#empirialism

[harry-sussex]

A question that just popped into my mind - would you guys call yourselves:

Royal fans?

Royal followers?

Royal supporters?

Something else?

Please reblog/reply with your answer and justification, regardless of your royal family of choice. I’m very curious!

[liliyawnas]

i mean i just,,,

as a ukrainian im so tired of these « antiempirialist » fucks

are we going to pretend that is not an antisemitic caricature of our president or ???

[4o77th]

@empiriical​ as czes said: things that would send cold chills down your spine and wake you in the middle of the night.

deep space nine.

spending time with the children is his favorite pastime. it is perhaps the saddest ward in the hospital, but also, the most joyful. it means everything to him to see their little faces light up, and he wants nothing more than for them to feel safe and cared for during their stint, however long that may be.

the girl who'd suggested telling ghost stories in the first place squeals, burying her face into the crook of his neck. he gave her a little shake, gently bouncing the knee she sits upon once, twice. " it's alright! benjamin's merely telling us a story. though i must admit, i'm a little spooked, myself! "

he turns his attention to czes, smiling tenderly. " you're quite the storyteller, son! do you want to be an author when you grow up? "

[c4rdshark]

❛  it's up to you whether we're friends or lovers!  ❜ / claire. never sent something so fast in my life.

Normal people don't just say things like that!

He's lucky enough not to let that little comment slip, but it's definitely thought with the utmost sincerity. If his face weren't already red before, it definitely would be now.

"Normally, you ask a guy about that sorta thing before takin' him on dates, Claire." He has to say this through a clenched jaw, tight with embarrassment. Honestly, it's bad enough that Claire had handled this whole thing the way he did in the first place, but even when he's just blatantly saying stupid things like this---

---I still like him, for some reason!

It's the kind of frustrating dilemma that makes Firo really want to shove his head into the nearest cushion and scream.

"Wouldja just---you'd think with how observant you are sometimes you'd be able to tell that sorta thing," Firo complains, using his grumbling as a convenient excuse to not have to answer right away. "...Look, I don't not wanna be l--- t... together, alright? I mean---augh, listen, I wouldn't... mind... that sorta thing, just..."

the slash! / accepting.

[celestialdetected]

The strangest thing about this interaction is that it wasn't happening in his office. People didn't tend to approach Arawn out in public, especially after he had been let out of prison. He had that convict look about him now, so he was told. A thick angry scar curved around his orbital bone, quite obviously a knife wound, and it tended to make people avoid him unless they were actively petitioning him for help.

But here Arawn was in a tavern, trying to negotiate Rhiannon into eating something other than sweets, and trying not to chug an ale in front of his six year old. She'd been so much easier to deal with before she'd formed opinions. Not that he didn't love her opinions, but still. To him she'd remained three years old for the past three years and then had suddenly skipped forward.

Then suddenly there was another figure at his side, talking to Rhia in a disarming voice. And there was Rhia actually lifting a green bean to her mouth. Arawn's mouth dropped open.

"Now, how the fuck did you do that?"

@empiriical

[closedcoffins]

@empiriical ( claire stanfield ) / loosely plotted starter. ( chané laforet ).

She still doesn't understand the boy her father is so interested in.

Claire Stanfield, he'd told her once. A genius child Huey intended to cultivate in order to have someone powerful who was also capable of carrying out his experiments, or at the very least being an annoying diversion for the authorities.

Chané had wanted to protest that she was capable of doing both of these things, but she wouldn't ever speak against her father like that, and even if she wanted to, she couldn't. Not very effectively, anyway. And she wouldn't have even been correct. She works hard every day to be able to be strong for her father---just as hard as Claire works when he's pushed to be better and stronger---but Claire always seems to be ten steps ahead of her.

So she doesn't understand Claire, but she'd like to. If she doesn't understand him, she'll never be able to reach his level, and then she'll be practically useless to her father.

That's why she finds herself, notebook and pen in one hand, holding out a torn-out paper to him with the other. For anyone else who couldn't speak, Chané assumes it would be natural to communicate in this way from time to time, provided sign language wasn't an option. But she's never done anything like that before. Never, to anyone. In some ways, it's the first time she's 'said' anything to anyone other than her father since being silenced.

« Please teach me how to be as strong as you. »

[zeveth]

@empiriical said "the universe is a dark place. i’m trying to make it brighter."

zeveth hums, granting him the slightest twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "you do make it brighter," she tells him honestly, "at least for me. but i think... not all of us know what we really want. people think they do. sometimes they just end up destroying themselves."

[boundlss]

❛ the only one who gets to kill you, is me. ❜ yknow. a classic laddclaire.

