#my character is going to be using yiddish the more i learn

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

im dealing with this how im dealing with it and that’s by exponentially elaborating on my character’s home and culture to my dm as they absorb the masses of new lore

[slyandthefamilybook]

Noah's Spring Jewish Book Review

this isn't gonna become a regular thing, don't worry. I just need to gush some about these books. I'm gonna keep the reviews short too because who's got that kind of time!

So far I've read 4 Jewish novels this spring and I'm working on a fifth. We'll go in chronological order

1. Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

~ Two estranged siblings, Isaac and Bellatine Yaga—the grandchildren of the famous Baba Yaga—inherit their ancestor's chicken-footed house. They travel the country putting on puppet shows and exploring their own mysterious abilities, all the while trying to escape from a threatening figure known only as the Longshadow Man, as well as their own pasts. History relives itself in a book filled with magic and mystery ~

This book was so damn good. Every other sentence is tattoo-worthy and hits you like a sack of bricks. The characters feel so real and raw while also managing to fill out their respective roles with a sense of poetry. The book has a supporting cast of memorable characters and a sense of real danger throughout. Every so often the house will interject in a way that reminds me so much of my bubbe (עליה השלום). I've read reviews that said it dragged on a bit in the second act but I was enraptured the entire way through. It's also pretty gay, which I always appreciate. 10/10

2. When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb

~ An angle and a demon—best friends for 200 years—set out from their tiny Pale shtetl to America in search of a girl who hasn't been heard from. They're accompanied by Rosie, a spunky and fire-spirited girl from their shtetl desperate to get away and have an adventure in the far-off West ~

No book has made me feel quite so seen as this one. As someone who grew up Orthodox there's virtually no representation for people like me. The majority of Orthodox characters in media are trying to get away. None of them love it quite so much as I do, as much as the characters in this book do. From Little Ash tucking his peyot behind his ears like my older brothers used to to the angel waking up to daven shacharit. Sacha Lamb takes the brave stance of "what if Jewish theology is real, actually" and it shines on every page. The writing effortlessly intertwines spirituality and reverence with a classic Yiddish folktale. It's also pretty gay. 10/10

3. From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos

Hannah, the descendant of the famed Rabbi Yehuda Loew, wakes up one morning to find herself transformed, her eyes turning to yellow slits. Her mother seems to blame herself without explaining why, and soon after disappears. After receiving a mysterious letter, Hannah and her adopted brother Gabe travel to upstate New York to meet their mother's family, to learn the secrets of her past, and of their own lineage ~

I'll start off by saying I'm not sure if I was the target audience for this book. It was good, don't get me wrong, but the writing wasn't to my taste. It was a little... blatant, where I prefer prose to be a bit more subtle. Again, nothing wrong with it, just not my particular thing. I definitely relate to Hannah and Gabe a lot, each in their own way. A lot of the book felt very comforting and familiar to me. The book is equal parts supernatural action and intriguing mystery, and keeps you engrossed til the end. It's also Extremely Gay 7/10

4. The Way Out by Gavriel Savit

~ Yehuda Leib and Bluma set out from their tiny Pale shtetl, each on a mission of the utmost importance. Yehuda Leib is looking for his lost father, and Bluma is running from Death. Navigating the Far Country full of demons, goblins, and angels, the pair fight their way through history and mystery alike, and prepare to make war on Death himself ~

This book. Oh boy this book. Where do I start? This book made me cry several times, which hasn't happened in over 15 years. This book said everything about death I've been feeling since my bubbe passed away (עליה השלום). This book genuinely made me re-think how I view G-d? All that and more in less than 400 pages. This book harmonized with my soul. This book changed who I am as a person. This book made me crumble to dust and then built me back up from scratch. 10/10

[writingwithcolor]

Jewish dryad character: non-human Jewish characters

writingthrowaway asked:

Is it ever acceptable to write a non human Jewish character as a goyim? I am writing an urban fantasy story with a mostly non human cast, and there Is going to be a discussion of religion at one point and one of the characters (a part human, part dryad) is explaining that being non human and having magic doesn’t give any answers, just different questions. His character feels very Jewish to me, but I am wary of creating a non human Jewish character due to the history of anti semitic portrayals of Jewish people as non human. I would avoid things like horns, green skin, etc, but am still worried.

