#like Empires? that's in modern-day Spain.

[giantkillerjack]

People are so shocked that Black folks existed in ancient Rome like my dudes Italy is like 10 feet away from Africa some of it was literally part of the Roman empire don't make me google maps this for you

[blueiscoool]

How Hadrian’s Wall is Revealing a Hidden Side of Roman History

A party invitation. A broken flipflop. A wig. Letters of complaint about road conditions, and an urgent request for more beer.

It sounds like the aftermath of a successful spring break, but these items are nearly 2,000 years old.

They’re just some of the finds from Hadrian’s Wall – the 73-mile stone wall built as the northwestern boundary of the Roman Empire, sealing off Britannia (modern-day England and Wales) from Caledonia (essentially today’s Scotland).

While most of us think of Pompeii and Herculaneum if we’re thinking of everyday objects preserved from ancient Rome, this outpost in the wild north of the empire is home to some of the most extraordinary finds.

“It’s a very dramatic stamp on the countryside – there’s nothing more redolent of saying you’re entering the Roman empire than seeing that structure,” says Richard Abdy, lead curator of the British Museum’s current exhibition, Legion, which spotlights the everyday life of Roman soldiers, showcasing many finds from Hadrian’s Wall in the process. A tenth of the Roman army was based in Britain, and that makes the wall a great source of military material, he says.

But it’s not all about the soldiers, as excavations are showing.

A multicultural melting pot

Hadrian, who ordered the wall to be built in 122CE after a visit to Britannia, had a different vision of empire than his predecessors, says Frances McIntosh, curator for English Heritage’s 34 sites along Hadrian’s Wall.

“All the emperors before him were about expanding the empire, but Hadrian was known as the consolidator,” she says. He relinquished some of the territory acquired by his predecessor Trajan, and “decided to set the borders” – literally, in some cases, with wooden poles at sites in Germany, or with stone in Britannia. Where those poles rotted thousands of years ago, the wall is still standing: “A great visual reminder” of the Roman empire, says McIntosh.

It’s not just a wall. There’s a castle every mile along, and turrets at every third-of-a-mile point, with ditches and banks both north and south. “You can imagine the kind of impact that would have had, not just on the landscape but on the people living in the area,” says McIntosh.

And thanks to the finds from the wall, we know a surprising amount about those people.

Although historians have long thought of army outposts as remote, male-dominant places, the excavations along the wall show that’s not the case. Not only were soldiers accompanied by their families, but civilians would settle around the settlements to do business. “ You can almost see Housesteads as a garrison town,” says McIntosh. “There were places you could go for a drink and so on.”

The Roman rule of thumb was not to post soldiers in the place they came from, because of the risk of rebellion. That meant Hadrian’s Wall was a cultural melting point, with cohorts from modern-day Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Algeria, Iraq, Syria – and more. “It was possibly more multicultural because it was a focus point,” says McIntosh, who says that the surrounding community might have included traders from across the empire.

Soldiers were split into two groups. Legionaries were Roman citizens from Italy, who had more rights than other soldiers and imported olive oil, wine and garum (a sauce made from decomposing fish).

They worked alongside auxiliaries – soldiers from conquered provinces, who had fewer rights, but could usually acquire citizenship after 25 years of service.

Soldiers carved their names and regiments on stones to show which part of the wall they built – around 50 of them are on display at Chesters fort.

But the wall shows that women and children were equally present.

McIntosh says that pottery brought to the camps – from the Low Countries and North Africa – shows that the soldiers “brought their families, who cooked in traditional style.” Archaeologists have found what seems to be an ancient tagine for North African-style cooking.

A tombstone from Arbeia fort for a woman named Regina shows she was a freed slave from southern Britain who was bought by – and married to – a Syrian soldier.

Another woman buried at Birdoswald fort was laid to rest with chainmail that appears to be from modern-day Poland. “Perhaps she married someone in the army,” says McIntosh, who calls the wall a “melting pot of people from all over the world under the banner of the army.”

“They brought their own religions, as well as worshipping Roman gods and adopting local deities,” she adds. At Carrawburgh, a temple to Mithras – an originally Persian deity – sat near a spring with a shrine to a local water spirit.

‘Wretched little Brits’

Some of the most extraordinary finds from the Roman empire are coming from one site on Hadrian’s Wall: Vindolanda. Here, archaeologists have found a wealth of organic remains because of what curator Barbara Birley calls the “unusual conditions onsite.”

At Vindolanda there are the remains of at least nine forts over 14 levels. “When the Romans would leave, they would knock down timber forts, and cover the area with turf and clay, sealing the layers underneath,” she says.

“Because it happened so many times, the bottom five or six layers are sealed in anaerobic conditions, so things don’t decay. When we get down there, we get wooden objects, textiles, anything organic.”

Vindolanda has the largest collection of Roman textiles from a single site in western Europe, as well as the largest leather collection of any site in the Roman empire – including 5,000 shoes, and even a broken leather flip-flop. “We probably had a population of 3,000 to 6,000 depending on the period, so 5,000 is a lot,” says Birley. For Abdy, the shoes evoke the conditions of the wet borderlands. “Women’s and children’s shoes are hobnailed – you needed it in the mucky frontier dirt tracks. They’re very evocative.”

There’s even a wig made from a local plant, hair moss, which is said to repel midges – the scourge of Scotland during the summer. A centurion’s helmet is also crested with hairmoss – the ancient equivalent of spraying yourself with insect repellent.

The first woman to write in Latin

One of the most famous finds is the trove of wooden writing tablets – the largest found anywhere.

“They give a snapshot of what life was actually like,” says Birley. “We understand so much more from written correspondence than from ‘stuff,’ and, archaeologically, it’s the stuff that usually survives – things like metals and ceramics.

“These were written in ink, not on a wax stylus tablet, and we believe they were used for what we’d put in emails: ‘The roads are awful,’ ‘The soldiers need more beer.’ Everyday business.”

The tablets – or “personal letters” as Birley describes them – were found on the site of a bonfire when the ninth cohort of Batavians (in the modern-day Netherlands) were told to move on.

“They had a huge bonfire and lots of letters were chucked in the fire. Some have been singed – we think it may have rained,” she says. One of them calls the locals “Britunculi” – “wretched little Brits.” Another talks about an outbreak of pinkeye. One claims that the roads are too bad to send wagons; another laments that the soldiers have run out of beer.

Among the 1,700 letters are 20 that mention a woman called Sulpicia Lepidina. She was the wife of the commander of the garrison, and seems to have played a crucial role. There’s a letter to her from another woman, Paterna, agreeing to send her two medicines, one a fever cure.

Birley says it’s similar to today. “If you’re a group of moms, still today we say, ‘Do you have the Calpol?’ It’s very human.” For Abdy, it’s a sign that women were traders. “She’s clearly flogging her medicines,” he says. “It’s really great stuff.”

Another tablet is an invite from Claudia Severa, the wife of another commander at a nearby camp. It’s an invitation to a birthday party. Under the formal invitation, presumably written by a scribe, is a scrawl in another hand: “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul.”

Presumably written by Claudia herself, it is thought to be the earliest example of a woman’s handwriting in Latin.

Without the organic finds – the shoes and the letters that indisputably belonged to women, unlike jewellery or weaving equipment – it’s difficult to prove conclusively that women lived in significant numbers. Vindolanda “illustrate the missing gaps,” says Abdy. For Birley, they prove that women were as crucial a part of army communities as men. “Before the Lepidina tablets were found we didn’t really understand the interactions between the soldiers and their wives,” she says. Another tablet is written by what is thought to be a Spanish standard-bearer’s common-law wife, ordering military equipment for her partner.

“The Vindolanda collection is showing that there weren’t just camp followers and prostitutes; women were part of everyday life, and contributing to the military community in many ways,” says Birley.

Abdy says that Hadrian’s Wall is interesting because the resident women span “all classes of society,” from Regina – the dead freedwoman, who would have been “bottom of the heap” – to the trader Paterna and the noblewoman Lepidina.

And of course, there’s the wall itself.

“In the Netherlands and Germany the finds are often stunning and better preserved – you go to museums and are bowled over. But in terms of structural remains, Hadrian’s Wall must be among the best,” says McIntosh, modestly, of her site.

Abdy agrees: “I can’t think of many symbols so redolent of imperial will than that wall.”

By Julia Buckley.

[myfriendpokey]

tunnel notes

i wrote some extra little notes and thoughts for the bonus tunnels in anthology of the killer, and then removed them before release; i didn't like the prescriptive feeling of leaving that stuff in the "final package" as if it was something people should feel obligated to engage with. but as of today it's been 30 days since the loader came out, so i figured i'd dump some of them online, for the benefit of whoever is interested in these things.

History: HISTORY IS A NIGHTMARE FROM WHICH I AM TRYING TO AWAKE is one of many famous zingers given to Stephen in Ulysses and I’ve always wondered if it’s especially Irish as a sentiment, Ireland sort of feeling like the “Oops! All Peasants” edition of European history as a whole – same misery, exploitation and death minus the occasional episodes of feudal colour or triumphant empire-building that seem to make the past tolerable for other people, and give them their own sense of demarcated time. But then I’ve never been much good on Irish history, which has always just felt like an interminable, indistinguishable series of massacres and betrayals and missed shots. Was I not paying attention or was this how it was taught in school? Well, it would have fit the style at the time – I was born in 1989, smack at the start of the famous end of history era. The 90s in Ireland meant the peace process and infusion of American capital to our backwards shores, all the more reason to cosign the idea of an abrupt and permanent break with a history notably lacking in the non-depressing or picturesque. All our history textbooks seemed to trail off at the point we’d joined the EEA. And even as this new modernity just started seeming like the monstrous antiquity dressed up in different clothes – hooded prisoners transported to torture sites through Shannon airport, our patchy social infrastructure dismantled by burghers, ghost estates and half-completed monuments scattered around like the ruin theory of value with more leprechaun imagery – there was still a sense that any change was off the table. You didn’t want to drag us back into history, did you? History seemed to have “ended” in the same sense Freddy Krueger did – done away with in ways that none of the grown-ups ever wanted to talk about, and now officially a non-presence, even if all the kids in town were mysteriously disappearing.

