#kind of how 'western world' is used today

[bottombaron]

you know, i can handle a little bit of fun "Nandor is dumb" talk, but i have a net-zero tolerance for any implication that Nandor is not educated.

Nandor would have been incredibly educated in his lifetime.

even (or especially) as a soldier in the Islamic World. being a soldier was more like getting sent to boarding school that's also a military camp. they weren't just concerned with creating loyal fodder for war. they were building the next government officials, generals, accountants, advisors, etc. it was important that young men knew how to read, write, speak multiple languages, learn philosophy...sometimes even studying art and music was mandatory.

if he was nobility (and its most likely he was), take all that shit and multiply it exponentially. Nandor would have been reading Plato at the same age most people are still potty training. he would have been specifically groomed in such a way to not be just a brilliant strategist and warrior, but also diplomate and ambassador of literally the center of scientific and cultural excellence of the age.

so like yeah, he can be a big dummy sometimes, sure. but that bitch is probably more educated than any of us will ever be.

[lesmana-enterprise-ltd]

WIP | National Simographics and Lesmana Enterprise Presents : Our World, Featuring Hitomi Okada ; Reconstruction of Almanara Castle in Porto Luminoso, Tartosa

This is Hitomi Okada,

Model, Influencer, All-year-round Traveller, and a history-arts Enthusiast.

Hitomi is no stranger to Tartosa. In fact, she travels to Tartosa a lot for her works and leisure, not minding the 8-hours-long flights she has to take to fly from Del Sol Valley.

Today, we will be following Hitomi to visit one of Lesmana Enterprise's latest Reconstruction Project in Porto Luminoso, the Almanara Al-Tartos Castle or Almanara Castle, as how the locals refer to it.

The Almanara Castle

Seated on top of a huge rock formation overlooking the Southern Tartosan coastline, is a Castle built in the 14th Century with an intricate Arabesque-moorish architecture, assimilated with Tartosan medieval architecture. Its beauty is a rare gem in Tartosa today, and Almanara Castle is currently the only one of its kind still standing in the country as a reminder of a bygone-era, of which the history books of our times refer to as the Tartosan Emirate period of 1396-1497.

In 2021, a powerful earthquake striked the coast and damaged the castle severely. In response, the Tartosan Government hired the Lesmana Enterprise to lead the reconstruction effort of the castle to restore it to its former glory.

Accompanying Hitomi Today

Are some of the best minds Lesmana Enterprise has hired to lead the reconstruction of this one-of-a-kind castle. Greeting Hitomi by the ornate gate towards the castle courtyard, are Felipe Cardona, a Lesmana Enterprise Head Reconstruction Engineer that had been working with the reconstruction of the castle since its beginning in 2021 and ; Sabrina Abdul-Zayed, a professional Archeologist from the prestigious Al-Simhara University Faculty of Archeology who had been flying back and forth to and from both countries to oversee the reconstruction of Almanara Castle.

A Heavenly Courtyard

Hitomi follows Ms. Abdul-Zayed to the picturesque courtyard where time seems to stop - the impeccable work of the engineers, craftspeople, and historians seems to keep this courtyard as how it was built in the 14th Century.

In the words of Ms. Abdul-Zayed:

"The original builders of this castle, the Al-Simharan sultanate builders, wanted to reimagine paradise by infusing masterwork craftsmanship and lush greeneries; I'm so grateful they left us with this"

As an Art-History enthusiast, Hitomi can't help but wonder:

"This place is so beautiful. But, if all the Tartosan Emirate structures had faded throughout history, why does this one still stand? "

Well luckily for Hitomi, her guide is a walking-talking encyclopedia of the Emirate's History, and knows the whole story of the Almanara Castle by heart.

What Happened to the Castle? as narrated by Sabrina Abdul-Zayed of Al-Simhara University.

After the Al-Simharan Sultanate under Sultan Yusuf VI had successfully taken over Kingdom of Tartosa from Queen Isabel de Montejo in 1396 after a four-years grueling war, the Sultan appointed his son, Emir Nizar Al-Simhari to lead Tartosa as a vassal kingdom to the sultanate. Thus, the Emirate of Tartosa or Emirate of Al-Tartos was born in the same year.

After the Al-Simharan army sets off accross the sea, the Emir needed somewhere to base his court at, and a place close enough to coast to oversee the robust southern sea trade. Thus, a much-larger palace complex was built upon Porto Luminoso's hill called the Qasr Al-Zayl.

"What you're seeing now as vineyards accross the castle is where the Al-Zayl stood about 600 years ago.", She added.

On the Final Years of the Emirate

The Emirate of Tartosa found itself at war with the western simland coalition from 1491-1496.

The Western Simland Coalition consisted of Kingdom of Henford, Kingdom of Britchester, Republic of Foxbury, Grand Duchy of Champ-les-sims, Kingdom of Windenburg, and finally the exiled Tartosan king Alfonso de Fiore XI.

The Coalition launched a full-scale invasion of the Emirate in 1491, and finally reaching Porto Luminoso in 1493, where the great 2-years siege of Al-Zayl began.

King Alfonso de Fiore himself led the siege of Al-Zayl with an overwhelming force of about 3000 men and 200 mercenaries, accumulated from 6 different nations with the same goal in mind:

End the Emirate, restore Alfonso de Fiore, and secure the southern sea trade route- where all the gold comes from.

With brutal tactics from both sides such as naval blockades, starvations, and use of early firearms, the al-Zayl finally came down in 1495, forcing the then Emir, Emir Jabar Al-Tartozi IV to seek refuge in a much more smaller castle, the Almanara.

On the Spring of 1496, the Almanara was finally breached, leaving the Emir and his last 100 men on the mercy of the besiegers.

He and his last loyal men were captured, and held prisoner in the Almanara until his execution in 1497 on the courtyard, which spells the end of the Tartosan Emirate.

To commemorate the victory over the Emirate, King Alfonso de Fiore XI spared Almanara due to its beauty, securing its place as a King's retreat after the war ended.

Good Thing they Spared this Place!

Is what the three can agree. Hitomi continues the tour to some of the castle's most beautiful halls, such as the Hall of Jenane shown in above photo.

When it is complete, the Hall of Jenane will be a museum ; and a space rentable for picturesque weddings!.

"Reconstruction of the whole castle; I can confidently say is at 90% to completion, and we can see reopening very soon around March 2025- or earlier maybe." Added Felipe Cardona.

Into the Subterrane

You will find this beautiful Azur Sanctum, a room adorned in intricate geomerty made of the finest Lazuardi and gemstones. There is also a working subterrain fountain which had been flowing without eletricity for the past 600 years!, even the air here seems a lot cooler than the air outside!.

"You know, the Emir made his last stand here with his most loyal men-the Mamluks. Many of the Mamluks perished in this very room" said Ms. Abdul-Zayed

"Okay you do not have to scare me like that" replied Hitomi.

And That ends our Short Trip for Today!

Don't forget to periodically check the Tartosan Board of Tourism for updates on the opening of the Almanara Castle!, experience the history for yourself ; or maybe plan an unforgettable wedding in the Hall of Jenane!.

Whichever you choose, don't forget to come here next time you're in Tartosa!.

I'm Hitomi Okada, and this is - Our World.

Sul-Sul!

Sim Hitomi Okada by : @mellowtrait

[marzipanandminutiae]

I genuinely think there were far more trans people in 19th century western history than we're aware of, simply because of the nature of how most LGBTQ people lived their lives back then

namely, though of course this varied WILDLY by time, place, cultlure, race, gender, etc., in relative secrecy

if you go back far enough, legal identifying documents were barely a thing for many people. and even if they existed, circumstances in which they'd be checked were few and far between. surveillance was nowhere near what it is now simply because of technological limitations. and due to those same technological limitation, people were more used to accepting at face value the identities of people with bodies that varied from the norm

Gilbert and Sullivan mention, in their 1885 song "I've Got A Little List," the singer's "auntie with a mustache" (albeit in a negative context). not "well, I don't hold with all this woke DEI nonsense and have we checked Auntie's genitals and what's the marker on this alleged woman's passport?" is it very probable that the auntie was cisgender? yes. there are plenty of reasons for cis women to grow more facial hair than is average, ranging from genetics to PCOS to post-menopausal hormone shifts. before HRT, in a time with few readily accessible safe hair removal techniques (though they tried, and electrolysis had been technically available- at ruinously expensive rates -since the 1870s), you'd be more likely to encounter cis women with facial hair who chose not to try removing it. and you assumed all women were cis. so your set concept of A Woman included, potentially, facial hair, and it was less likely to make you question someone's gender

