#Hws Chechnya

[irithnova]

Sakha headcanon post - courtesy of my conversations with @topipaku !! Thank you 🙏

Huge huge film bro he loves discussing films and makes his own

I headcanon that he is very much like a lawyer when it comes to business stuff but this somewhat "strong headed/argumentative" mentality also extends to how he critiques certain films or goes about explaining them

His favorite type of film is comedy/horror and a lot of his own projects involves someone dying in some shape or form

You can blame his love of everything morbid on Even, Evenk and Yukaghir, who often (when he was younger) tell him some pretty spooky stories (such as the Even folk tale of a mother turning into a cuckoo because her children would not give her a helping hand)

In all honesty they probably told him those stories to try and scare him into behaving - well now he's just a huge horror fan

Sakha has told many of these same spooky stories to Dolgan when she was younger

Speaking of Dolgan - whilst she's grateful for the hand Sakha had in raising her, she wants her own identity outside of him. Often Dolgan people are just labelled as being Sakha

Really good friends with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan because they are #Turkic but also because they like sharing their films/writing together - they screen each other's films in cinemas and in Kazakhstan, operas based on the Sakha "Olonkho" myth are being held.

Writers from Kazakhstan and Sakha signed a co operation agreement, and in Kyrgyzstan there is a monument dedicated to the Sakha politician and writer Maxim Kirovich

However - despite their love of sharing each other's writing, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are quite surprised at how often Sakha's stories end in death !

Kazakhstan often jokes to Sakha that he should become independent

I definitely think these three share a groupchat together

He has an inside joke with Buryatia about the both of them being Japanese or secretly being Japanese. This is because both Sakha and Buryat intelligentsia were accused of being spies for the Japanese Empire (by Russia) at the time

Needless to say, Japan is definitely shooting them questionable looks when he overhears them make that joke

I think these days he has a bit of friendly competition with Buryatia over who is the most popular/more relevant group in Siberia

Really likes rap music !!

His relationship with Mongolia is very funny - in Sakha there is something of a myth that the most powerful faction of Genghis Khan's army was comprised of Sakha soldiers.

In reality, Sakha was most likely a child during this time and the Sakha people were most definitely not a part of the Mongol army

I think Sakha and Mongolia are friendly but Sakha has a little bit of a fascination with Mongolia. There are Sakha artists such as Afanasy Osipov who paints scenes of Mongols, and there is a film called "The secret of Genghis Khan", and apparently the Republic of Sakha was the initiator of the filming process ?

Very big into wrestling - in fact he enjoys challenging Mongolia even if Mongolia doesn't really reciprocate. He doesn't care that Mongolia is technically an elder to him, he'll do it regardless !

He is good friends with Chechnya because of their shared love of wrestling

Good relationship with both North and South Korea, though these days he's closer to South Korea

A lot of North Koreans were sent to Sakha under the USSR and mined gold , with some staying to teach farming to the Sakha

There is a Sakha-Korean school in Sakha and there are people in Sakha who refer to themselves as being "Sakha-Koreans" - presumably from the North Koreans who were sent to Sakha

South Korea indulges Sakha on his love for films. There was an exhibition of Sakha films that were held in South Korea, and South Korea was the first to make an article about Sakha films

For a while, there were even direct flights from Yakutsk to a city in South Korea !

Sad that his films aren't really taken seriously on a more global scale :(

I'd say he's also good friends with Tuva as similar to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - both are Turkic and Sakha likes talking to people he relates to, especially as Siberia doesn't really have many Turkic groups

[unhonestlymirror]

[ask-miraculous-hetalia]

Tigress, the last holder of the tiger miraculous. She's from Chechnya

[sepdet]

Very good point. And no.

I think DS9 is very much a 1990s show with a Gen X sensibility and a dash of 1970s chaotic realism (from its creators), existing in the liminal space between the world polarization of the Cold War and the even greater polarization that's grown within the US in the past 20 years.

Here's some cultural context, since some of you don't remember the 90s. Apologies for the US-centrism.

Its main audience, Gen X, had been children under Pres Reagan, growing up with the prospect of nuclear annihilation at any second. Some of our earliest memories were disco and our hippie Boomer parents (where did they go?) protesting the Vietnam War.

I'm probably missing some context, because I think the creators of Deep Space Nine grew to adulthood in the 70s. Which I vaguely remember as being when African Americans were briefly celebrated as artists and cool dudes and professionals in the wake of the civil rights movement being successful… or so allies naively thought, since it was briefly unpopular to be overtly racist in public. I'm sure there are other 1970s things I missed. But they had a lot in common with us youngsters.

For the last several decades, the US had been involved in mini Vietnams all over the place you've probably never heard about, arming and sometimes fighting on one side of civil wars because the other side was Communist, Socialist, and/or backed by the Soviets. El Salvador. Nicaragua. Lebanon. Afghanistan. Communism and Socialism were treated as a monolithic threat largely thanks to Stalin establishing a horrible rep for Communism, which was a lot more authoritarian than Marx had envisioned (see also China).

From 1978-1992, there had been a war in Afghanistan between its Communist government backed by the USSR and religiously-motivated freedom fighters, the Mujahideen, including different religiously-motivated factions that would become the Taliban and, later, Al-Qaeda. The CIA trained and provided arms to these, although it disputes claims that it trained bin Laden.