At risk of being redundant, a grammatical note: “-im” is a plural ending in Hebrew and Yiddish. Seraphim, Nephilim, lechayim, and yes, goyim, are all plural. The singular is goy. It’s also not necessary or particularly more respectful to express that you’re not Jewish by saying “I’m a goy” than by saying “I’m not Jewish.” It’s not disrespectful, it’s just not necessary. If something feels meaningful to you about saying “I’m a goy,” “I’m a gaijin,” “I’m a gringo,” etc, you do you, and now you’re able to do it less incorrectly. 

As to your actual question, I think it’s lovely to show non-human, non-villainous characters practicing Judaism. Although we don’t proselytize, we do accept converts, and there’s a lot to play with in questions about how someone with different biological and potentially social needs would practice Judaism, although that would require a significant amount of research to write from the outside. Having that person be linked with trees is especially interesting, since Judaism has a lot to say about trees in a lot of contexts. If the character is half human and half dryad, that might open the door for you to learn more about the experiences of multiracial and mixed Jews, as their experiences might mirror those. I might point you to Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who has written publicly about her experience as a mixed-race Jewish child and public figure, as a possible inspiration. 

You listed a few tropes of non-human character attributes to avoid, and you’re right about them. I encourage you to consider also the negative tropes attached to Jewish human characters. In a previous ask I listed some negative stereotypes of Jewish masculinity, and noted that many of them are only negative if the context is set up to frame them that way. You could choose either to avoid giving your Jewish, half-human man any of those attributes, or to include some of those attributes but frame them as positive or endearing, particularly the ones about  a character’s looks or intellect, but for instance I would avoid demonstrating his Jewishness through tropes like having poor boundaries with his mother or being unusually cowardly. I don’t think you’re headed in that direction but it was worth saying. 

Honestly I love the idea of non-human Jewish characters, it sounds like you’re conscious of the tropes involved, and I think you’re on the right track for creating this character sensitively and well.

-Meir

Since we have an actual Jewish tree holiday and your character is part tree creature I'd love to watch a character like that celebrate Tu Bishvat 💚

I agree with Meir that yes non human Jewish characters! But I disagree about gentiles/outsiders/etc. using “goyim” for themselves just because it’s a word in another language that you don’t actually need. It means “nations” and to me it has an “everyone else” connotation. But I’m just one person so feel free to listen to either one of us on this. I think the reason it strikes me as off is the use of a random word in a language you aren't using for anything else but that specific word, when there is a word in your language. Like it has the same vibe to me as saying you want the atmosphere in your reading nook in your apartment to evoke "shalom" rather than just saying you wanted it to evoke peace, if you're an English speaker. But yeah my response is mostly the "everyone else around us" connotation I'm used to associating with the word. Again, please don't take either me or Meir as law, we're just demonstrating the two Jews three opinions phenomenon. 

—Shira

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

From David Sedaris via Bari Weiss and Free Press.

>>>>>

The New York apartment building Hugh and I live in isn’t terribly big. I wanted a nice view, so we’re on a high floor, the drawback being that we need to rely on the elevator—not for going down so much, but only my friend Dawn would carry a load of groceries up twenty flights of stairs. The building has doormen, so between me and the street there is definitely one, but more often, two or three occasions for small talk. Nobody likes this kind of thing. That said, there’s a definite art to it.

Not long after we moved in, I was heading to the lobby, and a neighbor I would later get to know as Tommy boarded the elevator one floor below mine. He nodded at me, and as the doors closed I raised a finger. “May I ask you a question?”

“Not if it’s about how much to tip the doormen at Christmas,” he said.

That was exactly what I was going to ask. Quick, I thought, think of a replacement. “Can you recommend a cobbler?” I asked.

Now it is five years later. I’m on my way to the lobby and when a woman boards at 14, I ask, “How long have you known your dentist?”

She thinks for a moment. “Fifteen years. Why?”

“Just curious,” I say. “I knew my old one for almost that long but then we moved to New York and I had to start over.”

“And where did you move here from?” she asks. And then we’re off, pleasantly conversing until we part ways on the ground floor.