--

Art: One reason I wanted to do an episodic series is just to see what would turn up, if any recurring interests would build despite a minimum of planning. One of the themes turned out to be, “art” – or specifically modernist art – and I am curious about why that would be. A recurring tendency in modernism was the idea that only by destroying the world as it currently existed could we clear space for anything better to emerge. Under the cobblestones, the beach! But this was always attended by a kind of fear: that clearing away the old structures would just allow something even worse to emerge, unmasked. Under the cobblestones, more corpses! And that the bleakest tendencies of the period would now run free without even the emptiest symbolic constraints to chafe against. Max Ernst’s painting of the fascist victory in Spain, of a huge, grinning oaf rampaging over the landscape like a kaiju while a miserable birdlike figure remains haplessly grafted to its leg – is titled both “The Angel Of Hearth And Home” and “The Triumph Of Surrealism”. As if to suggest that these are each the same thing, as though a cause of creative liberation worth devoting your life to and an empty cliché of domestic repression had so little light between them as to not even be worth the effort of distinguishing.

Part of the reason works like that make their way into the games in little ways is because I just like them, and go back to thinking about them. But the status of modernism in the 21st century is an odd one; the most tentative and inventive parts got dropped, while the brashest and stupidest aspects curdled into a kind of official state ideology – the idea of “creative destruction”, which just seems to mean a vague sense that it’s punk rock to create ridesharing apps. The monkey’s paw curled and the emptiest version of the modernist credo became something we all have to live with.. and yet I still can’t help but be moved by the source works and the goofy, ridiculous temerity of that wish to transfigure the world. sometimes it feels like only way to keep faith with those ideas is to travesty them, to try returning to them some of that sense of fear and doubt without which they just sound like so many web design agency manifestos. Kept alive in the breast of so many grimacing waxworks, underground.

Another reason to put this stuff in a horror game: to try getting at that feeling in a dream of looking in the eyes of people you know, people you love, and seeing nothing there anymore, seeing them look right past you. An earlier horror game idea I used to think about would have ended with the protagonist being dismembered and eaten by Gertrude Stein.

--

The moral: I’ve seen people express a sense, now, that merely working in the negative is not enough; to just outline what’s bad without also trying to give a vision of the good, some glimpsed utopia to shoot for. For the benefit of these people here is an epilogue. Imagine it’s the future and the long nightmare of prehistory is over; history proper unfolds as the full expression of human powers unhindered by material subjugation. Some students are given an assignment by a professor to investigate the meaning of a term that no longer exists, the meaning of horror. Well, the students do their best: they watch lots of old movies, put on rubber masks, comb through old fragments of the world that was. They’re enjoying themselves and that enjoyment warps the process, they keep drifting into pleasure, unsure what’s meant to be funny and what’s not. They get lost, get confused, lose the thread, famous faces appear under the wrong names, espousing things that are the opposite of whatever they believed. In the end they all have to admit defeat: they hand in their assignment with a note saying that in the new world, we can’t even imagine what horror may have been. The professor reads their findings, nods, and gives them all an F. No moral.

[image source: James Ensor, "The Intrigue"]

[supernovafics]

series masterlist | last part

pairing: modern!actor!steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 8.1k words

warnings: explicit language, angst, fluff, smut (18+)

summary: it’s ten months of texts, phone calls, voicemails, anything to make it feel like everything isn’t too different. and for the most part, it works. until you and steve finally see each other again

EPILOGUE | ❝𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆❞

You: How’s New York so far?

Steve: Good aside from Tom trying to force me to do more press stuff than what we initially agreed on and I’ve only been here three days

You: I kinda miss that british man

Steve: That truly offends me</3

You: I’m sorry<3

You: Okay very very important question

You: Empire State of Mind or Welcome to New York?

Steve: ???? 

You: You’re in New York for the next month so one of them has to be your signature song (and yes this is coming from the person that has only been to New York a handful of times. shut up don’t mention it) 

Steve: Can I say no to both of them?

You: No.

Steve: Okay then 

Steve: The Taylor Swift one

You: Solid answer

You: Now I will start your morning right every day you’re there by sending you lyrics from that song :) 

Steve: Oh god

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Steve: What was the name of that show we watched for almost five hours at your place that one night?

You: It sincerely hurts me that you forgot the name of Brooklyn Nine-Nine….

Steve: Yes, that’s it! I was thinking about this one episode we watched of it but I couldn’t remember the name

You: Are you about to watch it without me? (if the answer is yes that hurts me even more)

Steve: Yes I was… But now no way I would never watch it without you

You: A true friend. Thank you 

Steve: Oh wait I’m just now realizing how late it is where you are. How are you even talking to me right now? 

You: Yeah, it’s 2am but I can’t sleep. First day of real filming tomorrow. First day being AD. And yes all the pre-production stuff me and Jessie have been doing since we got to Spain two weeks ago has been perfectly leading to this moment, but now it just feels so fucking real and even though I know I’m not gonna mess up or anything I’m still nervous

Steve: You’re gonna do great and actually I think it’s impossible for you not to be really good at what you do  

You: Thank you

Steve: I would suggest that I call you and we watch an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine to take your mind off things but you should sleep 

You: No actually can we do that? I’m wide awake right now and I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep anytime soon 

You: Also fun fact: I’m actually able to function better when I’m running on barely three hours of sleep 

Steve: That’s a huge lie but okay

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

“… Please leave a message after the beep.”

You listened to the all-too familiar sound of the “beep” and then began speaking. “Okay, I know it’s like three in the morning in LA right now, so it completely makes sense why you didn’t answer. But, anyway, I just landed in London last night and now it’s morning and I’m at the coffee shop that you told me I should go to while I’m here.” 

“It’s really, really great, and I hate how right you are about the tea being amazing, and it actually makes me change my mind about how much I dislike tea. Oh, also, I got my first ever British scone from here and it’s so good too. I think I’ll probably be spending every day at this place while I’m here for the next month.”

“And I know you raved a lot about the breakfast sandwiches here too, so I will try that tomorrow. I think you said that the bacon one was your favorite, but please confirm that because I can’t fully remember… Oh, wait, nevermind, it’s definitely the bacon because I do remember you saying that you miss it a lot.”

“I could bring you one back if you want? No, wait, actually, that wouldn’t make sense because even when I leave London, I’m still gonna be in Europe for three more months… Wait, I see that they sell coffee mugs here, though, so I could definitely bring you back that if you wanted me to? They have some cool options.” 

“Alright, I think I’m just rambling at this point so let me shut up.” You let out a small laugh. “Okay, bye.” 

Call Ended

-

You: *image attached* 

You: Enjoy that picture of me being the most touristy tourist in the world :) 

Steve: I can’t believe you’re doing the leaning tower of pisa pose thing

You: I had to. I couldn’t come here and not do it. It feels like tradition. A rite of passage, if you will

Steve: You’re such a dork 

You: Joke’s on you because I fully take that as a compliment, so thank you 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The feeling of your phone vibrating in the back pocket of the jeans you were wearing surprised you because you thought you had turned it off for the day. And then seeing Steve’s name take over your phone screen further surprised you, but you didn’t hesitate to answer the call.  

“Hi,” You said. You were on a break for the first time that day, so the timing of his call was actually kind of perfect. “This is a pretty nice surprise.”

“Hey, how’s it going?” It felt really good actually hearing his voice for the first time in what felt like forever.  

“Pretty good. I never thought I’d actually find myself truly missing LA, but now I kinda can’t wait to be back there in three weeks,” You answered, saying what had been on your mind for a while at this point. “How’s Vancouver?” 

“Nice so far. It’s actually been snowing a lot, but I like it.” 

“I hope you've been doing all of the snow and Winter activities; making snow angels, sledding down hills. Y’know, all the stuff they do in children’s Christmas movies.” 

You almost immediately heard Steve laugh at your words. “The apartment I’m staying at here has a balcony, and last night after it stopped snowing I made a really small snowman.” 

You smiled. “I love that. Please send me a picture of it.” 

“Okay.”

Things became quiet for a moment, and it was a silence that easily felt comfortable and you didn’t mind it at all. Simply knowing that Steve was on the other end of the call felt like enough. 

“This is a random thought, but we never usually talk on the phone. Mainly because our time zones are insanely different, so the timing is never right, and we’re either leaving each other voicemails or just texting, which is fine. But it’s really nice hearing your voice. It’s just… really comforting.” You let out a soft breath. “Where I am right now and where I’ve been the past five-ish months have become my makeshift “homes,” but talking to you actually feels like home, in a way… And I know exactly how disgustingly cheesy that sounds. Don’t say anything about it, or I will end this call.”

Steve laughed a bit. “No, I agree with you. We’ve talked about feeling lonely before, but even though we haven’t seen each other in what feels like a really long time, whenever we text and especially when we talk on the phone, it’s hard to feel lonely. It’s like all of these miles between us don’t really matter, which is nice. You’re my “home” too.”

You were quiet for a second, fully taking in his words and smiling at how happy they made you feel. It was the kind of happiness where you also kind of felt like crying. 

You loved what you had been doing currently with your job and you wouldn’t have changed any of it, but you also really wished that you could see Steve right then; you would’ve killed for a hug.  

“Okay, I think I should go before I start crying,” You said, only slightly joking with your words. “Also, I only have ten more minutes of my break, and I haven’t eaten since this morning.” 

“Oh shit, I’m sorry.”

You shook your head even though he couldn’t see you. “No, don’t be sorry. Like I said, I really like when we can actually talk to each other. I like hearing your voice.” 

“I like hearing yours too,” He told you and somehow it was easy to hear the smile in his tone. “Okay, I’m gonna hang up now. Go eat something.”

“Aye, aye captain,” You said with a small laugh. “Talk to you soon.”  

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You: I just watched the final cut of Fear of Lonesome with Jessie… Enjoy this picture of me currently bawling my eyes out at the ending

You: *image attached*

Steve: Sorry for making you cry?

You: It was worth it, honestly

Steve: You’re coming to the cast and crew screening next week right?

You: Of course. I will happily cry at this movie again :)

You: It’s kinda really fucked up how good of an actor you are 

Steve: Thank you? At least I think that’s a compliment

You: It is<3

You: Anyway I’ll see you next week then

You: The first time in a really really long time. Holy shit 

Steve: That feels a little weird to think about. But a good kind of weird

You: Yeah definitely the good kind 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

It was a moment that was ten months in the making. 

Ten months of texts, voicemails, and sporadic phone calls. Ten months of being so far apart from one another, but doing so much to make it feel like you weren’t. 