EDIT: wow okay so that is NOT an original G&S lyric! it's so borderline in terms of Poor Taste that I assumed it must be 19th century. nonetheless, references to old women with whiskers and moustaches abound in Victorian and earlier literature, so the point still stands

besides which, for a very long time, personal questions along the lines of "what's in your trousers/skirt" were considered HIGHLY impertinent

so, while there would be a world of trouble if a trans person was caught or if suspicions began to arise about their gender for some reason- the past was not a trans-friendly utopia by any means -it was often somewhat easier to fly under the radar than it generally is today. the transphobic powers-that-were were less aware of this possibility and therefore not on high alert for it, generally speaking

and since most trans people then and now want to have jobs and social circles and families and do things to which being trans is incidental, while trans, it wasn't likely that they'd call attention to themselves in a time when Closet = Safe. indeed, most trans people from that era that we know about are only publicly known because their death wishes to be buried without autopsy were not respected. I'm thinking of Dr. James Barry, Charley Parkhurst, and earlier the Chevaliere d'Eon [no, that's not a misspelling; it's the feminine form of Chevalier since she was a woman]

(you hear about more transmasc people in the history of this era because it was harder to establish an independent life as a woman, at all, without some kind of support network/establishment of Reputation in the area where you were living. unless you were a sex worker, and while we do know about some transfem sex workers of the era, the specifics of their identities are often obscured behind salacious news reports of Man Disguised As Woman Tricks Other Men Into Doing Icky Gay Things. so figuring out whether they saw themselves as women or crossdressing men can be difficult. Mary Jones comes immediately to mind)

how many similar wishes were respected? how many people slipped through history with their gender variance unremarked-upon? there's literally no way of knowing- which is good in terms of immediate postmortem respect, but leaves historians of queer subjects nowadays with a herculean task

I think, in light of all that's happening right now, I just want to remind everyone that trans people have always existed, will always exist, and are an integral part of humanity's fabric

[h-sleepingirl]

You Are A Wizard, So Pour Over The Tomes

Hypnosis is magic. It is not just “the closest we can get to magic.” Trance practices in all kinds of forms have served as the basis for mysticism across cultures and human history -- thousands of years. It is not new. It is not western. It did not start with Franz Mesmer or James Braid or Milton Erickson or Wiseguy.

Modern hypnosis stems from a rich human history of fascination and spiritual veneration of the mind’s power. We are practitioners of a comparably new discipline where we can literally change the way that other people experience the world. Their innermost selves are as leverage to us -- putty to us, when we know what we are doing. We can transform others freely. We can give pleasure or pain. We can facilitate experiences that seem to defy reality.

People talk a big game about respecting that power. What they usually mean by that is respecting EACH OTHER. That’s crucial, obviously -- not manipulating, not harming, being a good person.

But what about respecting the discipline itself?

It’s tempting to see what we do as disconnected from the “historical” and “outdated” methods of hypnosis. But we are a part of that history. We are likely hilariously wrong about a lot of things related to trance, hypnosis, the human mind -- what will hypnosis and psychology look like in 100 years? And even as we innovate, we are always building on the techniques and ideas that came before us -- in ways we are often not even aware of. We reinvent; we use ideas from the past unknowingly.

We have a right -- and a responsibility -- to OWN our magic. I am not here to gatekeep and say that this magic is not yours. It IS yours; it’s unequivocally yours. But as a whole we could do more to respect it.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And hypnosis is not even a technology that we UNDERSTAND. The only real reason we DON’T see ourselves as wizards is because there is a huge motivation to legitimize hypnosis as a scientific discipline -- and non-rationalist perspectives are looked down upon in our culture. I’m not anti-science (maybe a little -- tongue in cheek) but I do think that labeling hypnosis as “just psychology” is dishonest about how much we actually objectively know about it -- and does a disservice to the phenomenon itself.

I’m not saying hypnosis is literally metaphysical. But I am saying we practice something very powerful without knowing its nature. There are secrets we have tried to suss out about this magic through history that we have written down -- past and present. We actually have tomes of knowledge, records of past experiments and modern inventors.

In the last couple of years, I’ve started teaching/facilitating “text studies” -- classes where we sit down with an excerpt from a hypnosis book and parse through it as a collaborative group. I desperately want to show people that there is value in just critically reading the resources available to us. The clinical texts -- especially older ones -- are hard to read, like they are almost in a different language. But it is amazing the insights we have come to by tackling them together.

These old texts are not pure truths -- there is a lot we’ve improved on over time. But we can learn a lot by learning what hypnosis was like historically. The entire discipline of hypnosis is extremely susceptible to change -- it is defined SO MUCH by how we view it culturally. I just recently was amazed at re-reading some Erickson where he talks about making his subjects daydream autonomously -- as a primary mode and result of inducing hypnosis. Contrast that with today, where if someone’s mind wanders for even a moment, they feel like they’ve failed. There’s something really important here -- a technique from 50 years ago that tells us something we’ve lost in modern practice.

And there are countless examples of this, of people losing and reinventing methods over and over. As I’ve watched our kinky niche grow over just the past 13 years, I’ve watched ideas phase in, out, and in again -- there is both growth and regression of our collective body of knowledge. That’s the nature of things, especially when we operate partially disconnected from the resources that are available to us.

We CAN be connected to the rich human history of trying to unravel the secrets about our minds, and about this thing that gives us enormous transformative powers -- powers that we take for granted.

You are a wizard -- so pour over the tomes.

Read a book. Read an article. Set aside some time and view yourself with the respect of being someone who can study and suss out a magical text. Take notes, look up words and concepts you don’t know. Or just absorb what you can on a first pass and go back later. Read a chapter or just master a single page. Romanticize the aesthetic of sitting with the scent of paper, or as the technomancer with words appearing on a screen.

Read. Own this art. And bring that respect of this art to the people you share it with. I promise you can do things with hypnosis that you have never thought possible.

------------------

This is a little motivational piece (for you and me!) as I gear up to teach "Analyzing Erickson" at Charmed. It's something I feel really passionately about, and I wanted to share it.

Permanently linked/free on Patreon.

[visenyaism]

Maryland is a fuckass New England state that pretends it's part of the south just because it was racist enough to leave the country 200 years ago

I don’t know what part of the American education system did wrong by you. This is both geographically and historically illiterate, but it’s pissing me off to imagine someone wandering around the world being this wrong presumably about the country they themselves live in so I’m going to explain it to you.

1: New England is way further north than Maryland. New England is Yankeeland, like settled by the Pilgrims and Puritans, currently inhabited by wasps, the Irish, libertarians, lesbian bed and breakfasts, and cops. Boston. Nothing south of New York City is New England.

Maryland historically was a southern state. They practiced slavery like the rest of the south, they were south of the Mason-Dixon Line (the first system of categorizing what was and wasn’t the south), and parts of the US government still considers them part of the South today. Look, here is the map of regions and divisions within the United States that the census bureau keeps. See how far apart Maryland and New England are.

However, despite historically (and sometimes bureaucratically) being a southern state, Maryland is very much a cultural part of the mid-Atlantic region today. They join Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York in that category. Some western Marylanders might identify as Appalachian if they live in the mountains, and some older Marylanders might still say they’re southern, but you will not find that many people fighting for Maryland’s inclusion in the south. 

2. Maryland did not secede and join the Confederacy during the Civil War. They still did slavery- two of the most famous Black abolitionists, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman both had to escape Maryland because they were born into slavery there- but Maryland was a Union border state. Abraham Lincoln very notably kind of violated the constitution to suspend habeas corpus, which is your right to not be held in jail indefinitely without being charged with a specific crime. He suspended that right partially so that he could throw as many pro-Confederate Marylanders in prison as possible and keep them there to make sure Maryland stayed in the Union, which was of critical importance because if they left the American capital, DC, would be surrounded. A Marylander DID kill Abraham Lincoln so maybe he should have oppressed them harder. However his plan did work. They never seceded.

[breelandwalker]

Why is Wicca not a preferred way of practice? I’ve read a couple of posts, and Wicca isn’t favored.

Moral puritanism and performative outrage, plain and simple. There's nothing inherently wrong with Wicca or Wiccans. Some people in the community just aren't doing the work and seem to think that decolonizing our thinking begins and ends with screaming BOYCOTT at anything they deem even remotely reprehensible.

Let's do some of the work and dig a little deeper, shall we?

The main complaint is that Wicca started with people who had problematic worldviews and has had some growing pains and issues with racism, sexism, cultural appropriation, and bad actors in the community as it has evolved, reaching into the present day.

