#//WHAT AM I A HISTORIAN????

[cookie-lore-keeper]

I know it's already shown that Pure Vanilla Cookie has romantic feelings torwards White Lily Cookie, but seeing him actually say it out loud makes me so happy

[lmaowh-at]

Lanns n Starks lineups/costumes sketches that I will probably add other houses to. Tywin and Joff & the rest aren't here because I was lazy and Cerseis dress took all of my energy. Don't ask me about inspiration or historical basis for these

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Flower Empowered.

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[gingerswagfreckles]

It's become extremely obvious over the past 15 months that the only reason much of the Western world ever basically agreed that the Holocaust was bad and was willing to teach about it is because for a brief period of time, Jews and gentiles in most of Europe + America had a common enemy in the Nazis. But this acknowledgement of Nazi antisemitism was only ever the same kind of acknowledgement of antisemitism that we get right now, where people are only willing to acknowledge the antisemitism of the people they already had a completely separate reason to dislike or fear. Antisemitism in this worldview is just a tool, a secondary accusation one can lodge at someone who is already for different reasons an enemy. It is never acknowledged as a form of bigotry in and of itself, that exists on its own and not as a follow up to another "more serious" form of oppression or bigotry against gentiles.

Obviously any Holocaust education we do get in Europe and the US has very much been the result efforts by Jews and our allies in a practical sense, but it is undeniable that there was a brief 70 or so year period where the white Western consciousness found it valuable (or at least politically convenient) to recognize antisemitism as wrong and the Holocaust as horrific. As true, original-brand Nazism fades, though, we see opposition to antisemitism and the Holocaust becoming less and less valuable to the white Western identity, as actual threat of Nazi occupation fades to historical memory. Newer, rebranded neo-Nazis and leftist Hamas supporters pose little to no threat to white Western gentiles. And thus, we see now not only a growing acceptance of antisemitism, but also a growing hostility towards the idea that we should study or condemn the Holocaust as anything particularly terrible. The Holocaust no longer represents a way for gentiles to additionally condemn an ideology that also threatened them, that also killed their families, that also resulted in their own countries and communities being occupied or destroyed by foreign fascist governments. It no longer represents to them an ideology that is in any way a threat to their own safety or way of life.

This is why we see such a massive rise in Holocaust denial among Gen Z, and, even more broadly than overt Holocaust denial, the rejection of the idea that the Holocaust should be particularly studied or condemned. More and more, we see people "questioning" the "propaganda" of The Jews Crying Victim All The Time, we see young people wondering why they are so cruelly forced to acknowledge on very rare occasion the suffering that the Jewish people went through in their own homes and towns. Often this is framed not only as intellectual bravery but moral bravery, as if this new generation rejecting Holocaust education is somehow fighting back against the unfair valuing of Jewish tragedy above gentile tragedy. What they don't understand, of course, and what many Jews up until now didn't understand either, is that no one ever valued the Holocaust because it WAS a uniquely horrific event in history, because it WAS the first and only industrialized genocide that gassed millions to death on a scale we can only pray the world will never see again, because it WAS only 70 years ago and is still a living part of the history of many Western countries. No. The Holocaust was only ever given the acknowledgement it was because it represented, at one time, an ideological threat that also included gentiles, though less overtly than it targeted Jews.

That ideological threat against Jews has not gone anywhere, and is in fact is seeing a new glory day dawning with the rise of fascism worldwide and the normalization/glorification of antisemitism on the left. But this new form of antisemitic hatred, be it neo-Nazism or support for Hamas, does not represent a threat to white Western gentiles, their way of life, or the integrity of their governments. And so we as we see the decoupling of the Holocaust from something that also incidentally threatens gentiles, we see standing against the Holocaust and antisemitism as a symbol of white Western identity disappearing as fast as it came.