It was all leading here— seeing Steve in person at the small theater in West Hollywood that had been rented out for the night’s occasion. And when you saw him, talking to random members of the cast and crew, it didn’t exactly feel real, which made you not say anything. 

Until he saw you and your eyes met and small smiles were quickly shared. You gave him a small nod before you got pulled into a conversation with someone.

He looked a little different, hair grown out a bit more and there was something minorly different about his stance, but overall he was still your Steve. Well, not technically yours, but close enough. You then wondered if he thought you looked any different. You personally felt a bit different, in a good way; like you’d become better over the past ten months, and in some ways, more of yourself. 

It was almost amusing how, most of the time, the time seemed to move slowly over the past ten months, but now it was suddenly moving so much faster. 

Everyone left the lobby area and started making their way inside the room that the screening would be happening in since it was scheduled to start in five minutes, but you and Steve lingered back, walking toward each other until there were only a few beats of space between you two. 

You smiled at him again. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He stepped forward to close the rest of the distance between you and pull you in for a hug, but you stepped back. 

“Oh, I don’t know if I’m allowed to hug you. Y’know given that you’re an engaged man and all.” You tried to be completely serious with your words but it was hard not to laugh at least a little bit.

According to many celebrity news outlets, Steve and his female costar of the limited series he’d been filming in Vancouver for the past five months were dating. It was a rumor that started about two months into filming, and there had been no confirmations about the said relationship but there were also no hard denials, so the speculations continued. And then there were even a handful of news outlets that went quite insane with their headlines and said that the two were secretly engaged. You both had laughed about it then when you sent that article to him, because the rumors were hilariously ridiculous, and you couldn’t not joke about it now. 

“Ha ha,” He said, voice deadpan. “I didn’t even get to tell you, but Tom suggested that me and Lily actually start fake dating because, in addition to all of this giving so much more press to the show, it could also help me. If I’m dating someone it will fully “kill off the asshole image.” I immediately vetoed that idea, though.”

Although the asshole narrative that surrounded Steve still existed— not as prominent as it once was but it still lingered whenever his name was brought up by the media— it was hard to see him like that anymore.  

You let out a laugh. “Of course Tom would suggest that.” 

“Yeah, he’s…” Steve trailed off with a quick shake of his head. “Anyway, c’mere.”

You walked into his open arms that time, pushing up on your toes to circle your arms around his neck as his wrapped around your waist. Your eyes fell shut as he held you tight and it was then that the time felt like it started to move slow again. 

“I have something for you,” You told him after a moment, words getting somewhat lost in his neck but he was still able to hear you. “A little gift. It’s in my car, I’ll give it to you after.” 

“I also have something for you,” Steve whispered, and you opened your eyes at that.

You pulled back from the hug, still smiling at him. “Great minds, hm?”

He nodded and matched your smile with one of his own. Seeing him right then still didn’t entirely feel real just yet, so you went quiet once again and the two of you simply looked at each other. 

During the past ten months you and him had talked pretty much all of the time, but there was something different about this moment. Feelings that you thought you had successfully pushed far away rushed right back to the surface. 

“We should head inside,” He said, breaking the silence and pulling you out of your thoughts, which you were grateful for because you really didn’t want to think right then, especially not about that.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You were the one that suggested Steve come back to your place and the small gift exchange happen there. 

The screening felt as if it ended too soon and the inevitability of the night itself ending started to hang in the air. However, you couldn’t allow that to happen; you wanted this night to last as long as it could. 

Steve agreed with your suggestion and thirty minutes after various goodbyes were said, the two of you were sitting on your couch as a frozen pizza that you’d just bought yesterday cooked in the oven because both of you were hungry. 

You were already wearing the navy blue oversized crewneck he got you that had “Vancouver” embroidered in white across the front of it. It was comfortable and perfect, and a simple gift but also the best thing you’d received in a while. 

“I hope you like this,” You said as you handed him the gift you’d gotten for him; a cream colored mug with the logo of a coffee shop in brown lettering on the side. “I know you said that you were okay with not getting a mug from that coffee shop in London, but I just really wanted to get you this one.”

Steve looked at the mug for a second and then at you, a smile on his face. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” You said and your fingers started mindlessly playing with the hem of your crewneck as you continued speaking. “I’ve missed you a lot this past year. I know we talked so often and everything, but being right here, in person, feels really nice.”

“I’ve missed you too,” He said softly before he placed the mug on the coffee table barely a few feet away and then met your eyes again. “There were so many times where I wanted to just drop everything and go see you. Rearrange plans or cancel some stupid press stuff and meet up with you. Even if it would only be for barely a day or whatever. I just always wanted to see you.” 

You wanted to tell him how much you related to his words. You wanted to say how there were a countless amount of times where you had yearned to do the exact same thing. However, you couldn’t find the words to tell Steve any of that, so instead you only looked at him for a bit.

It was almost funny how many times you had become at a loss of words so far that night simply because of him. But it was as if the fact that you were suppressing so much made you unable to say pretty much anything. Because you were scared of where exactly your mind would go if you didn’t immediately shut down some of your thoughts that involved you and Steve, especially now that he was right here instead of thousands of miles away and no longer solely limited to the confines of your phone.  

He was your friend. Best friend. And it had been so much easier to pretend that that was where you and him solely began and ended when you both were so far away from each other— when he wasn’t right in front of you and you weren’t so easily reminded of how close you two used to be in such a different way. 

Those same revived feelings from earlier that night came right back again, and they practically increased tenfold because you found yourself wanting to kiss him so fucking badly. And, of course, there was a part of your mind that immediately told you just how bad of an idea that would be. However, at that moment, you became okay with all logical thinking being pushed out of the window. 

In your mind it felt like you were moving in slow motion, scooting closer to him on the couch and sliding into his lap so that your legs were on either side of him, but in reality it was happening so much quicker. However, you stopped there before you did anything else.

You could see some confusion in his eyes and also something else that you couldn’t fully decipher, maybe he was contemplating things as much as you had been before you decided to take this sort of plunge.  

That look was almost enough to wake you up and remind you of what had been agreed upon all those months ago, but it wasn’t enough to make you pull away from Steve. However, instead of sliding off of his lap or moving things further, you gave the metaphorical ball to him. 

You let silence hang in the air as the two of you simply looked at each other and you gave him the opportunity to push you away. To tell you that there wasn’t any part of him that wanted this to happen. That he was so far past feeling anything like that toward you anymore. That he never even thought about it.

You would’ve been okay with any of those things happening because even though it would’ve hurt, it would actually make things a thousand times easier. 

But, he didn’t do or say any of that. Instead, he closed the last bit of space between you two and slotted his lips against yours. 

It was an immovable and obvious fact that you had missed him so much over the past ten months, but you now realized that you had missed this just as much. A soft kiss that almost immediately turned into something more with one of Steve’s hands coming up to cup your cheek and the other finding your hip to keep you steady. You couldn’t help but moan into his mouth when his tongue ran across your bottom lip making the kiss deeper, and your hands fisted themselves into his t-shirt to bring yourself impossibly closer to him. 

For the time being, you effectively turned your mind off. You deliberately chose not to think about what this exactly meant or what it would come to mean. All you focused on in that moment was how fucking good doing this with Steve felt. 

Your hands found the hem of your crewneck because you suddenly felt way too hot and you pulled away from Steve for a second so that you could slip it over your head, leaving you in just your black tank top and shorts.  

You became so lost in the pure happiness of everything that was happening right then that you couldn’t hear anything except your heart pounding in your ears and the soft sounds Steve was managing to elicit from you due to the way he was squeezing your hips.  

“The oven,” He mumbled against your lips, which slowly snapped you out of the haze you were in. “The oven is beeping.” 

It was then that you heard the incessant noise; almost too loud and clear. 

You abruptly pulled away from Steve and maneuvered off of his lap. “Oh, shit.”  

He followed you into the kitchen as you opened up the oven and used a mitt to grab the circular pan the pizza was on and place it atop the stove. 

“That was, um…” You trailed off not knowing exactly where you wanted to go with your words. 

Steve shook his head. “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.” 

“I don’t regret what just happened,” You blurted out. They were the words that pretty much mimicked what was said after the first time you two ever had sex. But, instead of those words first coming from Steve they were coming from you. “And I don’t really know what that means, and I kinda don’t wanna think about what it means right now. I kinda just don’t wanna think at all right now. Sometimes I feel like I think way too much when it comes to us.”

He was quiet for a second before he nodded at you. “Okay.”

His hands found your hips and you were softly pressed against the side of the kitchen counter. You two shared a look that felt as if it was saying a million things, none of which you particularly wanted to decipher right then. 

Before things could stay silent for too long, before you accidentally let your mind fall down a spiraling rabbit hole, you nodded a bit and mimicked Steve’s previous word. “Okay.”   

His hands came up to cup your face before he leaned in to kiss you again. You didn’t waste a second to push yourself onto the counter and Steve’s lips found your neck, roughly kissing and nipping at the skin. Your hands started playing with the hem of his t-shirt before circling in the loops of his jeans and pulling him flush against you. When you felt his hardness press against your inner thigh, you took in a sharp breath and let out a soft moan. You were completely certain that you would’ve let him pull off your shorts and underwear and do whatever he wanted to do to you against your kitchen counter if you weren’t reminded of something else. 

“The pizza?” You mumbled, a bit unable to form the question coherently because all you could really focus on was the feeling of Steve’s mouth against you. 

He pulled away from your neck and met your eyes. “We can eat it after.”

He didn’t have to specify further for you to know exactly what he meant. You smiled and pressed a quick kiss against his lips. “Yeah, after sounds perfect.” 

It became a blur of movements after those words fell from your lips. His hands found the backs of your thighs and he picked you up— the abruptness of the action made you simultaneously yelp and laugh as your arms came up to circle around his neck. You were carried to your bedroom and softly placed down against the unmade bed. Clothes were quickly shed until there was nothing between you and him. 

No words were said in these rushed moments where hands and mouths roamed almost everywhere on each other's bodies; the brief looks shared and breathy noises coming from both of you were enough. 

It was as if one mind was being shared or a song that only you two knew the words to was playing and both of you were singing along. Your hands were in his hair, softly pulling because the groans he’d let out were probably the hottest thing you’d ever heard. And his middle finger softly teased your clit as he whispered the filthiest things in your ear because he knew just how much that would make you lose it. 