But here's the thing - SHOW ME A RELIGION THAT DOESN'T HAVE THESE PROBLEMS SOMEWHERE IN ITS' HISTORY OR CURRENT CULTURE. GO AHEAD, I'LL WAIT.

It's neither fair nor reasonable to judge a religion based on its' beginnings, or to dismiss the ability of a community to grow and evolve over time, or to pretend that the modern witchcraft movement doesn't owe a large part of its' existence to Wicca. Like it or not, if it weren't for Wiccans, we wouldn't have the kind of organization or recognition that we do, nor would we have had certain landmark legal cases that led to pagans being able to claim the protection of law against religious discrimination in the States.

(And because someone somewhere is going to demand the encyclopedia answer - This is not to discount the contributions of other groups, but the historical fact remains that the people responsible for the foundations of Wicca kickstarted the movement in the UK and subsequent practitioners brought it into public view in a positive light during the counterculture movements of the 1950s and 1960s. And it was Wicca that was first pagan religion in the US to be recognized and therefore included under the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. This does not change the CULTURAL AND SOCIETAL response to witchcraft or paganism, or the problems that witches and pagans still face in other places, only the presence of civil rights that were not there before. And that has, in fact, contributed to an increase in wider normalization and acceptance. We may not owe EVERYTHING to Wicca and Wiccans, but we would not be where we are as a movement or a community without them.)

Not to mention, Wicca hasn't even been around for a whole century yet and already it's being judged like it has the same kind of cultural and political clout that, oh say, Christianity does in much of the Western world. And it's no coincidence that a good number of the criticisms leveled at Wiccans are the same ones flung at Christians.

Wicca DOES have a strong influence on modern witchcraft, because Wicca and Wiccans were such a big part of the foundation of the movement. Furthermore, many of the published works viewed as standard beginner texts were written by Wiccans or heavily influenced by Wiccan ideas and concepts. Admittedly, there was a tendency for quite some time to think of Wicca and Wiccan tenets as the default for modern witchcraft, and now that we're moving away from that and discovering just how much of our thinking relies on that framework and the ideas present within it, there's backlash happening.

It's important to try and decolonize your thinking as much as possible when it comes to witchcraft. But that involves more work and more effort than just pointing fingers and broadly condemning anything remotely problematic or anything that's ever been touched or influenced by people whose moral and ethical codes don't pass muster under a modern lens. We cannot and should not expect people from 50+ years ago to toe the line when people living today can't even do so reliably.

So to wrap it all up - there's nothing wrong with Wicca and there's nothing wrong with being Wiccan. We are none of us completely unproblematic and until we address the fact that issues with racism, sexism, manipulation, cultural appropriation, and so forth exist in MANY parts of the modern witchcraft and pagan community, we don't get to tar and feather any one group. A bit of critical thinking and self-reflection, and a great deal of Knowing Our Own History, is the key to moving forward here.

Because until the people voicing these complaints most loudly can realize the head-splitting irony of condemning Wicca in one breath and celebrating the Wheel of the Year or venerating a Maiden-Mother-Crone-model goddess in the next, we're not actually getting anywhere.

Anyway, I hope this helps to answer some of your questions. For more information, I highly recommend reading Margot Adler's "Drawing Down The Moon" and Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon" for a more comprehensive overview of the history of the modern witchcraft movement. Both are written from an outside scholar's perspective and are presented as research rather than rhetoric. Part of knowing where we are and deciding where to go next is knowing where we started and where we've been, after all.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Happy 99th Birthday David Attenborough!

1. 1954 - Wildlife for the masses

Sir David Attenborough joined the BBC as a trainee in 1952, having only ever watched one television programme.

His early career included the high octane round-table debate, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? But the tenacious 28-year-old was seeking new ways to make films and a life outside the television studio. The result was the hit series 'Zoo Quest,' which combined live studio presentation with footage shot on location for the first time. It brought rare animals - including chimpanzees, pythons and birds of paradise - into viewers' living rooms and proved wildlife programmes could attract big audiences.

2. 1965 - Civilisation – in colour!

We can't attribute Western civilisation to Attenborough, but we can give him the credit for one of its greatest achievements: colour television.

As Controller of BBC Two, he oversaw the first ever-colour broadcasts in Europe, rushing to beat rival German broadcasters by three weeks. He then commissioned the critically-acclaimed series Civilisation, written and presented by art historian Kenneth Clark. The Ascent of Man, presented by humanist scientist Jacob Bronowski, soon followed. These landmark series helped inaugurate a new kind of television documentary, putting history, culture and science on screen in ways never seen before.

3. 1969 - Monty Python's Flying Circus

By now BBC Director of Programmes, Attenborough continued to innovate and reinvent television – but this time in the world of comedy.

He commissioned Monty Python's Flying Circus, a cult sketch show which made stars out of John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam. The show was a global phenomenon, inspiring generations of comedians around the world. In Britain, Python became part of the nation's cultural DNA, encapsulating a recognisably British eccentricity and spawning popular catchphrases and figures of speech.

4. 1975 - Back to nature

Long before Bear Grylls slept in a camel carcass (ew), Sir David was trekking through uncharted wilderness to film some of the remotest people on earth.

Freed from his role as a BBC executive, Attenborough went back to nature to become an explorer. He made a series of programmes about tribes, some so isolated it's thought they hadn't been contacted by Europeans before Sir David's arrival. He immersed himself in their cultures, wearing nothing but a loin cloth while filming in the Solomon Islands. In showing us ways of life so different from our own, Sir David helped us understand both the diversity and universality of the human experience.

5. 1979 - Inventing epics

Now a staple of any self-respecting Brit’s television diet, Sir David helped invent the natural history documentary as we know it today.

In the late 1970s, he took inspiration from series like Civilisation and The Ascent of Man and travelled the globe to deliver his definitive take on the wonders of the natural world. A natural history programme of this scale and ambition had never been attempted before. The result was Life on Earth, a televisual feast which used stunning photography and innovative camera techniques to show animals in their natural habitats. It’s estimated that 500 million people watched the series worldwide.

6. 1994 - A rose by any other name…

While filming The Private Life of Plants, Sir David noticed the world's largest flowering plant had quite a racy name – the Amorphophallus Titanum.

Instead, he gave it another name in his script - titum arum - coining the plant's common name in the process. But as well as naming species, many plants and animals have been named after Sir David. They include a flightless beetle, a species of hawkweed found only in the Brecon Beacons and a long-necked dinosaur called the Attenborosaurus.

7. 2001 - Your first glimpse

Without the ambition and persistence of Attenborough and his collaborators, millions of us may never have seen some of the world's rarest creatures.

It's been a constant theme throughout his career, beginning with Zoo Quest in the 1950s, when he famously caught the elusive Komodo Dragon on film for the first time. But in 2001, we were given an insight into a strange new world, when Attenborough narrated The Blue Planet. The series introduced millions to the wonders of the deep sea and was the first time some species, including the hairy angler fish and the Dumbo octopus, were captured on film.

8. 2015 - Pushing boundaries

From colour broadcasts to 3D television, Sir David has always been at the forefront of pioneering technology in broadcasting.

In 2015, he dived 1,000ft in a submersible off the Australian coast to film previously unseen parts of the Great Barrier Reef, breaking the record for the deepest ever dive on the reef. He also collaborated with the Natural History Museum on a virtual reality project, and filmed BBC series – such as Planet Earth II and Wild Isles – in Ultra HD. Next time you tune into a major Attenborough documentary, you can be pretty sure you're witnessing a breakthrough in future broadcasting technology.

9. Today - Saving the world

Sir David has always said he didn't start making programmes with conservation in mind - he simply enjoyed observing the natural world.

But as time passed, he became aware that the animals and habitats he was filming were under threat. He's authored documentaries which overtly tackle environmental issues but prefers a subtler approach, showcasing the natural world in the hope we might be inspired to preserve it. Sir David has done more than almost any other person to help millions of us understand and appreciate the wonders of the world around us.

[aroaceleovaldez]

you're like the first blog i thought about ranting on this to but it drives me up the wall that some people treat any criticism aimed at tsats2 as being anti-ship or avoidable via just "not reading it". i dont think they realize that we're talking about a bigger issue of soulless commercialization and heavy quality downgrade of a franchise, not like. about an indie author publishing a fan book lmao

'i'll read it anyways haters gonna hate' crowd likely largely funding richard's mediocrity is sad.