I feel like the Bajorans may draw somewhat from the Mujahideen, although there's also hints of freedom fighters in various parts of the disintegrating Soviet Union, especially Chechnya.

Finally, Deep Space Nine was developed just after the unpopular (I'm biased; I was one of the protesters, but mass protests were on the news) 1990-1991 First Gulf War, when a US-led coalition intervened in a local Middle East dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. Which — bad, but we were afraid of peers in the army getting sacrificed in another Vietnam for oil. Which George Bush senior didn't manage to do, but unfortunately his son did. :/

Other context: the AIDS crisis, gays beginning to come out of the closet and risk marching for civil rights. At the time we were asking for protections against being fired, losing our kids, or being barred from teaching, the military, and loved ones' hospital rooms since non-legal partners had no right to be there or make medical decisions. States were rushing to ban same-sex marriage, so it never occurred to me that would become legal in my lifetime. I remember being harassed in 1994 simply for stopping and reading a "happy coming out day" sign chalked on the sidewalk; the person calling it gross was a college student who'd been snogging his girlfriend in public ten seconds earlier.

yeah. So that thing with Jadzia and her ex was grojndbreaking for its day. Pretty pathetic, huh?

1994-1996 - Chechen War

Jan 4, 1993 - DS9 premiere "The Emissary"

Dec 1993 - DADT executive order

Jan 1993-2001 Pres Bill Clinton (D)

Apr-May 1992 - LA Riots over 4 cops acquitted for beating black man, one of first police brutality cases caught on tape

Aug 1990-Feb 1991 - First Gulf War

Nov 9, 1989 - Fall of Berlin Wall, culmination of several years of thawing Cold War

Jan 1989-1993 Pres George HW Bush (R)

Apr 1986 - Chernobyl - according to Gorbachev, cost of disaster so massive it put severe strain on USSR and hastened collapse

1981-82 - beginning of AIDS outbreak in US

Jan 1981-1989 - Pres Reagan (R), best buds with Margaret Thatcher

1978-1992 Afghan Civil War

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was not a perfect show but its treatment of imperialism, war crimes, and genocide was light-years ahead of some of the stuff coming out today (looking at you, Star Wars).

In DS9:

Bajor, a world struggling to recover from decades of genocidal colonial policies, is front and center

Bajoran characters, most prominently Kira, are allowed to grapple with their own trauma and their stories don’t revolve around making their oppressors, the Cardassians, feel better

Kira’s history of violent resistance against the occupation is not sugarcoated, nor does the show shy away from the fact that she hurt innocent people in the process. But neither does the story condemn her for using violence to resist genocide

Not only was Kira a terrorist, but a religiously driven one as well. Belief in the Prophets held Bajor together during the occupation, and is a major subject of exploration in the show

Despite all that Bajor suffered, Bajorans are not relics of the past or a destroyed, defeated people–their culture is vital and alive, they are rebuilding against incredible odds, and are working toward Federation membership

Bajorans themselves are not some misty spiritual cardboard cutouts, either. They are complex, they lash out, they are spiritual, they are lovers, killers, reactionaries, weirdos, mystics, the full range of experiences and personalities

And then there’s Kai Winn, who is an entire book in herself. She is such a well-drawn female villain, a complicated portrayal of self-serving ambition, self-deception, and self-entitlement

Because Bajorans are given their own stories, it actually works when some Cardassians–generally minor and one-off characters–are shown to be dissenters, or themselves traumatized from the occupation

We actually see Dukat, the leader of the occupation, trying to play the misunderstood hero/redemption card only to get slapped down by the narrative time and again

Dukat isn’t a one-note villain either; he is often charming and sometimes inspiring, as when he has a stint as a resistance fighter himself against the Klingons occupying Cardassian territory

Ultimately, though, the story reveals Dukat to be a liar, a virulent racist, an abuser, and at heart an imperialist megalomaniac who almost destroyed the Alpha Quadrant with his lust for power

David Brin was right and Star Trek is better

[ask-miraculous-hetalia]

Chechen Wars

Tigress was there when it all started. The first acts of independence. She'd been holding the Chechen flag with the crowd of people when the Russian troops were sent in. She happened to notice another miraculous holder in the Russian crowd. Is that the snow leopard? Are they here to stop the revolution?

"Tigress, this needs to stop," Snow Leopard whispered into her ear. "No," Tigress said, glaring at Snow Leopard. "My people deserve to be free." "Won't be my fault if we need to find a new tiger holder," Snow Leopard said.

There she lay. Aiza Dudyin. Close to her right hand is the miraculous of the tiger. Red eyes of Rurik look down at her. It took a moment for him to speak. When he did, he said, "I warned you to stop." Then he picked up the miraculous. Roarr appeared out of the miraculous, looking between Rurik and Aiza laying on the ground. Realization soon dawned on the kwami. Bubbles came out of their mouth when they tried to say her name. "You're getting a new owner," Rurik said to Roarr.

Aino Korhonen. Pink haired and green-eyed Finnish male. He put on the panjas bracelet and out came Roarr. Both look at each other for a moment before Aino spoke up, saying, "I'm Aino." "Roarr," the kwami said. "I'm the kwami of the tiger."