#{ they come from the same ancestry and evolved differently. So... asking the real questions here }

[vahrutasgrace]

@starlyht liked for a starter!

¯`°¤.¸.¤ ¯`°¤.-- ♕ II "Revali... I do wish you were kinder to Link." She said, knowing she was speaking from a place that didn't involve her. She couldn't resist the urge to stand up for Link though. He was a man who had so much potential in Hyrule's troops and was a wonderful protector for the princess. His loyalty knew no bounds. Link had proven himself time and time again. How could Revali not see that?

"I fear that the competition you hold in your heart will only serve as a disastrous outcome, both for you and Vah Medoh." She lifted her chin to peer up at him, her golden hues regarding him closely. Surely her words would upset him, but it was those words that rang threw. When piloting their Divine Beasts, it was though they became one. Should Revali pilot his Beast with ill intent, there was no doubt it would overpower him and could cause irreplaceable harm.

Revali was a dear friend to her now. She couldn't help but worry about him, even if her words proved upsetting. If there was anyone who could get through to him, she prayed it could be her.

[alhilton]

hi! i just finished distraction in the hunters universe and just started arcove’s bright side - i’m super enjoying them so far! i did have a bit of a question when it comes to the worldbuilding if that’s all right to ask? do the creasia have a taboo against incest, or does it not matter after a certain point of relation? i’m curious if only because carmine and wisteria are both related through arcove (arcove being his son and wisteria his granddaughter) and attention is drawn to that in the narrative, in terms of how much they both look like and take after arcove. is this sort of thing generally accepted in creasia society, or is it given a pass since they’re both higher-ranking? i’m not asking to be a weird freak or anything, it just kind of hit me as a “oh right that’s a little odd” when i realized fully, haha. genuinely just curious - but also feel 100% free to delete this if that’s not something you’d want to discuss on your tumblr blog, i get that it’s kind of A Bummer by nature. again, super genuinely enjoying the books, i really love your prose and how the world feels so deeply lived in and real and how textured every character is, even the minor ones. wisteria is also an absolute icon with her two boyfriends, god bless her lmao

Hi, there. Thank you for your kind words! I'll answer your question, but I've done so in even more detail here - https://shop.abigailhilton.com/b/1HLeF (it's a free download) These are essays I wrote while researching lions for Distraction and Bright Side. I examine the potential for inbreeding depression, not just in creasia, but also in ferryshaft and other species on Lidian. I talk about the (highly bisexual) biology of real lions, the ways in which I modeled creasia on them, and the ways in which I made creasia different. In answer to your question, real lions have no inbreeding taboo. Ruling males don't usually hold a pride long enough to mate with their adult daughters. Teenaged males have a strong instinct to roam once they hit puberty. They travel far from their natal prides and seek to take over a distant pride. Females stay with their natal pride. That's how real lions avoid inbreeding. If young males are prevented from roaming (by habitat fragmentation), they may end up taking over a pride with relatives and will mate with them. I have given my creasia some degree of incest taboo, partially because I think it's too difficult for humans to relate to them otherwise and partially because I think it's a useful trait to have evolved, what with their limited range and food supply. They have an incest taboo that applies to siblings and parents, possibly great-grand parents. Those would be the most generically dangerous pairings. However, their are many other types of relatedness that humans recognize that creasia do not. In addition, creasia generations run into each other in ways that could not happen in human beings. Human women enter menopause right about the time that their daughters hit puberty. In creasia, mothers and daughters will have babies at the same time, perhaps for decades. Creasia are teenagers capable of reproduction at 4, young adults at 6, and fully adult by 8-10. Historically, most alpha males have died in fights by their 20's or 30's, while females and unambitious clutter males have sometimes lived into their 60's. This allows plenty of time for generations to run into each other. Now they're living even longer because they're becoming less violent. In this milieu, you would see generational pairings that would seem strange and impossible to human beings. Carmine is Wisteria's half uncle on her father's side and her great-half uncle on his mother's side. It really is a pretty twisty family tree. FYI, Wisteria has 2 kings in her ancestry. Ketch was Caraca's father. Creasia would not regard this as a close familial relationship or any form of incest. Indeed, it's unlikely to cause their cubs any problems. Arcove has been a very successful male creasia, which means his genes are going to be dominant in the population for quite a while. Halvery even more so (lol). In real lions, nearly all the females will contribute genetically to the population, but not so the males. A tiny percentage of the most successful males will sire all the cubs. So you have this same effect. Any deleterious genes lurking in those successful males could have outsized effects on the population, unfortunately. But real lions seems to weather this just fine.

[writingwithcolor]

Fantasy West Asian/North African queen with white ancestry

@writergirl523 asked:

In my story, the main character is a white girl and her best friend, who is the queen of their nation, is non-white—specifically I picture her as Middle Eastern/North African, but this is a fantasy world so that exact location does not exist. Her father is white, but her mother’s family (the royal family) is of this descent for an unspecified number of previous generations. The primary antagonist of the first book is an ancestor of the royal family from centuries ago (who is immortal). Currently I have her described as white, as the non-white members of the royal family are implied to have married in in the last 500 years. I have thought that it might be seen as offensive to have the royal family be descended from white people as well, and that maybe I should make this character the same race as the queen. But I also thought that while the queen has a significant part in defeating her, and is arguably as much a main character as the actual MC in this book, the main character of the series and POV character is still white, and it would be offensive to have a white protagonist face off against a non-white antagonist. I am wondering which would be the better alternative and if there is anything else about this scenario I should change.