I think part of it may have to do with a.) a lack of distinction in recent fandom culture between "Fandom" and "Audience" (alongside other recent fandom culture attitudes as well) and b.) so much of Rick's brand is built up exactly on parasocial behavior that a lot of fans get caught up in it. [under cut cause this got long:]

Re: The first, more recent fandom culture tends to treat "Fandom" and "General audience" as wholly equivocal. Because of this, the concepts tend to bleed into each other in a way we haven't quite seen before fandom became mainstream, and as a result we get a kind of Worst Of Both Worlds situation - a bunch of very passionate fans who have no community, create little to no fanworks themselves (only consume), and only engage at a surface level with the source material. Their only "fandom" community hub is the source material and official social media and they don't have a concept of how to exist outside it, unlike folks who are more used to older fandom culture and are self-sufficient. They have the passion and identity of classic fandom, but none of the depth, and so threats to the source material feel like threats to their community as a whole. They also just don't seem to understand that different subsections of the deeper fandom community are engaging with the material on an entirely different level, or they don't understand why they're doing that. They see no need to because they're never actually engaging with the community or source material beyond a surface level. Functionally they don't have a community. And mainstream media is actively encouraging this because it's profitable for them - they're reaping all of the rewards of fandom, minus the fact that because of the lack of actually community and support structures the entire "fandom" will only have a shelf life the same length of the source material. But at the same time this means they don't have to worry about quality or etc, because this extremely passionate side of their audience will just take anything thrown at them and it'll phase out almost immediately. It doesn't need to be good, it just needs to elicit some kind of reaction on social media. Any publicity is good publicity type stuff.

This lack of true community plus the parasocial emphasis the RR company has tends to make these types of fans double-down. Rick and co. are explicitly advertised as being both part of the "community" and integral to it. And when they've built Rick (and co) up as this moral paragon critical to both part of their identity they're very passionate about and what little of a community they have, any attack on him feels like an attack on themself. Particularly when so much of the publicity and marketing surrounding Rick right now is about his alleged activism when a lot of the criticism about him and the series is actively calling that into question with his unaddressed internalized bigotries. Acknowledging that what Rick is saying and promoting himself as versus his writing and actions don't always line up and pointing out the bigotry present in his work forces people to acknowledge and think about performative activism, which can make a lot of people very uncomfortable! It's forcing them to acknowledge "Oh, even if I'm saying all the right words and calling myself an ally, I am not immune to being bigoted if I don't address my internalized biases. My actual behavior matters." and that especially can feel like a personal attack. Especially in today's western landscape of media consumption being viewed as a moral act in itself.

I suspect this is why a lot of the retaliation against criticism of Rick and the franchise right now is "Why can't you just have FUN? You're just trying to hate for views. Don't take it so seriously! It's not that deep!" - they not only have no interest in engaging deeper in the material, but don't understand why others would, and doing so jeopardizes the foundations of what they consider the fandom. They can't fathom anybody legitimately having these criticisms (particularly not anybody who would ACTUALLY consider themself a "fan" - because their perception of "fan" is themself) because they're so resistant to digging deeper into the media/source material or the concept that anyone would for any legitimate reason (because as long as they keep it as "it's not that deep!!! it's just fun! just enjoy it you wet blanket!!!!" and take things at their word, they can feel secure in that performative aspect and not have to unpack it), and acknowledging that those criticisms exist and are valid means they have to acknowledge the franchise is flawed and imperfect, so they presume the claims are entirely superficial and the individual has ulterior motives rather than, yknow, doing what fandom does: diving deeper.

[gatheringbones]

[“Instead of presuming trans femininity’s coherence in advance and then using history to certify it, this book examines where and when trans femininity became a fault line in broader histories, including the repressive practices of colonial government, the regulation of sex work, the policing of urban space, and the line between the formal and informal economy. In this way, the method of this book is deceptively simple: it uses the history of trans misogyny to understand where trans-feminized people were lit up by the clutches of violence and how they responded to its aggressions. In doing so, we learn what makes trans misogyny unique and get a glimpse at how wildly diverse people around the world have come to find themselves implicated in trans femininity and trans womanhood, whether or not they wanted to be.

For these reasons, I maintain a difference between trans femininity and trans womanhood or trans women. The first is meant to signal a broad classification by outside observers, including aesthetic criteria and the history of ideas attached to people who have been trans-feminized. Trans womanhood and women, on the other hand, name people who saw themselves as intentionally belonging to a shared category—in other words, who tried to live in the world recognized as women, whatever that category meant to them contextually. Everyone in this book may have been trans-feminized, and all may have been brought into the orbit of trans femininity, but only some considered themselves to be trans women in response. These careful, empirical distinctions remind that trans misogyny has had the effect of pulling huge swaths of people into relation with one another, like Black trans women in New York City and kathoeys in Bangkok, who but for the accidents of history may never have seen each other as having anything in common. It does not weaken the category of trans femininity, or the political project of trans feminism, to examine trans women alongside hijras, street queens, transvestites, and Two-Spirit people, even if few to none of the latter would identify as trans women. On the contrary, it reveals just how narrow the Western definition of woman has been, since many groups of people reject it as a colonial limitation, even when it arrives in a trans idiom.

Some of the fault lines this book explores remain sources of major friction to this day. Is trans femininity best understood in relation to womanhood, or does its history suggest that gay men’s culture is its better reference? Much would seem to be at stake in the answer, for if trans women are women, period, as the adage goes today, why does so much of their history involve gay men? From late-nineteenth-century sexology’s concept of “the invert” to present-day fights over whether trans women belong in drag, the mixing of gender and sexual frameworks has long produced anxiety directed at trans femininity. Rather than pretend that deciding in one direction or the other is desirable, let alone possible, A Short History of Trans Misogyny emphasizes how gender and sexuality, or what is gay and what is trans feminine, have generally been blurred for most people. This book explores what kind of womanhood trans women acquire by doing sex work and considers the street queens of the mid-twentieth century who answered to the word gay precisely because their trans femininity had made them the queens of something called “the gay world.” Gay men turned to them to reflect on the electrifying promise—or horrifying possibility—of falling down the proverbial rabbit hole from effeminacy into outright femininity. Street queens appear all over the gay male cultural canon because their proximity to gay men represented the threat and freedom of “going all the way.”

Trans women and trans femininity, from this book’s perspective, aren’t so definitively excluded or erased as they are degraded and punished by those who lust after them in anger, fascination, and affection. Though I bracket trans-femininized people from other kinds of trans people—namely, trans men—this book has no separatist impulse. It doesn’t argue that trans women or trans femininity must be taken up in isolation to do them justice, or that trans misogyny is the responsibility of any single group, including men. Nor does it subscribe to the simplistic notion that some kinds of people are inherently affected by trans misogyny while others are cleanly exempt from it. A Short History of Trans Misogyny stresses that gender categories are intensely social, even if they are arranged in hierarchies. Trans femininity, just like non-trans womanhood or male heterosexuality, doesn’t come into the world on an island. Each one of us emerges as individuals to know ourselves only through our entangled relationships to those who are not like us—which is, strictly speaking, everyone. Indeed, the root fear common to trans-misogynist women, gay men, straight men, nonbinary people, or even certain trans women comes from needing the trans femininity of others as a foil for their place in the world.

Gender as a system coerces and maintains radical interdependence, regardless of anyone’s identity or politics. Trans misogyny is one particularly harsh reaction to the obligations of that system—obligations guaranteed by state as much as by civil society. The more viciously or evangelically any trans misogynist delivers invectives against the immoral, impolitic, or dangerous trans women in the world, the more they admit that their gender and sexual identities depend on trans femininity in a crucial way for existence.

Understanding this primary interdependence between gender and sexual positions in the hegemonic Western system, this book pairs trans-feminized subjects in each chapter with people whose relationships to them are disavowed in misogyny. By telling stories through their enmeshment, this book refuses to pretend that trans-feminized people are alone, isolated, and suffering because they need rescue. This book refuses to pretend there is only one form that trans womanhood and trans femininity take, or that the Western model of gender identity and bourgeois individualism, with its simplistic understanding of oppression, is all that useful except as a tool of discipline and domination. And though it cannot tabulate every relevant entry in what would be an impossibly long list, this book insists on holding everyone accountable for the degradation of trans femininity. The collective power of trans-feminized people, including trans women, lies in how many others rely on us to secure their claim to personhood.

