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As many of my readers are probably already aware, on 16 April 2021, Punchbowl News released documents, which revealed that Trump allies in the Republican Party, led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, had founded what they were calling the “American First Caucus,” which was supposed to be dedicated to promoting “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure that “befits the progeny of European architecture.”The caucus was immediately denounced as white supremacist. According to this article from The Washington Post, Greene is now trying to distance herself from the proposed American First Caucus, insisting that the documents Punchbowl News released were “a staff level draft proposal from an outside group.”This relates to a controversy that has been boiling in the field of medieval studies for years now over the use of the name Anglo-Saxon. The term has been widely used for over two centuries to refer to the English-speaking inhabitants of Britain after the Germanic invasions of the fifth century CE until the Norman conquest in 1066. Now, though, many scholars, especially young scholars and scholars of color, argue that people should avoid applying the name in this way, because it is largely anachronistic, it inherently implies racial whiteness, and it alienates people of color. Below is a discussion of the issue, along with a few of my thoughts on the matter.A brief disclaimerBefore I dive into this issue, I feel I should clarify that I am not a professional scholar of early medieval England. Instead, I am currently an undergraduate student approaching the end of my third year double-majoring in history and classical studies at Indiana University Bloomington. My main area of study is ancient Mediterranean history. My current intention is to earn a PhD and become a professor of ancient history. (And, yes, I am well aware that, with the current state of the academic job market, I almost certainly don’t have any realistic chance of becoming a professor of anything. I am considering other options.)The first reason I am writing about this subject is because I am personally interested in the European Middle Ages. Even though it is not my main area, I’ve taken multiple classes on the subject at my university and I’ve written multiple articles on the subject on my blog—the longest of which is this article I originally published in May 2019, in which I attempt to debunk the popular misconception that the Middle Ages as a whole were a uniquely “dark” period of human history.The second reason I am writing this article is because the debate going on in medieval studies right now over the name Anglo-Saxon is similar to the debate going on in ancient Greek and Roman studies over the name classics, which has similar problematic historical connections and implications. (If you want to know more about my thoughts on the name classics, I recommend this article I wrote in February 2021, in which I address the issue.)Did the early English call themselves “Anglo-Saxons”?Before we discuss the question of whether or not the term Anglo-Saxon should be applied historically, we need to address an important historical fact, which is that Anglo-Saxon was never the primary name that the early English used to describe themselves. In fact, they actually almost never called themselves by this name.When the early English wrote in their own language (i.e., Old English), they most commonly described themselves as Englisc or Anglecynn. When they wrote in Latin, they most commonly described themselves as Angli. These names occur frequently in early English writings. The compound name Anglo-Saxons, by contrast, mostly only appears in the Latin form Angli-Saxones in Latin texts written by authors living in continental western Europe.In October 2020, the scholar David Wilton published an excellent paper titled “What Do We Mean By ‘Anglo-Saxon’?: Pre-Conquest to the Present” in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 119, Number 4. In this paper, he gives an exhaustive survey of the history of the use and meaning of the word Anglo-Saxon, which, as the subtitle of his paper suggests, spans from the earliest attestation of the name all the way up to the present day.According to Wilton, the earliest known use of the term Angli-Saxones occurs in the Historia Langobardorum, a history written in Latin sometime between 787 and 796 CE by the Italian Benedictine monk and historian Paul the Deacon. Paul writes in Latin:“vestimenta vero eis erant laxa et maxime linea, qualia Anglisaxones habere solent.”This means, in English:“Their vestments truly were loose and mostly linen, of such a kind as the Anglo-Saxons are accustomed to have.”Despite this earliest attestation of the name Angli-Saxones in continental Latin, however, the name does not appear in any Old English or Anglo-Latin texts whatsoever until nearly a century later. The earliest known use of the name Angli-Saxones in a text written in Britain is a charter from the year 891 CE that refers to King Alfred of Wessex (lived c. 848 – 899 CE) by the Latin title Rex Anglorum-Saxonum, which means “King of the Anglo-Saxons.”The name Angli-Saxones, however, very quickly fell out of use in England. Alfred’s son and successor Edward the Elder (lived c. 874 – 924 CE) continued to use the same title as his father, but Edward’s own son and successor Æthelstan (lived c. 894 – 939 CE) dropped the title Rex Anglorum-Saxonum in favor of the even more aspirational title Rex Totius Britanniae, which means “King of All Britain.”ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a silver coin minted by Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons, bearing his imageAfter Æthelstan’s reign, the name Angli-Saxones and its variants begin to fade from the corpus of Anglo-Latin literature. By the time of the Norman conquest in 1066, the name had already been mostly forgotten. After the Norman conquest, the name Anglo-Saxons and its variants disappear almost entirely from writings produced in England. There is not a single attestation of the name in any work of Middle English literature and there are only a few attestations of the name in Anglo-Latin literature from this period.Then, in 1586, the English antiquarian William Camden (lived 1551 – 1623) published a chorographic survey of Britain and Ireland titled Britannia. The book is written in Latin and uses the Latin name Anglo-Saxones to refer to the English people prior to the Norman conquest, thereby artificially distinguishing them from the English people of Camden’s own time. Camden’s book became the defining work of English antiquarianism for centuries thereafter and greatly promoted use of the name Anglo-Saxons.Inspired by Camden, in 1589, the English literary critic George Puttenham (lived 1529 – 1590) published a work titled The Arte of English Poesie, which is the earliest known work in the English language written after the Norman conquest to use the term Anglo-Saxon. Other English-language writers followed in Puttenham’s footsteps and, by the mid-eighteenth century, the name was commonly used in historical contexts to refer to the English people before the Norman conquest.ABOVE: Portrait of the English antiquarian William Camden, whose chorographic work Britannia helped revive the use of the term Anglo-SaxonThe invention of Anglo-Saxon as a racial termIn the late eighteenth century, people began to use the term Anglo-Saxon to refer to white English-speaking people of British ancestry in a racial sense to indicate that such people were seen as the true descendants of the early English from before the Norman conquest. In the nineteenth century, the racist ideology of Anglo-Saxonism developed, which held that people descended from the early English were innately racially superior to all other peoples, including not just peoples of non-European ancestries, but peoples of non-English European ancestries as well.This ideology became tremendously popular among upper-class white people in Britain and the United States. Many prominent white British and American thinkers and intellectuals of the nineteenth century were believers in it, including the Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle (lived 1795 – 1881) and the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (lived 1803 – 1882). Various forms of racial Anglo-Saxonism ultimately fed into and influenced Confederate racist ideology, twentieth-century Nordicism, and, ultimately, German Nazism.Largely as a result of the extensive use of the word Anglo-Saxon by nineteenth-century and twentieth-century racists, the racial meaning of the word has become by far the most common meaning across all media in nearly all English-speaking countries. One of the most common places where the word Anglo-Saxon appears in public discourse is in the phrase “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” or “WASP,” which refers to a white person of British ancestry who is a member of a Protestant denomination of Christianity.ABOVE: Photograph taken by Elliott & Fry in the 1860s depicting the Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Caryle, who was an ardent believer