In a scenario like this, a lot will depend on your worldbuilding and your execution. We don’t have much information about these two things, so it’s difficult to give specific advice, but we will ask some general questions and point out a few potential pitfalls to keep in mind.

Worldbuilding ethnic diversity and multi-ethnic royal families

[Note: West Asian and Middle-Eastern mean the same thing, but I prefer using West Asian because it de-centers Europe and explicitly describes the region's location within Asia.]

I don’t see anything inherently problematic about having a royal family with mixed heritage. However, I’d be curious to know how you’re handling the worldbuilding surrounding it and the implications it has for the history, culture, and social dynamics of your fantasy country. Here are some questions that may be helpful to think about if you haven’t yet considered them:

- What is the ethnic breakdown of this country? Are there multiple ethnic groups? Which ones?

- Is one the dominant group, either demographically or in terms of political or economic status? If so, what’s the relationship between the majority and minority groups? What are the social implications? What are the interpersonal implications?

- How did this diversity come to be? Did one group conquer or colonize the other? Were there wars? Alliances? Trade and cultural exchange? Migrations? What are the implications for the present-day relationships between these groups?

- You’ve mentioned that there is one group which is white-coded and another which is West Asian/North African-coded. These are very broad categories. Can you make your coding more specific? Think about language, religion, and culture. Are these the same across both groups? If so, how did this come to be? If not, what impact do those differences have on your story?

- How do royal marriages work? Can members of the royal family marry anyone, regardless of social status? Or does it have to be nobility from their own country? Or royals from other countries? Does this track with the way you want your royal family to have evolved?

I’m asking this because if you want your royal line to have been mostly white for several centuries, and then become mostly brown for several centuries after that, you need to be able to justify that with every single generation of marriages. If the white royal family only married amongst their own ethnic group at first, and then suddenly switched to only marrying within the non-white group, there must be a reason for that switch. Also, keep in mind that if they only want to marry other royals, their choices are limited. In real life, royals married (and still do) other royals from other countries, which results in a lot of ethnic and cultural mixing.

If you find yourself struggling to answer these questions, one way to get started is to look at real historical examples from our world. You might want to research the history of the Mediterranean region as a starting point. Even though by modern-day North American standards we consider Greeks and Italians to be white, and Turks and Arabs to be brown (to mention just a few of the many ethnic groups in the region), such racial distinctions didn’t exist for most of the Mediterranean's history. Those peoples and many others around the Mediterranean, including Black Africans, interacted and intermarried heavily for thousands of years, especially among royalty.

I highly recommend reading through the WWC Research Guides and the worldbuilding tag if you haven’t done so yet. There is a lot of very helpful advice already available on the blog. Two recent posts, about diversity in fantasy worldbuilding and linguistic diversity, might be especially relevant to you.

- Niki

Potential pitfalls : white saviors, mixed characters, and exoticization

I agree with everything Niki said. There are a lot of questions left to be asked considering your concept and a lot of worldbuilding that will need to be done. I’d like to build off Niki’s answer.

Depending on your choices there are some potential pitfalls, such as the white saviour trope (in case you go for your white MC saving a non-white community/country, as well as writing a diverse but not inclusive story/setting. A lot depends on the make-up of your setting. Really go into those questions Niki so kindly provided. What and how many ethnicities will be there? Is there a dominant group? How do the power dynamics play out? How does this influence the royal family and their courts as well as how they in turn influence everything else? Yes, there can be (mixed with/and) white people in the royal family but as mentioned by Niki, think about what that implies and how this impacts your worldbuilding and everything else. How did things develop like this? Why did you choose this option? Also take into consideration how being mixed in this setting plays out. Being mixed with white ancestry and/or being white-passing are complex, often misunderstood and oversimplified identities and experiences so keep that in mind as well.

Be sure that if you write diversity into your worldbuilding that you do so inclusively. Don’t make the diversity and the cultures you let inspire your story just be the sauce that “exoticizes” your setting and characters. I’d like to also give the general reminder that West Asian and North African are unspecific terms, given the vast diversity in these regions. As well as with being mixed, there is no one look for any of these identities.

And yes, there are also some potential traps surrounding writing a West Asian/North African antagonist while your MC is white, but simply changing the antagonist to being white (and often other major characters as well) while going for a diverse setting can make things worse.

Asking yourself the right questions as to why you make the choices you make as well as taking the time and care to properly develop your setting, characters and plot will help in your attempt to evade said pitfalls.

It’s not to say something is wrong or right, given we only see part of your concept here, execution can make quite the difference, and we are not to give the rubberstamp of approval. It’s that if this is to be written with respect and care, this story needs a lot of research and thought as to why you make the choices you make. It’s hard for me to really do more than offer these extra thoughts and reminders without more specifics.

~ Alice

Researching North African history and ethnic diversity

Following Niki and Alice’s answers, I reiterate that worldbuilding is the most important factor here and so is historical research.

1. Alice has pointed out that making a character “West Asian or North African” looking does not really mean anything, since it's not a monolith. There are different ethnicities in both regions, each with distinct customs, features, skin tones, and even languages and religions. For example, the biggest ethnic group in North Africa are Amazigh, and to say that your character is Amazigh-looking without specifying what type of Amazigh is (Tuareg, Riffian, Kabyle...) will lead to confusion. To give you a start, the main North African ethnic groups today are Amazigh, Copts, Nubians, and Dinka. In very small numbers, you can find others, such as Arabs.