In other words, the dolls hold all the receipts, and the time has come to call them in.”]

jules gill-peterson, from a short history of trans misogyny, 2024

[kebriones]

Hey just letting you know that @/margaretkart is a racist and apparently some kind of modern greek supremacist. She plays the victim and acts as if Greek people are an oppressed minority in the world and refuses to acknowledge that race is a post colonial construct. Race as we know it did not exist during ancient times. She for some reason also is convinced that the worst thing in the world is having a person of color play a fictional Greek mythological character. God forbid the “purity” of Ancient Greek mythology becomes sullied by—gasp!—a Percy Jackson show. The Ancient Greek gods were the gods of all the people on earth like come on. That includes people of color.

1. What is the point of this ask. To inform me? It could've been done privately or out of anon. If you have issues with someone, block them or talk to them about it. Do not do this. Also why mention this person when there are many greek people on tumblr who hold very similar opinions? If you wanted to talk about the issue in general it would've been better to not mention one specific person. I haven't even seen this person mentioning this topic, but I have seen it before by other greek people here.

2. I've argued about this topic with fellow greek people publicly online here, in private talks and in real life. I am a firm believer that actors who play in movies as well as theater do not have to match anything from age to gender to appearance to origins of the character they're playing. Have I still complained that helen in the movie troy looks way too german? Yes. So do I understand where this sensitivity stems from? Yes. The systematic approach of ancient greek culture being a free for all for western countries while ignoring modern greek identity and how, for better or for worse, tied it is to the ancient culture, is an issue. I still think it's up to us to put ourselves in this narrative rather than complain that foreigners aren't catering to us.

3. I feel like describing someone as a racist and a "supremacist" over this is a little bit in bad faith. I have not had talks about this topic with this person, I don't care to have extensive talks about this topic in fucking general anymore because it's stupid and I know other people who feel that way and I'm not some morality police to go out of my way to go call them out. When the discussion reaches me, and when I'm talking for myself, I will say what I think. The way the discussion of race is online is so weird to me anyway. It's all way too saturated by current convoluted US ideas and I am not equipped to help detangle the mess for others.

4. Do I think that it's way more realistic for a movie about, say, classical era greece to have a character that looks to be of african origin than a character that looks Scandinavian? Absolutely. Did the actor that played Achilles in Troy:Fall of a city bother me? No, it's an actor playing a role, of an imaginary character no less. What bothered me was that he didn't have long hair, because hair was a very significant cultural element at the time, and his hair is used in the story. The same exact issue that I had with the actor that played hector in that series, who also didnt really look like a person from that area realistically, but who was otherwise very good at his role.

5. As for playing the victim and oppressed minorities: while i would not go so far as to use "oppressed minority" for the greeks of the diaspora, it's very real that modern greeks have been looked down at by westerners, historically. Do I think this justifies or has anything to do with being bothered about what actors who play ancient greek mythology characters look like or come from, in a foreign piece of art no less? No. But it's still a thing.

6. I am extremely stressed out and busy today but I still took time to answer this because i need to say again, please don't do this. If you want to help people to see things differently and maybe move away from biases, talk to Them. Just because I'm following someone or interacting with them online, it doesn't mean I'm endorsing or agreeing with or even KNOW everything they think and say and believe. I avoid reading posts from fellow greeks that are complaining about these things because i think it's an overreaction and I think we need to tackle deep and actual cultural problems that WE have ourselves and not care too much about what some Hollywood movie is doing. Whatever. Tired discussion.

7. Percy Jackson sucks and I do hate that it's based on anc greek mythology but I just don't interact with it. The fact that it is a generation's first taste of anc. gr mythology and thus has had an impact on their perception of it is true and important though. The same way it bothers me when all people know of the odyssey is epic the musical. But still, whatever. Some greek people might be more bothered by it all and need to talk about it online and I think that's perfectly okay and valid. I do my petty complaining now and then too.

8. "The ancient greek gods were the gods of all people one earth" you can say that of other mythologies that have an origin of the entire human race as part of their myths, that's how religions usually go. These gods were worshipped in specific areas in a specific time and the mythology was created by specific cultures of specific areas. This is a major complaint that greek people have, which I mentioned before, that this specific ancient culture's mythology is treated as a thing detached from the actual culture, the ancient one, and from its inheritors which happen to be the people that live here and/or have this specific cultural identity. I don't think this cultural identity has anything to do with the appearance of people, and we all know the greek identity has absolutely nothing to do with race and that's a very fundamental part of it.

9. I would try to make myself even clearer but I don't have time and I didn't want to leave this unanswered even though I also kinda wanted to because this type of anon ask does nothing good for anyone and I encourage you to engage with others in a way that is understanding and comes from a place of wanting everything to be better and kinder. And there's so so much you will disagree with, on fundamental levels, with other people online, if only because we all come from very different cultures with different values and upbringings, despite how it looks like we're all in a US-based melting pot. You have to make peace with that, and it can be difficult. I've had American friends that I deeply disagree with on important stuff, and I had to face the discomfort and take time to let myself understand that our cultures are different.

Anyways. I apologize in advance if anything i said makes no sense or is insensitive or condescending. I admit i was upset when I started my reply but if you want to discuss this further we can absolutely do that. I cannot reply privately to anon asks otherwise i would have. I hate call-out style stuff like this because they do nothing good.

[max1461]

This has mostly disappeared from my corner of the internet over the last few years, but it used to be the case that every once in a while some story would go around about a corporation or a government doing some fucked up shit in pursuit of their self-interest, and people in the comments and reblogs would act utterly aghast that said government or corporation would do such a thing.

This was always baffling to me, and I have only ever been able to interpret it as a sign of profound naivety. Of course, I too think it is awful, sad, and unjust when people are exploited, killed, abused or so on by the institutions of our society. But "aghastness" is not synonymous with these things, to be aghast is to be (or present yourself as) in some sense surprised. And surprise is wholly unwarranted here.

I suppose this is part of my worldview that feels very fundamental, it feels deeply obvious, and I struggle to figure out how to talk productively with people who did not get the memo: exploitation and abuse of others in pursuit of self-interest is in some sense the natural behavior of agents in any kind of competitive context. It requires a lot of effort and coordination to mitigate this behavior. We do not feel "aghast" when someone is bitten by a dog. Dogs bite people, idiot! And corporations exploit their workers, lie, cheat, and steal, unless you work very hard to prevent them from doing so. And governments exploit and neglect their citizens, and go to war and kill and maim, unless you work very hard to prevent them from doing so. Individual humans, as members of a social species for which cooperation is paramount to survival, have quite a lot of specific programming whose purpose seems to be to discourage us from doing these things (empathy, loyalty, etc. etc.), and yet very often we still do them!

I have relatives who have a hard time believing in US atrocities abroad, on the grounds that "Americans are the good guys, and the US just wouldn't do that". This is very stupid! Do you think the US got where it is today without cracking some eggs? Bullshit. There's never been a government or a military in the history of humanity that "just wouldn't do that". I sometimes see posts on here from tankies, defending Chinese or Soviet atrocities on the grounds that these things must be Western propaganda, a socialist government just wouldn't do that. Again, I find this so obviously false as to be essentially beneath engaging with. We don't live in a just world! Often, a very effective strategy for achieving whatever it is you're trying to achieve will involve treating people like shit. It is what it is.

I'm not trying to play defense for injustice here. Obviously I think we should do as much as we can to prevent these abuses. But I think that doing so must start with basic recognition of the following: it is the nature of institutions—being as competition between them is essentially unavoidable, and being as their decision processes are unavoidably removed from the face-to-face social context which is so load-bearing in motivating respectful treatment between individual humans—to abuse people in pursuit of their (perceived) self-interest. This behavior is mundane and expected. It can be mitigated in various ways, ideological and structural, but it will probably always be with us to some degree. To look at it and express shock in any capacity suggests a completely misguided understanding of how the world works.

This is the first and most important thing I ever learned about politics or society.

[etz-ashashiyot]

So what’s the modern interpretation of the laws about keeping slaves? I’ve heard that said laws where a lot more kind to slaves then the surrounding nations but, like, it’s still slavery?

Hi anon,

With Pesach coming up, I'm sure that this question is on a lot of people's minds. It's a good question and many rabbanim throughout history have attempted to tackle it. Especially today, with slavery being seen as a moral anathema in most societies (obviously this despite the fact that unfortunately slavery is still a very real human rights crisis all over the world), addressing the parts of the Torah that on the surface seem to condone it becomes a moral imperative.

It's worth noting that the Jewish world overall condemns slavery. In my research for this question, I came across zero modern sources arguing that slavery is totally fine. I'm sure that if you dug deep enough there's some fringe wacko somewhere arguing this, but every group has its batshit fringe.