in racial Anglo-SaxonismHow the term Anglo-Saxon is being used todayFor his paper, David Wilton conducted an exhaustive survey of how the word Anglo-Saxon is being used in various English-speaking countries today. He closely examined the use of the term Anglo-Saxon in diverse corpora of writings from different countries spanning over the course of twenty-seven years from 1990 to 2017. The main corpora Wilton used for his survey are the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English, the British National Corpus, and the Corpus of News on the Web (NOW Corpus).In his paper, Wilton classifies three distinct uses of the word Anglo-Saxon:An ethnoracial use to refer to white English-speaking people of British descentA historical use to refer to the English people before the Norman conquestA politicocultural use to refer to notions of Anglo-Saxon legal traditionsWilton defined a use of the term Anglo-Saxon as “ethnoracial” in cases where the term was applied to a specific contemporary individual, in cases where the person using the term made reference to racial physiognomy, in cases where it was used as part of the phrase “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” and in other cases where the term was clearly being used to describe contemporary white people.Wilton notes that the ethnoracial and politicocultural uses of the word Anglo-Saxon are sometimes hard to distinguish from each other and that, under some definitions of race, the politicocultural use of the word might also be classified as racial. Nonetheless, he prefers to distinguish between them for the sake of greater specificity.Wilton found that, in writings from the United States, the ethnoracial meaning of the word is overwhelmingly the dominant usage across all media, with 66% of all uses of the word in the United States English corpora he examined being in the ethnoracial sense, 12% being in the politico-cultural sense, and only 22% being in the historical sense. He found that works of fiction were the most likely to use the word in the ethnoracial sense, with 87% of all uses of the word Anglo-Saxon in fiction being ethnoracial.Although Wilton did find that academic books and journal articles were somewhat less likely to use the word in the ethnoracial sense, 54% of all uses of the word in academic texts were still ethnoracial. Only 22% of uses of the word in academic texts were in reference to the English people prior to the Norman conquest. Clearly, then, for academics in the United States, the ethnoracial meaning of the word Anglo-Saxon is still very much the primary meaning.ABOVE: Figure from Wilton’s paper showing the overwhelming dominance of the ethnoracial use of the term Anglo-Saxon in contemporary United States EnglishMoreover, Wilton found that the ethnoracial use of the term Anglo-Saxon was actually even more dominant in works written by Canadian authors than works written by authors from the United States. Fully 74% of all uses of the word Anglo-Saxon in the Canadian English corpora Wilton examined were in the ethnoracial sense. An additional 12% were in the politicocultural sense. Only 14% of uses of the word were in the historical sense.ABOVE: Figure from Wilton’s paper showing the overwhelming dominance of the ethnoracial use of the term Anglo-Saxon in contemporary Canadian EnglishThe same principle held true for Australian English and New Zealand English. In Australia, 54% of all uses of the term Anglo-Saxon were in the ethnoracial sense, compared to only 19% in the historical sense. In New Zealand, 38% of uses were in the ethnoracial sense compared to only 24% of uses in the historical sense.In Ireland, India, South Africa, Singapore, Pakistan, and Nigeria, the majority of uses of the word Anglo-Saxon were in the politicocultural sense, usually followed closely by the ethnoracial sense, with the historical sense nearly always coming in dead last as the least common use of the word.ABOVE: Figure from Wilton’s paper showing the frequency of different uses of the term Anglo-Saxon in other English-speaking countriesOf all the countries Wilton examines in his paper, there is only one country in which the historical use of the term Anglo-Saxon to refer to the English people prior to the Norman conquest is actually the most common use. Unsurprisingly, that country is the United Kingdom itself.Wilton found that, in the United Kingdom, 76% of all uses of the term Anglo-Saxon overall and 87% of all uses of the term in academic texts were in the historical sense. By sharp contrast, only 9% of all uses overall and only 5% of all uses in academic texts were in the ethnoracial sense.This clearly marks the United Kingdom as quite an aberration among English-speaking countries. I’m sure that British people will try to insist that they are the only ones who are using the term “correctly,” but this doesn’t change the fact that the United Kingdom is literally the only place on earth where the historical use of the word is the most common.ABOVE: Figure from Wilton’s paper showing the overwhelming dominance of the historical use of the term Anglo-Saxon in contemporary British EnglishA national divideGiven Wilton’s findings, it should probably come as no surprise that, in the debate over the use of the term Anglo-Saxon, there is a notable division between scholars who grew up in the United Kingdom and scholars who grew up outside the United Kingdom.Generally speaking, scholars who grew up in the United Kingdom are far more likely to insist that it is not problematic at all to use the term Anglo-Saxon in a historical context to describe the English people prior to the Norman conquest. Meanwhile, scholars who grew up outside the United Kingdom—especially scholars who grew up in North America—are far more likely to say that using the term in this way is problematic, because it inherently calls to mind the racist myth that the early English were a racially homogeneous and innately superior people.This division is probably a result of the fact that scholars who grew up in the United Kingdom are more likely to have first heard the term Anglo-Saxon in history class when learning about the early English and to have heard the ethnoracial use of the term later. Scholars who grew up outside the United Kingdom, on the other hand, are more likely to have heard the ethnoracial use of the term first and the historical use of the term later. The history of a person’s own experience with the term therefore has a considerable impact on how that person is likely to view it.My personal experienceAt this point, I would like to make a bit of an aside about my personal experience. I grew up in a rural area outside a small town in Indiana. I don’t remember exactly when the first time I ever heard the word Anglo-Saxon was, but the first time I distinctly remember hearing it was when I was in maybe fifth or sixth grade and I watched a documentary series with my mother about the history of England. The first episode of the series was about the early medieval English and I distinctly remember that the presenter—who was, somewhat unsurprisingly, an older white British man—consistently referred to them as “Anglo-Saxons.”That, however, was outside the classroom and, unfortunately, I don’t remember precisely when the first time I heard the word Anglo-Saxon in the classroom was either. I do remember that, when I was in seventh or eighth grade, we read a play in English class that was based on Beowulf, but I do not recall whether the teacher in that class specifically used the word Anglo-Saxon. If she did, it was already a term I was familiar with, so it didn’t particularly register.ABOVE: Illustration of Beowulf battling the dragon, drawn in 1908 by the English illustrator Joseph Ratcliffe SkeltonThe first time I vividly, distinctly remember hearing the precise word Anglo-Saxon in the classroom was when I was in tenth grade English class. We were reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and, to prepare us for the novel, our teacher showed us a video about the murder of Emmett Till.Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old Black boy from Chicago. In August 1955, he was staying with relatives who lived near the town of Money, Mississippi. On 24 August, he and his cousin Curtis Jones went with some local boys to buy candy at Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, a small local grocery shop.There is dispute about what happened while he was in the store, since the accounts given by eyewitnesses at the time contradict each other and multiple eyewitnesses later changed their testimony, but it is clear that Till said or did something that somehow gave Carol Bryant, the white female proprietor of the store, that he was sexually interested in her.ABOVE: Photograph of Emmett Till, taken by his mother Mamie Till Bradley on Christmas Day 1954When Carol Bryant’s husband Roy heard about what happened, he was furious. Very early in the morning on 28 August 1955, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. W. Milam—who was a much larger man with reportedly more violent inclinations—broke into the home of Till’s great-uncle Mose Wright, armed with pistols.They forced Wright to show them to Till and threatened to kill him if he told anyone. They abducted Till, tied him up in the back of their pickup truck, and took him to a barn, where they beat him and tortured him. Then they took him down to the river and shot him in the head. They mutilated his corpse and dumped it into the Tallahatchie River, weighing it down with a fan they had removed from a cotton gin.Wright refused to call the police because he was afraid for his life and he didn’t think the police would be of any help, but Jones called both the sheriff and Till’s mother. The police arrested Bryant and Milam for kidnapping. On 31 August, two boys fishing in the Tallahatchie River discovered Till’s naked corpse, which was completely mutilated beyond all hope of recognition. The body was only eventually identified as that of Emmett Till because a silver ring Till had worn with the initials “L.T.” and the date “May 25, 1943” was on the corpse’s finger.Bryant and Milam admitted during interrogation that they had abducted Till, but claimed they let him go without killing him. The two men were brought to trial in September in the face of national media attention. There was no shortage of witnesses to various stages of the murder, since the murderers had had no fear of being caught and they had made no efforts to be discrete; they knew perfectly well that violence against Black people was effectively legal and that they would never be convicted of anything.The legal system, however, was thoroughly biased in the white murderers’ favor and the jury was composed entirely of white Southern men. In his closing statement, the defense attorney John W. Whitten Jr. explicitly appealed to the jurors’ racism, telling them:“Your fathers will turn over in their graves [if Milam and Bryant are found guilty] and I’m sure that every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men in the face of that pressure.”When all the arguments had been made, the jury went out for only sixty-seven minutes before they returned to acquit Milam and Bryant of all charges. When one of the jurors was asked why he and his fellow jurors returned so quickly, he replied they would have returned even sooner if they hadn’t stopped to pick up soda.In 1956, Milam and Bryant, having already been acquitted, openly admitted that they murdered Till in an interview with the journalist William Bradford Huie for Look magazine. Milam explicitly defended the murder, declaring that he wanted “to make an example of” Emmett Till “just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.”ABOVE: Photograph of the men who murdered Emmett Till—J. W. Milam (left) and Roy Bryant (right)—smiling with their wives immediately after being acquitted for the murder they later confessed to having committedLearning about Emmett Till’s murder for the first time in tenth-grade English class left me absolutely shocked. I had, of course, previously been vaguely aware that lynchings had taken place in the South during the Jim Crow Era, but I had had no idea of the sheer extent to which the American legal system had protected white people who murdered Black people. It was not a topic that had ever really been covered in any of my history classes up to that point.And there, in the middle of it all, was the word Anglo-Saxon. I think that it was when I heard about John W. Whitten Jr.’s use of the word in his closing remarks at the trial of Bryant and Milam for the murder of Emmett Till that I first had some inkling of a realization that Anglo-Saxon was not the perfectly neutral historical term for the English people before the Norman conquest that I had previously always thought it was.Even after that lesson in English class, however, I assumed that John W. Whitten Jr. was simply misusing the phrase Anglo-Saxon and that it was still an appropriate term to use in historical studies. I continued to use the term for years. In fact, in an article I wrote on my blog as recently as September 2019, I refer to Ēostre as an “Anglo-Saxon goddess.” It was only in around late 2019 or early 2020 that I stopped using the term Anglo-Saxon in my articles. You’ll notice that, in an article I wrote in April 2020, I refer to Ēostre as “Old English,” rather than “Anglo-Saxon.” I did that deliberately.ABOVE: Illustration from 1884 by the German illustrator Johannes Gehrts, representing the goddess Ēostre as the artist imagined herEthnic and cultural diversity in early medieval EnglandThe fact that so many historians and medievalists continue to use the term Anglo-Saxon to refer to the English people before the Norman conquest, even though the same term is so widely used to mean “white people,” only reinforces the inaccurate impression that England before the Norman conquest was a completely racially homogeneous, white society.In reality, no one in early medieval England ever thought of themself as “white” in the contemporary racial sense. As I discuss in this article I wrote in September 2020 about race in ancient Greece and Rome, the concept of a “white race” is a modern social construct that is based on extremely superficial external physical features—not any kind of objective biological reality.This construct did not exist in the ancient world. No one in ancient Greece or Rome ever considered themself racially “white.” In fact, believe it or not, ancient Greek and Roman visual artists often used skin color to differentiate gender, rather than race. In ancient Greece and Rome, men were expected to be outside in the sun and become tanned, while women were expected to stay indoors and remain pale. Therefore, it was a common convention for artists to portray men as having very dark skin and woman as having very pale skin.Geraldine Heng, an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, provides an excellent discussion of how modern conceptions of race determined by skin color developed in her book The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, Chapter Four, “Color.” Heng argues (convincingly in my opinion) that the conception of western European Latin Christians as racially “white” first began to emerge in around the twelfth century CE or thereabouts and developed over the course of the later Middle Ages. Thus, for the entire period before the Norman conquest, the concept of a “white race” did not really exist.ABOVE: Ancient Roman fresco from the House of Mars and Venus in Pompeii depicting the goddess Venus with pale skin and the god Mars with dark skin as a way of distinguishing genderMoreover, even if we apply modern conceptions of race to pre-modern history, England has always been inhabited by people of diverse ancestries and ethnicities. As I discuss in my article about race in ancient Greece and Rome, even before the English arrived in Britain, during the time of the Roman Empire, there were already people living in Britain who came from all over North Africa and the Middle East.Forensic skeletal analyses have tentatively identified multiple individuals from Roman Britain as having most likely been of African ancestry, including the Ivory Bangle Lady, a young woman of elite status who lived in the Roman city of Eboricum (which is now the city of York) in around the fourth century CE.Meanwhile, the Arbeia Museum in South Shields, England, displays a tombstone dating to the late Roman imperial period that was erected by a Syrian man named Barates for his wife, a British freedwoman named Regina. The inscription on the tombstone is written in both Latin and Aramaic, a Semitic language that was spoken in Syria in antiquity.ABOVE: Tombstone of a British freedwoman named Regina erected by her husband, a Syrian man named Barates, bearing an inscription in AramaicThe Roman Empire lost control of its territories in Britain in the fifth century CE as various Germanic peoples from what is now Denmark arrived and took control. After arriving in Britain, these Germanic peoples became the early English. Despite the arrival of the English, however, the ethnic diversity of Roman Britain did not disappear.Additionally, during the early medieval period itself, many people came to England from Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and other parts of western Europe. In fact, people continued to come to England from places even further afield, including North Africa and the Middle East. Some of these people attained very important positions of ecclesiastical and political authority.An Amazigh man named Hadrian was born somewhere in North Africa sometime before 637 CE. Hadrian became a Biblical scholar and commentator and eventually moved to Italy. When the position of Archbishop of Canterbury fell vacant in 667 CE, Pope Vitalian offered it to Hadrian twice. Hadrian refused, but he introduced the Pope to his friend Theodoros of Tarsos, a Greek man who had been born in the city of Tarsos in southeastern Asia Minor in around 602 CE. Theodoros agreed to accept the position as the new Archbishop of Canterbury in 668 CE under the condition that Hadrian would accompany him to England.The two men arrived in England in 27 May 669 CE. Theodoros became the Archbishop of Canterbury and Hadrian became the abbot of Saint Peter’s Church. Together, they founded a school at Canterbury, which