It had been almost a year but neither of you forgot these little things about one another and it almost felt like second nature to be with each other in this way. There wasn’t a hint of nervousness or awkwardness, and maybe that was saying a lot more than you wanted to admit. 

You were positive that if you fully thought about what was happening right then, your mind wouldn’t hesitate to yell at you that this was a bad idea; that it would only make things complicated, and start you both back at square one. 

However, it would also tell you that the times in your life where you felt your happiest and most comfortable mainly consisted of moments with Steve, and that was something that felt as if it would never change. 

Therefore, when he slipped inside you with a low groan that you caught with your mouth and proceeded to make you come faster than you had in such a long time, it was hard to feel anything but completely happy. 

Your legs wrapped around him, coaxing him deeper inside of you and soft “pleases” fell from your lips begging him to come. And after a particularly hard thrust, he let out a loud “Fuck” and came inside of you, and you couldn’t do anything but moan at the feeling of his cum painting your walls. 

The weight of him crushed you in the most comforting way possible, and you tilted your head upward a bit to meet his lips in a soft and lazy kiss. The two of you stayed just like that for a while, coming down from your highs and letting your racing hearts return to normal. Your head fell back against your pillow, eyes closing, but you didn’t feel tired. 

“When those articles about you and Lily dating started coming out, I knew exactly how ridiculous the rumors were because I feel like we have the kind of… friendship where you’d tell me if you were dating someone… But, there was still a small part of me that believed it for a second, and it was actually so hard to not feel a little sad about it.” Your words came out quiet, and you actually had no idea why you had just said all of that— perhaps that confession did not make for the best post-sex pillow talk conversation. But, for some reason, you wanted to say it. 

It was a thought that had weighed on you all those months ago, and you knew that you couldn’t tell that to him then because of what it implied. And you weren’t entirely sure why and what made this moment different from then. 

Steve was quiet for a bit and his face was buried in your neck as he softly spoke. “I don’t really know what to say to that.”

“It’s okay,” You whispered back. “You don’t have to say anything. It was dumb of me to feel that way about it.” 

He rolled off of you and the feel of his warmth against you was something that you missed almost immediately. For a second you thought that maybe you ruined this moment, whatever it was, but then he said something.  

“What are you doing this weekend?” He asked, and you were grateful for the randomness of the subject change. 

You let out a breath that you didn't know you’d been holding and turned on your side to face him. “For once, absolutely nothing. It’ll probably be the last time I actually have nothing to do before the documentary I’m helping out on starts filming in a month, and I have to do some pre-production stuff for it soon.”

Work was honestly the only thing in your life that felt completely certain, so it always felt easy to talk about.

“You should come to New York. I’m going tomorrow, and I'll be there until the premiere here for the movie next week. I have to do some press stuff and have a few meetings. A bunch of boring stuff, but you should come for the weekend,” Steve said, one hand finding your bare hip and softly rubbing the skin. “To make the boring stuff a lot less boring.” 

You couldn’t help but smile at that, and you nodded at him, quickly deciding not to think too heavily about your answer. “Okay.” 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

It was a little surprising that it wasn’t surprising how easy things fell back into that old place with you and Steve. Back to what sort of resembled the “arrangement” that had started during filming a year ago where you two pretty much acted like you were in a relationship, but neither of you would say the words or wholeheartedly acknowledge that fact. 

There was a lot that you two would eventually have to talk about, but you decided that that would be a bridge that you’d cross once you were hours away from getting on your flight back to California. And it was a flight that kept changing because you didn’t want to leave New York just yet; you didn’t want to leave Steve yet. 

So, your weekend trip extended days upon days until Wednesday came and it was agreed upon that you’d just go back to Los Angeles Friday morning when Steve was heading back there as well because that was the same day as the movie premiere.

You had a little work to do during those first few weekdays you were there, but you found it easy to respond to emails and make the phone calls you needed to from the comfort of Steve’s apartment, which was smaller than his place in LA but of course still massive and had a great view of Central Park. The dining room area became your makeshift “work from home” spot with your laptop at the table at pretty much all times. And while you did that, Steve was off doing press stuff for the movie, or he was in meetings; the things aside from filming that came along with being a famous actor. 

And then when the day would change into the evening and then night, you two were together, doing everything that you both had desperately missed doing. You two still knew each other’s bodies so well, and it was as if that fact was only further and further proven every night. 

It was hard not to be close to each other when for so long, you hadn’t been able to be, and because of that, things became a little different this time around in comparison to what the “arrangement” had been. There were little touches and affections— holding hands while sitting as close as you possibly could on the couch or Steve kissing you goodbye before he’d leave the apartment— that hadn’t happened before because of the lines that had been metaphorically drawn, but they felt pretty blurred now. 

A sort of routine quickly and almost effortlessly formed and it gave you that glimpse into what you and him could be if the circumstances were slightly different. And it was hard not to admit that you completely adored what this “what if” looked like. 

“We need snacks.” Your words were random and abrupt and Steve only looked at you amusingly. 

It was Wednesday night, days before things would inevitably change, and you weren’t completely sure what they’d change into— if they’d go back to the normal you had created with Steve where the two of you were friends and nothing more, or if things changed into something else entirely. You still completely avoided thinking about it all, and it was pretty damn nice living in this fantasy world. 

The two of you were on the couch in his living room. Your legs were draped over his lap and a blanket covered you both.

One of Steve’s hands was absentmindedly rubbing your leg beneath the blanket as he spoke. “There’s some stuff in the pantry.” 

“If we’re about to spend the entire night watching The Hunger Games movies we need more than just the chips to keep us alive.” 

His eyebrows furrowed at your words. “Am I underestimating how long these movies are?”

“You definitely are,” You said with a small laugh and pressed a quick kiss against his lips. You then pulled off the blanket that had been draped over the both of you and stood up from the couch. “I’ll go to the convenience store down the street.” 

Steve got up as well. “I’ll come too.” 

You quickly shook your head. “No way. It’s kinda insane how the paparazzi seem way more ruthless here. I think they’re always camping outside the building.” 

Over the past few days, you had come to the conclusion that it was lucky that Steve lived in an apartment building because whenever you would leave and come back, no one could ever know that you were there for him. And you knew just how big of a field day they would have if they did know, especially because of the dating rumors that were still circling about him and Lily.

“Yeah, way too many famous people live here,” Steve said as he followed you into his bedroom.

Your small suitcase, that had only been meant for a weekend trip and was packed as such, was a haphazard mess in the corner. You slipped off the shorts you were wearing and pulled on a black pair of leggings.  

“And yet, I’ve still not run into Paul Rudd on the elevator since I’ve been here,” You jokingly said and expected Steve to laugh, but instead he bypassed your statement.  

“Wait, it’s raining. You sure you’re gonna be okay out there?” 

You smiled at his slightly concerned face. “Okay, I know I’ve been living in LA for a long time now, but don’t worry I have in fact experienced rain before.” 

Steve shook his head at you but still couldn’t help but laugh a little at your words. “Hold on.” 

He almost immediately walked away, heading into his closet, before you could ask him what he was doing, and then returned moments later with a hoodie and umbrella. 

“I was already planning to steal a hoodie, but thanks for the umbrella,” You told him with a smile as you put on the plain black hoodie. “What kind of candy do you want me to get?”

“Skittles.” 

“Solid answer,” You responded with a nod. 

The two of you headed toward the front door and you put on your shoes that were next to it. Once you were done, Steve handed you the umbrella. He then pulled the hood of the hoodie over your head and then leaned in to press a kiss on your nose. “Don’t meet Paul Rudd on the elevator.”

You laughed a bit. “I’m sorry, but I really, really hope I do.” 

You didn’t meet Paul Rudd on the elevator, and you told Steve that with an over dramatic sad sigh when you came back from the store twenty minutes later, a bag full of junk food in hand, before you both settled back on the couch.

The two of you were only able to fully watch the first two Hunger Games movies before falling asleep an hour into the third one, around two in the morning. You half-woke up when the credits were rolling and then lightly poked Steve awake so that you two could go to his actual bed for the rest of the night.

“This is how it would be, y’know,” Steve said in the morning, words slightly getting lost in your hair.

The two of you were cuddled in his bed, your back pressed against his front and one of his arms draped over your waist. You had just finished having a half-awake discussion about what to do for breakfast before he said that he had to leave soon for the final day of press interviews for the movie, but he told you about a bagel place nearby that you’d probably like. And then the conversation shifted to a pinky promise agreement that you and him would finish the final two Hunger Games movies that night. 

Things became quiet after that, with both of you savoring the last few minutes you could spend in bed, and you found his hand, intertwining it with yours and pulling it up to kiss the back of it. 

You almost shifted around to face Steve after he abruptly said his previous words, but you felt too comfortable in your current position to do so. “How what would be?”

“You and me if we decided to be something real.”

 “Steve,” You said softly and then decided to shift around so that you were looking at him. His hair was a little disheveled and he looked pretty tired, but he also looked so cute. If he hadn’t just abruptly pushed open the door to the conversation that you knew needed to happen, you were certain that you would’ve kissed him right then. 

“I’m just saying...” He said as his shoulders upturned in a small shrug. “Also, I’m slightly kidding. This week has been really good, and I’m glad we got to have it, but I know things will go back to… normal soon. And that’s okay.” 

Hearing him say that— confirming that things would just go back to how they were, a friendship where you both seemed to just lie about what you really wanted and how you felt— made you get hit with the sudden realization that you hated the thought of going back to that.

However, for some reason, you couldn’t find the words to tell him that right then, so instead you nodded at what he had just said and plastered on a fake smile. You made your voice sound as light as possible. “Yeah.” 

He left the apartment forty-minutes later and you left it twenty minutes after that, deciding to go to the bagel place he suggested because you were hungry and also because you didn’t want to be alone in his apartment with only your confusing and contradicting thoughts to keep you company. 

However, somehow as you walked aimlessly around Central Park— your bag with your plain cream cheese bagel in one hand and iced coffee in the other— that was when it felt like the dam broke, and your mind started spiraling because it finally felt impossible to keep avoiding and pushing your thoughts away. You were finally facing the bridge that you had told yourself you’d eventually have to cross, and in your head, you could see that the end of it was leading in two completely different directions. And you knew the exact direction you wanted to go in. 

Your friendship with Steve was supposed to be more than enough. That was what you had told yourself that night at the wrap party to convince yourself that you were completely okay with only having a friendship with him. 