Here are some sources across the political and religious observance spectrum that explain it better than I could:

Chabad (this article is written by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, a wonderful rabbi whose words I have learned deeply over the years. He is one of my favorite rabbis despite not seeing eye to eye with a lot of the Chabad movement)

Conservative (to be clear: this is my movement; it's not actually politically conservative in most shuls, just poorly named. We desperately need to bully them into calling themselves Masorti Olami like the rest of the world. It's [essentially] a liberal traditional egalitarian movement.)

Conservative pt. 2 (different rabbi's take)

Reform (note that this is from the Haberman Institute, which was founded by a Reform rabbi. Link is to a YouTube recording of a recent lecture on the topic.)

Chareidi (this rabbi is an official rabbi of the Western Wall in Israel, so in a word, very frum)

Modern Orthodox

I want to highlight this last one, because it is written by the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chovevei, which is a progressive Modern Orthodox rabbinical school. They work very hard to read Torah through an authentically Orthodox lens while also maintaining deeply humanist values. As someone who walks a similar (if not identical) balancing act, this particular drash (sermon) spoke very deeply to me, and so I'm reposting it in its entirety**

[Edit: tumblr.hell seems real intent on not letting me do this in my original answer, so I will repost it in the reblogs. Please reblog that version if you're going to. Thanks!]

Something you will probably notice as you work your way through these sources, you'll note that there are substantially more traditional leaning responses. This is because of a major divide in how the different movements view Torah, especially as it pertains to changing ethics over time and modernity. I'm oversimplifying for space, but the differences are as follows:

The liberal movements (Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist, etc.) view halacha as non-binding and the Torah as a human document that is, nevertheless, a sacred document. I've seen it described as the spiritual diary of our people throughout history. Others view it as divinely inspired, but still essentially and indelibly human.

The Orthodox and other traditional movements view halacha as binding and Torah as the direct word of G-d given to the Jewish people through Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses) on Mt. Sinai. (Or, at a minimum, as a divinely inspired text written and compiled by people that still represents the word of G-d. This latter view is mostly limited to the Conservative and Modern Orthodox movements.)

Because of these differences, the liberal movements are able to address most of these problematic passages by situating them in their proper historical context. It is only the Orthodox and traditional movements that must fully reckon with the texts as they are, and seek to understand how they speak to us in a contemporary context.

As for me? I'm part of a narrow band of traditional egalitarian progressive Jews that really ride that line between viewing halacha as binding and the Torah as divinely given, despite recognizing the human component of its authorship - more a partnership in its creation than either fully human invention or divine fiat. That said, I am personally less interested in who wrote it literally speaking and much more interested in the question of: How can we read Torah using the divinely given process of traditional Torah scholarship while applying deeply humanist values?

Yeshivat Chovevei does a really excellent job of approaching Torah scholarship this way, as does Hadar. Therefore, I'm not surprised that this article captures something I have struggled to articulate: an authentically orthodox argument for change.

[dresshistorynerd]

@bubbletea4ever I'm responding to your comment in a separate post since my answer got too long and I then just decided to properly make my case.

(For anyone else stumbling here, here's the post in which comments we were discussing. There's couple of comments before this, so if you want more context, you are free to check them out.)

So here's @bubbletea4ever 's comment:

so you can understand that regimes can control and influence how people dress, but you can’t see that a culture does the same? If you ask women who veil their faces why they do it, how many of them do you seriously think are going to say ‘to protect me from the sun’ ? covering your face is dehumanising to yourself. you can pretend it’s neutral but it’s not. there’s not a world where this means nothing, it’s inherently oppressive that women just so happen to be the sex whose awra seemingly includes everything but the face and yet even some believe they should cover that. It is inherently oppressive that there are women who choose to swim in clothes that puts them at further risk of drowning in the name of piousness. And I said it’s cultural imperialism because that’s precisely what it is. Not every niqabi is from the specific region of Saudi where this began. This sort of regression only had a resurgence because of petro-Islam.

Of course people don't usually actively think about their clothing's origin or practical purpose. Culture forms around the practice and assigns symbolism and meaning to it. If you ask most people of the world "why are you not going out in your underwear?" they will probably not answer by "because of western hegemony we are all wearing clothing that originates from Europe and in European climate layering is the best strategy to keep you warm but not overheated or sweaty". They will most likely answer "it's not appropriate". Yes, the reason today many Muslim women wear any kind of veil, including niqab, are usually religious reasons (weather by choice or not), but my point in my original response was to show that these clothing are not just tools of oppression or just religious symbols, they are also practical useful garments which have long history, just like any other traditional clothing item from different cultures. My point was that while they can take different meanings, none of those meanings are inherent to them.

When I mentioned enforcing and controlling how people dress I of course mean also other means of control than just legal means. But there is a difference in controlling societal structures and cultural norms, though the line between those two is often hazy. All cultures ever have had some social standards and norms for dress. My previous example works here as well. In modern globalized culture it's deemed inappropriate to be naked or even in just the underwear in public. However, there is nothing inherently inappropriate in it. In many cultures thorough history, mostly those originating from hot and at least semi-humid climates, it has been entirely appropriate to appear almost or fully naked in public, and the concept of underwear itself is not even universal. Even in Early Modern Europe it was very appropriate for certain women in certain situations to appear in public their breasts fully exposed (I have a post where I explain the phenomena). However, in modern globalized culture it's not. I wouldn't call that inherently oppressive though. Historically using veils (even face coverings in desert climates) was often more of a neutral cultural norm like the one I just described rather than a tool of societal control, including in Europe, where veils and other head coverings were for a long time part of the standard dress (also originally for practical reasons). (I'm not saying this was always the case thorough history, I can already think of some examples which cross the hazy line to more of an oppressive standard, but broadly speaking.) Of course, I do know that in many modern Muslim societies, even when there's no outright laws enforcing it, there is very much societally enforced pressure especially for women to wear certain clothing, which is oppressive. Still the garments themselves are not oppressive.

I think it's interesting you say covering your face is inherently dehumanizing. Why is that? What makes covering your face specifically dehumanizing? Is covering your eyes dehumanizing? For example would you consider using sunglasses as dehumanizing?

I'll give you an example to better explain how I see this. In Victorian Era western societies it was societally enforced standard for women to only wear skirts and never pants. That was oppressive. Are skirts then oppressive? I certainly wouldn't agree with that. Some feminist women did push against this oppression and wore pants. There were also women who agreed that it's oppressive to control what women wear but still choose to wear skirts. Was the only reason they choose to wear skirts because of this oppressive standard? For some it certainly was because they were afraid of the backlash, which was severe at first. But for others it clearly wasn't, because some of them did dress in very unconventional manner directly contrasting the contemporary beauty norms, but still wearing skirts. Would it have been a good way to dismantle this norm by demanding that no woman ever wears a skirt? Absolutely not. There would be just another type of control. (I write a bit more on that history in this post.) Another example. At the same time men were not allowed to wear skirts in public (outside very specific situations like when they were small children or when they were a Scott wearing a kilt). During Victorian Era many countries had laws against cross dressing, but even to this day it's not socially acceptable for men to wear skirts in western and most westernized countries. Even if there's no longer laws against it, our oppressive social structures still enforce that. So are pants then oppressive? Of course not. Should all men stop wearing pants? No, they should be allowed to wear skirts or pants. Should I assume that every man ever wearing pants is only doing it because they are oppressed by the societal standards of dress? I do not think so. My thinking is exactly the same about niqab and other Muslim and Arab garments.

In your previous comment you said the prevalence of face covering as a whole is due to imperialism, which is what I disagreed with, at least with the "as a whole" part, because as I said, face coverings have long been used in many arid, especially desert, environments, not just Arabia. Niqab term and the specific form comes from Arabia, but very similar types of face coverings are not exclusive to Arabia nor even to Islam, nor do they originate with either of them. There's even historical examples from Europe of the practice of face coverings in certain areas (for example in parts of Germany during the Renaissance, but this is veering quite off the point). Face coverings have been recorded in Levant in pre-Islamic historical accounts as well, as this academic article on the misconceptions about nicab explains (this paper informs my opinion in this subject a lot). Coptic Orthodox women, who are Christians who originate around Eqypt, traditionally wore black veils and face coverings as seen in the photo from 1918 below. Tuaregs (one of the Amazigh peoples of North Africa), both men and women, but particularly men, have also worn face coverings called Litham for centuries, as seen in the second image from 1897. Litham is a veil that also covers the face, and is often worn by men as a turban. In Central Asia face coverings have also been used for a long time, chaderi has been used in Afghanistan for several hundred years, as seen in the third image, an illustration from c. 1840.