There's no way in a million years Ladd would actually be able to kill him in the way he wants to, but it's still a romantic thought.

There's no person Claire would want to kill him more, frankly, just because he knows Ladd would savor that kill down to its last second. It's almost enough to make Claire genuinely reconsider his stance on the subject of being killed. Sure, he wants to say, you'll be the one who gets to kill me, but let's have a long and happy life together before that, alright?

Or something like that. He smiles softly to himself.

"I'm a little insulted that you think I'd let someone like that lay a scratch on me," Claire says instead, because that had also been on his mind. "I'd prefer it if no one got a hit off on me at all, but I definitely don't think some nobody who thinks they'll be able to scratch me just 'cause they might get lucky deserves to do somethin' like that."

He takes a few steps forward, closing the distance between with intent, and delivers a slow and easy kiss to Ladd. Between them, things are usually more fast-paced, but this is more of a message than anything---a message Claire subsequently also delivers aloud.

"You're the only person I'm ever gonna let touch me in a fight. Since we met until forever---that's just how it is. I know you mean it when you say you wanna kill me more than anyone, so give me a little faith, too. You don't have to believe the world's really mine, or anything. Just remember that I love you too much to let anyone else even think they might be able to kill me!"

dialogue prompts. / accepting.

[xtruss]

Archaeology: How Asia’s First Nomadic Empire Broke the Rules of Imperial Expansion

Ancient China’s mobile neighbors built an empire that’s attracting scientific scrutiny

Xiongnu Herders in what’s now Mongolia, portrayed in this painting, followed their own rules in building a multiethnic empire and advancing iron-making technology starting around 2,200 years ago, new studies indicate. Flickr (CC0 1.0)

— By Bruce Bower | July 2, 2023

In an age that spawned the ancient Roman and Egyptian Empires, Mongolia’s Xiongnu Empire broke the rules of imperial expansion.

Long before the Mongol Empire arose, Asia’s first nomadic empire, horse-riding Xiongnu people, conquered ethnic groups across the continent’s northeastern and central expanses (SN: 1/29/10). A common political system headed by Xiongnu imperial rulers formed about 209 B.C. and lasted for roughly 300 years. Unlike in Rome or Egypt, mobile groups of Xiongnu animal herders accomplished this feat without building cities, forming central bureaucracies, devising a writing system or mobilizing masses of farmers to produce food.

Today, remnants of Xiongnu culture largely consist of more than 7,000 tombs, some heavily looted and many yet to be excavated, in Mongolia and nearby parts of China and Russia. In the last decade, geneticists and archaeologists have ramped up efforts to study these sites and ancient records to decipher the Xiongnu Empire’s political organization and technological achievements.

Starting from a heartland in what’s now central Mongolia, the Xiongnu Empire (brown) spread across a large part of northern Asia, taking hold around 2,200 years ago. Naturalearthdata.Com/Wikipedia (CC0 1.0)

A few ancient Chinese chronicles include descriptions of the Xiongnu political system. These accounts portray the Xiongnu as predatory raiders who belonged to a “simple” confederation of herding groups run by a few nomadic alpha males. Even so, warfare with mounted Xiongnu warriors equipped with bows, arrows and metal weapons had inspired Imperial Chinese leaders to construct their Great Wall.

Some researchers have argued that Xiongnu people formed a lesser, “shadow empire” alongside Imperial China. But that view is giving way to a picture of the Xiongnu Empire as a different, not lesser, type of ancient state, says Yale University archaeologist William Honeychurch.

In this view, nomadic Xiongnu elites developed a flexible system of political power that connected mobile groups with different genetic and cultural ancestries spread across extensive grasslands and forests. “Elite lineages were not only an important part of a multiethnic Xiongnu state, but members of these lineages were sent to peripheral areas as part of state integration,” Honeychurch says. One new study, for example, indicates that Xiongnu women from elite lineages in central Mongolia served as “princess” emissaries to the empire’s frontier, assuming political power in distant territories populated by various ethnic groups.

“This must have been an empire organized around moving populations,” says archaeologist Bryan Miller of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Xiongnu elites were savvy politicians who delegated power to keep the empire together.”

In another recent development, excavations in Central Mongolia point to Xiongnu people as early ironworking innovators whose advances spread to their regional neighbors. These discoveries, and others, highlight the unappreciated complexity and the ongoing mystery of how Xiongnu society worked, researchers say.