But now, after these past five days of getting that glimpse into what something more could look like, you knew that just being friends really wasn’t enough, and it never would be. And although a part of you still felt a little scared to risk it all, there was an even bigger part of you that didn’t want to give this up anymore. 

You couldn’t give up how completely and irrevocably happy Steve made you in more ways than just friendship. It was a mixture of the butterflies you’d get in your stomach whenever he would pull you close to him to press a soft kiss against your forehead or cheek and the wide smile you’d get on your face when he’d come back to the apartment after being gone for hours. It was also how he would look at you so adoringly when you would ramble about work stuff and how he could easily manage to convince you to stay in bed for “five more minutes;” five minutes that would always turn into at least ten but you never cared. 

Steve Harrington made you the happiest you’d ever been and you suddenly became tired of continuously avoiding that fact.  

It was a series of quick but definitely long overdue actions that happened next. 

You found yourself sitting on a park bench with the thought of eating your bagel or drinking more of your coffee long forgotten for the time being, and instead they simply sat next to you, because there was something else you needed to do at that moment. You pulled out your phone and went to Steve’s contact, pressing the call button before you could think twice about it. 

It went straight to voicemail, just like you knew it would because he always kept it off during interviews, so you waited for the way too familiar “beep” sound and then started speaking. 

“Hi,” Your voice came out softer than you expected it to, so you cleared your throat. “I knew that you weren’t gonna answer, and I’m kinda glad that you didn’t because I just want to get all of this out all at once. So, stay tuned for a very long-winded ramble from me.” You let out a small laugh. “Um, anyway, these past five days that I’ve been here in New York with you have been so good, like insanely good, and I’ve been avoiding thinking about what would happen after this and what would exactly change between us. And I was completely okay with not thinking about any of that because it made it easier to just live in the moment and be happy with what we’ve been doing. But then this morning, you said that it’s okay that things will go back to normal soon and that finally made me think about everything, and I realized that I don’t want us to go back to “normal.” I actually kind of hate the thought of doing so.” 

You stopped for a moment, gaze becoming fixated on a group of friends that had blankets spread out in the grass and were having a picnic not that far away from you, and then you looked at a couple that was walking down one of the paths holding hands. 

After taking a quick breath, you kept going. “You’re so important to me, and our friendship is so important to me too… But I love you. I’m in love with you. And because of that, I can’t just be your friend. I want more, I want us to be something real; and that’s pretty much exactly what you said that night at my apartment almost a year ago. I’m so sorry that it’s taken me this long to realize just how fucking great we are together.”  

Your hand that wasn’t holding your phone to your ear began absentmindedly playing with the hem of the sweatshirt you were wearing; it was the Vancouver crewneck he got for you.

“I want us to have days like this past week forever. And I know that this week has kind of been a fluke because, for the first time in a really long time, our schedules worked out pretty well. But we can make this work. I know we can. I was an idiot to say that we don’t make sense before because we do. Yes, our lives pull us in pretty different directions most of the time, and it sucks, but it's okay because it doesn’t change how I feel about you, and it never will. And I think that's the most important thing. It's why I know we, us, can actually work.”  

You leaned back against the wooden bench and let out a breath. “Okay, wow, I’m so surprised that I haven’t been cut off yet… I’m currently sitting on a park bench in Central Park, and I got a bagel and coffee from the place you mentioned. I haven’t tried the bagel yet, but the coffee’s pretty good…” You trailed off with a shake of your head and then laughed a bit. “I have no idea why I’m telling you that right now. Um, anyway, I’m gonna stop talking now, and I’ll see you back at the apartment later. Bye.” 

When you ended the call and pocketed your phone away, you felt an immediate weight lift off of your shoulders and you let out a contented sigh that turned into a small laugh. 

You waited for a second, though, waited for something that resembled dread or regret to suddenly hit you, but it never did. And that was what let you know that what you’d just done was fully the right thing to do. 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Hours later, you still felt nothing but complete contentment with what you had done, leaving the minute and a half long voicemail that would, in fact, change everything. You wanted it to change everything. 

After responding to a handful of work emails and then enduring an hour-long phone call with one of the Producer’s of the soon-to-be filming documentary, you were in the kitchen searching for some sort of a snack to eat. However, hearing the sound of the front door opening halted your rummaging. 

“Hi,” You said, watching Steve enter the apartment and then close and lock the door behind him. 

He met your eyes almost immediately. “I really loved that voicemail.”

You smiled at him, at how quickly he wanted to address the elephant in the room before it really even had a chance to enter. “Yeah?”

He didn’t hesitate to nod his head and he smiled back at you. “Yeah. I’m never deleting it.”

He looked so happy as he walked over to you where you were leaning against the kitchen island, and that look made your heart constrict in your chest. 

“I love you,” It didn’t feel the tiniest bit scary to say the words right to him, they just felt so honest and undeniable. Your voice was soft and your arms came up to wrap around his neck, hands immediately finding home in the hair at the nape. 

“Mm,” His eyes slipped shut as his arms circled around you, pulling you against him.  “Say it again.” 

Your mouth was right against his ear as you spoke. “I love you.” 

He hummed again and then pulled back a bit, his nose brushed against yours and his lips did the same. It was all so teasing, like he wanted to take his absolute time with kissing you. However, now it didn’t have to be slow or drawn out because none of this was going to abruptly end; there was no expiration date apart of this like the arrangement you had a year ago. 

“I love you too,” He said before finally slotting his lips against yours.  

There was so much expressed in the soft kiss. It completely felt like the beginning of something new, something better, rather than simply a continuation of what you two had. The kiss was so certain and sure and it only further confirmed to you that everything happening was right and good and perfect. This was what you had wanted from the moment the two of you made that pinky promise during the wrap party; the one where you both said that you wouldn’t let your friendship end. Technically, it wasn’t being broken. 

You pulled away when you started feeling lightheaded and you met Steve’s gaze as you allowed yourself to breathe for a bit. You were quiet for only a second. 

“This will work,” You whispered. 

Steve nodded and then pressed a kiss to your forehead. “Yeah, it will.” 

The three simple words comforted you, they wrapped around you like a warm blanket, and you savored the feel of them. For the first time, probably ever, your overthinking mind felt sated; it couldn’t find anything wrong about this moment. You finally felt like you could breathe so goddamn easy because there was nothing to truly worry about, and you found yourself wanting to cry at that feeling, but you didn’t. Instead, you kissed Steve’s cheek and then his other one, and then his nose and forehead. 

“This is random, but I’m really, really glad that I was forced to be your assistant.” 

Steve laughed a bit at that. “Sometimes it doesn’t even really feel like that's where we started.” His hands found yours, intertwining them and giving them a light squeeze. “But, I’m so fucking glad that it was you.” 

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

author’s note: i'm gonna miss these two<333 i hope yall enjoyed this series! its been a rollercoaster fr (a good one for the most part though lol) i might do lil blurbs for these two someday because i'm way too attached to them and i have some minor ideas of some things i'd wanna do involving them.... but that probably won't happen for a while because after somehow being able to put out chapters weekly for this i do in fact need a Break lmao but anyway thank you for reading and enjoying this series🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾

[girlactionfigure]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐞𝐰𝐬.

I'm sick and tired of Candace Owens and her likes that are obsessed with framing Jews behind every problem that they had over the years. While we all love the Christians and while most Christians are real friends of the Jews, I think this has to be said again and again. So let's review some history and some facts.

1/ Early Christian Era: 

Hostility towards Jews began as early as the 4th century when Christianity became the Roman Empire's official religion. Emperor Constantine's policies, later codified in the Theodosian Code, restricted Jewish rights. Jews were barred from public office, synagogues were destroyed, This set a precedent for future Christian rulers to marginalize Jews.

2/ First Crusade (1096): 

As the Crusaders marched to the Holy Land, they massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland (modern-day Germany). Known as the Rhineland massacres, thousands of Jews were killed in cities like Worms, Mainz, and Cologne. The violence was often enabled by Crusader preachers who framed Jews as enemies of Christianity. Many Jews chose martyrdom over forced conversion, a theme that would reappear in later persecutions.

3/ Blood Libel Accusations (12th century - today): 

The first known case of blood libel occurred in Norwich, England, in 1144, when Jews were falsely accused of murdering a Christian boy, William of Norwich, for ritual purposes. These accusations led to widespread violence and massacres, including notable cases in Trent (1475) and Damascus (1840). Blood libel myths fueled antisemitism, resulting in the torture, execution, and expulsion of Jews across Europe.

4/ The Black Death (1348-1351): 

As the plague ravaged Europe, killing millions, Jews were scapegoated and accused of poisoning wells. Pogroms erupted across the continent, with entire Jewish communities in cities like Strasbourg being annihilated. In some areas, Jews were burned alive, while in others, they were forcibly converted or expelled. Despite papal condemnations of the violence, local authorities and priests encouraged and some even participated in the massacres.

5/ Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834): 

The Inquisition targeted conversos, Jews who had converted to Christianity, suspecting them of secretly practicing Judaism. Tomas de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor, led a brutal campaign of torture and execution. The Alhambra Decree of 1492, issued by Ferdinand and Isabella, expelled all Jews from Spain, forcing over 200,000 to convert or flee. This expulsion ended centuries of Jewish cultural and intellectual contributions to Spain.

6/ Expulsions in Europe: 

Over centuries, Jews faced expulsion from numerous European countries. England (1290) saw the Edict of Expulsion under King Edward I, forcing Jews to leave and seizing their property. France (1306 and 1394) saw similar expulsions, as did various German states. These expulsions often followed periods of economic exploitation and violence against Jews, stripping them of property and wealth and forcing them into exile.

7/ Ghettos and Restrictions (16th-18th centuries): 

In many European cities, Jews were confined to ghettos, segregated neighborhoods with curfews and restricted economic opportunities. The first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516. In Rome, Pope Paul IV established the Roman Ghetto in 1555, enforcing strict segregation. Jews in ghettos faced overcrowding, poverty, and social isolation, with limited rights and constant threat of violence.

8/ Russian Pogroms (19th-20th centuries): 

The assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 sparked a wave of violent pogroms against Jews across the Russian Empire. These state-sanctioned attacks involved looting, arson, and murder, with entire villages destroyed. The May Laws of 1882 further restricted Jewish rights, driving mass emigration to the United States and Israel. Pogroms continued into the early 20th century, culminating in the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, these pogroms were influenced by various social, economic, and political factors, they occurred in a predominantly Christian society where antisemitic attitudes were pervasive and pushed by local priests, and a lot of Christians participated in the violence.