2. Research the history of North Africa. Even though the indigenous North African groups still exist till this day, there obviously has being conquests and invasions (Vandals, Arabs…), as well as a slave trade and European colonization, that had their impact and left a huge print. Even if your fictional world does not geographically/demographically resemble ours, but you want to include cultures and traditions from existent locations, history will help you not to mix things.

Other than this, the questions Niki has left above are a great start to understand your own world and how it functions.

-Asmaa

[tarotinapinch]

Pile One: Green Fluorite Tower

1. Soul Gift: What you came here to express and share with the world.

*Portal: Doors are opening. You decide. Rewards. Wild Card.

*Share Your Voice: Come out of the cave. Persecution. Expression.

*Death

*Joy

You came here to share your own unique voice, one that is different than anyone else in this world. You may have been raised a certain way, but you are meant to break the mold and transform yourself into someone who is so vibrant and full of joy. You are meant to make your own decisions, unaffected by other people's opinions. Sharing your voice with the world could mean so many different things, whether it be singing, writing, becoming a licensed therapist, doing private readings for people or sharing public readings for the collective, being an influencer on social media, or even making YouTube videos ranting about your personal experiences. The possibilities are quite endless. But you have a specific calling that feels right to you. Go after it, that is your life purpose and you are meant to share these gifts to help raise the collective consciousness.

2. Karmic Wound: What you came here to heal.

*You Got The Love: Hadarian Energy. Codependency. Boundaries

*Keepers of the Earth: You are not alone. Ancient Ancestors stand beside you.

*Take Risk

*Authentic Truth

You have a major karmic wound within your blood family ancestry and that wound is named codependency. I could probably write an entire book on my own experience with this subject, but the main focus for you right now is how to set healthy boundaries. You very well could have grown up with a lack of boundaries as a kid and even into adulthood. Your immediate family could struggle with boundaries with themselves, therefore cross yours more often than you'd like to realize. Boundaries aren't hard to learn, but they can definitely be hard to practice, especially when those around you do not know how to set healthy ones. Here's some good news, though: you are the one who is meant to break and heal this family curse of unhealthy boundaries and codependency. Does this feel like a huge undertaking? I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't. But here's some more good news: although this may be quite the quest to take on, the solution is super simple. All you have to do is take the risk to live your most authentic life, to do what you want to do and be who you want to be at a soul level. These ancestral patterns will break and the healing will start, all just by you being unapologetically you and living only within your truth. Setting boundaries with yourself and with your family to uphold your promise to yourself about living authentically won't exactly be easy, but it will get easier with time and practice. Remember that it's normal to feel guilty when you first start setting boundaries, but also know that feeling guilty does not mean that it's the wrong thing to do. Start small, take it one step at a time. Before you know it, you'll be in such a better place and ready to take the next, even bigger step for spiritual journey.

If you would like to do some self-help research of your own, I highly recommend that you get your hands on a copy of Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Tawwab. Her book is the how-to manual on learning everything about boundaries. The way that she writes is so easy to understand and absorb. No psychobabble, just real talk and experiences.

3. Life Lessons: What you came here to learn.

*All Paths Lead Home: Inner authority. Intuition. Turn your gaze within.

*Deep Replenishment: Retreat. Rest. Be held.

*The Wildling

*Divine Animals

You came here to learn that no matter what path you choose to go down, no matter how crazy it may seem, you will always find yourself going the right way. In fact, the "crazier" your choice may seem to others, the more likely it's what is meant for you. You will never make the wrong choice, you will always end up home, whatever that word may mean for you. Your intuition is always on point and you're here to learn how to follow that inner voice with confidence, even if you may not be able to see the path forward at certain points in your life. You are also here to learn when to give yourself a break. You're a hard worker, perhaps brought up and taught that "there's no free handouts” and that you need to work hard in order to achieve anything in life. As much as we hear this "advice" from society, it's quite the toxic mindset. You should /never/ have to overwork yourself to the point of burnout just to be comfortable. You need passion and focus, of course, but those things do not have the same definition as "hard work". If you really enjoy what you do, then the "work" should be easy and fun for you. The more easy and fun the "work" is, the more time you can spend doing it without burning out and the more money you can earn. The more money you can earn, the more time you can take away to rest, rejuvenate, take a vacation, and care for yourself it whatever other means you feel necessary. Animals may also play a major role in your life whether they just be family pets that you have a close bond with, part of how you wind down and destress, or they could even be a part of your career. Whatever the case may be, you definitely have some important animal friends in your life that were sent by your guides to be a spiritual companion.

4. Current Obstacle: The thing that's challenging you the most.

*Star Ancestors: Hidden secrets. Lost Wisdom. Look a little deeper.

*Dance With Life: Do something to change your energy.

*The Outlaw

*Let Go

The hardest thing for you right now could very well just being able to feel like you can be yourself and do what you want to do without the fear of judgement from others. You may be feeling a bit stuck in a rut, our energy becoming a bit too stagnant for your liking and only adding to the stuck feeling. Know this: no one is holding you back or keeping you stuck. The only person in the entire Universe that can do that is your own self. So you can move and change your energies any time that you wish to. But you may be having a hard time letting go of the way things are because the logical part of your brain tells you "but this worked in the past, so why can't it continue to work now? Why shake things up when everything seems to be running okay?" True, it may have worked in the past, and it may be running okay now. But that doesn't mean that you are okay with how things are, nor does it mean that you have to accept things as they are if the energies don't vibe with you anymore. We are constantly evolving and therefore what we are comfortable with and what we are no longer comfortable with also fluctuate many times during the course of our existence. Do not fear what others may think, or the judgements they may make. This will only hold you back. The only opinion that you need be worried about is your own. As long as you are doing things for you that make you feel good about yourself and you are not intentionally harming others, then you're doing the right thing! Take a minute to meditate, clear your mind of anyone else's thoughts or opinions and ask yourself directly, "What do I want to do? What is it that would make me happy?" Whatever answer you come to that is not tainted with your family's, friends', or even society's opinions, is the true answer that you are seeking to follow.