provided instruction in the Latin and Greek languages and also produced some of the most noteworthy scholarly work in early medieval England.People living in early medieval England not only came from many different backgrounds; they also spoke many different languages. For one thing, during the Early Middle Ages, many Celtic people in Britain, including parts of England, still spoke various Brittonic and Goidelic languages. English people themselves spoke many different dialects of Old English, with the main ones being West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian, and Kentish.Many educated people throughout different parts of Britain, including most members of the clergy, also spoke Classical Latin. During the early periods of early medieval English history, many speakers of various dialects of Vulgar Latin lived in England as well. During the later periods of early English history, there were speakers of Old French. Even more notably, the Norse, who began arriving in Britain in the late eighth century CE and eventually came to occupy large swathes of the country, spoke Old Norse.Early medieval England was not a monoethnic monolingual monocultural society by any stretch of the imagination.ABOVE: Modern icon showing what the artist imagined Theodoros of Tarsos might have looked likeHow use of the term Anglo-Saxon sends an implicit message that only white people belong in early medieval English studiesThe use of the term Anglo-Saxon to describe the early medieval English reinforces the false notion that early medieval England was a homogeneous white society. This, in turn, sends a message to people of color who might otherwise have had an interest in the field that the field is not for them. It also reinforces the belief among white people who are already in the field that people of color do not belong in it.This article from The Washington Post discusses the experiences of Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm, a female scholar of color, in the field of early medieval English studies. The article notes that, while Rambaran-Olm was a student, her teachers constantly expressed astonishment that she had any interest in early medieval English studies. Unfortunately, it seems that some people saw Rambaran-Olm’s involvement in the field as not only unusual, but outright wrong. The article says that, on one occasion, a person who turned her down for a job told her: “We couldn’t figure out how to justify to our students that you are an Anglo-Saxonist.”Rambaran-Olm further discusses the racism that is endemic to the field of early medieval English studies in this post on Medium from June 2018. In her post, she says that she has repeatedly witnessed talented scholars of color leave the field of early English studies. She says that she has talked to some of these scholars and asked them why they chose to leave the field. The overwhelming response seems to have been that they felt they were not welcome because of the color of their skin:“Over the past eight months I talked to several scholars of color about their choices to pivot out of early English studies. Choosing to stay anonymous for professional reasons, several told me racism was their deciding factor. They told me things like: ‘I had no choice. There was no room for me,’ and ‘in my interactions with medievalists, I always felt ostracized and pushed out.’”“Another said that skin color was a constant distraction to their scholarship. ‘It’s beyond difficult to jockey your way in and continue to try and justify your work when your currency and worth is based on your skin color. As a brown “Anglo-Saxonist” I had no currency, so I realized I needed to switch course.’ Another told me about facing racist harassment from their supervisor in graduate school.”Rambaran-Olm seems to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the entire field of medieval studies in more recent years. In a video posted on YouTube on 9 September 2020, she denounces the field, saying that it has done almost nothing to address the white supremacist narratives it was founded upon and that the field as it currently exists is so extraordinarily hostile to students of color that she does not recommend that young students of color even try to get involved in the field, because it will only cause them suffering and heartache. She warns:“Until we start grappling with these issues and start dismantling institutional bullshit, we’re not going to change anything. Until then, I do not recommend students of color to join. And, students of color, don’t kid yourselves: you are not going to fix anything. We have to dismantle and burn to the ground the field in order for something better to emerge. White people need to quit trying to save this field and make it relevant until you are old enough to retire.”I cannot speak from personal experience here, because I am white and I am not a medievalist. Nevertheless, it seems to me from what I have read and seen of Rambaran-Olm’s work that white medievalists in general don’t realize just what an incredibly toxic environment their field apparently is for students and scholars of color.Just for the record, I’m sure that my own field of ancient history is probably every bit as toxic for students and scholars of color as medieval studies—perhaps even more toxic—but that’s a conversation for another time. The point I’m trying make here is that use of the term Anglo-Saxon only reinforces the implicit racist message that early medieval English studies is a field exclusively for white people.ABOVE: Screenshot of Mary Rambaran-Olm from the beginning of her YouTube video about medieval studies and white supremacy“Reclaiming” the term Anglo-Saxon?Many white scholars—especially white scholars who live in the United Kingdom—have tried to argue that it is imperative to “reclaim” the name Anglo-Saxon from white supremacists. For instance, Howard Williams, a professor of archaeology from the University of Chester in the United Kingdom, wrote an essay for Aeon in May 2020 in which he argues:“When archaeologists refer to ‘early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries’, ‘middle Anglo-Saxon settlements’, ‘Anglo-Saxon great square-headed brooches’, ‘late Anglo-Saxon coins’ and so on, the term tells us about the objects and sites, when they were made or found. The term has no racial connotation whatsoever. Spurious modern racial categorisations are simply inexplicable and inapplicable for the early medieval period.”What I think Williams fails to realize is just how widely the term Anglo-Saxon is used to mean “white English-speaking people of British ancestry.” The term cannot realistically be “reclaimed.” Archaeologists may very well write about the “Anglo-Saxons” and think that the term is racially neutral, but, when other people read what they’ve written, they will inevitably interpret “Anglo-Saxon” to mean “white people.”In this case, it doesn’t especially matter what scholars mean in their heads when they use the term; what matters is what people will actually read on the page.ConclusionAt this point in our discussion, I think that several facts remain clear:Anglo-Saxon is not the primary term that the early medieval English would have used to refer to themselves. In fact, they rarely ever used it.In most countries today where the majority of people speak English, the term Anglo-Saxon is primarily used to refer to white English-speaking people of British ancestry—not the historical English people prior to the Norman conquest.Using the term Anglo-Saxon to describe the early medieval English reinforces the false notion that early medieval England was a racially homogeneous society in which everyone was a white English-speaker.This misperception of early medieval England drives scholars of color away from the field of early medieval English studies and reinforces the belief among white scholars that people of color don’t belong in the field.There are other, perfectly acceptable terms that we can use to refer to the early medieval English, aside from “Anglo-Saxon.” For instance, we can call them “Old English,” “early medieval English,” “English people before the Norman conquest.” Indeed, if it’s already clear which period we’re talking about, we can just call them “English.”Given these facts, I think that the term Anglo-Saxon is best avoided—especially in the names of departments and scholarly organizations.I’m sure that some people will accuse me of trying to “cancel” the name Anglo-Saxon, but that’s really not what I’m doing. I’m just saying that, in general, when referring to the early medieval English people, there are other names people can use that are more accurate and less harmful. I acknowledge that there are some specific contexts in which using the name Anglo-Saxon may be necessary, such as when translating an early medieval Latin text that uses it or when talking about Alfred of Wessex and his title Rex Anglorum-Saxonum. Generally speaking, though, it’s not a term that people need to be using.I also want to clarify that I do not think that anyone who uses the term Anglo-Saxon is automatically racist. There are plenty of perfectly well-intentioned people who use the term to refer to the English people before the Norman conquest simply because they either aren’t aware of or haven’t considered the contemporary racial use of the word. As I have already mentioned, I myself used the term for years without fully realizing its racial implications.In September 2019, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, a highly eminent scholarly organization devoted to the study of early medieval England, voted to change its name to the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England. I think this was a wise decision and a step in the right direction—and perhaps the first step along the long road to making the field of early medieval English studies have a bit less in common with the “America First Caucus.”(NOTE: I have also published a version of this article on my website titled “Why We Should Avoid Using the Name ‘Anglo-Saxon.’” Here is a link to the version of the article on my website.)