9/ Context on Christian Persecution Claims: 

While millions of Christians have faced persecution over the years, those claiming they are the most persecuted group are misleading. Let’s look at some numbers:

- 1800: Approximately 22% of the world population was Christian, around 200 million out of 900 million.

- 1850: Christians made up about 28% of the world population, roughly 350 million out of 1.2 billion.

- 1900: The proportion increased to 34%, with 560 million Christians out of 1.65 billion people globally.

- 1950: Christians constituted about 35% of the global population, approximately 800 million out of 2.3 billion.

Today, around 31% of the world's population identifies as Christian, approximately 2.3 billion people out of 7.8 billion. Given these numbers, it's clear that while Christians have certainly faced persecution, the idea that they are the most persecuted group does not hold up. It's like saying the world is the most persecuted world—statistically inaccurate given the substantial and growing global Christian population. 

This context does not diminish the real suffering that many Christians have endured, especially in certain regions and periods. However, the Jewish experience of persecution stands apart due to its intensity, persistence, and the often racially motivated nature of the oppression. Jews, a much smaller group historically, have faced systemic efforts aimed at their complete eradication, from medieval pogroms to the Holocaust. Their persecution involved not just religious but also racial and cultural dimensions, leading to centuries of marginalization, violence, and genocide.

10/ Conclusion: 

The history of Christian persecution of Jews is a strong reminder of the consequences of intolerance and bigotry. While it's important to acknowledge and appreciate the many Christians who have stood by Jews as true friends, we cannot ignore the dark chapters where Christian societies and authorities played a significant role in the suffering of Jewish communities. 

By understanding these historical contexts, we can better appreciate the resilience of the Jewish people and the importance of standing against all forms of hatred. Let's ensure that history does not repeat itself by fostering an inclusive and compassionate future. It's time to move beyond misplaced blame and work together to combat antisemitism and bigotry in all its forms... 

𝐋𝐞𝐭’𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐮𝐬: 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐨𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭. 

[sophiemariepl]

Being an Eastern European/Central-Eastern European/post-Soviet fan of the Hunger Games, I have to say that it really rubs me the wrong way when US-American/other Western fans throw a tantrum when u tell them that u see similarities between how Panem functions and how other empires than the US function, too. Like, even in criticism of imperialism, everything has to revolve solely around Americans.

I do not mean to say that Suzanne Collins did not write “The Hunger Games” trilogy and “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” without taking inspiration from her geopolitical, economic and cultural context, because she obviously did, and those elements are very obviously visible in the story.

But those are not the only ones.

Another very obvious inspiration for Panem was the Roman Empire, and surprise, surprise! There are more than one European/Western empire that took/takes inspiration from Ancient Rome. Britain, France, Spain, also Russia, just to name a few. That means that people from different regions can have different associations when reading different texts of culture and that is perfectly normal. It does not mean that they are manipulated by the goddamn CIA if they don’t have the same associations as Americans while reading it 😆

And for instance, for me as an Eastern European, the first association I had while reading THG trilogy for the first time, for instance, was the USSR and modern-day Russia, simply because I come from this geopolitical context and I know it better.

Ceasar Flickerman even reminded me of several modern Russian propagandists, including Vladimir Solovyov.

The political and economic structure of Panem reminded me of the way the modern-day Russian Federation functions, with monumental Moscow at its center, and oblasts and republics basically serving as feudal provinces for the production of goods and natural resources. Regions and republics in which people often lack access to basic goods and improvements.

Heck, even President Snow very often reminded me of people like Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Putin, with his pretending to represent the people only to hold a tight grip on the state as an authoritarian/dictatorial leader.

Does that deny the American (or America-inspired) elements in THG universe? Of course not. But it certainly does not mean that others should not also see the empires that abused them and their ancestors in Suzanne Collin’s novels.

Because some elements are just common, dare I even say, universal, in many empires.

[elbiotipo]

Isn't Argentina as much of a settler state as the USA, Canada and Israel? Say, what happened to the Indigenous and the Afro population after independence?

The independent Argentine state commited genocide against the native peoples of Patagonia during the "Conquista del Desierto", and the less known yet not-less brutal colonization of the Great Chaco, by displacing or outright killing native populations. With regards to the Afrodescedant population, there was not an organized campaign of genocide, but rather a process of "invisibilization" where Afrodescendants hid their heritage to assimilate to eurocentric society, same with mestizo people. These are historical and current debts that the successive Argentine state has not repaid or adressed properly despite recent advances.

Sarmiento was the first and main architect of the conception of Argentina as a country for European inmigrants that "to modernize" needed to get rid of the native and afro-descendant population, the now celebrated figure of the gaucho, the same people who fought for independence, was disgusting to him. Julio A. Roca was inspired by the genocide of the native peoples of the United States and tried to use the same mentality and tactics here. Despite there have never been formal laws of racial separation, this mindset continued as part of state policy until roughly the early-20th century and still shapes national attitudes today.

Despite the desires of these men to destroy them, they ultimately failed. Over a milion (probably undercounted) Argentines belong multiple native peoples, with 30-40% of Argentines (depending on region) from partial or full native descent and 4-7% from african descent. Culturally, because of the aftermentioned process of invisibilization and the way the concept of race expresses itself in Latin America, there are fewer people who identify themselves with such groups than genetics show: racism still exists against "morochos", that is, brown-skinned people, compared to the Eurocentric ideal.

These are not hidden facts, they are taught in Argentine schools and universities, widely discussed and regarded as shameful, and they still shape our society and politics.

When I read the term "settler state" it confuses me because every Latin American country is a settler state, because by definition they were colonized by Spain and Portugal. Independent nations in Latin American inherited the racial and colonial mindsets of their "parent" empire. From Chile and Brazil, which also commited similar genocides on native lands following the procesess of the Spanish and Portuguese, to the opression of native and afro-descendants in favor of the european-descended elite in places like Perú, Bolivia and México, and the overall "blanqueamiento" (whitening, or however you want to call it) theory common to all Latin America where mestizaje was encouraged to "whiten" the popluation. Every Latin American nation was born, like it or not, from these violent processes.

The genocide did not begin with Argentine independence, it began in 1492, and it continues to this day. Similiarily, it has not started or stopped with a single administration or another, and it expresses itself in multiple ways. The only way to solve such deep rooted problems is by the state assuming its political, social and economical debt, but also for the entire mindset of society to change, which will take generations. I like to think we are progressing on that front, but when I see recent events such as the repression in Jujuy, I also know we have decades, if not centuries as my grandfather says, to go.

[cicerenella]

now i’m so curious, what are your thoughts on spaus, historically and in the modern day? what do you imagine romano thinks of them?

I'm jumping to answer this ask because I'm continuing the Austria train! And also because I have a lot of thoughts about this pairing that is (sadly) very overlooked in my opinion. Slight Spamano following.

OK SO I love SpAus. Great angst machine, I love their historical accuracy and a way to portray my view on Empires in Hetalia, since most of the time power gets into their head. Oh well, a marriage between two of the most powerful empires in europe, what's the worst that could happen?? a divorce that brought war to half of europe.

Spain and Austria's marriage was probably one of the longest and most powerful europe has seen, but that doesn't mean that it was good LMAO. I have an idea that for the first century or so of their union everything was...ok? Sure, it could be better, and it had it's ups and downs (I'm looking at Spain) but that doesn't mean that it was that bad. Except for like, the revolt of the Comuneros, that was a bad one.

I think their marriage started to go really south after the Netherlands' independence and the decline of the Spanish Empire, because after that things only started to spiral downwards. And I do not have a good and kind portrayal of "Empire Spain". He was awful both historically wise and also in his personal relationships and it SHOWED.

So, the war of Spanish Succession. A shitshow, Europe's messiest divorce, it did not end good, and Spain lost massive chunks of territories. The treaty of Utrecht/Peace of Rastatt was probably their divorce papers AHAHHA. In thirteen years more than eighty wars where fought.

And about Romano...I know many people make the love triangle between Roma/Spain/Austria and honestly? I like it. ALTHOUGH I have a very specific characterization that I am going to analyse through just now!

So, Naples was considered an "anomaly" in the Spanish Empire. It was the biggest and most populated city, and often times even overshadowed cities in Spain. Historically speaking, Antonio would admire the HELL out of Romano, even if he was one of his subordinates. I don't think he "loved" him yet, more than he considered him his favorite out of all his colonies.

Although I think the more his marriage with Austria deteriorated, the more his kindness to Romano turned into straight up obsession. The civil war twisting Spain's head in a lot of ways too.

That is to say, that while Spain was having his twisted villain arc, Romano would both hate and care about his superior. In a friendly way, of course, because it would be scandalous having an affair with his "master" that was married to another (plus not to mention Romano's internalised homophobia). So while my man was fighting to get independence, Spain was trying both to save his crumbling marriage and keeping his favorite colony with him (spoiler: he failed in both).

SO UHM YEAH. Romano probably wouldn't want to get into the SpAus business, and Spain obsession for Roma definitely irked Austria a bit. Can you imagine after all that crap that was the Spanish War of Succession going on a rampage in trying to reconquer South Italy?? From your ex husband?? Absolute madlad. I love SpAus. Spamano is my number one ship but this one is a guilty pleasure of mine.

[OH SHOOT, forgot about modern day SpAus. Uhhh, since I ship spamano it is a bit tricky. But most of the time I make them stay on friendly terms!! ex husbands that often nitpick at eachother yay. The venom of their divorce is long gone, and they're both old men that like to crack jokes and reminisce about their past adventures.]

[olympeline]

Thoughts on ukus?? And if it’s good thoughts can we hear about how you would put them in situations?? 👉👈👀

I’m more of a USUK enjoyer but I can go for some UKUS every now and then. As for a situation:

If you want some good “Arthur dominating Alfred” but with modern Al, send him back to the peak of the British Empire. I see plenty of Alfred meeting sexy pirate!Arthur, which is fun oh yes, but historically inaccurate if you want the most powerful Arthur possible. He wasn’t even the strongest in Europe back then. Spain was still far above England in their piracy days. Arthur would only reach his full potential three centuries later in the era of Pax Britannica.