5. Soul Calling: What your soul is calling you toward.

*Wait: It's not yet time. Things are being woven. 

*Don't Dim to Fit In: How are you dimming your light in order to fit in?

*The Observer

*Focus

Right now is a time for some observance. Hold on a minute. Take a step back and really focus on your life and where you are currently heading. Are you doing the things that you truly want to do? Or are you doing things because you feel the need to fit in with others or with society as whole? Are you dimming down your true, vibrant personality because you feel like you need to fit a certain mold to get by or to be successful? If any of these questions ring true for you, spirit is telling you it is not time to move forward quite yet. Only move forward when you know that you are moving towards what /you/ want for you, not what others want for you. Stop dimming that beautiful personality down. Let it shine brightly like the stunning star that you are. Once you start living within this energy, really focused on your personal wants and needs, that's when it will be time to move forward with the next stage of your life.

6. Guidance Message from your Spiritual Team

*Seeker of Coins

*Become Aware: Create Space today to connect with your body. Find a comfortable place and close your eyes, bringing your awareness to your physical form. How does it feel? What does it speak to you? Do hidden emotions reside within? After you have connected with your body, ask yourself what your body needs in this moment

*Forgiveness

*Following the path of another. Your path is being redirected to where it should be.

Your guides want you to know that what you are meant to do for "work" in this life is quite different than what those around you do. I put "work" in quotation marks because I believe that if we are aligned with the right career path, "work" will never feel like work, it will just feel like a fulfilling and fun life that provides you with all that you need and more. These cards suggest that perhaps there is a family business or perhaps a career path that almost everyone in your family follows that you feel you are expected to follow as well. Just because your family follows this path doesn't mean that you have to as well. And you don't need your family's or anyone else's approval to go after the career choice that you truly long for. Maybe you've felt a pull to this path for a long time somewhere deep in your bones, but have kept putting it off to appease others, or for the fact that it seemed easier to follow an already paved road rather than to clear a path of your own. Whatever the case may be, forgive yourself for the time that you spent dwelling on this. You did not waste time, this time only made you realize what you did not want, and that is very important. Also forgive those around you who seemed to be persuading or pushing you in a different direction than what you really wanted. At the end of the day, they were most likely just trying to help you achieve the goal that they think you wanted. Don't be afraid to speak up for yourself and your needs. Express how you truly feel about things and start to go after the choices that feel right for you. Your true family and friends will respect and support your decisions and you will always be supported by the universe when you go after your dreams to make them a reality.  

[sleepylixie]

The Prince of Pearls 

Seawalker/Merman! Yang Jeongin

Word Count: 1.6k, Fantasy, Beware of suicide, mentions of depression I’m sorry you guys

A/N: THIS FIC DOES NOT REFLECT THE CHARACTER OR LIKENESS OF THE REAL YANG JEONGIN IN ANY FORM OR MANNER. ONTO THE FIC!! I love this for so particular reason, I really don’t know why, 

 ( @aliceu​ and @rebecca-noona​ welcome to the cult yet again. Today we’re serving Sex on the beach with a side of Fantasy Fries)

Requests are open for SKZ and BTS! || Masterlist

Every heard about a time when the lines between natural and supernatural were so blurred, they lived as one? Ever heard about a mortal loving the sea so much, he became one with it? Come, let me tell you the story of the Prince of Pearls.

The sea was an entity of dread to mortals, bringing fear in its unpredictability and terror of the unknown that lay within it. 

But for this village off the coast of what would become Busan, South Korea, the sea was nothing more than a god- given blessing for it brought them a bond other inlanders couldn’t even fathom-  

Merpeople. 

Not more than 80 years ago, the first Mermaid queen had reached out to the Busan chief, hoping to find themselves an agreement of mutual benefit. 

Despite strong disagreement, the chief agreed to the Queen’s behest, 

And it was evident, soon enough, that his decision had been for the best.

Her people were curious and benevolent, she claimed, if not slightly impish in nature- They were curious of their land counterparts and wished to observe them from as close of quarters as they’d allow-

They brought with them deep-sea treasures like the pearl and opal for the village to trade in return for their acceptance of her kind.

Busan thrived with their newly acquired trade of rare gems and medicinal weeds from the sea floor, and quickly warmed up to their newest neighbours. 

Soon enough, it was no oddity to see a band of children splashing and laughing at each other in the shallow waves with a trio of mer-children

It was commonplace to see the mothers sitting at the rocks at the edge of the beach, talking marketplace gossip with their underwater counterparts responding with their own equivalents. 

Busan grew well with the merpeople’s companionship, the village blossoming into a robust little trading town. 

\\

Yang Jeongin was the name of the current chief’s son, a young boy with a polite, if not a little shy disposition which was often mistaken for coldness. 

