#like eastern europe or the american south

[chronicangel]

I think what this person is getting caught up on is "American" as a demonym for living people.

When referring to a group of people as Americans without additional qualifiers (e.g. South American), most of the time we're talking about USAmericans because that is just the demonym that the US uses. (And like, we're not exactly spoiled for choice. What else would we do? Statesians? Uniters? Bleh.) When we talk about our nationalities, we typically refer to ourselves by demonym—Irish, Brazilian, Pakistani, Kiwi, etc. Sometimes we refer to ourselves by a demonym based on city, state, or territory, too—New Yorker, Parisian, Quebecois, Masshole (I'm KIDDING).

It's only occasionally that broader continental labels like European or African come up (except for you, Australia), and I think it's also less and less common the larger and more diverse a continent is—for example, I hear European by itself way more often than I hear just African or just Asian. And all of them almost always come with some additional context. Eastern European, South Asian, North African, and... well, okay, Middle Eastern is kind of a complicated thing on its own in the first place, but still. And even then, all of those are united continents all clumped together by a combination of geography, history, and culture (again, except for you, Australia).

If you tell someone, "I'm European," it's all going to be in the same general geographic region regardless of which country you specify or whether you specify a country at all. Which is not to say that Europe isn't wonderfully geographically and culturally diverse, I just mean that if you get me a map the size of a piece of printer paper, I can cover all of Europe with like, one finger. Maybe two, since I've got baby hands. But covering both North and South America would take a whole baby hand. (My baby hands, not infant hands. It'd probably take both of those. Maybe more than one baby, even.) Saying, "I'm American," to refer to all of North, Central, and South America gives you even less information than just saying, "I'm European," does, and that'll usually already net you questions about which country (or city or area, depending on the asker's familiarity) you're from.

All that being said, the reason that we use American as a term to refer to North, Central, and South America sometimes is because of things like history and culture (and even a little bit of geography). "Wait, didn't you just say that continents are united by those things, these are different continents!" I hear you yelling at your computer, and yes, I did say that, but when we're not talking about currently living human people, the degree of specificity that we need to use varies significantly more depending on context.

For example, when we're talking about indigenous Americans, that can refer to the 574 tribes currently federally recognized in the United States. Or maybe it's referring to the Mesoamericans who were the dominant cultural indigenous group in the Americas for over 3000 years, including when North America welcomed (I am using this term facetiously) its first European settlers in the late 15th and early 16th centuries—only, wait, Mesoamerica doesn't overlap with the US at all, it spans Central Mexico down to Costa Rica. And, I mean, the first indigenous people that Columbus and his crew ran into and promptly fucked over were in the Bahamas (which is, for those keeping score, not in the US). And maybe they've changed the curriculum since I was a lass, but personally speaking, when we learned about American history in school, my teachers always started with the Aztecs (Mexico), the Incas (Peru and Chile), and the Mayans (Mesoamerica).

And if we're talking about American politics, yes, obviously the United States has our own nightmare going on, but there is still a whole continent over here (two of them!), and occasionally, we interact with each other. Once we're at the point of trying to build a wall at the border and tossing out tariffs at any country they'll stick to, like, "Mexican American" is a different term that means a different thing in addition to just being kind of a mouthful (and yes, okay, in writing it would be Mexican-American, but sometimes people do this thing where we go outside and we talk to other people out loud with our mouth parts), and "North American" will only work as long as we stick to bullying our two immediate neighbors. Which... seems unlikely, considering.

So we have the term American, which means people who live in the United States or hail from the United States or some combination thereof. And then we have the term American, which means someone or something who at some point did something important in North, South, or Central America. And the former is useful for grumbling online or self-identifying where you are or are not from, and the latter is useful for talking about broad historical and cultural movements. Like, if you take an American History class, even in the US, it doesn't generally start in 1776 (or 1607, or 1492, pick your favorite). Not to say that most of it won't be about the US, we're pretty self-important like that, but part of that self-importance is also wanting to act like we're older and cooler than we are.

And you might be saying, "Well, the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans are dead, so they're probably not participating in Tumblr polls, and I doubt the President of the United States is on here either." Which, wrong, I stole his shoelaces. But moving past that, it still doesn't really hurt anybody to be more specific, does it? I mean, it certainly doesn't hurt the people descended from those ancient American populations we tried so hard to destroy and failed, thank G-d. It doesn't hurt USAmericans, who could stand to get our inflated senses of self-importance checked and remember that the US does not encompass even most of the Americas, so maybe we can share our toys (or our demonyms, as the case may be). It doesn't hurt the people making Tumblr polls, who have limited options for answers and need to be as specific as possible to make sure dumb dumbs online know what they're talking about.

So like, yeah, we know what people mean when they say "Americans" 99% of the time, because 99% of the time it's the US, and 99% of the time we deserved it. But like, really, why not be more specific? Why not acknowledge that there's more to America than the United States, much as we try to pretend otherwise? If it's helpful, think of "USAmerican" the way you would think of "East Asian," or maybe try to treat it as like a South African vs. Southern African thing, if that makes more sense.

Of course, I'm pretty confident sandersstudies already knows all this, and that taking a screenshot of a dictionary was just a faster and easier way to explain than writing all of this out, so I'm not trying to like, counter her or educate her or anything. But since anon felt the need to be so insanely snarky, I thought maybe they'd like to know.

USAmerican is not a word

- A Brazilian

(We don’t call ourselves American)

Just because you don’t, or don’t know someone who does, doesn’t mean that it’s not in common use. Also, it never hurts just to be extra-specific, even if USAmerican is effectively a synonym for American to most.

[bimdraws]

I am queer for Palestine because bombing Gaza also kills LGBT+ Palestinians. The bombs and the IDF won't stop and ask you if you are gay.

I'm queer for Palestine because my support of human rights isn't just for people who agree with me. I don't want homophobes to die.

I'm queer for Palestine because homophobia is everywhere and flat out genocide would never solve that. Are you seriously arguing that it's morally justified to bomb every "homophobic country" on Earth? Because we wouldn't be left with much.

I'm queer for Palestine because I've been listening to queer voices in Palestine.

I'm queer for Palestine because there will never be freedom for queer Palestinians without liberation for all Palestinians.

I'm queer for Palestine because I refuse to engage in racist portrayals of another ethnic group by colonizers.

I'm queer for Palestine because there's no safe zone in Gaza anymore and I can't be comfortable with that as thousands of people, men, women, children, have died and will continue to do so under Israeli regime.

[muirneach]

the tennis calendar is famously bad but february is the most disorganized thing i've ever seen. it's january so we're in australia on outdoor hard. march we will be in the united states on outdoor hard. so how do we get there? via western europe, the middle east, and the entirety of south america. some of these events are indoor hard. some of them are outdoor hard. some of them are clay! like what the hell

[itsalwaysdark]

the world if sims 4 had more lots per world

[nonbinary-vents]

I remember that when everything was happening with Noah Schnapp, so many people were saying that ‘he’s a white coloniser!’ ‘he’s clearly European!’ and ‘how are we supposed to think he’s indigenous to the Middle East when he looks like that?!’ They were screaming so much about he couldn’t possibly be from the swana region due to being pale, despite the fact that… wait for it…

Noah Schnapp is a Moroccan Jew.

The exact the same thing happened with Jerry Seinfeld too, despite him being a Syrian Jew.