Give them proportional strength and send Alfred back to meet Arthur in say, the mid to late nineteenth century. Proportional in that they have the strength of how much they dominate(d) the world at their best. The modern USA is a world superpower, but in that era Arthur was a world hegemonic power: the next level up. Probably the only one that ever was or ever will be. Thanks to a variety of factors that couldn’t have existed up until that point and now can’t be repeated. Stuff like ancient empires not being able to invade enough of the world pre-globalisation, the other Western powers (and Japan) still industrialising and not having caught the UK yet, rival superpower France getting curb stomped by Prussia, etc. etc. yadda yadda, history is complicated. The point is the USA can’t be fully imperial and bully the world the way Pax Britannica era British Empire used to. If for no other reason than the game changer that is nuclear weapons. Meaning Alfred at his strongest is proportionally still not close to Arthur at his peak.

Maybe they should meet and Arthur should make this swaggering, cocky yank aware of that. 👀

[whencyclopedia]

John Hancock

John Hancock (1737-1793) was a merchant, politician, and Founding Father of the United States, who helped lead the Patriot movement during the American Revolution (1765-1789). He served as president of the Second Continental Congress from 1775-1777, and as Governor of Massachusetts from 1780-1785 and again from 1787-1793. He is best remembered for his flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence.

Early Life

John Hancock was born on 23 January 1737 in Braintree, Massachusetts (modern-day Quincy). He was the second of three children born to Reverend John Hancock and Mary Hawke Hancock; he had an elder sister, Mary (b. 1735) and a younger brother, Ebenezer (b. 1741). John Hancock's childhood was a solitary one. His father was often preoccupied with the spiritual needs of the community while his mother preferred doting on his elder sister, leaving John to his own devices. He took to following around the older boys of Braintree, which included John Adams and Samuel Quincy; although the older lads tolerated Hancock's presence, they did not like the younger boy, whom Adams later described as possessing "a peevishness that sometimes disgusted and afflicted his friends" (Unger, 15).

In 1744, Reverend Hancock died after a brief illness at the age of 41. Faced with the impending horrors of poverty, Mary Hawke Hancock appealed to her late husband's brother, Thomas, for help. From humble beginnings as a bookseller's apprentice, Thomas Hancock had become one of the most successful merchants in Boston, having founded a world-famous firm called the House of Hancock. There was, however, a small problem threatening Thomas' commercial empire: he had no heir. He and his wife Lydia had been unable to have children. So, when his brother's widow reached out for help, Thomas decided to cut a deal. He agreed to financially support Mary and her children, on the condition that John be sent to live with him in Boston, to be groomed to one day inherit the Hancock family business.

Mary agreed, and John was sent to live in his uncle's lavish house atop Beacon Hill. The Hancock home was a three-story, Georgian-style mansion, made of square-cut granite blocks, with a superb view of Boston Harbor. The reverend's son would have marveled at the delicately imported mahogany furniture, beautiful oil paintings, and apricot trees imported from Spain. He was carefully tutored to fit the part of an elegant Boston gentleman, was taught etiquette and introduced to members of Boston's high society. He was dressed by his doting aunt in velvet breeches and silk coats, sparking a lifelong love affair with expensive clothing. In 1750, he was enrolled in Harvard at the age of 13, the second youngest in his class. During his college days, he regularly got into trouble; he drank frequently and, at one point, got the enslaved servant of the Harvard president dangerously drunk. Still, he managed to graduate in July 1754 (albeit without academic honors). Now 17, Hancock was tall, slender, and sophisticated, always dressed in the most fashionable clothes. It was time for him to learn the family business.

Continue reading...

[kostantina]

HWS Female Holy Rome X England (Medieval Empire X Modern Empire)

AESTHETIC MOOD BOARD

❝Many German and English writers were fond of expressing a common Anglo-Saxon-Germanic heritage prior to 1914, but in fact this largely disappeared after the Saxon migrations of late antiquity. Important contacts remained, especially with the renewed missionary activity promoted by the Carolingians, who often relied on qualified monks from the British Isles, like St Boniface, but otherwise England and the Empire evolved separately. While a sense of Saxon heritage may have played a part, both countries were sufficiently distant not to be immediate competitors. Ironically, this opened possibilities for royal marriages which, like Byzantine-imperial matches, were intended mainly to impress a domestic audience and avoid antagonizing a king’s nobles by tying him to one local family. Otto I married Alfred the Great’s granddaughter, Edith of Wessex, while Henry III married Gunhild, daughter of Knut of Denmark-England. Edith’s and Knut’s deaths ended any chances of a lasting alliance in both cases.

❝By contrast, connections in the high Middle Ages were more significant, if less celebrated in the nineteenth century. Emperor Henry V married Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, in 1114 as a deliberate attempt to forge an alliance with the Anglo-Norman dynasty ruling much of Britain since 1066. It was hoped this would outflank a Franco-papal alliance threatening the Empire towards the end of the Investiture Dispute.❞

-  Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire

❝On his mother's advice, Richard resigned the kingdom of England to Henry VI in order to receive it back as a fief of the empire. He was to pay his overlord £5,000 a year. Richard was now a vassal of Philip for his continental lands and a vassal of Henry VI for his island kingdom, but it seems that in England few, if any, were willing to acknowledge this, and that this part of the agreement was hushed up. At Henry's court, of course, it was regarded as the jewel in the crown.

❝On the day of his release, Henry VI and the princes of the empire had sent Philip and John a letter telling them that they would do all they could to help Richard if everything that had been taken while Richard was in captivity was not restored at once.❞

- John Gillingham, Richard I

❝On the morning of 6 August an imperial herald in full regalia rode through Vienna to the Jesuit church of the Nine Choirs of Angels. After climbing to the balcony, he summoned the inhabitants with a silver fanfare to announce the end of the Empire.

❝The Empire was certainly not dead by the late eighteenth century, and if it was sick, as Zedler and others suggested, it was not yet on life support. If revolutionary France had not intervened, the most likely prognosis was that the Empire’s socio-political order would have persisted further into the nineteenth century, but it is unlikely that this could have been sustained against the levelling and homogenizing forces unleashed by capitalism and industrialization around 1830.

❝By 1806, some leading intellectuals expressed the sense that the Empire had been sick for a long time and that its doctors had long given up hope. Goethe’s mother wrote two weeks after Francis II’s abdication that the news was not unexpected, ‘as when an old friend is very ill’. Later historians have expressed similar views that the Empire died ‘a “natural” death’ from old age, rather than having been murdered by Napoleon.❞

-  Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire

❞By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, French imperialism had been curbed in North America, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia, but soon much of North and West Africa would be brought under French political and cultural influence. Spain was no longer a major power, but after the demise of its empire in the 1830’s its cultural dominance in the countries of South America remained: their economies urban, their governments strictly centralized, and their peoples devoutly Catholic in the Spanish style (Fernandez-Armesto, 2003). The Dutch and Portuguese empires were also in decline, and yet survived, resistant to radical change because of the commercial benefits derived from their overseas possessions. However, none of these four imperial orders came close to matching the size and power and wealth of the British Empire.

❝Encompassing nearly a quarter of the Earth’s land mass and a quarter of its population, the British Empire in the 19th century grew into the most extensive empire the world has ever seen.❞

- Douglas M. Johnston, In The Historical Foundations of World Order: The Tower and the Arena

[blueiscoool]

17th-Century Pirate 'Corsair' Shipwreck Discovered off Morocco

Wreck-hunters have discovered the remains of a small 17th-century pirate ship, known as a Barbary corsair, in deep water between Spain and Morocco.

The wreck is "the first Algiers corsair found in the Barbary heartland," maritime archaeologist Sean Kingsley, the editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine and a researcher on the find, told Live Science.

The vessel was heavily armed and may have been heading to the Spanish coast to capture and enslave people when it sank, its discoverers said.

But it was carrying a cargo of pots and pans made in the North African city of Algiers, probably so that it could masquerade as a trading vessel.

Florida-based company Odyssey Marine Exploration (OME) located the shipwreck in 2005 during a search for the remains of the 80-gun English warship HMS Sussex, which was lost in the area in 1694.

"As so often happens in searching for a specific shipwreck we found a lot of sites never seen before," Greg Stemm, the founder of OME and the expedition leader, saide in an email.

The 2005 expedition also found the wrecks of ancient Roman and Phoenician ships in the area, Stemm said.

News of the corsair wreck is only being released now, in a new article by Stemm in Wreckwatch, after extensive historical research.

Dread pirates

The Barbary corsair pirates were predominantly Muslims who began operating in the 15th century out of Algiers, which was then part of the Ottoman empire.

Much of the western coastline of North Africa, from modern-day Morocco to Libya, was known as the "Barbary Coast" at the time — a name derived from the Berber people who lived there; and its pirates were a major threat for more than 200 years, preying on ships and conducting slave raids along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Europe.

The people captured in the slave raids were held for ransom or sold into the North African slave trade that operated in some Muslim countries until the early 20th century.

But the piratical activities of the Barbary corsairs came to an end in the early 19th century, when the pirates were defeated in the Barbary Wars by the United States, Sweden and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily in southern Italy.

Sunken ship

The corsair wreck lies on the seafloor in the Strait of Gibraltar, at a depth of about 2,700 feet (830 meters).

The ship was about 45 feet (14 m) long, and research indicates it was a tartane — a small ship with triangular lateen sails on two masts that could also be propelled by oars.

Tartanes were used by Barbary pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries, in part because they were often mistaken for fishing vessels, meaning other ships wouldn't suspect pirates were onboard, Kingsley said.

"I've seen tartanes described as 'low-level pirate ships,' which I like,” Kingsley said.

The wreck hunters explored the sunken corsair using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which revealed the vessel was armed with four large cannons, 10 swivel guns and many muskets for its crew of about 20 pirates.

"The wreck neatly fits the profile of a Barbary corsair in location and character," Kingsley said. "The seas around the Straits of Gibraltar were the pirates' favorite hunting grounds, where a third of all corsair prizes were taken."

Stemm added that the wrecked ship was also equipped with a very rare "spyglass" — an early type of telescope that was revolutionary at the time and had probably been captured from a European ship.

Other artifacts of the wreck support the notion this was a pirate ship laden with stolen goods.

"Throw into the sunken mix a collection of glass liquor bottles made in Belgium or Germany, and tea bowls made in Ottoman Turkey, and the wreck looks highly suspicious," he said. "This was no normal North African coastal trader."

By Tom Metcalfe.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Can you give us your headcanons and thoughts on Belgium? What’s she like?