He wasn’t of the chief’s blood, for his wife was too weak to bear a child. He was picked up by his wife at an orphanage, being swept away by the baby with hair like ebony and a smile like nectar.

He wasn’t a child of many words, often choosing silence and smiles as much as he could.

That is, until he saw the ocean. 

The second the waves touched his toes, Jeongin seemed to evolve- no more was he the timid, reserved child his school friends knew him as.

He was a bright, vivacious little thing, unashamed in his loud laughter and witty in his responses, attracting every mer-child’s attention without a smidgen of hesitance. 

It was like he bloomed into his true self when he was in the ocean only to retreat into himself again on land, much to his parents’ exasperation.

“Your life is here, on land, Jeongin,” his mother would reprimand him every time he came back past midnight, tracking sand off his feet and pockets full of coral. “You give too much of yourself to the ocean.”

He would smile his shy smile again, complete with the shiny puppy eyes, and his mother would melt, yet again. 

And so grew Yang Jeongin, from a reserved child with an affinity for the ocean, to a young man with a love for it. 

He was never curious of his true parentage, for his adoptive parents had never made him feel less than their own son by blood- What was the need to look into history, when the present was as beautiful as this?

His hair was black as midnight, cut short so they hung slightly over his coral-brown eyes, brushing at high cheekbones. He stood tall and proud, like a chief’s son should, with swimmer’s shoulders and work-roughed palms. Despite his nature, he was loved by the village, an unconscious charmer who had eyes for nothing but the sea.

Jeongin had begun to spend as much time as he could in the underwater world, loving it all way too much to be able to stay away. 

He could stay underwater for long minutes, swim unnaturally fast with his human limbs, even understand the merpeople’s underwater tongue like it was his own.

There was no doubt, of course, that the merpeople loved the chief’s son. He was forthcoming with his questions, nimble with his trickery and brilliant with his words, all qualities that they treasured very greatly amongst their own people.

“Join the sea,” they’d mock him, laughing their bubbly laughs when Jeongin would frown for he knew he had responsibilities on land that he had no choice but to shoulder. “I wish, my friends.” He’d respond in their tongue, a wistful look in his eyes. 

But at least his underwater friends would always be there for him, no matter what-

but one day, they disappeared. 

One winter morning, Busan woke up to find the merpeople had retreated into the deep sea, far beyond measure.

Busan was lucky that their trading season was over and that they could tide away a few months without the precious cargo the merpeople used to bring for them

But what were they to do if they never returned?

The pressure of the decisions fell onto the chief’s family- who were facing an entirely different kind of dilemma altogether. 

Their son had fallen into a spiral of darkness after the merpeople left, retreating so deeply into himself that he was barely a shadow of his old self. 

It felt like something was missing inside Jeongin, even when he stood at the sea. It was a sickly, poisonous sensation that left him unable to even stand the sight of the ocean- a place he couldn’t stay away from not too long ago.

No amount of talking from his father or pleading from his mother could get him to leave his room- the windows closed, the bed turned away so he would not catch whiff or sight of the sea and it’s breeze.

The healer came up with nothing that could allude to his strange behavior; his body was entirely fine, she said. His mind, on the other hand....

If only they knew. 

If only they knew how he cried at the edge of the beach every night, where nobody would hear him, screaming and begging for the underwater race to come back, bring their ocean magic back with them

The water felt like a trap without their presence, a dark shroud falling over his senses that used to be open and clear even under water. 

Maybe that was why Jeongin gave up, one night. 

He couldn’t take the emptiness inside him anymore, he couldn’t take having to watch the very thing he loved so much tighten a noose around his head every time he so much as smelt it’s air 

So he gave himself to the sea, walking right into the water that felt so poisonous, allowing it to rise from his knees, to waist, chest, shoulders, nose, eyes....

and let go. 

It was a full moon that watched the boy with the midnight hair walk into the very water that gave him life, only to never come out again. 

//

When he felt water rush into his nose, Jeongin’s immediate reaction when he came around to consciousness was to panic and try to push his way to the surface until-

The water wasn’t constricting his lungs at all. The water didn’t feel suffocating, like it did for all those months before.

Right in front of him floated the same people who he’d cried for, all those nights when he felt hopeless and lost in the land. 

“I am sorry you had to live that way, young one.”

The oldest spoke, his merman tongue unfamiliar with his language. 

“Where am I,” he breathed out, finally allowing his eyes to rove over his surroundings- his extremely clear, unblurred vision. 

That was when he looked down at himself- and nearly blacked out in shock when he saw not two legs, but one tail. A strong streamlined tail with shimmering bronze dorsal fins, obsidian scales rippling throughout the length of it. 

“Welcome to Atlantis.”

//

He took to life underwater better than he could have ever imagined. 

Word went out about the newly arrived merman, formerly of human nature but unforgiving in his love for the sea, much like the rest of them. They accepted him graciously, offering him room and tutelage with his true-blooded peers.

He learnt about how merpeople were formed- first by divine intervention, then procreation and rarely, like in his case, when a mortal with a great love for the sea gave his life away to it. 

What Jeongin never understood, however, was why the merpeople that had resided in the waters next to his town decided to leave so suddenly.

When asked, he was told that the merpeople royal court had decided against further interaction with the humans with no explanation at all.

It was sad, he was told.The mer people loved the companionship of their land counterparts, and it pained them to leave the little town that had quenched their curiosities and accepted them without question.

He thought long and hard, over his tutelage, about what the relationship between the merpeople and his human ancestry could bring to the both of them- and then it struck him.