But what this tells me is that so many American and European leftists fundamentally do not understand what North Africans and Southwest Asians look like. They do not understand that many Middle Eastern groups are pale, many Middle Eastern groups share features with Europeans— I mean, the Middle East literally borders Europe, did you not expect us to have similarities? This stretches back to the ancient world too. We know that in Yehuda there were gingers, as shown by King David*. Iirc, studies on Rameses the second’s remains show that he most likely had an olive tanned complexion and reddish-blondish hair, similar to a European Mediterranean look— which makes total sense seeing as Egypt is literally a Mediterranean country as well

It’s not just Jews. Persians, Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Amazigh, Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula**, all of these ethnic groups are incredibly diverse in their features, even without any significant genetic influence from other areas. You cannot just project American and European black and white concepts of race onto the Middle East and act as if that is reality. The world is not split into pale people in the north, brown people in the middle, and black people in the south, and if you genuinely believe that then you really need to look at some pictures of the groups that you’re claiming to be the defender of. Please. I’m so tired of this bullshit lol

*I know that the historical evidence for David is shaky at best and we’re not sure if he was real or not (I personally believe it’s a King Arthur sort of situation where there was a real person here that got turned into legend), what I’m trying to say is that if the Ivrim could have a figure like this who was ginger, then the Ivrim clearly had gingers. Nobody come for me please

**not adding other Arabs because there tends to be genetic mixes with other groups, and my point is about how even without distinct genetic markers from each other, middle easterners groups can turn out with a super intense variation in appearance, especially skin tone

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Hi, so i writing a book based in the 1800s like the cowboy eras can you please tell me somethings I should keep in mind about the society and stuff also I need a little motivation I have been loosing it all please and thankyou <<<333

Writing Notes: Cowboys

Cowboy

In the western United States: a horseman skilled at handling cattle, an indispensable laborer in the cattle industry of the trans-Mississippi west, and a romantic figure in American folklore.

Pioneers from the United States encountered Mexican vaqueros (Spanish, literally, “cowboys”; English “buckaroos”) on ranches in Texas about 1820, and soon adopted their masterful skills and equipment—the use of lariat, saddle, spurs, and branding iron.

But cattle were only a small part of the economy of Texas until after the Civil War.

The development of a profitable market for beef in northern cities after 1865 prompted many Texans, including many formerly enslaved African Americans, to go into cattle raising. (Though they have been almost entirely excluded from the mythology of the American cowboy, it is estimated that Black cowboys accounted for nearly a quarter of all cattle workers in the nascent American West during the latter half of the 19th century.)

By the late 1800s, the lucrative cattle industry had spread across the Great Plains from Texas to Canada and westward to the Rocky Mountains.

Vaqueros

In 1519, shortly after the Spanish arrived in the Americas, they began to build ranches to raise cattle and other livestock. Horses were imported from Spain and put to work on the ranches.

Mexico’s native cowboys were called vaqueros, which comes from the Spanish word vaca (cow). Vaqueros were hired by ranchers to tend to the livestock and were known for their superior roping, riding and herding skills.

By the early 1700s, ranching made its way to present-day Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and as far south as Argentina. When the California missions started in 1769, livestock practices were introduced to more areas in the West.

During the early 1800s, many English-speaking settlers migrated to the West and adopted aspects of the vaquero culture, including their clothing style and cattle-driving methods.

Cowboys came from diverse backgrounds and included African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans and settlers from the eastern United States and Europe.

Cowboy Life

Cowboys were mostly young men who needed cash. The average cowboy in the West made about $25 to $40 a month.

In addition to herding cattle, they also helped care for horses, repaired fences and buildings, worked cattle drives and in some cases helped establish frontier towns.

Cowboys occasionally developed a bad reputation for being lawless, and some were banned from certain establishments.

They typically wore large hats with wide brims to protect them from the sun, boots to help them ride horses and bandanas to guard them from dust. Some wore chaps on the outsides of their trousers to protect their legs from sharp cactus needles and rocky terrain.

When they lived on a ranch, they shared a bunkhouse with each other. For entertainment, some sang songs, played the guitar or harmonica & wrote poetry.

Cowboys were referred to as cowpokes, buckaroos, cowhands and cowpunchers.

The most experienced cowboy was called the Segundo (Spanish for “second”) and rode squarely with the trail boss.

Everyday work was difficult and laborious for cowboys. Workdays lasted about 15 hours, and much of that time was spent on a horse or doing other physical labor.

Rodeo Cowboys

Some cowboys tested their skills against one another by performing in rodeos—competitions that were based on the daily tasks of a cowboy.

Rodeo activities included bull riding, calf roping, steer wrestling, bareback bronco riding and barrel racing.

The first professional rodeo was held in Prescott, Arizona, in 1888. Since then, rodeos became—and continue to be—popular entertainment events in the United States, Mexico and elsewhere.

Joseph G. McCoy offered the wealthy cattleman's vision of the cowboy. He recorded a reasonably balanced, if slightly condescending, views in his 1874 treatise on the cattle trade.

He lives hard, works hard, has but few comforts and fewer necessities. He has but little, if any, taste for reading. He enjoys a coarse practical joke or a smutty story; loves danger but abhors labor of the common kind; never tires riding, never wants to walk, no matter how short the distance he desires to go. He would rather fight with pistols than pray; loves tobacco, liquor and women better than any other trinity. His life borders nearly upon that of an Indian. If he reads anything, it is in most cases a blood and thunder story of a sensational style. He enjoys his pipe, and relishes a practical joke on his comrades, or a corrupt tale, wherein abounds much vulgarity and animal propensity.

Black Cowboys

African American horsemen who wrangled cattle in the western United States in the late 1800s and beyond.

Though they were almost entirely excluded from the mythology of the American cowboy, it is estimated that Black men accounted for nearly a quarter of all cattle workers in the nascent American West during the latter half of the 19th century.

In the years following the Civil War (1861–65) and emancipation from slavery, a budding ranching industry promised freedom and prosperity unknown to most Black Americans, many of whom were formerly enslaved themselves or were the children of enslaved parents.

Texas became part of the United States in 1845, and, by 1860, enslaved people accounted for 30 percent of the state’s population. Among them were some of the first Black cowboys: skilled laborers with experience in breaking horses and herding stock. Many were given the autonomy to work unsupervised, and some even carried guns.

The cowboy lifestyle came into its own in Texas, which had been cattle country since it was colonized by Spain in the 1500s. But cattle farming did not become the bountiful economic and cultural phenomenon recognized today until the late 1800s, when millions of cattle grazed in Texas.

White Americans seeking cheap land—and sometimes evading debt in the United States—began moving to the Spanish (and, later, Mexican) territory of Texas during the first half of the 19th century.

Though the Mexican government opposed slavery, Americans brought slaves with them as they settled the frontier and established cotton farms and cattle ranches.

By 1825, slaves accounted for nearly 25 percent of the Texas settler population.

By 1860, fifteen years after it became part of the Union, that number had risen to over 30 percent—that year’s census reported 182,566 slaves living in Texas.

As an increasingly significant new slave state, Texas joined the Confederacy in 1861. Though the Civil War hardly reached Texas soil, many white Texans took up arms to fight alongside their brethren in the East.

While Texas ranchers fought in the war, they depended on their slaves to maintain their land and cattle herds.

In doing so, the slaves developed the skills of cattle tending (breaking horses, pulling calves out of mud and releasing longhorns caught in the brush, to name a few) that would render them invaluable to the Texas cattle industry in the post-war era. But with a combination of a lack of effective containment— barbed wire was not yet invented—and too few cowhands, the cattle population ran wild.

Ranchers returning from the war discovered that their herds were lost or out of control. They tried to round up the cattle and rebuild their herds with slave labor, but eventually the Emancipation Proclamation left them without the free workers on which they were so dependent.

Desperate for help rounding up maverick cattle, ranchers were compelled to hire now-free, skilled African-Americans as paid cowhands.

Freed blacks skilled in herding cattle found themselves in even greater demand when ranchers began selling their livestock in northern states, where beef was nearly ten times more valuable than it was in cattle-inundated Texas.