This is a great question.The number one position here is easy.PrometheusI love sci-fi. Alien and Aliens are some of my favourite movies. I love that universe's vision of the future. Ridley Scott is a very talented director. What's more, it didn't suffer from the standard form of the disease that has been ravaging Hollywood, unnecessary prequel-itis. Too often a prequel is made for a prequel's sake (read: the sake of the almighty Dollar!) But here, there plausibly could have been a story that needed to be told and was interesting.On top of that, the trailer really was excellent. Hell, the first hour of the film was excellent (right until they enter the mounds). But then it all fell to pieces and none of it made sense. Stupid plot decisions (the mapping specialist gets lost? Did he say someone else's lines by mistake. It is just moviemaking 101 to have a different character be the one that gets lost).There were two ways of making Prometheus not suck.1. Tell a detective story. Have us never meet a live engineer/space jockey, and have the main characters try to piece together what happened to them and how they disappeared. Easy to weave in all the standard Alien tropes of human beings screwing each other over for money here. Maybe near the very end of the movie, have a xenomorph released and kill all the crew. But even that's not necessary, the story could work without a xenomorph if the script was good.2. Tell a story wholly from the perspective of the engineers. This would be a lot harder, and might end up resembling Avatar too much. Likely too much CGI schlock.As it is, we got a crap horror/thriller that is loosely connected with the Alien universe, and were then hit over the head with a message about religious faith. I like movies about faith! But they have to be subtle. And faith was just obviously absent from the other Alien movies, so had no place here.The Hobbit FranchiseI love Tolkien. And, I love the Peter Jackson LOTR movies. Sure, there were a few decisions Jackson made that I disagreed with but we can put these to one side. We got two very good movies and one 5 star one (Fellowship). I was really looking forward to the Hobbit films - the pre-release teasers were excellent, and showed that Jackson and Co still really cared about the universe and the magic of moviemaking (costumes, practical effects etc).And then I saw the movies. They were all awful, made into big-dumb action movies with far too much CGI. I reckon you could fan edit the trilogy into one decent movie though.Harry Potter and the Philosopher's StoneI was one of the first kids in my primary school to read the Harry Potter books. I loved them. I was really looking forward to this movie. But I hated it. It just didn't have the magic of the books to me. In terms of nitpicking, I couldn't understand why Dudley was not blonde when he is explicitly described as such in the books. To this day, I have only seen the first two movies in the franchise.Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullI expect this one to have high participation here. Basically it's very, very average. There is one or two really great scenes (the greaser/jock fight in the diner, the motorcycle chase on campus) amid a sea of mediocrity. Red Letter Media perfectly skewer the movie:Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullTroyThis film is actually pretty passable/above average, but it could've/should've been great. I'm a big fan of sword and sandles epics, and this was one botched. The reason it was botched is that it did not include the gods or the supernatural in any way, when they're an integral part of the story. The way to include them would've been to copy the way they're portrayed in Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts. The idea of gods playing chess with men's lives fits the period really well.The Star Wars prequelsI actually didn't hate these when they first came out. My excuse there is that I was very young and just happy to see Star Wars on the big screen again. I think I saw Revenge of the Sith three times in the cinema! What was I thinking? Having thought a lot more about the movies though, they are all irredeemable turds.Tinker Tailor Soldier SpyI had high hopes for this. The period was realised beautifully, and it had an absolutely stellar cast (Oldman, Firth, Ciaran Hinds, Cumberbatch, Strong etc). The first hour was pretty good too. But the ending was rushed and unsatisfying. The plot is basically a detective story, and in a good detective story the audience should be able to form their own hypotheses and see how the main characters come to the conclusions that they do. But that doesn't happen in this movie, since the last 30 minutes is absurdly rushed. It took me several rewatches and a good bit of reading on wiki to see how Smiley came to the conclusion that Bill Haydon is the spy. This is the mark of a bad movie. Good movies are relatively self-contained. Really, this should have been a mini-series so that more justice could be done to it.That'll do for now.

cause he is,he was made to be like thathe tanks any attack unscatched and unfazed. Dudes who said Saitama isnt a gag are denials who cant accept saitama is a gag and unbeatable.People like to said he isnt. cause they just cant accept the fact. they keep applying double standards,ad hominem,Appeal to Reality fallacy,Genetic Fallacy,and Argument from incredulity fallacy and etc when measuring and analyzing Saitama stats.Double Standard Fallacy: link: Double StandardDescription: Judging two situations by different standards when, in fact, you should be using the same standard. This is used in argumentation to unfairly support or reject an argument.Examples:OPM critics: Goku is stated to be limitless,always meant to win, universal and shaking infinite etc etc. so he beats this and that. His statements were gospel and super relevant. we take statements.also OPM critics on Saitama: Saitama isnt unbeatable,limitless and bla bla bla,His statements are irrelevant to vs battles,even if Reliable character or even ONE stated hes limitless we dont accept statements we accept feats and bla bla bla.2. OPM critics on other gag characters:gag character means a character that made to be a joke.later. when they see Saitama stated and made to be joke/Invincible Unlimited Joke Character.OPM critics on Saitama: Saitama isnt a gag, GAG CHARACTER means that character must be a side character,has no personality,rarely appear,defying logic toonforce,has no explaination on how the character got his power. according to ‘’insert link’’ aka thisGag character - Wikipediaeven though they didnt read the last paragraph which proves them wrong.‘’However, there are special cases where a gag character can also be the main character of a particular show or a series, in such cases the show follows a single recurring joke throughout the show, unique to that main character, examples of such cases are Arale Norimaki from the Dr. Slump manga and Marvel's Squirrel Girl. Due to being the protagonists of their respective shows, such characters tend to show personality, unlike their standard counterpart. Such characters are also known as Modern Day Gag Characters.’’by this gag definition logic,Saitama is still 100% gag causeSaitama= ‘’character can also be the main character of a particular show or a series’’ =Main Character.Saitama= ‘’in such cases the show follows a single recurring joke throughout the show, unique to that main character’’=ONE PUNCH MAN=Saitama Single Recurring Joke is ONE PUNCH MAN,he always win easily and CAPABLE of defeating everyone in ONE PUNCH. CAPABLE. Him Doesnt beat boros,overgrown rover and garou in one punch cause he went easy. this isnt headcanon. Saitama can held back his One Punch ability. this is backed byShingo natsume stated that Saitama is One Punch Man.Saitama admits himself that hes the One Punch ManONE stated that Saitama is ONE PUNCH MAN and made to be Invincible.Saitama is stated to be invincible by Shingo Natsume and Japanese Voice actor of Saitama(Makoto Furukawa)So anyone who said ‘’Saitama point isnt that hes one punch man’’ or ‘’One Punch Man is just a series title,it doesnt related to anything’’ are dead wrong.Statement about Saitama can held back his power.also Boros stated Saitama held back his power and their battle isnt even a battle.Saitama also tend to shows personality but that doesnt make him not gag,cause we already seen gags like popeye and sunred,oggy tend to show their personality,they often cries and laugh. thus they have personality.as for their argument on ‘’gag is meant to defies logic with toonforce,has no explaination on how the character got his power.’’ is also a part of the double standard.Because.OPM haters: Ohh look Squirrel Girl beating enemies with just Squirrels,She has no explaination. shes a gag. wow shes OP. She beats Saitama everyday.*later,when they see Saitama has no explaination/illogical explaination on how he got his power,like doing situps,squats,10 km runs,pushups according to law of OPM universe shouldnt make him even bust a car,99,9% OPM characters does training far harsher and more intensive than saitama yet they arent stronger than saitama and would be always below saitama.remember that those 99,9% OPM Characters have enough potential and its bigger than Saitama. unlike Saitama who stated to have no potential and talent. and when saitama as a no potential,no talent character**does that weak training yet hes boundlessly stronger than everyone who have talent,potential and train harder than himself and having infinite power*OPM haters: Saitama still isnt a gag,His training are explained,no matter what youre wrong. he should do this and that(basically applying new standard). he isnt like muh squirrel girl and popeye.2. Ad Hominem: Ad hominem - WikipediaDefinition of AD HOMINEMAd hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a term that refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue.The most common form of this fallacy is "A makes a claim a, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument a is wrong".Examples of AD hominem:Example #1:“How can you argue your case for vegetarianism when you are enjoying that steak?”This clearly shows how a person is attacked instead of being addressed for or against his argument.Example #2:OPM haters: *insert an argument*OPM fans: *insert an debunk to that*OPM haters: Youre Schupid OPM fanboys noises,OPM W4nK444r noises, OPMT4rrrrd noises in any argument with OPM fans. Naw Limiat Fallaci. Oau Pe em Fans(Without proving how they commit that fallacy,even if they debunk them that they didnt commit that fallacy with good arguments. they still triggered and bring those ad hominems again)3. Appeal To Reality Fallacy.Sources: Appeal To RealityExamples:OPM critics/haters: Saitama cant have infinite power,How can you hold back infinite? 1% of Infinite is infinite.(Appealing to Reality Fallacy). The moment saitama walks it should have destroyed the entire universe.………………………………………………………………………………………………….LOL,first its fiction,in fiction you can do whatever you want. reality logic doesnt apply to fiction.Second,There are many characters who held back infinite power like Squirrel Girl,Popeye with spinach,Kami Tenchi,Bugs Bunny,Azathoth. Saitama is no exception or you all will commit 2 fallacies(Double standard and Appeal to Reality Fallacy)Double Standard: First When Goku shook the world of void,And you guys call it impressive without realizing that Void Is nothing and cant be shaken.void means - Google Searchwhen i said ‘’Void Cant be shaken,How can you shake Something that is nothing,pure zero?’’ You guys would said its fiction. But when Saitama having infinite power,You guys would said it isnt possible cause according to math and bla bla bringing real life logic,Wheres the ‘’Its fiction,Not Real life” crowd?Appeal to Reality: Applying real life logic to Fictional world.4. Argument from incredulity, also known as argument from personal incredulity or appeal to common sense,is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition must be false because it contradicts one's personal expectations or beliefs, or is difficult to imagine.Arguments from incredulity can take the form:I cannot imagine how F could be true; therefore F must be false.I cannot imagine how F could be false; therefore F must be true.[2]OPM critics: we cannot imagine Saitama being infinite,he just a baldy who have no life and too weak,thus he cant be infinite. While AoUr GaHkU,NArAuTO aNd SaPaMan looks badass so they beat anyone and infinite power.5. Genetic Fallacy: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Genetic-FallacyThe genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue)[1]is a fallacy of irrelevance that is based solely on someone's or something's history, origin, or source rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context. In other words, a claim is ignored in favor of attacking or championing its source.The fallacy therefore fails to assess the claim on its merit. The first criterion of a good argument is that the premises must have bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim in question.Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are not conclusive in determining its merits.Examples:“1. The newspaper editor homeschools his children. So, any claims he makes about the public school system are biased and untrue.’’‘’2. Saitama is a human,Goku is a Saiyan,In DB series Aliens(Saiyans) Are made to be stronger than humans(ignoring that some other fiction shows that Humans were stronger than aliens,OPM is one of them) So Goku wins against Saitama(Non human DB character) dude.Saitama.he has no full power. Hes limitlessHes ONE PUNCH MAN.isnt meant to be beatable and taken damage. he was meant to be strongest,hes different from deku,beerus,whis and other serious characters. any serious characters can win without effort and didnt shown their full power. but that doesnt make them unbeatable like saitama. they were proven to be scaled to other characters. for example beerus didnt show his full power that doesnt make him limitless,he scale to whis and weaker than whis,whis didnt show his full power and never tries but that doesnt make him limitless,he scales to grand priest and weaker than Grand priest. Saitama scales to none. Hes stronger than everyone. theres no being in his verse that stronger than him. So far no one can hurt him,Boros cant damage him,Tatsumaki never bothered him and when she ragdolled saitama to the ground multiple times,Saitama takes it like a badass and never bothered with it. this is not about how weak saitama’s opponents,its about saitama who made to be invincible.he was made to beat everyone without tryingif boros really make saitama struggle to kill him in one punch and thus Saitama ‘’ONE PUNCH MAN’’ title went null in meaning. why murata draws this panel and saitama said this.if boros,evil natural water,overgrown rover,garou really disproves saitama being one punch man the sentences should be ‘’there are no enemies i can beat with normal punches’’ not ‘’there are no enemies i cant beat with normal punches in the first place’’so yeah it means Saitama knows it that he actually never tries and he can kill Boros and his enemies with normal punch anytime. but he just didnt wanted it. he choose to hold back.even his killer moves serious series doesnt exist stated by himself.—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-so if anyone said ‘’Saitama was referring to cool looking moves’’nope the panel clearly refers to his ‘’serious series moves’’He has unlimited strength - ‘’he does. He’s stated to have unlimited power that’s it. this is proven by saitama saying he reached the peak definition of strength in unlimited power context.yes at first boros sensing saitama energy is the same as Z fighters sensing Cell power and they said Cell has no limit(hyperbole) but Since OPM series already confirmed what type of limitless saitama got(from events happened in OPM to OPM Interviews). it refers to infinite/limitless power. so yeah he reached the peak and his peak is infinite,infinite power is the peak,since theres nothing beyond true infinity. not that saitama hits his limit and only weakling planet,star,galaxy buster. it means he has infinite power. IF he still having Infinite Potential,Why OPM series heavily implied and stated Saitama cant get stronger,Thats Impossible for Unlimited Potential characters. Saitama broke both his limits and his limiter to the point theres no limit to break and he reached infinite power therefore he cant get stronger.Saitama was made to solo fiction that isnt a gag,isnt invincible and limited in power. He can’t beat other gags like him tho. He stalemates them in fight. He was made to be the strongest. That’s it. Until he has limits or ONE states/Retcon Saitama to be weakling powerscaled non gag character whom OPM Haters wanted him to be, he’s got infinite power.Now for the misconceptions from what i heard and saw:1. ‘’Boros isnt star level.’’He is.OPM haters: “but but hoshi means—’’Hoshi could mean star or planet,but as OPM guide shown. Boros final attack was obviously star level cause boros in base form alone was stated that he could bust planets away.If boros in base form is multiple planets level then how in the world that in his peak hes only single planetary level. are you saying that 1 is bigger than 3? or are you saying that multi planets level is stronger than one planet level? its obvious that hoshi in this case clearly refers to star. so yeah OBLITERATES a star. thats boros peak.OPM haters: But that guide didnt approved by ONE and murataH_I_T_C_H_E_N R_A_Z_O_R. Prove your claims.on the contrary i have evidence that it was approved by ONE and Murata.The guidebook has interviews from ONE in both english and japaneseOPM haters: ‘’but boros said planet surface and planet in anime and manga guide.’’YOU And the planet surface/planet, YOU.I also want to note that every time I say and hint/capitalize on "YOU" and "YOU", of Boros words is because by anime/cartoon/science fiction logic or logic of fans that I argued against, the target(in this case Saitama) of an attack absorbs/is supposed to absorb- almost all/most of the power and destructiveness of an attack made against it(him).example: Kid Buu released a ki ball that destroyed the earth. Goku was afraid to Tank it,Does that Means Buu saga Goku is only planet level/Saiyan Saga Level? no,it means that That Ki Ball has Multi Solar System Power,Just that ball destructive capacity was controlled/KI control to planet level. Goku(target) absorbs most of that Ki ball effect. Ki control was already explained in DB series.Attack Potency=/=Area Of Effect.