The Xiongnu Dispatched Frontier ‘Princesses’

Initial insights into the Xiongnu people’s diverse genetic origins were first published in 2020. DNA extracted from remains of 60 individuals excavated at 27 Xiongnu sites indicated that two genetically distinct populations of Mongolian herders had coalesced to become the Xiongnu people around 2,200 years ago. One population descended from several western Mongolian cultures and the other from a couple of eastern Mongolian cultures.

Additional genetic contributions to the Xiongnu mix then came from farther away, most likely a culture near present-day Ukraine as well as Imperial China, reported archaeogeneticist Choongwon Jeong of Seoul National University in South Korea and colleagues.

Building on those findings, Jeong’s team then examined DNA of 17 individuals from elite and low-status graves at two Mongolian cemeteries on the Xiongnu Empire’s western frontier. Central Mongolia’s Xiongnu heartland lay around 1,200 kilometers to the east.

The six largest and richest tombs contained women whose genetic ancestry traced back to central Mongolia, the scientists reported in April in Science Advances. These women rested in wooden coffins placed in square tombs. Items found in these tombs included gold sun and moon emblems of Xiongnu imperial power, glass beads, silk clothes and Chinese mirrors.

Gold Sun and Moon Emblems of Imperial Xiongnu power were found among other elite items in a woman’s tomb on the western edge of the ancient nomadic empire. DNA evidence indicates the woman was related to ruling families in the empire’s Mongolian heartland. © J. Bayarsaikhan

One woman was buried with horse-riding equipment, a gilded iron belt clasp and a Chinese lacquer cup. These objects have previously been found in graves of male horse-mounted warriors. But such items signal that a deceased person had been powerful, not necessarily a warrior, says Miller, a study coauthor.

Miller and his colleagues suggest that the women had been sent to the frontier to maintain Xiongnu traditions and nurture contacts with Silk Road trade networks (SN: 3/8/17). Preliminary signs of genetic relatedness among individuals interred at one of the cemeteries suggest that some elite Xiongnu “princesses” also cemented power by marrying into local families.

The elite women’s graves were flanked by simple graves of adult men, and of girls and boys ranging from babies to adolescents. These commoners possessed greater genetic diversity than the female big shots. If the men were retainers or servants of female elites, they had come from distant parts of the Xiongnu Empire or possibly beyond, the researchers say.

Male Rulers Were Homebody ‘Princes’

Like these female elites, premier Xiongnu rulers had common roots in central Mongolia while their followers had diverse geographic origins, another team reports in the June Archaeological Research in Asia. But rather than being sent to the far reaches of the empire, these rulers stayed close to home.

Three male nobles interred in large underground tombs at one of the largest Xiongnu cemeteries, Gol Mod 2, spent most or possibly all their lives in the Khanuy Valley where they were buried, say archaeologist Ligang Zhou of Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology in Zhengzhou, China and colleagues.

Meanwhile, at least four of eight individuals buried in some of the many small satellite graves situated near the nobles’ tombs had spent much of their lives in distant places before settling in or near the Khanuy Valley, measurements of different forms of the element strontium in individuals’ teeth and bones indicate. Diet-related strontium signatures, which vary from one region to another, signal where a person spent early and later parts of their lives.

The identities of those in satellite graves, who were apparently killed to form entourages of followers that accompanied deceased nobles, are unclear. They include children and adults, Zhou says. Some were buried with metal weapons or luxury objects such as jewelry.

Genetic and strontium findings suggest that “Xiongnu political organization in central and western Mongolia was highly similar,” Zhou says. Then, as the empire expanded, rulers in the Xiongnu heartland sent select members of their extended families, such as high-ranking women, to new territories in order to replicate the imperial power structure.

Seen from above, a Xiongnu noble’s tomb, left, lies near a set of small tombs that contained his followers to the afterlife. Xiao Ren, Henan Provincial Institute of Culture Heritage an Archaeology

Iron Innovations Bolstered the Xiongnu Empire

From the start, Xiongnu imperial power depended on a ready supply of iron weapons and other gear that enabled horse-mounted warfare. Researchers who view the Xiongnu Empire as a faint version of Imperial China argue that the nomads’ power depended on importing crops and borrowing iron-making techniques, or simply trading for iron products, from the Chinese.

But new findings suggest that Central Mongolian metallurgists launched a regional boom in iron production around the time the Xiongnu Empire originated, says archaeologist Ursula Brosseder of the University of Bonn in Germany.

At a riverbank site, Brosseder and colleagues have excavated five iron smelting installations that contain by-products of iron making and burned wood. Radiocarbon dates of that material extend to as early as around 2,200 years ago, when the Xiongnu Empire arose.