The lack of significant railroads in the state meant that enormous herds of cattle needed to be physically moved to shipping points in Kansas, Colorado and Missouri. Rounding up herds on horseback, cowboys traversed unforgiving trails fraught with harsh environmental conditions and attacks from Native Americans defending their lands.

African-American cowboys faced discrimination in the towns they passed through—they were barred from eating at certain restaurants or staying in certain hotels, for example—but within their crews, they found respect and a level of equality unknown to other African-Americans of the era.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Writing occasionally makes me feel like I'm losing it too! I find that taking a step back can be good. That time away from being a writer can be used to being the reader again, and to research your topic. And when your head's clear enough, you can go back & see if the story flows more freely, armed with information you collected to incorporate in your writing. Hope this helps <3

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 6: Athena, Goddess Of Wisdom]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.2k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Here at the midway point in our journey—like Dante stumbling upon the gates of the Inferno—would it be the right moment to review what’s at stake? Let’s begin.

It’s the end of August. The delegates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago officially vote to name Aemond the party’s presidential candidate. His ascension is aided by 10,000 antiwar demonstrators who flood into the city and threaten to set it ablaze if Hubert Humphrey is chosen instead. At the end—in his death rattle—Humphrey begs to be Aemond’s running mate, one last humiliation he cannot resist. Humphrey is denied. Eugene McCarthy, dignity intact, boards a commercial flight to his home state of Minnesota without looking back.

Aemond selects U.S. Ambassador to France, Sargent Shriver, to be his vice president. Shriver is a Kennedy by marriage—his wife, JFK’s younger sister Eunice, just founded the Special Olympics—and has previously headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Peace Corps, and the Chicago Board of Education. He also served as the architect of the president’s “War on Poverty” before distancing himself from the imploding Johnson administration. Shriver is not a concession to fence-sitting moderates or Southern Dixiecrats, but an embodiment of Aemond’s commitment to unapologetic progressivism. Richard Nixon spends the weekend campaigning in his native California, a gold vein of votes like the mines settlers rushed to in 1848. George Wallace announces that he will run as an Independent. Racists everywhere rejoice.

Phase III of the Tet Offensive is underway in Vietnam; 700 American soldiers have been killed this month alone. Riots break out in military prisons where the U.S. Army is keeping their deserters. The North Vietnamese refuse to allow Pope Paul VI to visit Hanoi on a peace mission. President Johnson calls both Aemond and Nixon to personally inform them of this latest evidence of the communists’ unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. Daeron and John McCain remain in Hỏa Lò Prison. The draft swallows men like the titan Cronus devoured his own children.

In Eastern Europe, the Russians are crushing pro-democracy protests in the largest military operation since World War II as half a million troops roll into Czechoslovakia. In Caswell County, North Carolina, the last remaining segregated school district in the nation is ordered by a federal judge to integrate after years of stalling. On the Fangataufa Atoll in the South Pacific, France becomes the fifth nation to successfully explode a hydrogen bomb. In Mexico City, 300,000 students gather to protest the authoritarian regime of President Diaz Ordaz. In Guatemala, American ambassador John Gordon Mein is murdered by a Marxist guerilla organization called the Rebel Armed Forces. In Columbus, Ohio, nine guards are held hostage during a prison riot; after 30 hours, they’re rescued by a SWAT team.

The latest issue of Life magazine brings worldwide attention to catastrophic industrial pollution in the Great Lakes. The first successful multiorgan transplant is carried out at Houston Methodist Hospital. The Beatles release Hey Jude, the best-selling single of 1968 in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. NASA’s Apollo lunar landing program plans to launch a crewed shuttle next year, just in time to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1962 promise to put a man on the moon “before the end of the decade.” If this is successful, the United States will win the Space Race and prove the superiority of capitalism. If it fails, the martyred astronauts will join all the other ghosts of this apocalyptic age, an epoch born under bad stars.

The night sky glows with the ancient debris of the Aurigid meteor shower. From down here on Earth, Jupiter is a radiant white gleam, visible with the naked eye and admired since humans were making cave paintings and Stonehenge. But Io is a mystery. With a telescope, she becomes a dust mote entrapped by Jupiter’s gravity; to the casual observer, she doesn’t exist at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

What was it like, that very first time? It’s strange to remember. You’re both different people now.

It’s May, 1966. You and Aemond are engaged, due to be married in three short weeks, and if you get pregnant then it’s no harm, no foul. In reality, it will end up taking you over a year to conceive, but no one knows that yet; you are living in the liminal space between what you imagine your life will be and the cold blade of the truth. Aemond has brought you to Asteria for the weekend, an increasingly common occurrence. The Targaryens—minus one, that holdout prodigal son, always glowering from behind swigs of rum and clouds of smoke—have already begun to treat you like a member of the family. The flock of Alopekis yap excitedly and lick your shins. Eudoxia learns your favorite snacks so she can have them ready when you arrive.

One night Aemond takes your hand and leads you to Helaena’s garden, darkness turned to twilight in the artificial luminance of the main house. You can hear distant voices, chatter and laughter, and the Beatles’ Rubber Soul spinning on the record player in the living room like a black hole, gravity that not even light can escape when it is wrenched over the event horizon.

You’re giggling as Aemond pulls you along, faster and faster, weaving through pathways lined with roses and sunflowers and butterfly bushes. Your high heels sink into soft, fertile earth; the air in your lungs is cool and infinite. “Where are we going?”

And Aemond grins back at you as he replies: “To Olympus.”

In the circle of hedges guarded by thirteen gods of stone, Aemond unzips your modest pink sundress and slips your heels off your feet, kneeling like he’s proposing to you again. When you are bare and secretless, he draws you down onto the grass and opens you, claims you, fills you to the brim as the crystalline water of the fountain patters and Zeus hurls his lightning bolts, an eternal storm, unending war. It’s intense in a way it never was with your first boyfriend, a sweet polite boy who talked about feminist theory and followed his enlightened conscience all the way to Vietnam. This isn’t just a pleasant way to pass a Friday night, something to look forward to between differential equations textbooks and calculus proofs. With Aemond it’s a ritual; it’s something so overpowering it almost scares you.

“Aphrodite,” Aemond murmurs against your throat, and when you try to get on top he stops you, pins you to the ground, thrusts hard and deep, and you try not to moan too loudly as you surrender, his weight on you like a prophesy. This is how he wants you. This is where you belong.

Has someone ever stitched you to their side, pushing the needle through your skin again and again as the fabric latticework takes shape, until their blood spills into your veins and your antibodies can no longer tell the difference? He makes you think you’ve forgotten who you were before. He makes you want to believe in things the world taught you were myths.

But that was over two years ago. Now Aemond is not your spellbinding almost-stranger of a fiancé—shrouded in just the right amount of mystery—but your husband, the father of your dead child, the presidential candidate. You miss when he was a mirage. You miss what it felt like to get high on the idea of him, each taste a hit, each touch a rush of toxins to the bloodstream.

Seven weeks after your emergency c-section, you are healing. Your belly no longer aches, your bleeding stops, you can rejoin the living in this last gasp of summer. Ludwika takes you shopping and you pick out new swimsuits; you’ve gone up a size since the baby, and it shows no signs of vanishing. In the fitting room, Ludwika chain-smokes Camel cigarettes and claps when you show her each outfit, ordering you to spin around, telling you that there’s nothing like Oleg Cassini back in Poland. You plan to buy three swimsuits. Ludwika insists you get five. She pays with Otto’s American Express.