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………2. ‘’he one shotted himself from the day before. So he doesnt have unlimited power. the proof is VGS System. VGS bot represent saitama from yesterday and saitama one shotted it. then saitama said ‘’why would i lose to myself’’ so its proves saitama only have unlimited potential.’’this is just wrong. The vgs system was heavily unreliable. this is proven when The VGS system failed to measure metal bat fighting spirit.The VGS system also failed to read zombieman brainwaves and his regeneration ability.THE VGS system also failed to copy saitama appearance and his power.Sources:Virtual Genocide SimulationAudiobooks/Maji Drama CD Vol. 2So VGS saitama isnt Saitama from yesterday. as VGS system is unreliable and full of errors when measuring its users capabilities.about ‘’ Saitama: Why would I lose to yesterday’s me? ’’ quote. well saitama said later ‘’It’s just unreliable simulated data right?’’also Saitama saying : ‘’Why would I lose to yesterday’s me? ’’ He was being sarcastic. he pretend to act like the data was reliable. even though THE VGS who supposed to represent saitama from yesterday isnt reliable proven by evidences above.Genos doesnt get that and he goes ‘’extensive scribbling.’’later when Genos took it seriously,Saitama said: it’s just unreliable simulated data right?conclusionVGS Saitama isnt yesterday Saitama proven by evidences above.Saitama cant get stronger cause hes infinite in power. Infinite Is Infinite, theres nothing beyond Infinite.Saitama:Why would I lose to yesterday’s me? quote, doesnt make him only having unlimited potential,it was an outlier and sarcastic quote. and later saitama said ‘’its just unreliable simulated data right?’’Saitama has unlimited power not potential.link: ONE stated Saitama is already in peak condition/at his maximum power level:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3. ‘’He took damage against boros: heres the proof’’……………………………………………………………………………………………..He didnt. that was fanmade translation. heres the real panelBefore you say that was edited by hardcore fan.it exists on raw OPM manga Vol 7 Chapters for sale. which means it is approved.VIZ: Read a Free Preview of One-Punch Man, Vol. 7More evidences that saitama doesnt took damage.1.2. Link: The Most Infamous Fallacies of Saitama's "Limits".3.HE doesnt take damage and he doesnt bleeding as saitama stated,it was all aliens bloods and dirts covering his clothes.4.No ‘’he took damage’’ sentences in the anime.No ‘’he took damage’’ sentences in the webcomic.OPM haters: ‘’But But he took damage cause he was clobbered’’‘’‘’Clobbered doesnt mean damage. Clobbered means hit hard,beating(Punches,Kicks and etc)clob·ber1/ˈkläbər/Learn to pronounceverbINFORMALpast tense: clobbered; past participle: clobberedhit (someone) hard."if he does that I'll clobber him!"treat or deal with harshly."the recession clobbered other parts of the business"defeat heavily.(Defeat heavily???? Saitama won against boros easily. So he doesnt get defeated So the context of ‘’clobbered’’ term would be beating and hit hard)Source: clobbered meaning - Google SearchIt even stated on there that clobbered term was similar tohitstrikeslapsmackcuffpunchbeatthrashthumpbatterbelabordrubhookpoundsmashslametc.All of it means beating.OPM haters: ‘’ You used google translate,google translate was unreliable”\fine fine,ok then. Lets use Reliable online dictionaries likeCambridge: CLOBBERED | meaning in the Cambridge English DictionaryOxford: clobber verb - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes.Lexico: Clobber | Definition of Clobber by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.com also meaning of ClobberDictionary. Dictionary.com Is The World’s Favorite Online Dictionary: Definition of clobber | Dictionary.comAll of them agrees that Clobbered means hit hard/beating.Beating doesnt mean damage,there are beatings in anime that doesnt give damage)like this So yeah Saitama doesnt took Damage,He only beaten/clobbered without taking damage. even when Saitama in the moon after taking boros kick supports that he doesnt took damage, hes still unfazed.OPM haters: but but he got stracthed by a cat.uhhh that was a joke scene. he tanked attacks far worser than that and hes fine.OPM haters:but but it happened and we should take it seriously.OK. by your logic. Does all of you consider Arale is only street level and lower cause of thisa mere free fall made her unconscious. even though she beat universal base form vegeta and almost obliterate SSB goku and tanked their universal and beyond attacks with no damage. but she was half dead by a mere free fall that proves she isnt even street level. even kid goku at the beginning of DB OG series can tank it easily. guess Arale isnt even land level or street level XD XD XD XD XD XD XD.OPM haters: uhhhhhh uhhhhhhhh It was a joke scene uhhhh uhhhhbut it was happened as you guys said it on saitama and i should take it seriously XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD arale would lose and can be killed by deku and other street level,building,small city to large city level characters by your logic yey XD XD XD XD XDby their flawed logic on analyzing joke scenes,this is even funnierToribot who they call ‘’ONE ABOVE ALL of DB and Dr Slump Series’’ ‘’Omnipotent’’ Being got hurt by a plate(even though it was a joke scene as toribot tanked attack far worser than that and hes fine but just using their flawed logic)guess toribot isnt omnipotent then XD XD XD he isnt even plate level. he would get killed by table level characters according to their logic.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4. ‘’Saitama was stated to only have unlimited potential and he still growing’’he cant anymore. He stopped growing since he became bald.ONE stated that saitama cant get stronger and cant grow anymore.1.‘’Peak Condition’’2.when he says, "have the protagonist be extremely strong from the very start - be at the maximum power level which could only be attained in the final chapter of the usual manga." To differentiate Saitama from the other shonen characters, he made him extremely strong and at the maximum power level since the beginning of the series instead of at the end of the series. The parallel is that Saitama's been at the maximum power level since the very beginning instead of spending the entire series growing. Unlike those other characters you mentioned, they don't have evidence such as the creator saying they're at the highest power level possible and things like the limiter law to show they have no limits in power. Saitama max level is infinite. Saitama cant get Stronger as he reached infinite power, while others have infinite potential(most Shonen Characters in General).Saitama=/=Shonen characters in terms of power,narrative and appearance proven again by ONE and Murata.ONE statement about saitama is made to be different from shonen characters was also supported by murata and Saitama.Murata(while accepting that saitama is a gag and parody)‘’whole different plane compared to characters in the manga’’ capitalize and mark that.Saitama(confirming ONE and Murata,he realizes it)As for the limiter thingLink:How The Limiter Workif anyone said ‘’limiter thing was just a theory not canon’’its not theory,it becomes OPM law.Webcomic(in the narration Boxed Text) it says ‘’Garou’s LIMITER’’ implying that Limiter isnt theory,its outright OPMverse law for someone to get stronger to being Invincible. Garou tries to break his limiter but later failed miserably.Why garou didnt break his limiter like Saitama?Murata said he still evolving/Growing.So yeah Garou Didnt Break His Limiter,He still has infinite potential and only break limits without removing the limiter completely. No different than Metal Bat. A dude who also didnt break his limiter. but.If garou really broke his limiter completely like Saitama,Then he cant get stronger. but its the otherwise.The Joke of One Punch Man is No one breaks the Limiter completely to the point when the person cant get stronger cause theres no limits and limiter to break. besides The OPM itself ‘’Saitama’’ and he uses very weak training to do that.Manga(in the spiky boxed text) it says ‘’Garou’s Limiter’’3. if you said the limiter theory isnt canon then congrats,you just made OPM fans easier to say Saitama is a gag,cause the reason why OPM critics/haters said that saitama isnt a gag cause they use the limiter existence and makes it as argument to prove that saitama power was explained cause of it and he breaks his limiter rationally and it was no different than how other breaks it even though its wrong.