These are just a few examples and my point with them is to illustrate niqab style face coverings are not exclusive to Saudi Arabia, and certainly not to Najd alone, so calling all face coverings outside Najd Saudi imperialism is simply not true. Saudi Arabia is certainly an imperial entity and historically Arab imperialism has been in a cultural hegemony position in the MENA area. However, Arab imperialism is certainly not the only kind of imperialism effecting MENA societies. Similarly as Arabic cultural products are pushed on many Muslims outside Arabia and even Arabic countries, so are western products. Would you think the only reason an Arab or a Muslim more broadly, man or a woman, would wear jeans or other western clothing is that they are oppressed by western imperialism? Would you condemn that usage of jeans?

It was also the western colonialism which enforced western cultural norms in many Arab and other Muslim countries, which led to the wave of westernization across MENA in the 20th century and the decline of the usage of traditional clothing, including veils and face coverings. Western world of course framed it as progress, because in the colonial framework the burden of the white man was to "civilize" non-white non-western societies. Everything non-western was then backwards and uncivilized. The Islamic backlash against this led to another kind of oppression, which is fueled by the continued western imperial presence in the area. Even Saudi Arabia is in the end just an arm of American imperialism. My point is traditional Islamic or Arab garments are not inherently more oppressive than western garments, what is oppressive when either is forced upon a culture and upon it's people.

[userlofyy]

[AKNK] Honeymoon Knight - Berrien

⚠️ Please note that I am by no means a professional and there may be mistakes/mistranslations along the way.

🚫 DO NOT use my translations for Machine Learning/AI training or repost them anywhere

捧げた心

Dedicated Heart

Episode 1

 - Caliste Inn -

The plans of the couple who are heir candidates for the Grosvenor family have changed… The butlers and I decided to stay in the town of Caliste for a while One day… Berrien came to visit me.

*knock, knock*

Aruji: Come in

*door opens*

Berrien: Good morning, arujisama

Aruji: [Good morning, Berrien]

[Do you need me?]

Berrien: Today… I came to invite arujisama out.

Aruji: Speaking of going out…

I remembered what the butlers said the other day. Me and the butlers will go out together as newlywed partners… At the goddess’s temple, they will give me a bouquet of flowers So the butlers have said so

Aruji: [Are we going out today as newlyweds?]

[Are we going out as partners?]

Berrien: Y-yes.. It was with that in mind that I spoke to you today…. As expected… Is it bothersome to be partnered with me?

Aruji: [That's not true]

[I’m happy that you invited me]

Berrien: hehe… Thank you very much Spending time with arujisama as newlywed partners… I’m a little nervous though… As your spouse, I will do my best to help you… So we can create happy memories. Arujisama, I will be in your care.

Aruji: If we’re newlyweds, shouldn’t you call me by my first name?

Berrien: T-that’s true… Then… [Name]-san, let’s enjoy this day together.

And so, me and Berrien…. We decided to go out together as newlywed partners…

 - City of Blessings Caliste -

 - A few minutes later -

We arrived at the center of Caliste

Berrien: Well then, arujisama… No, today I will be calling you [Name]-san. [Name]-san, is there anywhere you would like to go? If there isn’t any in particular… Before going to the temple, there is somewhere I would like you to accompany me 

Aruji: What kind of place is that?

Berrien: Caliste bell tower is over there.

When I turned to the direction indicated by Berrien… I saw a tall bell tower

Aruji: [It’s quite tall]

[It’s a beautiful building]

Berrien: That is the tallest building in Caliste… At the top of the stairs, there is a place similar to an observation deck You can see a very beautiful view from there… Apparently, couples often visit on their honeymoon.

Aruji: That’s perfect for us now.

Berrien: Yes, exactly ♪ [Name]-san, would you like to go up with me?

Aruji: Yeah, let's go .

Berrien: hehe… I understand. Then, let me guide you.

Guided by Berrien, we head towards the bell tower.

- Caliste Observation Deck -

 - After a while -

Berrien: [Name]-san, thank you for your hard work. We arrived.

Berrien and I climbed the stairs of the bell tower…. We came to the observation deck. A beautiful white and blue cityscape with a cloudless blue sky… The soft breeze felt good.

Aruji: This is a nice view.

Berrien: Yes… Both the city and the sky are very beautiful hehe…

Aruji: What is it, Berrien?

Berrien: Oops… Please excuse me. Being here together with [Name]-san…  I couldn’t help but smile. The fact that Caliste has this observatory… I’ve known about it for a long time… If I have the chance to visit the city with arujisama… I wanted to go up to this observatory.

Aruji: Oh I see 

Berrien: This beautiful scenery… I wanted to watch it together with [Name]-san

Aruji: Thank you, Berrien

Berrien smiles as he says this, his hair swaying in the soft wind.

Berrien: [Name]-san, I… There are many places I would like to go with you. If the angels get destroyed, and the world becomes peaceful… I want to go on a trip with [Name]-san In a city far away… seeing and experiencing many things… Spending a fun time together… Summer in Velis, Maruta in winter… It would be nice to have a relaxing time If we go to the southern land… Samrus’s meteor shower, the festival in Daraja is a must see In the western land… I’m interested in the Night Cherry Blossom Festival in Slisia Village. The world that we saved… How happy I would be if I could look around together with [Name]-san That is what I think.

Aruji: Then, let’s make it come true.

Berrien: Eh…?

Aruji: [Let’s defeat the angels and travel around the world]

[Let’s travel together in a peaceful world]

Berrien: Arujisama… No… [Name]-san, thank you very much. Someday, definitely… Let’s definitely travel the world together. Velis and Daraja… Doll Town and Maruta… Rose Town, Tisailles, Rondine… Slisia Village, Samrus, and Caliste… The world we saved with our hands… Let’s go around together.

Aruji: That’s a promise, Berrien.

Berrien: Yes… Me and [Name]-san, a promise between the two of us. hehe… I wanted to make [Name]-san happy.. I even invited you out… On the contrary, I ended up being happy…

 - Exit of Caliste Bell Tower -

 - After a while -

We were discussing our travel plans at the observatory, but… It got crowded, so we decided to return to the ground. I took Berrien’s hand, and was escorted descending the stairs of the bell tower

Berrien: sigh… We finally made it [Name]-san, thank you for your hard work. Thank you for agreeing to my request.

Aruji: Thank you for your help.

Berrien: No, there is no need for thanks. As a butler, I just did what was expected of me. And, as of right now… I am your partner. As your partner, I’m sure…. I think we should hold hands, at times like this…

Saying that, Berrien… was looking down at our hands that were still connected.

Aruji: Berrien…

Berrien: What is it… Am I getting a little too carried away? 

Aruji: [That’s not it]

[I’m happy with Berrien’s kindness]

Berrien: hehe… If you say it like that, I’m glad. However, if this keeps up… [Name]-san is so kind that I feel like I’m going to get spoiled

Aruji: It’s okay to be spoiled

Berrien: Eh…?

Aruji: [Because we are newlyweds]

[Berrien is my partner]

Berrien: [Name]-san…

Aruji: [Berrien can spoil me too]

[Let me be kind to Berrien too]

Berrien: hehe… You truly are a kind person… I understand. Then… I have a request for you, [Name]-san. Please, for now… Can we please walk hand in hand? From here to the temple, we will pass along a deserted road… There won’t be anyone around to see. Me and [Name]-san… I want to spend more time like a newlywed. While we are outside, please… Let me be your partner.

Saying that, Berrien… He placed his other hand on our connected hands.

Aruji: [Of course, Berrien]

[I’ll be relying you as my partner]

Berrien: hehe… Thank you very much, [Name]-san Spending time with you together like this… I feel happy and my heart is full. Well then, let’s get going. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.

Berrien strengthened his grip on our joined hands a little… I too grabbed hold of his hand Without letting go of each other’s hand… We headed to the temple.

･──✽──୨୧──✽──･

Episode 2

 - Goddess’s Temple  Caliste-

 - A while later -

Berrien and I came to the temple. One of Caliste’s legends…. “Those who are given a bouquet of flowers at the temple of the goddess will be blessed with good luck.” Near the stage of the goddess’s temple… Berrien was standing there holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

Berrien: [Name]-san. Thank you for your cooperation so far. Spending a peaceful day with you like this… Making a promise for the future… …It was like a dream for me. I want to move forward towards the future with an important person to me… I feel happy, being able to think like that… I was able to remember that.

Aruji: Berrien…

Berrien: [Name]-san. Please accept this bouquet.