A very emotionally intelligent woman who has a track record of being very strongly attracted to whomever the current power is. Spain, Portugal, Venice, England, and America. She's very good at getting what she needs without much effort in that arena.

She has very sturdy self esteem. Being one of two women in her region (Brighid being the other) made her something of a scarce resource, prized as much as the wealth generated by her territory. She's beautiful and she knows she's desirable. Beautiful, intelligent, hilarious witty, scathingly witty, artistic. She's got that eye for trade and design that Jan has but with much better packaging, an eye for PR, and social skills. As a woman among the empires, she held a bit of a strange spot being just as culpable as anyone else but wielding power slightly less directly. But being in a corset doesn't make her any less capable or culpable.

She loves her waffles and carbs. She is honestly so much better at making beer than the men around her but gets so little credit for it. She too this day has a love of textile work that belies the very strong leg up it gave her financially for much of her young adulthood. Belgian linen is to this day the conservation standard. She has an eye for making lace, and often makes her own curtains or cuffs well into modernity, probably picking it up again in the past few years.

She's quite good at managing her dual linguistic communities, despite the grid lock it causes. And speaking from my own experience: I see her also tending to be the least judgmental of the francophonie at least as far as the accents gi. She gets a kick out of listening to people butcher French and Dutch, especially as many learned it in Flanders. She annoys Jan endlessly with her version of Dutch and wishes he'd get his head out of his ass but at the end of the day the big stupid € is who she has for family.

[vonnie422]

Africans teaching Europeans how to bathe 🤢

by Amani Sawari

on February 6, 2019

We often hear about Africans teaching Europeans how to bathe and the other hygienic rituals required in order to build a healthy society. Abu l-Hasan Ali Ibn Nafi, also known as Ziryab, was born in modern day Iran circa 789 CE to a freed Ethiopian slave. His nickname, Ziryab, means blackbird and was given to him in reference to his dark complexion and stunning singing voice. He is known as the innovator of those hygienic practices such as bathing, shaving and the use of toothpaste, perfumes, fragrant oils and deodorant. Moor was a term Europeans used to describe indigenous Africans and while many people may have heard of the term, Ziryab is not a name circulated in Western history and not many people understand the weight of his influence. During the 10th century these weren’t African leaders only contributions to European society.

Ziryab arrived in Cordoba, the Arabic Empire’s ‘Wild West’, in 822 CE. As a master musician, his musical talent dramatically increased his popularity in the region, introducing many of the earliest versions of several instruments, including the lute, guitar and the Lyre. He was so sought after for his musical talent that he later founded an influential music school in Cordoba, Spain translating Eastern ideas into Western European music.  Though he was originally known for his musical skills, his influences weren’t restricted to the music realm. His contributions to music culture in Europe led to his becoming a respected leader that people looked to in many other areas of their lives.

Spanish occupation by the Moors began in 711 AD when an African army led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad from northern Africa invaded the Iberian peninsula. From then the Moors ruled Spain for 800 years allowing African royals and other leaders to influence many aspects of Spanish society. Ziryab was a natural born leader and pioneer. Along with reforming music Ziryab introduced a new style of eating in Western Europe, set course meal. The new eating style began with a soup that was followed by a fish course, then a meat course and finally a desert. This is an eating style that can still be seen in Western society today. He also recommended the use of crystal, as opposed to metal, to serve drinks. Ziryab expanded Europeans diet with the introduction of a variety of new crops including hard wheat, sugar, orange, lemon, peach, apricot, fig, sugar cane, dates, ginger, pomegranate saffron and rice. All of these continue to be prominent in Spain today. Instituting these new crops in the region required the Moors intimate knowledge of irrigation and cultivation. They also taught Europeans how to properly store spices for up to 100 years.

 In addition to establishing new hygiene practices, founding a music school and introducing new crops in Spain, Ziryab was also considered a fashion icon at the time. Clothes became more than just modest coverings for the body as Ziryab used clothes as a form of adornment. He was unique in the way he would change his clothes according to the seasons and weather and even went as far as having different outfits throughout the day.

During the time that London had a largely illiterate population, unpaved streets with none of the technological advancement of the Roman empire that existed 600 years prior; the Moors advanced greatly in hydraulic engineering. During the 10th century the Moors had paved roads, street lighting, running water, hundreds of public baths, mosques and well stocked libraries. Because paper was needed in order to create documents to transfer knowledge the Moors also brought paper making to Spain, and under Moorish conquest the first paper mill is recorded at Xàtiva in 1151. Along with this, over 4,000 Arabic words and derived phrases were absorbed into the Spanish language. Spanish use of words like algebra, alcohol, chemistry, nadir, alkaline, cipher checkmate, influenza, typhoon, orange, and cable can be traced back to the Moors.

As we can see in the many examples presented, the Moors mastered several methods of survival that vastly contributed to European society from the 10th century into the 12th century. During this time the Moors introduced multiple new scientific techniques to Europe in astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, geography and philosophy. While conquest came as a result of war, during the Moors’ reign, the people flourished in Moorish Spain with paved roads, universal education and efficient hospitals. Leadership requires the effective transfer of knowledge and the Moors successfully transferred several methods and techniques of their high functioning society to Europeans. These contributions continue to go unnoticed and ignored in Western public education. It’s essential that we circulate these stories in order to better understand our history through a proper lens that honors the work of our ancestors.

[asitrita]

For whatever reason I felt like sharing some of my thoughts about spuk today.

I kind of have this hc that Arthur's a really good story teller (probably because i've grown up with tlotr, hp and arthurian legends, plus, you know, the chronicles of narnia, alice in wonderland, peter pan and a lot of fantasy literature for kids and teens), and I like to imagine that, perhaps, back in the day and before all the drama, during the Middle Ages and first decades of the Modern Era, when Spain (and the different Spanish kingdoms) and England had a rather good relationship, when visiting England for whatever diplomatic mission, Antonio would ask Arthur to tell him some stories before bedtime, or during "nap time" after lunch, while laying on a meadow under the shadow of a tree, maybe a oak or old chestnut (so romantic u.u) It is kind of canon, I believe, that Antonio was a huge fan of chivalric themes and medieval heroic epics, like most of Europe at the time, and Spain fed a lot on the chivalric poetry and romance, not only during Medieval times, but also later on. It may seem out of topic, but Spanish conquerors and explorers (which would led to the begining of the Spanish empire), for better or for worse, were greatly inspired by both, classic epic, but also chivalric novels (maybe it is not a coincidence that the literary work that universally mocked the chivalric genre ended up being a Spanish production, Don Quixote). Medieval romance poetry is also a big deal in Spanish literature and folk culture, so it is only fitting he would enjoy fantasy tales and chivalric epic, as well as romance and poetry. The two would complement each other. Arthur would enjoy making up stories, and telling old chivalric romances, adding a little bit of magical and fantastic elements to it (like the magic cauldron tell, or magical swords,and whatnot), that Antonio would very much enjoy, while Antonio would passionately deliver passages from classic works, like The Aeneid, and recite poetry, also around the themes of chivalry and romance, while playing the lute, sometimes singing, rather than merely reciting the verses.

I also have this hc about Arthur being an exceptionally good archer and timidly trying to show off so Antonio notices him. On the other hand, I think Antonio would be skilled in the art of poetry, and be good at languages in general, making him a good rhapsodist. He would also be a pretty skilful musician, and play the lute, the vihuela and be surprisingly good at playing the clavichord (not at all referencing Antonio de Cabezón here). I even imagine during the times of Catalina de Aragon as queen of England he would try to teach Arthur how to improve his fingering and playing technic.

Just a few of my silly hc.

[goldenstarprincesses]

Henlo! You rebloged my post about France in fanfiction and I wanted to reply to it because I found what you said interesting, but because you used just tags would be goofy to reblog it again so I am sending an ask!

I agree about the cannon not helping, the thing is France got better in the cannon, he is more interesting now. I am not very into Prussia so I don't remember if he got better in later parts. But this thing about him being the worst in PruCan fanfic isn't something I noticed in Brazilian Fanfics or maybe I just don't remember lol

I wrote my post at 1 AM and now I stopped to think about what annoys me about how simple and awful Francis' characterization is and I noticed that it simply doesn't have a reason. When I was writing my fic, I wanted to make him bad in a European kind of way, he is France, France really did a lot of shit, he is kind of goofy and useless now? Yes, but that wasn't the case in the Early Modern era.

I also never saw no one exploring his sexuality. Why is Francis overly sexual? Why is he so dramatic? Why is he always trying to get in someone's pants? Real people have reasons to act overly sexual, they aren't just born this way, but WHY I NEVER SEE NO ONE ASKING THOSE QUESTIONS??

Thank you for rebloguing my post and confirming I wasn't just seeing things lol

Hiii! First, I adore your blog. Thank you for introducing me to the world of TurkFra. My eyes have been opened and my mind widened.

I almost think the fandom needed to go through the "dark times" or "dark age" of character interpretation to get where we are now. I know there was for sure a shift happing when I dipped out of the fandom in 2016ish. And when I started occasionally reading fanfics again during lockdown I was blown away with the shifts regarding the characterization of nearly all the characters.

Totally agree with you 100% about interpreting a character like France in a way where he is bad shit person, because of the actual actions of France. Imo its really important to include things like that into every nations characterizing when engaging in more "real life inspired" characterization. Almost have to wonder if the rise in popularity of historical hetalia has had anything to do with this change. While it was sorta a thing in the early years of the fandom, it didn't really seem to have much of a collective following and community. And now it seems that characters of empires/colonists like France/England/America/Russia etc. have shifted away from being written to have very goofy and comically negative traits more in-line with the 2008-2012ish canon to having their negative traits rooted more in the real-life negative habits or traits of the real world nations. I'd also wonder if the average age in the fandom has gone up which has helped characters simply be better developed.

The "bad touch trio" was super common back in the day. It was France/Prussia/Spain. Pretty much the entire characterization for them all ended up being sex addicts who went around well, SA or SH other nations. That mixed with the very silly "everything is based on basic national stereotypes" vibe of early canon I think just made i so a character like France ("nation of love"/the idea that the French are much more sexually liberated then the English or Americans) was very one-sided even when other charters were getting a little bit better of treatment. I also always felt like France was never as popular in the American/English fandom as American and England. So he (and often Canada) would sorta just thrown into things without much development character-wise.

You bring up so many good points!!! legit I have always thought about things like this.