That afternoon at home in your blue bedroom, you get changed to join the rest of the family down by the pool, your first swim since Ari was born. You choose Ludwika’s favorite: a dreamy turquoise two-piece with flowing transparent fabric that drapes your midsection. You can still see the dark vertical line of where the doctors stitched you closed. Now you and Aemond match; he got his scar on the floor of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, you earned yours at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. There are gold chains on your wrist and looped around your neck. Warm sunlight and ocean wind pours in through the open windows.

Aemond appears in the doorway and you turn to show him, proud of how you’ve pulled yourself together, how this past year hasn’t put you in an asylum. His right eye catches on your scar and stays there for a long time. Then at last he says: “You don’t have something else to wear?”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Labor Day, and Asteria has been descended upon by guests invited to celebrate Aemond’s nomination. The dining room table is overflowing with champagne, Agiorgitiko wine, platters of mini spanakopitas, lamb gyros, pita bread with hummus and tzatziki, feta cheese and cured meats, grilled octopus, baklava, and kourabiethes. Eudoxia is rushing around sweeping up crumbs and shooing tipsy visitors away from antique vases shipped here from Greece. Aemond’s celebrity endorsers include Sammy Davis Jr., Sonny and Cher, Andy Williams, Bobby Darin, Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Claudine Longet, and a number of politicians; but the most notable attendee is President Lyndon Baines Johnson, shadowed by Secret Service agents. He won’t be making any surprise appearances on the campaign trail for Aemond—in the present political climate, he would be more of a liability than an asset—but he has travelled to Long Beach Island tonight to offer his well-wishes. From the record player thrums Jimi Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower.

When you finish getting ready and arrive downstairs, you spot Aegon: slouching in a velvet chair over a century old, hair shagging in his eyes, sipping something out of a chipped mug he clasps with both hands, flirting with a bubbly early-twenties campaign staffer. Aegon smiles and waves when he sees you. You wave back. And you think: When did he become the person I look for when I walk into a room?

Now Aemond is beside you in a blue suit—beaming, confident, his glass eye in place, a hand resting on your waist—and Aegon isn’t smiling anymore. He takes a gulp of what is almost certainly straight rum from his mug and returns his attention to the campaign staffer, his lady of the hour. You picture him undressing her on his shag carpet and feel disorienting, violent envy like a bullet.

Viserys is already fast asleep upstairs, but the rest of the family is out en masse to charm the invitees and pose for photographs. Alicent, Helaena, and Mimi—trying very hard to act sober, blinking too often—are chit-chatting with the other political wives. Otto is complaining about something to Criston; Criston is pretending to listen as he stares at Alicent. Ludwika is smoking her Camels and talking to several young journalists who are ogling her, enraptured. Fosco and Sargent Shriver are entertaining a group of guests with a boisterous, lighthearted debate on the merits of Italian versus French cuisine, though they agree that both are superior to Greek. The nannies have brought the eight children to be paraded around before bedtime. All Cosmo wants to do is clutch your hand and “help” you navigate around the living room, warning you not to step on the small, weaving Alopekis. When Mimi attempts to steal her youngest son away, he ignores her, and as she begins to make a scene you rebuke her with a harsh glare. Mimi retreats meekly. She has never argued with you, not once in over two years. You speak for Aemond, and Aemond is a god.

As the children are herded off to their beds by the nannies, Bobby Kennedy—presently serving as a New York senator despite residing primarily on his family’s compound in Massachusetts—approaches to congratulate Aemond. His wife Ethel is a tiny, nasally, scrappy but not terribly bright woman, five months pregnant with her eleventh child, and you have to get away from her like a hand pulled from a hot stove.

“You know, I was considering running,” Bobby says to Aemond, chuckling, good-natured. “But when I saw you get in the race, I thought better of it! Maybe I’ll give it a go in ’76, huh?”

“Hey, kid, what a tough year you’ve had,” Ethel tells you, patting your forearm. You can’t tear your eyes from her small belly. She has ten living children already. I couldn’t keep one. What kind of sense does that make? “We’re real sorry for your trouble, aren’t we, Bobby?”

Now he is nodding somberly. “We are. We sure are. We’ve been praying for you both.”

Aemond is thanking them, sounding touched but entirely collected. You manage some hurried response and then excuse yourself. Your hands are shaking as you cross the room, not really seeing it. You walk right into Lady Bird Johnson. She takes pity on you; she seems to perceive how rattled you are. “Oh Lyndon, look, it’s just who we were hoping to speak to! The next first lady of the United States. And how beautiful you are, just radiant. How do you keep your hair so perfect? That glamorous updo. You never have a single strand out of place.” Lady Bird lays a palm tenderly on your bare shoulder. She has an unusual, angular face, but a wise sort of compassion that only comes from suffering. Her husband is an unrepentant serial cheater. “I’ll make you a list of everything you need to know about the White House. All the quirks of the property, and the hidden gems too!”

“You’re so kind. We’ll see what happens in November…”

“Good evening, ma’am,” President Johnson says, smiling warmly. He’s an ugly man, but there’s something hypnotic that lives inside him and shines through his eyes like the blaze of a lighthouse. He pulls you in through the dark, through the storm; he promises you answers to questions you haven’t thought of yet. LBJ is 6’4 and known for bullying his political adversaries with the so-called “Johnson Treatment”; he leans in and makes rapid-fire demands until they forget he’s not allowed to hit them. “I have to tell you frankly, I don’t envy anyone who inherits that den of rattlesnakes in Washington D.C.”

“Lyndon, don’t frighten her,” Lady Bird scolds fondly.

“Everyone thinks they know what to do about Vietnam,” LBJ plods onwards. “But it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t clusterfuck. If you keep fighting, they call you a murderer. But if you pull the troops out and South Vietnam falls to the communists, every single man lost was for nothing, and you think the families will stand for that? Their kid in a body bag, or his legs blown off, or his brain scrambled? There’s no easy answer. It’s a goddamn bitch of a quagmire.”

Lady Bird offers you a sympathetic smirk. Sorry about all this unpleasantness, she means. When he gets himself worked up, I can’t stop him. But you find yourself feeling sorry for President Johnson. It will be difficult for him to learn how to fade into disgraced obscurity after once being so omnipotent, so beloved. Reinvention hurts like hell: fevers raging, bones mending, healing flesh that itches so ferociously you want to claw it off.

LBJ gives Lady Bird a look, quick but meaningful. She acquiesces. This has happened a thousand times before. “It was so nice talking to you, dear,” she tells you, then crosses the living room to pay her respects to Alicent.

The president steps closer, looming, towering. The Johnson Treatment?? you think, but no; he isn’t trying to intimidate you. He’s just curious.

“Do you know what Aemond’s plan is for ‘Nam?” LBJ asks, eyes urgent, voice low. “I’m sure he has one. He’s sworn to end the draft as soon as he gets into office, but how is he going to make sure the South Vietnamese can fend off the North themselves? We’re trying to train the bastards, but if we left they’d fold in months. It would be the first war the U.S. ever lost. Does he understand that?”

“He doesn’t really discuss it with me.” That’s true; you know his policies, but only because they are a constant subject of conversation within the family, something you all breathe like oxygen.

“We can’t let Nixon win,” LBJ continues. “It’s mass suicide to leave the country in his hands. The man can’t hold his liquor anymore, getting robbed by Kennedy in ’60 broke something in him. He gets sloshed and shoves his aids around, makes up conspiracies in his head. He’s a paranoid little prick. He’ll surveille the American people. He’ll launch a nuke at Moscow.”

You honestly don’t know what he expects you to say. “I’ll pass the message along to Aemond.”