That makes these finds, each of which consists of two pits connected by a tunnel, the oldest Xiongnu iron smelting kilns by at least 100 years, the researchers reported in March in Asian Archaeology.

Earlier research had established that people living just north of Xiongnu territory in southern Siberia started producing iron as early as around 2,800 years ago. Based on comparisons of finds in the two regions, Xiongnu metallurgists not only learned about iron making from their neighbors but also invented tunnel furnaces, the investigators say. Eastern Asian groups outside the Xiongnu sphere began making and using tunnel furnaces over the next couple of centuries.

Discoveries by Brosseder’s group “show that metallurgy reached the Xiongnu in Mongolia from southern Siberia, not China,” says archaeologist Nikolay Kradin, director of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology at the Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok. Craftspeople at several iron-making centers, some slightly younger than Brosseder’s discoveries and others yet to be found, must have managed that technological transition, hypothesizes Kradin, who did not participate in the new research.

Brosseder suspects the Mongolian site she’s studied hosted a major iron-making operation. Four iron-making furnaces excavated near the other five have not yet been dated. And ground-based remote sensing equipment has revealed signs of at least 15, and possibly 26, more iron smelting kilns still covered by sediment.

“We can expect more findings of Xiongnu iron smelting centers considering the demand for iron horse gear, arrowheads, carts and other material by the empire’s large army,” Brosseder says.

No reliable estimates exist for the size of that army, or for the overall number of Xiongnu people, says Michigan’s Miller. Xiongnu herders, who also occasionally cultivated a grain called millet, moved across the landscape in relatively small groups that must have been greatly outnumbered by Imperial China’s estimated 60 million citizens.

The Capital Was a Seasonal Seat of Power

In the same valley where Brosseder’s group discovered the oldest known Xiongnu iron smelting kilns, Mongolian researchers have uncovered remains of what was probably a Xiongnu political center, or perhaps even its capital, called Longcheng in 2020. Consistent with everything else about the Xiongnu Empire, “this was a capital of a different kind,” says Miller.

Longcheng excavations so far have focused on a large building that may have hosted important gatherings.

Roof tiles on that structure bear an inscription in ancient Chinese characters that reads “Son of Heaven Chanyu.” Chinese records refer to the supreme Xiongnu ruler as “chanyu.” That royal inscription, the only one found within the Xiongnu realm, identifies Longcheng as a seat of power, Miller says.

Rather than a permanent site, Longcheng, like several excavated Xiongnu villages and walled compounds in central Mongolia, served as a seasonal stopover or temporary meeting place, Miller suspects (SN: 11/15/17). “We don’t know if those other sites were separate political capitals for the Xiongnu,” he says. Top Xiongnu honchos gathered for part of the year at Longcheng before packing up and moving elsewhere, he speculates. Xiongnu herders, regardless of political status, navigated animals to seasonal grazing spots. Staying in one place throughout the year was not an option.

Having a flexible, mobile system of rule appears to have kept the nomadic realm rolling for a few hundred years before the Xiongnu Empire rapidly disintegrated about 1,900 years ago. Why it did so is an enduring mystery. Perhaps the empire succumbed to combined attacks by Imperial China and other groups or, in true nomadic fashion, Xiongnu people reorganized on a smaller scale and moved to safer areas.

Still, “the Xiongnu had created a massive imperial network in Asia,” Miller says. “Their ways of life didn’t go away overnight.” For instance, Xiongnu-mediated trading by groups situated along Central Asia’s Silk Road routes continued despite military defeats in the empire’s central Mongolian heartland. Only further archaeological and genetic discoveries can clarify how Xiongnu people in the imperial core responded to those setbacks.

Whatever happened, Asia’s first nomadic empire can likely be counted on for a few more surprises.

— Science New, July 02, 2023, By Bruce Bower

[soulmissed]

@empiriical: ❛ as long as you’re alive, you can get through just about anything. ❜ from claire!

memes, accepting

he chews his popcorn, bag crickle-crackling. the circus soundtrack plays. (a whimsical, extravagant number. truthfully captures the atmosphere.) and august taps his foot. alas, the motion is mechanic, spiritless.

“ i guess. ” ambivalent drawl. like he’s psychically itching his head. juggling a duo of could be’s, down-the-roads. “ and what happens when my hour glass runs outta sand? ”

[eternityencased]

❛  it's a little late to worry about the impression we're making on people, you know?  ❜ aging for illness!

A slip of the tongue in a moment of blaring noise. Illness doesn't even notice what she's said until she has unloaded a round into the men's heads, then it stops her in her tracks. By the time the gunsmoke clears, she has replayed the phrase in her head a hundred times.

