore @AncientLitDude]

To get into heaven you have to know how to hold an N64 controller properly.