[iatnen]

Sebastian Sallow + Male MC (OC? Whatever)

I was upset that there were barely any MaleMC+Sebastian content but then I remembered I can draw

I posted this on TikTok first but I wanted to try Tumblr cuz perhaps the fandom is easier to reach here 😼

I named him Daniel Anderson ��� he’s an awkward idiot loser

[mtreebeardiles]

Every so often I’ll see interpretations of Liara’s N7 armor display as creepy/obsessive behaviour — and that’s a fair interpretation! But it got me thinking about my own interpretation and, well

It kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?

Whether you romance her or not, she still has that armor display. The archaeologist. Displaying the armor of someone Important™️, someone whose most recent importance was downplayed by the Alliance — support for Shepard’s Reaper theory was waning, the Alliance sent them off to more remote spots, Alchera happened…

Liara is first and foremost a student of history, and an Asari one at that. She’s trained to see those patterns of history, and knows a legend when she sees one — beyond whatever else Shepard may have been known for before ME1. And in the aftermath of Alchera, I’m sure she got her first real experience with how humans, and the Alliance in particular, will try to bury or gloss over inconvenient truths — if they can be bothered to acknowledge those truths in the first place

They didn’t memorialize Alchera until Shepard was back, two years later. They didn’t want to keep a spotlight on Shepard, on why they were even out there. But Shepard didn’t stay buried, and, well, maybe other ghosts wouldn’t either

All this to say I personally see Liara’s display as her own way of honoring Shepard as a historical symbol, as someone Historically Important™️, and part of that history is a part the Alliance wanted to forget, was happy to forget until they couldn’t anymore

But Liara wasn’t going to forget, and she’d make sure galactic history broadly wouldn’t, either. And in ME3, she takes that conviction one step further, seeding Shepard’s story, the story of the Reapers, all throughout the galaxy

That just reads as more narratively consistent to me, anyway 🤷‍♂️

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[theorahsart]

Is it normal for Peter Mcfee to e-mail people??

I'm totally reeling from him e-mailing me lol Its not a big email, it reads like a social media msg, I think hes just being a normal 70-smth man and probably doesn't see the difference between emailing me and replying to my shout out on social media

But to me.... its a big deal....to be emailed by Peter Mcfee.....my day has truly been made u_u

[saturnpanther]

I think everyone is doing Austria a disservice when they write him as a prudish blushing flower, and not as a manipulative bitch who has mastered weaponized sexuality. YES he's an uptight snob, but when you look at the history of Austria's military alliances there is a lot of calculated moves based around arranged unions instead of (or to subdue) all out wars. It's much more fun imo to see Roderich as someone who can seduce you into a strategic marriage for the sake of saving his own ass.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Polish Jewish resistance courier and tireless advocate for Holocaust education and commemoration in the US Vladka Meed shaking hands with President Jimmy Carter at a White House Rose Garden ceremony marking the official presentation of the report of the US Holocaust Commission to the president by commission chairman Elie Wiesel (second from right, with Benjamin Meed, center). Washington, DC, September 27, 1979.

Image and parts of caption courtesy USHMM

[countlessofvoids]

I think THW's epilogue would work slightly better if Hiccup was a bit older, maybe around Stoick's age. I know the movie pushed the idea of dragons being just instictual animals (as contradictory as it is towards not only the franchise as a whole, but also the film itself), but to me it feels more plausible for Toothless to start forgetting his life with Hiccup after 20+ years rather than 10, if I'm being led to believe they were such an unbreakable bond.

More importantly though, I would've prefered if instead of only Hiccup's family having one last flight; the whole 'gang' was there. While them being an actual friendgroup is more of a RTTE thing (unfortunately), I don't see why everyone else should be excluded, especially Valka. I mean, Astrid got to see her own dragon again. Why couldn't others? Are Hiccup, Astrid and their children the only ones allowed to break the rule? Was Hiccup really the only one to have actual friendship with a dragon?

On an unrelated note, the detail of people forgetting dragons and even claiming they never existed can work - as long as it's meant to interpreted as their existence being forgotten over the course of history, instead of when Hiccup was still alive. Maybe even Berkians and their allies themselves wrote them out to keep the secret safe.