As a human child turned merperson, he could be the perfect conduit between both the worlds- a seawalker who could broker a peace with the landwalkers.

He threw himself into his studies with new vigour, for it felt like he had found a new purpose in life. 

Jeongin rose through the ranks with just the lure of his voice-

For it was easy to accept his words, especially when they were paired with his easy charm, simple smiles and fox-like cunning now veiled behind new sapphire-blue locks.

His new home wondered about him, 

“Is it true that he’s part siren??”

“His land family wasn’t his blood family, what’s to say he truly has our blood in him after all?

Atlantis took to calling him the Prince of Pearls, a fond nickname for the newest addition to their large family who had ideas bigger than them all, a heart filled with compassion and beliefs clad in iron and adamant.

Everybody knows about the seawalker from Atlantis, all midnight hair and trickster allure, the tale of a mortal from the wrong side of the sea now a voice of reason for everything he had learned to believe.

[circular-time]

About "Koschei" and degrees of canon

I thought the name first appeared in Divided Loyalties, but I think it’s actually The Dark Path, a Virgin Missing Adventure published in 1997.

Doctor Who canon is very malleable, because it’s been going for over a half a century, nobody can consume let alone keep track of all of it, and various people in charge of it have given more or less of a damn about it and/or past eras.

As fans, our impression of canon is going to vary by the era we first watched on TV, what other EU stuff we enjoy the most (if we enjoy any), and our personal experience.

For ME, that’s:

The Pertwee to Davison era. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy were my “new Who.” I’m not old enough to remember when the addition of the “12 regenerations” limit and the depiction of Gallifrey in The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors were controversial. Whereas Saward’s grimdark era and the Cartmel Masterplan still raise my hackles a bit, in the same way that RTD fans side-eye some of Moffat’s stuff. ;) 

Big Finish. Which has made me appreciate Colin Baker far more and accept the Eighth Doctor as adopted into Classic Who instead of Wilderness Years, a significant distinction for those of us crushed by the show’s cancellation in 1990. 

I have MAs in classics and mythology, with training in evaluating the authority, applicability and trustworthiness of certain texts. 

This has caused me to privilege TV Who, especially classic; it causes me to accept/resist EU Who based on how much it seems to fit the spirit and canon I remember; and it causes me to pay attention to behind-the-scenes creation of particular stories. I gauge “degrees of canon” partly according to how much a story was vetted by showrunners or crew working on TV production of Who. (Which is why I tend to regard Big Finish as a bit more canon-ish; the showrunners of classic Who aren’t usually involved, but the cast is, adding another subtle layer of vetting.)

That’s the short version. Here’s the long version. I have a lot of thoughts about degrees of canon and how to look at it. 

As a student of myth, I’m trained to notice when representations of a myth jibe or clash with the more common and popular versions of the myth, in art or ritual or text. 

There’s no “one true version,” but there are versions that get more or less at the heart of certain myths or mythological figures. There are certain versions that get told again and again, or that appear in art again and again, that are the common, default versions of the myth. And then there are versions presented by one particular artist or playwright or writer trying to deconstruct, reinterpret, spoof or embellish elements of the myth: they’re not wrong, and they’re often illuminating or insightful, but they shouldn’t be treated as typical. They’re fanfiction. Also, common perceptions of particular myths and mythological figures change over time, especially when new cultures adopt and adapt older things. Sometimes fanfiction ascends to the “default” version of a myth.

Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream has come a long way from Dionysos and Bacchus, but traces of his ancestry, even that tendency to disrupt and poke fun at the aristocrats of the city (see The Bacchai from the 5th century BCE), peep through. 

Doctor Who, to me, is not just a fictional character we’re treating as real with real history and backstory. He’s a mythological figure. So I’m more forgiving of details being jiggered around (as long as people don’t take them as The One True Version ™), as long as they don’t betray the basic spirit of the character or show. I try to remember that the myth has changed/evolved over time, but I sometimes react against newer elements that go against the grain of the myth I grew up with.

On the other hand, as a ex classics scholar (studying Greek and Roman history and culture, plus Egyptian because Egypt Is Cool), I can’t help but sweat the details, too.

Scholars of ancient literature try to determine which copies of a text are the most accurate, and which have details interpolated by centuries of scribal error, editorial comment slipped into the body of the text, passages rewritten by somebody who objected to something, or bits added by later writers to make a point or insert what he thought should be there. And that’s just whether one copy of a text is close to how it was originally written down.

The other question is whether the chap who first wrote it down (usually a chap, thanks to sexist literary traditions) knew bugger-all about what he was talking about and/or cared about being historically accurate (faithful to canon). 

Maybe he was an eyewitness or talked to eyewitnesses who may or may not have remembered details correctly. Maybe he lived at a later period, but was a general who knew military tactics, or a career politician who had access to official documents, or a scientist or someone with expert knowledge of the subject. Maybe he was Making Shit Up because it sounded good, or illustrated the point he was trying to make, or was entertaining, or was the sort of thing he thought the historical figures at that event might have said, since in those days people didn’t have cameras. Maybe he wasn’t a very good writer or didn’t care or didn’t know his subject matter but later scribes copied it because it was all they had to go on. And what’s come down to us is often written by later writers trying to pool together information from earlier, now lost sources, whose validity they had to weigh for themselves. EU writers, in other words.

How does that translate to Doctor Who?