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5. ‘’He doesnt have gag feat or bla bla bla to make him a gag’’What kind of gag feat you want Saitama to perform?First,lets take a look on the meaning of Gag.GAG | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary‘’a joke or funny story, especially one told by a comedian (= person whose job is to make people laugh):’’Gag means joke, humor. Gag character means joke, humorous character. the problem is that Most people keep saying that gags means toonforce. gag feat could mean Joke Feat. and Joke can be made differently.he does have it ,By the training alone and how he got his power proves that hes a gag,there are so many events in OPM that proves saitama is a gag,by statements hes a gag.By MurataOne stated that hes gag manga artistShingo Natsume admits that ONE PUNCH MAN series has GAG elements.(i mean OPM is a Gag(comedy)-Action) Mangafor the ‘’gag characters must have toonforce’’ claim. Whatever Arale does, isn't really a factor on what is and isn't a gag, because Aho Girl and Squirrel Girl doesn't do that ‘’toonforce’’ stuff, but she listed as gag character and Aho Girl Series was listed as a gag manga, and presented in a sense of nonsensical. Now show me where toonforce feat appeared in Aho Girl Series,If Gag means Toonforce. People saying Saitama is sensical, doesnt really understand the series. His whole story is nonsensical. No one but Saitama gains power from minimal effort. He trained in the most obviously weak way, and gained power no one, not even Boros, could overcome. The training is even a part of his gag, in that it's a joke. No one would label that training, and it's nonsensical to say that it's hardcore training that would get him power. And toon force isn't a thing. No actual comic writer or manga writer mentions that. It's a fanmade term, and fans don't really decide whether someone has an actual power or not. Fanmade terms are just fanmade terms that people can pretend it means whatever they want. Like, if I suddenly made up a term to describe someone's power, that doesn't mean I decide how far that power goes. Then it becomes pure fanfiction, and fanfiction does not belong in debates, because it's not a factor, and you pretty much lose the moment you try to argue someone's personal fanfiction in a debate about non fanfiction.The problem is that people misunderstand what being a GAG character really means. By definition, being a GAG character only means being used for jokes. Which Saitama is used for all the time. Not All Gags Have Toonforce.Not to mention ONE directly stated that the reason he drew OPM is because he wanted to make a GAG manga, and Shingo Natsume Said that OPM is a Gag-Action Manga implying OPM is indeed a GAG manga. So it's even more obvious Saitama is a GAG character.Not to say being gag means solos anyone. Being a GAG character is irrelevant if the context of your ‘’gag’’ doesnt prove youre invincible.Same way Sinbad from popeye isn't invincible because he's a GAG character. It's implied that Popeye after eating Spinach beats him(another gag character). so yeah context matters. Popeye With spinach was made to be invincible. While Sinbad Isnt.Saitama is battle gag character,he was more to invincible in fight and one punch gag. While he can lose in other categories OUTSIDE of the fight that doesnt affect the main joke. Saitama still invincible in fight.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….6.’’ Saitama’s gag only worked in his universe,plot is irrelevant in vs battles’’plot armor, the idea is relatively straight forward. Saitama only wins easily because his author makes it so he's always much stronger than his opponents. Put Saitama in a neutral universe, and he's just another strong character, with limits, weaknesses, and the possibility of losing. There's a problem though. Saitama is overpowered due to the author, but not in the way you'd think.Just imagine both Indiana Jones and Superman getting headshot by bullets, and neither dying. Jones should die according to physics, because he is defined as a normal human who can die to bullets. That is plot armor. Superman not dying to bullets is perfectly reasonable and logical, he's been defined as superhumans and above bullet level. Same with Saitama, except to the maximum exaggerated levels. Saitama created by his author without any limits at all. No, the author isn't twisting the story so Saitama has no limits, Saitama was invincible from his conception.LOL,Its character power,not plot intervention. while plot is irrelevant to scaling. Character power is relevant and can be used for scaling.if you think plot=Character power. then you must conceded that any Omnipotent beings doing galaxy feats WITH EASE. would lose to Non omnipotent character with universal feats. cause him being omnipotent was just his plot in his verse.kami tenchi,its kami tenchi character design that he is omnipotent. not plot intervention. it doesnt mean kami tenchi omnipotence only worked in his verse. by your logic his feats no matter what would lose to this character despite the statement that hes omnipotent cause plot isnt relevant in vs battles no no no its not plot,its character design. its means kami tenchi is designed to be omnipotent that have infinite power and thus his power worked on other universes,feat doesnt matter. kami tenchi point is that hes omnipotent and he rules anyone.Same with Saitama and other characters who made to be win easily as their joke. Feat doesnt matter,hes stated and heavily implied to be limitless gag character. and its Saitama character that hes invincible,limitless. gag character. his power worked in other verses.Heres the similarities between Invincible Gags and true Omnipotents,this dude explains it better than me.Reddit Link:Why Saitama cannot defeat 100% of fiction7.Many People Said that ‘’Saitama is invincible this and that,By that logic,Goku and Superman would also solo fiction,cause they also made to beat anyone and surpass anyone’’False Equivalence Fallacy:False equivalence - WikipediaFalse equivalence is a logical fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency.examples;1.Jesus ChristAdolf HitlerThey both have mustaches, Therefore Theyre the same.Yeah no,theres context behind it,Jesus was born and lives in different place. Jesus is a Blessed Prophet Of GOD. Hitler is a killer who erases 6 millions —- *Inserts nazi anthem* yeah you already know it.So yeah They are different.2.Kaguya from naruto created a dimension therefore she is equal to Grand Priest who also created a void dimension from DBS. Because ‘’Dimension’’ word.Yeah no theres context behind it. Kaguya dimension’s size peaks at planet-star-solar system. While Grand Priest dimension was a void and it was absurdly bigger than kaguyas dimension. by reliable statements and implications.3. that ‘’Saitama is invincible this and that,By that logic,Goku and Superman,And basically any Fictional characters would also solo fiction,cause they also made to beat anyone and surpass anyone’’ argumentYeah no theres context behind it,Goku is a character who is designed to struggle to overcome obstacles over time by including all the cliches/tropes as well as help from friends/family and even ex foes. Goku DOES NEED the "plot armor"/"main character" or rather "main cast of characters character" due to Toriyama having expressed before that he intended for Gohan to be the main character but probably that idea was scrapped or not executed yet so yeah. goku is designed as a character to struggle to overcome obstacles and depend on other characters and he essentially depends on the author/Toriyama every time to think of a reasonable/logical way for Goku to beat his new fight.Saitama is the opposite. He has been designed to cake walk every obstacle and need nobody(no allies, no cliches, no tropes, not the author, no ex foes ect ect). He doesn't need items and special items to come up with a way for him to beat his new fight because he has been designed to auto-win against any opposition with ease.As for Superman, Superman has a ton of versions, not just one. And has shown actual vulnerabilities, struggling and similarly with Goku, often needs his allies to win, Justice League and such. Even strongest Superman version Cosmic Armor Superman isnt invulnerable.So yeah Saitama’s narrative=/=Goku and Superman’s Narrative.For ‘’any fictional characters’’ we need to see if they really invincible. literal or not. thats why hyperbole and literal exist. OPM series has been literal on implying and stating saitama being invincible.THE ENDO…N…E…P…U…N…C…H…M…A…N…..1#………