“People love you, Mrs. Targaryen.” LBJ watching you closely. “Believe it or not, they used to love me too. But I still remember how to play the game. You’re the only reason Aemond is leading the polls in Florida. You can get him other states too. Jack needed Jackie. Aemond needs you. And you’ve had tragedies, and that’s a damn shame. But don’t you miss an opportunity. You take every disappointment, every fucked up cruelty of life and find a way to make it work for you. You pin it to your chest like a goddamn medal. Every single scar makes you look more mortal to those people going to the ballot box in November. You want them to be able to see themselves in you. It helps the mansions and the millions go down smoother.”

“President Johnson!” Aegon says as he saunters over, huge mocking grin. He thumps a closed fist against the Texan’s broad chest; the Secret Service agents standing ten feet away observe this sternly. “How thoughtful of you to be here, taking time out of your busy schedule, squeezing us in between war crimes.”

“The mayor of Trenton,” LBJ jabs.

“The butcher of Saigon.”

Now the president is no longer amused. “You’ve never accomplished anything in your whole damn life, son. Your obituary will be the size of a postage stamp. I’m looking forward to reading it someday soon.” He leaves, rejoining Lady Bird at the opposite end of the room.

You frown at Aegon, disapproving. You’re dressed in a sparkling, royal blue gown that Aemond chose. “That was unnecessary.”

Aegon is wearing an ill-fitting green shirt—half the buttons undone—khaki pants, and tan moccasins. “I just did you a favor.”

“What happened to your new girlfriend? Shouldn’t she be getting railed in your basement right now? Did she have a prior commitment? Did she have a spelling test to study for? Those can be tricky, such complex words. Juvenile. Inappropriate. Infidelity.”

“You know what he brags about?” Aegon says, meaning LBJ. “That he’s fucked more women by accident than John F. Kennedy ever did on purpose.”

“That sounds…logistically challenging.”

“He’s a lech. He’s a freak. He tells everyone on Capitol Hill how big his cock is. He takes it out and swings it around during meetings.”

“And that’s all far less than admirable, but he’s not going to do something like that around me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s not an idiot,” you say impatiently. “He was perfectly civil. And I was getting interesting advice.”

Aegon rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry I crashed your cute little pep talk with Lyndon Johnson, the most hated man on the planet.”

“I guess you can’t stop Aemond from touching me, so you have to terrorize LBJ instead.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Aegon hisses, and his venom stuns you. And now you’re both trapped: you loosed the arrow, he proved you hit the mark. He’s flushing a deep, mortified red. Your guts are twisting with remorse.

“Aegon, wait, I didn’t mean—”

He whirls and storms off, shoving his way through the crowd. People glare at him as they clutch their glasses and plates, sighing in that What else do you expect from the worthless son? sort of way. You’re still gaping blankly at the place where Aegon stood when Aemond finds you, snakes a hand around the back of your neck, and whispers through the painstakingly-arranged wisps of hair that fall around your ear: “Follow me.”

It’s not a question. It’s a command. You trail him through the living room, into the foyer, and through the front door, not knowing what he wants. Outside the moon is a sliver; the light from the main house makes the stars hard to see. “Aemond, you’ll never believe the conversation I just had with LBJ. He really unloaded, I think the stress is driving him insane. I have to tell you what he said about—”

“Later.” And this is jarring; Aemond doesn’t put anything before strategy. He grabs your hand as he turns into Helaena’s garden, and only then do you understand what he wants. Instinctively, your legs lock up and your feet stop moving. Aemond tugs you onward. He wants it to be like the very first time. He intends to start over with you, the dawning of a new age in the dead of night.

Hidden in the circle of hedges, he takes your face roughly in his hands and kisses you, drinks you down like a vampire, consumes you like wildfire. But your skull echoes with panic. I don’t want him touching me. I don’t want another child with him. “Aemond…”

He doesn’t hear you, or acts like he doesn’t, or mistakes it for a murmur of desire, or chooses to believe it is. He has you down on the grass under the vengeful gaze of Zeus, the fountain splashing, the sounds of the house a low foreign drone. He yanks off your panties, but he doesn’t want you naked like he always did before. He pushes the hem of your shimmering cobalt gown up to your hips and unbuckles his trousers. And you realize as he’s touching you, as he’s easing himself into you: He doesn’t want to have to look at my scar.

You can’t ignore him, you can’t pretend it’s not happening. He’s too big for that. It’s a biting fullness that demands to be felt. So you kiss him back, and knot your fingers in his short hair like you used to, and try to remember the things you always said to him before. And when Aemond is too absorbed to notice, you look away from him, from the statue of Zeus, and peer up into the stone face of Athena instead: the goddess who never married and who knows the answer to every question.

“I love you,” Aemond says when it’s over, marveling at the slopes of your face in the dim ethereal light. “Everything will be right again soon. Everything will be perfect.”

You conjure up a smile and nod like you believe him.

“What did LBJ say?”

“Can I tell you later tonight? After the party, maybe? I just need a few minutes.”

“Of course.” And now Aemond pretends to be patient. He buckles his belt and returns to the main house, his blood coursing with the possibilities only you can make real, his skin damp with your sweat.

For a while—ten minutes, twenty minutes—you lie there on the cool grass wondering what it was like for all those mortals and nymphs, being pinned down by Zeus and then having Hera try to kill them afterwards, raising ill-fated reviled bastards they couldn’t help but love. What is heaven if the realm of the immortals is so cruel? Why does the god of justice seem so immune to it?

When at last you rise and walk back towards the house, you find Mimi at the edge of the garden. She’s on her knees and retching into a rose bush; she’s cut her face on the thorns, but she hasn’t noticed yet. She’s groaning; she seems lost.

You reach for her, gripping her bony shoulders. “Mimi, here, let’s get you upstairs…”

“No,” she blubbers, tears streaming down her scratched cheeks. “Just go away. Leave me.”

“Mimi—”

“No!” she roars, a mournful hemorrhage as she slaps your hands until you release her.

“You don’t have to be this way,” you tell her, distraught. “You can give up drinking. We’ll help you, me and Fosco and Ludwika. You can start over. You can be healthy and present again, you can live a real life.”

Mimi stares up at you, her grey eyes glassy and bloodshot but with a vicious, piercing honesty. “My husband hates me. My kids don’t know I exist. What the hell do I have to be sober for?”

You weren’t expecting this. You don’t know what to say. “We can help make the world better.”

“The world would be better without me in it.”

Then Mimi curls up on the grass under the rose bush, and stays there until you return with Fosco to drag her upstairs to her empty bed.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next afternoon, you’re lying on a lounge chair by the pool. Tomorrow the family will leave Asteria and embark upon a vigorous campaign schedule that will continue, with very few breaks, until Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th. The children are splashing and shrieking in the pool with Fosco, but you aren’t looking at them. You’re staring across the sun-drenched emerald lawn at the Atlantic Ocean. You’re envisioning all the bones and splinters of sunken ships that must litter the silt of the abyss; you’re thinking that it’s a graveyard with no headstones, no memory. Your swimsuit is a red one-piece. Your eyes are shielded by large black Ray Bans aviator sunglasses. Your gaze flicks up to the cloudless blue sky, where all the stars and planets are invisible.

Jupiter has nearly a hundred moons; the largest four were discovered by Galileo in 1610. Europa is a smooth white cosmic marble with a crust of ice, beautiful, immaculate. Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system and the only satellite with its own magnetic field, is rumored to have a vast underground saltwater ocean that may contain life. Callisto is dark and indomitable, riddled with impact craters; because of her dynamic atmosphere and location beyond Jupiter’s radiation belts, she is considered the best location for possible future crewed missions to the Jovian system. But Io is a wasteland. She has no water and no oxygen. Her only children are 400 active volcanoes, sulfur plumes and lava flows, mountains of silicate rock higher than Mount Everest, cataclysmic earthquakes as her crust slips around on a mantle of magma. Her daily radiation levels are 36 times the lethal limit for humans. If Hades had a home in our corner of the galaxy, it would be Io. She glows ruby and gold with barren apocalyptic fury. You can feel yourself turning poisonous like she is. You can feel your skin splitting open as the lava spills out.