I’m aware that early Who was mostly produced by people in a hurry to get the shows out, during a time when there was no easy way to look back at what had already been said (whether you were a writer or a fan) since tapes weren’t available or at least easy to get to. 1960s Who cast members have remarked that episodes in those days were thought to be ephemeral; they never expected fans to watch them again after their initial broadcast.

So they didn’t worry about rigorous consistency, until around the beginning of the color era. Even then, it was far more casual than now. There was no “canon bible,” no Wikis to consult. Producers/writers weren’t going back to check that their version of the Time Lords in The Five Doctors matched what we saw of them in The Three Doctors a decade earlier. But at least, all the way through the classic era, there was a continuous literary tradition, so to speak, of people who had worked on it earlier handing it down to those who came after.

The cancellation of classic Who establishes a huge “canon” and “post-canon” demarcation in my mind. Without a TV studio to advocate for the show or the BBC interested in maintaining it, nobody much was minding the store during the Wilderness Years.

Nowadays, Big Finish scripts, written mostly by fans and passed under the nose of Nicholas Briggs and at least one script editor who knows classic Who REALLY REALLY WELL, are sent to the Cardiff studio at the idea-proposal stage and at the finished-script stage, and they’ll sometimes be rejected or asked for a rewrite. I don’t know how involved Moffat himself is involved in that vetting, but that means every Big Finish story is subject to new Who AND classic Who continuity policing, a more rigorous editorial process than ever before.

That’s pretty canon-ish.

Whereas in the Wilderness Years, when the BBC had cancelled Who and didn’t intend to do anything with it ever again, there was little to no oversight. Some Virgin novels were damn fine fanfiction, written by professional writers who were also fans and knew more about classic Who than some of those who had actually worked on the TV show. But they were enjoying a certain amount of creative license which made for some amazing stories but which sometimes took pretty wide sweeping paths away from typical or primary canon. Besides which, a lot of the Wilderness Years material is now inaccessible to fans because those books are out of print.

Wilderness Years Who isn’t wrong, and many of the best bits have now been incorporated into TV and Big Finish canon, because fans who hung onto their love of Who through the Wilderness Years are now in charge of the show. So some of what started out as ascended fanfiction is now pretty much “canon-ish" (like President Romana). BUT. I am still wary of retroactively forcing details from the Wilderness Years onto classic Who TV episodes. Which is why I tend to chirp when the name “Koschei” shows up in discussions of the Pertwee era, or when people start going on about Looms in relation to Deadly Assassin, or Time Lords’ aversion to plants when discussing Arc of Infinity.

I am also somewhat wary of new Who retroactively rewriting classic Who stories. I don’t care (much) if Cybermen and Sontarans and Daleks and the Master and the Doctor are presented very differently in episodes now than they were then. It would be too cumbersome trying to be faithful to everything that went before! New Who had to start with an almost-clean slate and license to rewrite anything it wanted. And sometimes the new version is better-thought-out. That’s all perfectly fine in my book, although I grit my teeth sometimes when they jettison a bit of canon I loved.

BUT at the same time I object when they show clips of the past, real footage from classic episodes, and Photoshop it, so to speak, so that it looks different or reads differently than it did when it was broadcast. That’s not what happened, I scream internally. I resent “my” Who being misrepresented to modern fans. I want to understand and enjoy and discuss old Who stories as they were for their audience and their writers and their actors when they were first broadcast.

Mind you, newer interpretations/embellishments/fanon/fanfiction can be rewarding, enjoyable, and fascinating. They breathe new life into stories that would otherwise be pretty well fossilized by now. My blog is named for an EU audio that dared to throw an entirely new spin on the Fifth Doctor’s regeneration, which for fans my age is a fairly “sacred” moment of canon. BUT however much I love some of the EU, and however much it’s “headcanon fucking ACCEPTED,” it’s not quite the same as “original, classic Who canon,” so I won’t blur the two when discussing a classic Who story that aired on TV. 

And this is all my own VERY biased opinion.

Also, for the most part? I try not to dwell on what is or isn’t canon(ish), or what I dislike about the eras and parts of Who that don’t work for me. 

I’d much rather put my energy into discussing, sharing, and enthusing about the eras of the show I love most. And, yes, that includes coming up with fan theories and fanfiction of my own. Which isn’t canon. ;) 

[multiracialmedia-blog]

Why Saying "6.9% of the US Population" is Mixed Race is the Right Number for the Wrong Reasons

Why Saying “6.9% of the US population is Mixed Race” is the Right Number for the Wrong Reasons.

Sometimes a report comes out and the data just seems to speak to you.  You can read the numbers and say “Yeah, that sounds about right.”  And then there’s the 2015 study from the Pew Research Center that put the size of the multiracial population at 6.9%.  Every time I hear this number cited by my fellow Mixed Race Commentators my hairs bristle, I suck in my teeth, then I let out a deep sigh with a wag of my head and here’s the reason why.

Once upon a time people in the US were segregated by an odious system of racial apartheid known colloquially as Jim Crow.  Since race mixing was a fact of life in spite of the prohibitions against sexual relations, it became necessary to determine clearly who was and was not a member of the black race to know how to enforce the law.  The system they developed became known as the “one drop rule” to suggest that any amount of black ancestry introduced a “drop” of black blood and that was all that was needed to make someone black.

A reverse system was used among Native Americans.  “Blood quantum” numbers attempted to reduce the size of tribal populations to then attempt to seize native lands.  If a tribe became “watered down” enough in Native American purity then the tribe could be claimed to no longer exist.  The point is that using ancestry to determine individual identity was intended to be an oppressive act.