Berrien said that… He handed me a bouquet of roses. The color of the roses are the same as the color of Berrien’s eyes…. It’s bright pink.

Berrien: The flower language of deep pink roses is “gratitude”. [Name]-san… Thank you so much for being our lord. Coming to this world and taking our hand… I cannot thank you enough. But someday… When the world becomes peaceful… At that time, please… Please take my hand. There are 12 roses in this bouquet… The 12 roses are called the Dozen Roses… It has 12 meanings. Gratitude, sincerity, happiness, trust, hope, love… Passion, truth, respect, glory, effort… And the last one…  “I promise forever.” [Name]-san, I… I am forever your butler. As a demon butler… I fight angels and mourn for my friends… Such is our fate… With you, I’m sure we can make a difference. Because you are certainly… You are my destiny. [Name]-san… Please, would you accept this bouquet? I will forever be… [Name]-san’s ally. No matter what, my heart… Will be by [Name]-san’s side forever.

Berrien said that… He looked at me with eyes of the same color as the roses. I quietly received Berrien’s bouquet.

Aruji: [... Thank you, Berrien]

[I can feel Berrien’s feelings.]

Berrien: Arujisama... hehe… I ended up calling you arujisama again… [Name]-san… Thank you for accepting my feelings. I, right now… feel very… very happy. To you, who is more important than anyone else… I dedicate my heart to you.

Berrien said that… narrowed his eyes and smiled.

Those eyes look so happy… There were a few tears in his eyes

 - Caliste Inn -

 - That night -

*knock, knock*

Berrien: Arujisama. I brought you some tea before bedtime.

Aruji: [Go ahead]

[Come in, Berrien]

*door opens*

Berrien: Good evening, arujisama.

Aruji: Thank you for the tea.

Berrien: Not at all. As a butler, it’s only natural.

Aruji: Speaking of which…

Berrien: Yes, is something the matter?

Aruji: [That way of calling is back]

[You called me arujisama]

Berrien: Yes, that right… Now that we are back at the inn… I cannot call the lord by their name However…

Aruji: …Berrien?

Berrien: Arujisama. Although we are not newlyweds… Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow… You are my destiny. Until the day when a peaceful future arrives… Please remember this. Even as the master of the demon butler… Even as only [Name]-sama… Even when the battle with the angels is over and peace has come to the world… I will forever be… An ally of the lord.

Aruji: [Thank you, Berrien…]

[I’ll be in your care, from now on]

Berrien: hehe, yes… Now, arujisama. Enjoy your tea before it cools down Drink some hot tea… Please have a good rest. And… Thank you for your continued support tomorrow. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow… I will make you happy, arujisama.

[inky-duchess]

Hello! I have several questions about weddings in the 1910s (pre-ww1, roughly 1912), for an upper class lady living in England

According to my research, wedding receptions would have been around at the time, though it does not specify if they would have been a common occurrence for the nobility. Would the couple, which consists of two people of noble birth (the daughter of an earl and the eldest son of a different earl), have a wedding reception, and what would it look like for them? In the western world today, wedding receptions are functionally big parties, but my research is telling me that they'd be more like gatherings of family and friends to celebrate the marriage. Would this be likely?

related to question one, but would gifts be given to the newlyweds, and what kinds of gifts would be considered appropriate? would something like fine china or a tea set be considered a good gift, if gifts were being given? I understand the parents and direct family of the newlyweds may be most likely to give the couple gifts, would they do this before or during the wedding, or would they send the couple gifts after?

would it make sense for the actual wedding ceremony to be held at a local church and then the reception (assuming one is suitable) at one of the couple's family homes (my research is telling me that it would likely be the bride's family home, is this true?)

how would unwanted guests and party crashers be dealed with in this time period? for context, the party crasher is an ex lover of both the newlyweds, but only had actual relations with the husband. the wife only ever danced with him at social engagements a few times and exchanged a few letters. The party crasher is mentioned to have attempted to cause the wedding to be called off, would they be able to do this? the marriage is a lavender marriage.

I understand if this is too many questions, in which case I was wondering if you have any sources you might recommend about the topic! unfortunately my initial searches proved unfruitful and were mostly about the US :(

There would be a thing called a wedding breakfast. Basically most weddings happened in the morning, and the old tradition was you didn't eat before Mass/service so it was the first meal eaten afterward. It would be a sort of lunch/dinner affair with cake and would be attended by family, friends and invited well wishes. It is a reception and just as large or small as they want.

They would get things for their new life. They might get furniture, china, vases, frames, silver services etc. The Bride would probably get jewels from her family and the grooms family but guests might too. There would be cufflinks for the groom or sometimes if the couple were receptive to the idea dogs or horses. Basically anything they needed in their future life.

Yes, the wedding would happen at church and then there would be a wedding breakfast at the bride's home. After the reception, the bride and groom would 'go away' together onto their honeymoon or to where they were staying with their family and friends waving them off.

Ooo, scandalous! It's giving Good Luck, Babe vibes. But really the host - the bride's family - would gave to accommodate him if he's of similar rank so not to cause a scene. It would be awkward and may cause issues behind the scenes but outwardly, they won't fuss in public so none of that china will be getting smashed up

[scarfacemarston]

Bucky Barnes Emoji Hc's

Prompt here. If you enjoy this, please think about liking/reblogging - it’s what keeps me going, or feel free to request more!

💓 - What are some signs they’ve fallen for someone? How do they show their affection?

Younger Bucky had a pep in his step and a sense of bravado. He felt on top of the world like he could wrestle an alligator. He’s extra flirty, peppering in pet names, giving extra smiles, showing off, finding excuses for physical touch, and just radiating positivity. He brings his partner flowers and spends more than he should on them.  Bucky post-Azzano through today, he’s more subdued. However, he still holds his head a bit higher but tends to feel a combination of self-consciousness and self-confidence. It’s a weird dichotomy for him. It’s him worrying he’s going to mess it up. He’s a bit more dreamy, a bit more lovesick. He silently begins to hope more. He’s actually similar to his younger days except a bit more subdued and perhaps a bit more hesitant. He’s much more tender and takes things a bit slower, but the love is still there.

🤡 - What’s something dumb they’re embarrassed about? He’s lactose intolerant . One time, he snuck ice cream at an amusement park and threw up in front of the preacher. His parents were very unhappy.

🌱 - Do they have a green thumb or are they a plant killer?

His family on his mom’s side were farmers, whereas his dad’s side of the family worked in factories, so Bucky was around farms a lot before moving to Brooklyn, and his family would go to Indiana every year after. Bucky didn’t touch plants again until his time in Romania, where he had a single potted plant sitting on his windowsill that he kept alive - and did well with it! He also did well in Wakanda and would do decently with his own garden. He likes the idea of helping things grow and keeping them alive.  (Comic Bucky lived in Indiana before moving to Camp Lehigh. He doesn’t live in a house with a yard again until he buys a home in Indiana.)

📱 - What social media do they use the most? He canonically tried out at least one dating app. I don’t see him actually using social media unless it’s just a blank profile or something anonymous like reddit.

👪 - What’s their relationship with their parents like?

Comic Bucky was close to his mother, but she died when he was a child. His father was understanding and kind, but also strict. He wanted Bucky to be his best, but Bucky was an angry child and frequently got into fist fights. Bucky was of course devestated when he died. MCU Bucky - I imagine his mother as an overbearing mother who accidentally put too much pressure on him and gave him a lot of responsibility in caring for his younger siblings. She wanted Bucky to marry a good Irish Catholic girl and give her lots of grand children. His father was a WW1 veteran who worked, but didn’t pay a lot of attention to the family. 🐒 - What’s their favorite animal? He’s always loved dogs and owls. He also has a fondness for goats after working with them in Wakanda. However, he does not like horses after a childhood incident on his Uncle’s farm.

🧳 - What countries have they been to?

As an adult, Bucky didn’t have a choice but to travel most of his life, starting with him being drafted in WWII. However, Bucky accepted this despite his fear as he wanted to serve his country and make his family proud. In the comics, he was on both the European front and the Pacific front. In the MCU, he’s just in the Western Front in Europe. 

Afterwards, as the Winter Soldier, he was sent to numerous locations, but that’s not traveling. After freeing himself from Hydra, he traveled the world, but again, it was not for fun. Wakanda was a refuge rather than actual travel. His FATWS era did not enjoy traveling for fun, either. At this point, outside of missions, he would rather stay at home. However, if he had a partner who wanted to travel, he might be convinced. Comic Bucky wanted to visit the Grand Canyon.

🤔 - What’s something they’ll never understand? “Kids these days” and today’s dating scene.