Aegon trots out of the house—red swim trunks, cheap red plastic sunglasses, no shirt, a beach towel slung around his neck, flip flops—and kicks your chair. “Get up. We’re going sailing.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Great, because I’m not asking you to talk. I’m telling you to get in my boat.”

You don’t reply. You don’t think you can without your voice cracking. Aegon crouches down beside your chair and pushes your sunglasses up into your Brigitte Bardot-inspired hair so he can see your face. Your eyes are pink, wet, desperately sad. Deep troubled grooves appear in his forehead as he studies you. Gently, wordlessly, he pats your cheek twice and lowers your sunglasses back over your eyes. Then he stands up again and offers you his hand.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says, softly this time. You take his hand and follow him down to the boathouse.

Five vessels are currently kept there. Aegon’s sailboat is a 25-foot Wianno Senior sloop, just roomy enough for a few passengers. He’s had it since long before you married into the Targaryen family. It is white with hand-painted gold accents; the name Sunfyre adorns the stern. He unmoors the boat, pushes it out into the open water, and raises the sails.

You glide eastbound over the glittering crests of waves, slowly at first, then faster as the sails catch the wind. Aegon has one hand on the rudder, the other grasping the ropes. And the farther you get from shore, the smaller Asteria seems, and the Targaryen family, and the presidential election, and the United States itself. Now all that exists is this boat: you, Aegon, the squawking gulls, the school of mackerel, the ocean. The sun beats down; the breeze rips strands of your hair free. The battery-powered record player is blasting White Room by Cream. When you are far enough from land that no journalists would be able to get a photo, Aegon takes two joints and his Zippo out of the pocket of his swim trunks. He puts both joints between his lips, lights them, and passes you one. Then he stretches out beside you on the deck, gazing up at the September sky.

You ask as your muscles unravel and your thoughts turn light and easy to share: “Why did you bring me out here?”

“So you can drown yourself,” Aegon says, and you both laugh. “Nah. I used to go sailing all the time when I was a teenager. It always made me feel better. It was the only place where I could really be alone.”

You consider the math. “Wow. You haven’t been a teenager since before I was in kindergarten.”

“It’s weird to think about. You don’t seem that young.”

“Thanks, I guess. You don’t seem that old.”

“Maybe we’re meeting in the middle.” He inhales deeply and then exhales in a rush of smoke. “What do you think, should I get an earring?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It might shock Otto so bad it kills him.”

“I’ll get two.” And then Aegon says: “It’s not cool for you to mock me.”

You are dismayed; you didn’t mean to hurt him. “I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. You were mocking me. You mocked me about the receipt under my ashtray, and then you mocked me again last night. I’m up for a lot of things, but I can’t handle that. Okay?”

“Okay.” You turn your head so you can see him: shaggy blonde hair, stubble, perpetual sunburn, the softness of his belly and his chest, flesh you long to vanish into like rain through parched earth. “Aegon?”

He looks over at you. “Io?”

“I don’t want Aemond to touch me either.”

He’s surprised; not by what you feel, but because you’ve said it aloud, a treason like Prometheus giving mankind the gift of fire. “What are we gonna do about it?”

If you were the goddess of wisdom, maybe you’d know.

[keptalivebymagic]

The Scholomance as a global tale

The thing I keep finding myself thinking about is how hard The Scholomance works to not be centred around the West or Europe. (Spoilers ahead.)

This is a book written by an American, published in an American market, and yeah we can point to Novik's other works and say, "well she wrote this Eastern European inspired stuff" but that's still a far cry from what she does in the Scholomance. She makes repeated, concerted efforts to remind us that magic is international. El is half-Indian and Novik explicitly points to the region of her origin. El speaks Marathi and Hindu and Sanskrit. Her Indian family are said to be one of the few natural enclaves. They all make a deliberate effort to be "strict mana", and even when we see them wrong El and try to kill her because they fear she will become a great dark sorceress, Novik avoids the "these communitarian foreigners are sheep who can't think for themselves".

Meanwhile El talks about how the school was started by Manchester and therefore greatly favours the Western hemisphere over the East, and how that has impacted and rightly upset the enclave in Shanghai and Hong Kong, among others. Novik talks about how they might want to start their own school, which would be a great strike against Manchester/London/New York.

Apart from what we know about India enclaves via El and China enclaves via Liu, we also see substantive characters from Arab countries (admittedly I can't remember if it was the UAE or Saudi Arabia) and West/South Africa.

It may seem like such a small thing, but the most successful "magical school" book in contemporary memory is Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling certainly made zero effort to consider the global south, nor even leave the door open on future world building in that vein. Meanwhile here's Naomi Novik, creating a work that makes significant effort to recognize that there's more to the world than London.

[metamorphesque]

so interesting that armenians don't consider themselves european! i am a little uneducated on this topic, so i've never thought otherwise. i'm now gonna research this topic more, thank you. how would you say armenians determine themselves?

I’d like to start by saying that, for me, being considered Asian or European holds no inherent preference. My answer contains no malcontent; I am simply addressing the question as it's been posed. Interestingly, I had never thought of myself as European. I’ve always identified as Asian and as someone from the Caucasus.

I’ll explain my reasoning shortly, but first, let’s not confuse "Caucasian", meaning a person from the Caucasus, and the term "Caucasian" as coined by Blumenbach in his highly problematic racial theory. Many people use "Caucasian" to refer to white people (a surprise to me at first) without knowing the term’s problematic origins. Blumenbach categorized humanity into five groups—Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American. His work was mostly scientific, but he showed bias by declaring the skull of a Georgian woman the “most handsome”, suggesting that the most beautiful people lived on the southern slopes of Mount Caucasus. He then made a leap by claiming that whiteness was the “primitive color of mankind”. This is how "Caucasian" became synonymous to "white" and this is why I find the use of "Caucasian" to mean white people so problematic. But, once again, when I call myself/Armenians Caucasian, it is because we are actually from Caucasus.

Armenians are indigenous to the Armenian Highlands, which are bordered by the Pontic Mountains to the north, the Caucasus Mountains to the northeast, the Zagros Mountains to the south, and the eastern Taurus Mountains to the west. This clearly places us in Western Asia, not Europe. Modern-day Armenia occupies only a small part of the historical Armenian Highlands, situated in the South Caucasus. So, in conclusion, as an Armenian, I don’t consider Armenians to be European.

[piracytheorist]

Things about Greece you're (probably) getting wrong

When you say "Greece" or "Greek", that's automatically referring to Modern Greece and Modern Greek. It's an existing country with a population of around 10 million people. The Modern Greek language is spoken natively by those 10 million along with 1 million people in Cyprus and around 2 more million in diaspora. If you want to refer to Ancient Greece or its history/culture, just add the word "ancient" to it.

The Greek name for the country is "Hellas". "Hellenic" is an adjective used for non-human nouns. Don't call yourself "hellenic" even if you have Greek roots, you're basically calling yourself "Greek thing".

There is no one correct way of pronouncing Ancient Greek as a whole. That language spanned over a thousand years and across places that didn't communicate easily or were outright hostile to each other. It's like claiming that Shakespeare's works should be pronounced with an Australian accent.

Along with the famous 300 Spartans, in the battle of Thermopylae there were also 700 Thespians (not actors, people from the town Thespiae) and according to some sources, also 900 helots (slaves) and 400 Thebans.

The town of Sparta exists in modern day. However, if you visit Greece, unless you actually are from Sparta, do NOT call yourself a Spartan, no matter what school/university you went to. "Spartans" is the name of a far-right, outright neo-nazi political party, so calling yourself that here equals to associating yourself with that.