This was the source, in part, for Maria P.P. Root to include in her “Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage” to state things like “I have the right to identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify.”  Among other self-affirmations, the litany of rights presented by Root essentially boils down to one thing: self-identification is the only valid form of identification.  Slowly, government agencies within the US have been moving towards this goal.

Enter Stage Left: the Pew Research Center’s Notion of 6.9% of the US Population

At first blush, the Pew’s study on multiracial people was really exciting.  I always felt the Pew had a good reputation for honest reporting and kudos to them for considering the mixed race community important enough to dedicate resources to studying us.  Their report had multiple chapters exploring many aspects of mixed identity.  For some reason, the chapter that grabbed my attention the most was on politics.  Simply put, the multiracial community seemed evenly split on many social and political issues.

Having been involved in the multiracial movement for over 25 years I have come to know many multiracial people of all stripes.  And while we are certainly not monolithic in our thinking, I believe I have a fairly good idea about how most people in the multiracial community feel about certain political issues.  If I were to characterize the multiracial community politically, I would definitely say it is left of center.  Perhaps not as far left as some racial minority groups, but still leaning to port.  So why did the Pew seem to indicate we are so divided?  I was determined to find out.

My first clue was this number 6.9% of the US population.  How did the Pew end up with such a large number when the Census Bureau, with a larger sample size, stated only 2.9% in 2010?  The answer lay in their methodology for who they counted as multiracial.  First they began with a method of self-identification.  Anyone in their survey that claimed two races or literally “multiracial” was counted as multiracial.  But if they claimed only one race the Pew went a step further and asked for the race of their parents.  If the parents were of different races, then the study individual was counted as mixed even if they themselves didn’t identify that way.

And if that wasn’t bad enough they went a step further.  If the parents claimed the same race they then asked about the race of the grandparents.  If any grandparent claimed a different race, or even a mixed race identity, then the study participant was counted as mixed race.  So in theory, a family could have a legend of a long lost Native American ancestor and that would suddenly make the study individual mixed race.

In fact, this is likely what happened.  According to the 2010 Census, only 16% of the mixed race population, or about 1.5 million people, identified as mixed white and Native American.  However, according to the Pew study, the mixed race population is twice the size and 50% of that community, or about 11.4 million people, are mixed white and Native American.  That’s more than a 700% increase!

This is a problematic methodology for a number of reasons.  First of all, it violates the ethos of the multiracial community embodied by Maria Root’s “Bill of Rights.”  It overwrites self-identification using ancestry just like the “one drop rule” and “blood quantum” rules had done.  If the community wishes to be consistent in its values then this cannot be acceptable.

Secondly, this may not even be accurate.  Many individuals and families claimed Native American ancestry to cover up black ancestry.  While the stigmas may have faded with time, the legends remain and can skew our understanding of racial mixing.

Remember how I mentioned how the community was divided politically?  I became inspired to recalculate the Pew study numbers eliminating the white and Native American community.  I chose this group since it had the highest difference compared to the Census numbers.  Arguably that’s an arbitrary decision, but I’m not going for scientific truth.  Rather I wanted to test the sensitivity of the results to the inflated mixed white and Native American numbers.  If the remainder of the mixed community agreed with white-Native Americans then there should be no change in the numbers.

My algorithm to recalculate was limited to the results that the Pew presented as aggregate alongside white and Native American.  Some of the results are shown in the attached figure.  The top bar in each graph is the Pew’s results and the bottom bar is mine.  In a few cases the changes were minor, but as can be seen some of the changes are highly significant as in double digit changes.

I can understand the interest the multiracial community has in the 6.9% population size.  For so long our community has been relegated to the fringes of society and so little valid research has been done about us.  And then to see a study that greatly inflates our numbers is a real boost to the ego.  But we shouldn’t rush to embrace something simply because it is nice to hear.  The irony here is that the Pew’s numbers might still be correct, but not for the reasons the Pew thinks.

Today, Latinos are not considered a race by the Census Bureau and the Pew agrees with them.  Latino identity is asked as a separate question from racial identity.  As a result, when the Census Bureau and the Pew tabulate mixed race folks, they don’t usually include Latinos.  (The Pew did have a chapter on mixed Latinos but they still applied the flawed ancestral methodology so I’m not going to go into that here.)  But the Census Bureau has been testing a new methodology where Latino IS counted as a race and thus Latino identity may be tabulated in combination with other racial groups.

The initial results of this methodology can be found in the 2010 Alternative Questionnaire Experiment or AQE conducted by the Census Bureau.  In this test, in one format of the question, the “Two or More” population jumped to 6.8%!  Other formats saw increases as well.  However, unlike the Pew these were self-identifying people (not descendants from distant ancestors) and the bulk of the increase was due to mixed Latino and non-Latino identifying people (not inflated white and Native American numbers).

So what number should multiracial commentators use?  Should we even report one number at all?  Core to multiracial identity is being comfortable with ambiguity.  Perhaps a range of numbers should be reported and when readers respond with confusion we start a dialog that leads to a greater understanding about what these categories mean.  Identity is not something that can be fit neatly into a box.  This is really just step one in deconstructing race and evolving our society.

Do you have any thoughts about why saying “6.9% of the US population is Mixed Race” is the right number for the wrong reasons?

Why Saying “6.9% of the US Population” is Mixed Race is the Right Number for the Wrong Reasons if you want to check out other voices of the Multiracial Community click here Multiracial Media