"Ugh, what a weird thing to say..." she mutters, light-headedness setting in. She tears off her mask and goggles to get a breath of fresh air, but the stagnant air in the room is acrid and metallic, and does nothing to settle her stomach.

She knows if the other Mask Makers were there, they would be mocking her for it already. Just imagining their responses makes her insides twist - who says something like that in a situation like this?

"It's a little late to worry about the impression we're making on people, you know?"

Illness looks from Aging to the bodies on the floor. In the panic, she had almost forgotten they were there. Somehow, the fact that the only other people who could have heard her faux pas are dead makes it all worse. No chance to make amends, no chance to prove she isn't that weird, it was just a mistake, she doesn't always say things like that -

"But.... what if it was the last thing they heard before they died?" She sways on her feet. "They'll spend their whole afterlives thinking about what a freak I am - I mean, if there is an afterlife - ugh...."

She thinks she can feel them staring at her with their glassy eyes. She wishes they could just look asleep, instead of dead. Dead people in movies just look like they're having an afternoon nap, and they don't keep staring at you after you've said something wrong.

"A-anyway - can we just get out of here now?"

[serpentide]

﹙ -`♡´-   ﹚   › @empiriical has bought a ticket for the circus :

❛ it's been a long time since i met anyone this interesting. / Claire this time

𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐘 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐐𝐔𝐄 [ … ] 𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐘 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐇𝐔𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐄. and yet, he is entirely antithetic when compared to the countless people who have spoken of her horrendous performances in whispers and sighs ever since she was naught but a lost child with neither name nor crown, neither home nor dreams to call her own: the time spent watching her and her snakes solely served the selfish purpose of embellishing their own lives, of discoloring their struggles and their nightmares, of allowing them to feel better and superior over this wretched girl whose inexplicable abilities reminded them of fictional characters in movies and novels. the lure was there, the lure was powerful enough to compel them to open their wallets and surrender their credit cards but there was no love in their actions, there was no appreciation nor affection for a jester who was ready to commit the unspeakable in pursuance of trying to conquer their favor, their smiles, their happiness ... serpent was their car accident, she was their all - devouring wildfire, she was the mangled corpse that made their stomach churn with its agony even whilst their eyes stubbornly remained fixed 'pon spilled innards and butchered limbs. SHE WAS THEIR LITTLE MONSTER, she was theirs to use and break and mend.

but claire is not here to find a horror greater than any he has encountered in his life and thus serpent is oftentimes left pondering over the reason that may lay at the base of his company. if he is not here to sneer and jest at the monster, why is he here ? and then he speaks, compliments all those same features and attributes and abilities that have always set her apart from everyone and the sad vixen can almost swear that something within her has suddenly shifted and changed and molded, as if a dormant snake had finally roused from its slumber and is now coiling around her ribcage with a strength that she has never known before. a hum thunders across her breastbone, it is a chime of silver bells at dawn, the hissing song of a snake made docile by the sun - kissed warmth of another. ❝ seems like you've been surrounded by tedious people for a very long time, ❞ taunts in response the jester, whose gaze remains settled onto the minuscule black python comfortably coiled around her lithe finger but whose hand has instinctively reached out, for it now rests against his own. the stage is empty, only the ghosts of laughter and applause pay witness to their conversation. ❝ you should remain here for a while, so i can show you just how interesting i can be. ❞

[empiriical]

did y’all miss me

[choicescreen]

@empiriical

he tugs his travel-worn cloak a little closer around his shoulders, and stares over the lip of his flagon at xenk. " so. " echoey, still buried in the mug. " pretty cool stuff back there, " clumsily said on a beer-swilled swallow: " nhuh? "

[guttersniper]

@empiriical as tick said: you can look now.

vampires in the lemon grove.

a body is just a body. he can see the ever-slight rise and fall of the chest, and he closely watches it as it grows stiller and stiller. there have been worser sights seen. he can't even remember the first time he saw one -- bloated and mangled on the streets, probably. can't remember the first time he saw this happen, last inhale, exhale.

he's felt it underneath his own hands, chillingly, in a way that haunts him, in some way, even if they were going to hurt him or somebody else, yet it still manages draw a hard blink, dry and near-audible in the quiet, from the boy.

he spreads his shoulders away from how they’d unwittingly folded toward a thin chest -- as though he could somehow convince himself that he belongs if he insists upon it, as if by demanding room he could somehow drown out the voice that tells him he has no right to the space he inhabits.

" what're you going to do with -- " it. him. the body. his hesitance is so short, it is hardly noticeable to the untrained ear. a body is just a body, no need to be frightened of it, even in death. " what now? "