Greek houses in American campuses sound weird. Do those letters (some of which are wildly mispronounced, btw) even mean anything

Democracy in Ancient Athens was not fair by today's standards. It was mostly a glorified, expanded aristocracy. The "demos" that had the authority to vote only consisted of land-owning Athenian men. If you were a woman, a slave, poor, an immigrant, or a child of immigrants, along with other descriptions I might be forgetting right now, you didn't have the right to participate in the ruling.

Oh yeah, the "birthplace of democracy" very much did have slaves. Some whom were prisoners of war.

Greece is on the southern end of the Balkan peninsula, located in South-Eastern Europe. However, many Greeks are wildly racist and will not admit we're part of the Balkans or Eastern Europe. There are cultural differences due to Greek not belonging in the Slavic languages (the most common language family in Eastern Europe) and for political reasons, but the main reason this distinction happens is very much racism. They prefer to be called a "Mediterranean country" (because then we're associated with countries like Italy and Spain, you know?)

Greece never recovered from the financial crisis of 2008, and has only been going downhill since then. However, the war reparations that Germany never paid Greece for the damages and the deaths it caused in WW2 is estimated to be over 200 billion euros. The German government considers this matter "to be in the past" (since they never paid them, I guess, we can forget about it!), yet is one of the countries that most strongly demands Greece to keep paying back the loans it took over the years from the EU. This is a very painful matter for all of us (especially considering there are people still alive who witnessed the destruction and death the nazis brought to the country, and now they along with their descendants are paying taxes that'll eventually reach German pockets), yet racism centers around hate for other Balkan countries and Turkey. Divide and conquer I guess.

[unsolicited-opinions]

One of the false myths that stand in the way of peace is that the Jews are foreign European-based colonizers, encroaching upon the indigenous Palestinians who have lived in the land for thousands of years. In reality, Jews are indigenous to this land. Their religion, culture and unique identity originated in Israel thousands of years ago and are fundamentally and perpetually connected to that part of the Levant. Conversely, and surprisingly to some, Islam and Arabism are of foreign origins. Based in the Arabian peninsula, Islam and Arab culture were spread through the Levant by the sword and through subsequent assimilation beginning in the 7th century AD, roughly 2,000 years after the earliest Jewish presence in the land. Cultures and languages need not be European in origin to be exported, and colonialism is not exclusively “white”. Genetically, Jews are demonstrably Levantine in origin, and while 2,000 years of diaspora impacted their genotypes (most Jews today are roughly a genetic mix of 50% Levantine origin and 50% admixture with diasporic host populations) and phenotypes (Ashkenazi Jews appear more “white” because of European admixture, while Mizrahi Jews appear more “brown” because of Middle-Eastern admixture), their culture and origin are indisputably Judean, Levantine, Israeli. Palestinians are also, by and large, Levantine in origin. Though they’ve adopted a foreign culture and religion as their own, and have integrated with foreign populations who have migrated to and through the region over the years – mostly from the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, but also from southern Europe and Mesopotamia – their genotype is predominantly Levantine and likely, to some extent, Judean as well. Genetic studies demonstrating the similarities between Palestinians and Jews support that. The myth of the white Jew vs. the brown Palestinian is propaganda, meant to leverage European and American liberals’ guilt and apologism over their colonialist past to create a misguided affinity with the Palestinians and animosity toward Israelis. Should all parties realize that the conflict is, in fact, between brothers of a common origin who were separated involuntarily by the tides of history, peace may easily follow. The photos for this game are selected at random, and most players get roughly 60%-70% of them correct.  If selecting blindly, a player would get about 50% correct. Playing a similar game between, for example, Dutch colonizers of South Africa vs. the indigenous population of the same region, a player would likely get 100% correct without breaking a sweat. I hope this helps crystalize the nuanced reality of this conflict for those who would otherwise be all too eager to see it as black and white.

[alphynix]

The evolution of falcons is rather poorly understood. Thanks to genetic evidence we know that they're closely related to seriemas, parrots, and passerines, but their fossil record is patchy and little is known about the early members of their lineage.

But a group knows as masillaraptorids are giving us a rare glimpse at what some early falconiforms were up to. Known from the Eocene of Europe, these long-legged predatory birds seem to have been caracara-like terrestrial hunters specializing in chasing down prey on foot – although their wings and tails indicate they were also still strong fliers.

Danielsraptor phorusrhacoides lived during the early Eocene, about 55 million years ago, in what is now eastern England. Although only known from partial remains, it was probably around 45-60cm long (~1'6"-2'), and it had a large hooked beak with a surprising amount of convergent similarity to those of the flightless South American terror birds.

Its mixture of falcon-like and seriema-like features may indicate that the common ancestor of both of these bird groups was a similar sort of leggy ground-hunting predator.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[tsibeyantiger]

How to write European characters for Americans (and for everyone else, but especially for Americans):

Rule number one: Europe is a continent, not a country. No, European countries are not like American states. They are all totally autonomous and may be massively different even when they are neighbours. So everything I tell you might not be the case in every country in Europe or not in all parts of all countries!

-not everyone owns a car and many people prefer public transport or bicycles over driving, especially in north western Europe. Places that cannot be reached by foot exist, but are rare.

- Euros are the currency in most countries, but not in all. Im countries poorer than the EU average, Euros might be accepted, too, in richer countries they will not be. Cents and 1€ & 2€ are coins, the rest are notes. The notes don't all have the same sizes! Cash payment is favored in some parts of Europe, card in others. Debit cards are way more common than credit cards!

- Eastern European countries are way poorer than Western European ones. You see a lot of people moving west for work. People from Western Europe hardly ever move to an Eastern European country.

- In Northern and Central Europe, pretty much everyone younger than let's say 70 speaks at least a decent English. Millennials and Zoomers often also speak French or Spanish. In Southern Europe, the younger generations usually speak English, but elderly people are usually monolingual. In Eastern Europe, German and Russian are common second languages, often even more common than English.

- in an elevator, people usually lean against the walls and look into the middle. Standing in the middle and facing the door is uncommon. Unlike in America, you keep your fork always in the same hand and do not move it to the other hand during the meal.

- Northern and Western European countries have got a lot of foreign citizens. South Asians, Africans, Caribbeans and other Europeans are typical in the UK, Arabs and Africans in France, Arabs and Latinos in Spain, Africans in Italy, Turks, Poles, Arabs and Russians in Germany, Arabs and South Asians in the Nordics. Eastern European countries are way whiter and their foreign population mostly consists of people from neighbouring countries.

- some countries prefer their local cuisine, others prefer international food. If a country has got a world-famous cuisine, it probably belongs in the first category, if not in the second.

- With the exception of a few countries (Ireland, Finland and the Baltics), football is the number one sport. Every country has got a national professional league, but especially people from smaller countries often support a team from another country, usually from England or Spain. Women's football is way smaller than in the US and is often ignored or forgotten. Even though each of these has got at least a small fan base in Europe, you cannot expect people to know anything about NBA, NFL, NHL or MLB. Other notable team sports are handball, basketball, ice hockey and rugby, but this depends very much on the country.

- in most countries, sports clubs play a huge role, and school and especially university sports teams hardly exist.

- colleges don't really exist in most countries. If you're going for an academic degree, you'll go to a university, for other careers you'll usually get trained by your company and acquire some kind of diploma. I actually never really understood the difference between a college and a university and so do probably most people here. Studying is not free in every country, but public universities are usually very cheap and under 1000€ per year. Applications for universities are way easier than in the US and usually free. Many people go to university in their hometown. It is not common to move out from home before your early twenties, especially in Southern and Eastern Europe, unless you go studying in a different city. Students live with their parents, in a flat share, with their partner, very rarely alone or in a student's residence. They do NOT share their bedroom with anyone and fraternities or soririties in an American sense do not exist in any country I know.