[bogkeep]

my thesis probably doesn't need to be longer than like, 2k-3k words total, i can stick to a reasonable scope, i don't NEED to delve into the origins of the babylonian sexagesimal number system to write about the prague astronomical clock

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

I'm new to Sade so sorry if this is a stupid question, but was Sade gay? I'm currently reading Justine and noticed the passionate, semi-romantic descriptions of m/m sex, which contrast with the crude descriptions of f/m sex. I've not read all of Sade's books, but the ones I have read also feature characters who're mostly disinterested in women, who give off self-insert vibes (e.g. Dolmancé). Am I reading too much into it? IDK but I was wondering if you could shed some light.

Happy deathday to Sade!! lol

Really all that can be said with certainty is that he definitely wasn't straight lol. Like anyone who died before modern queer theory, Sade's sexuality can be difficult to label with today's terminology. He was certainly attracted to both men and women, so for simplicity's sake I just say he was bisexual. But really, who knows...

Characters that he uses as self-inserts like Dolmancé in PitB or Bressac in Justine are pretty exclusively attracted to men. Like you said, there's multiple times in his writing where characters will praise m/m sex and show blatant disgust towards sex with women. But if you look at Sade's life, there's only one known* male sex partner and many women. There's also several women Sade was in love with throughout his life, but there exists no letters of him professing love to any man. Could this be because male victims were less likely to go to the police, therefore less known to us? because women were easier to pursue in public? because even he felt the pressure of societal norms? because he kept relations with men better hidden? because any such letters or records were selectively destroyed by a relative? Who knows! It could be some, all, or none of these things. It's really up to the interpretation of the reader. The misogyny, philosophical extremism, and very culturally different ideas about sex add so many different variables to Sade's sexuality.

To add further confusion: gender and sexuality were much more correlated in Sade's writing (and seemingly in the time period in general, I mean look at the bisexual Lord Hervey being referred to as "the third sex"), male characters who get sodimized call it them "becoming women", women who put on strap-ons "become men", even women who get sodimized are masculinized: Saint-Ange says she wants to be a "Ganymede" to Dolmancé. So sodomy seemed inherently gay to Sade, regardless of the sexes involved or what roles they played. Whereas today, that's definitely not the case. Beauvoir follows along with the sexuality-gender correlation and suggests that Sade felt more feminine than masculine and his written contempt for female genitalia was a product of his own gender frustrations. From what I've read, most modern historians tend to avoid labeling Sade with anything other than "sodomite" and "libertine" only using "bisexual" and "homosexual" to label certain actions he performed like "homosexual sex" "bisexual orgy" etc. This is when the word queer is godsent.

Tldr; He's too 18th century libertine for modern labels. Colloquially, I default to calling him bi, but we'll never really know. Maybe he would have preferred gay due to his preferences/philosophies. Who knows. Safest bet is to just call him queer.

*Should go without saying but, there were obviously more. Latour is just the only named one with recorded proof.

[wonder-worker]

Studies of Elizabeth Woodville […] have been hampered by the continuing fascination with her brother-in-law, Richard III. The Ricardian [and Yorkist] apologetic is now largely dependent upon the argument that the Woodville family posed such a threat to Richard of Gloucester, and the kingdom as a whole, that Gloucester had little option but to take the throne from his Woodville-dominated nephew. Although this argument has [irregularly] been contested, a reassessment of the queen's role in 1483 has not yet been attempted. Michael Bennett, in his 1987 account [...] still dismissed her as `an inveterate intriguer, capable in her vanity and fecklessness of some remarkable shifts and turns'. But more often she is scarcely mentioned in general histories of the period.

— J.L. Laynesmith, “English Queenship 1445-1503” (Thesis for the degree of DPhil in Medieval Studies, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, April 1999)

[professor-medeus]

OBSESSED with a Queen Charlotte AU where Gale is George and Tav/OC/reader is Charlotte.

[chainofclovers]

As a documentarian, this has been an unbelievably stressful time