- Windows can and will be opened frequently. Air conditioning is common only in the Mediterranean and is used to cool down the room, not to let fresh air in. For that purpose, we open the window.

- for distances of a few hours, Europeans either take the car or the train. You can reach every major European city by train, but this doesn't mean the train service is always good. For longer distances, flights are common.

- Germany is always less modern and the Baltics are always more modern than you expect.

- Europeans are just as political as Americans, but every country has got a great variety of different political parties, even though usually 1-3 of them dominate the political landscape. "Liberal" means "center-right" in Europe. Leftists would define themselves as socialists, social-democrats, communists or anarchists. Most countries have at least one conservative AND one extreme right party.

- You can't just fire someone for no reason in most European countries. You'll often have to pay them at least a few monthly salaries as compensation. Every country has got universal health care, though it isn't always good or accessible, and it does NOT depend on your employment. The number of sick days is not limited and even though some countries work even more hours than America, people usually can't be contacted by their employer in their free time.

- the EU is often criticised, but mostly viewed as positive. National laws may not break European law and you see EU flags on many public buildings.

- if someone owns a gun, they are a hunter, a cop, a soldier or a gangster.

- parties start and end way later than in the US. In most countries, no club will close before 3am and you don't arrive at the club before midnight. Sometimes you can party until 8 or even 10 am.

- it is common to cross an international border for shopping if products are cheaper in the other country.

- people are less religious than in America. Even in the most hardcore Catholic or Orthodox regions, you don't see shit like in the US. People there might be frantically kissing some Saint's painting, but they don't believe Jesus died for their right to own a gun or stuff.

Feel free to add some!

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

So many people I expected better from just went and keep going full mask off with how much they hate Black Americans and Indigenous people in the US, putting words in people's mouths to make them look violent and evil (no Black American said they have it as bad as Gaza or that they love genociding Koreans wtf), and it's gotten to a point where they are behaving exactly like marginalized whites who weaponize their marginalizations to be racist - ironically, a lot of these people are white themselves, but act like they have no white privilege over Black Americans and Indigenous people because they live in South America or Eastern Europe.

🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔 the latines tryna get in on it is especially funny to me bc unlike a lot of the people of color in this drama they're just straight up colonizers. like y'all forget yourselves fr

[fairuzfan]

not to minimise what trump has done. he is… terrible in every which way. but… why is there a comparison between trump’s reign vs biden’s? biden is endorsing genocide openly and proudly and bypassing congress or whatever to send israel ammunition.

how is he still “the lesser evil?”

i think if people started comparing, you’d have to acknowledge that nothing trump’s done comes close to what biden is doing. especially not on a global scale. and that’s really just a pointless conversation to begin with. biden’s current political policies have led to the murder of 30,000+ people. i don’t think anyone should be comparing him to trump or forming hypotheticals when the reality is that biden is killing people. he doesn’t deserve a vote because he’s killing people. how can anyone live with themselves by endorsing a war criminal so blatantly?

i feel like this entire conversation kind of shows just how unaware americans are of their own politics and of the world outside of the US. how is this the conversation you’re having? how is this even a point to argue? especially with a palestinian who’s people and family and friends are being murdered with biden’s backing. why is nobody focusing on insisting for better candidates instead of the whole biden vs trump argument?

i mean trump did still do terrible things in yemen and syria, i dont think we should forget that but biden perpetuated a lot of that and didn't end it. but now we're looking at the darfur genocide, the continued sanctions on syria, palestinian genocide, armenian expulsion, and just so many other things. And that's just in swana and south eastern europe!

biden expanded the border wall, kept the concentration camps in the south, basically got rid of masking policy leading to the death of thousands, and just so much more. like what?! how is he "lesser" like honestly honestly, how is he lesser of an evil. he did this shit and feels no regret for any of it. so no i don't think anyone in the democratic party is a "lesser evil" i think they sat by while all this stuff happened and continue to sit by. so is it better that they're able to put on pretenses??

[yamishika]

have any other ethnicity headcanons for fairy tail characters?

Fairy Tail Characters Ethnicity HCs

I don’t have as much extensive proof as I do for my Erik headcanons post but I will explain my thoughts for why I think certain ethnicities.

Natsu Dragneel : Japanese + Greek? (Because of the clothing style in his past flashback with his biological family)

Erza Scarlet : British + ? - I say British because she reminds me of Lara Croft who in her older days had reddish hair, also English history is big on knights, which Erza is. The other half I can’t tell as I don’t actually know what to think of her father Rung as. He seems like a POC though. (Maybe Mexican?)

Lucy Heartfilia : British / American - Because Lucy’s heritage as a noble it reminds me more of English nobility, but then her characteristics remind me more of american for some reason (it doesn’t help that Lucy looks a lot like Ashley Graham from the original RE4 and she’s American so I am kind of biased there)

Gray Fullbuster : Canada or Serbia (I think that’s mainly because I am making the link of cold countries though). Also if with Serbian I can see Ultear and him coming from similar places)

Gajeel Redfox : Native American (His hair and features remind me of Native Americans and I don’t know he kind of reminds me and looks like of Ratohnhake:ton / Connor from AC3) Juvia Lockser : Spanish + Russian (Spanish as the name Juvia is Spanish origin and Russian since the ushanka she wears and her clothing style in general)

Jellal Fernandes : Mixed ethnic - Mixed Arab (mainly Levantine Arab) + Brazilian, but then in my HCs he’s also part Desi too since the name Jellal is most prominent in India (And I want Erik to have a desi bro in CS). And the Arab/South asian idea came from him wearing Kohl/Surma in S1 in the anime. 

Ultear Milkovich : Serbian with mixed Central Asian or Kazakh (Again cold countries but since Ultear looks Eurasian but with dark features these countries came to mind. Serbia because apparently the name Milkovich is Serbian origin)

Macbeth/Midnight :  English w/Scottish + Irish + Japanese - English/Scottish/Irish is a given since his name ‘Macbeth’ but since his aesthetic is alike to Visual Kei, I see Japanese influence. But I don’t know, I just can see Macbeth with a british accent, maybe that’s just me.

Sorano Aguria : French and Korean/Japanese (I don’t know why I have the French, it just fits me when discussing with my friend @acutemushroom. Korean/Japanese because despite having a Japanese name (her and Yukino) due to her features she gave me kind of Korean vibes for some reason)

Sawyer : English (I can’t explain other than the name. But I thought of Romanian too for some reason, so English + Romanian?)

Richard Buchanan : South African + Scottish? (My only thought for this was because Buchanan I knew it as a last name big in South Africa, and Scottish is probably because of the red hair and ruddy complexion that I know scottish people can have)

Meredy : Irish (I don’t know why, it was hard to think of anything for her)

Kinana : Desi (Since the name Kinana is an urdu name apparently - So Pakistani) 

Cana Alberona : Irish + Italian (Guildarts gave me tanned Irish vibes for some reason and Alberona is I believe an Italian name)

Minerva Orland : Chinese + Latina (She wears a Cheongsam and her hair reminds me of Chinese culture but then I see Latina too) BUT, maybe she has Egyptian too and Italian since Minerva (Italian/Latin) but the blue eyeliner/eyeshadow she always has is alike to Malachite powder that was used by ancient egyptians 

Laxus Dreyar : Ukrainian + Russian (He gives me eastern europe vibes and also his features) but also since he's Makarov’s grandson he’d have Russian in him 

Makarov Dreyar : Russian - (I think his full name is of Russian origin but I can't be sure.) These are the HCs I have off the top of my head, hope this answers your question!