How long have you known your dentist is such a good icebreaking question, a real keeper in my opinion. I didn’t make it up, it’s not mine, rather I found it on Duolingo, an app my friend Dave turned me on to. He’d been using it to learn Spanish. Me, I started with Japanese. It offers over forty languages, free with ads, and free of them for a pretty nominal charge.

Each program features the same cast of animated characters: the excitable little boy, the bored teenage girl with hair covering her face. There’s an athletic-looking blond fellow, Vikram, who wears a turban, and Bea, who, according to her profile, is of West African heritage: eleven in all, including a talking bear named Falstaff. Sometimes Duolingo will give me a sentence in English: “How many desks are in the room?” and I have to translate it into Japanese choosing from the menu of words written in hiragana at the bottom of the screen. Other times I have to read a sentence out loud and the characters will either accept or reject me, based upon my pronunciation. My least favorite is when they give me the sentence and I have to write it in whichever language I’m studying. If you’ve only ever learned English you maybe don’t know that in other countries, “I gave her the suitcase,” might go, “I gave to her the suitcase,” or “I had to her the suitcase gave.” You have to grasp a new word order. Then there’s the spelling to worry about.

My friend Mike is learning Yiddish with Duolingo and one of the sentences it taught him is: “My uncle is a broken man.” I used its French program to freshen up before a trip to Paris not long ago, and was both surprised and not by the question, “What is he doing in our bed?”

I’m a dilettante, and always have been. Rather than really buckling down and mastering anything, I flit from one language to the next. Thus I noted how different Duolingo’s Japanese was from Duolingo’s German version. In the latter, the characters have definite opinions. “Your apartment is dark and ugly.” “I don’t like your sweater.”

They give the impression that German people are direct and judgmental, but also outdoorsy, generous, and sure of themselves. Thus such sentences as, “I’m sorry, but your doctor is playing volleyball today,” “I am giving one hundred toilets to my father,” and “Spain needs us.” There’s a lot of talk about witches, but no mention of them dating one another, this as opposed to Duolingo’s Japanese program where seemingly everyone is gay. “Is that your grandmother’s new girlfriend?” is one of the questions I was taught. Suddenly the guy with the headband on had a husband as well as a son. Even the bear was dating another guy.

I often complained about the last Japanese learning program I used, Pimsleur. So much of the talk was, as it is on their German and Polish and Romanian courses, about drinking. “Do you want a beer? Wine? Sake? Whisky? How many bottles? Should we drink at your place or mine? What time should we start drinking? Do you know what Tenaka-san drinks? Does his wife drink too? Have you ever had drinks with his parents?”

Pimsleur taught me a lot of practical things though, like how to make reservations and buy train tickets. “Which track do I leave on? At what time do we arrive? Is it an express train or a super express train?”

When it comes to icebreaker questions though, the type one might ask in an elevator, both Pimsleur and Duolingo pale compared to Teach Yourself Japanese, a book a woman in England sent me a few pages of. It was what her dad used back in the ’50s, and it includes the phrases: “What will become of us if father dies? Grandmother has turned blind. The man with small hands is my friend. I no longer take any pleasure in my work. Shall I kill myself tomorrow?” and “It is only the third bottle from the left which has poison in it.”

What age, I wonder, are these students? If you no longer take pleasure in your work I’m guessing you’ve been at it for a while, yet your grandmother is still alive, and newly blind? And just how small are the friend’s hands? I’m thinking of someone with the equivalent of raccoon paws, trying to open a bottle of pills he can kill himself with.

Depressing phrases or practical ones, you’ll never become fluent through an app or a book, no matter how many hours you devote to it. You have to talk to actual people. My friend Scott has tutors in both Japanese and French and is miles ahead of me in terms of conversing and understanding. He does his lessons once a week on Zoom. I suppose I could do the same, but I’m afraid I won’t like the tutor, and won’t know how to put an end to our relationship. It’s the same reason I don’t see a psychiatrist or hire a trainer.

Most of the doormen in my building are from Ecuador and one, Adrian, has, at my request, started speaking to me exclusively in Spanish. I took it in high school, so we didn’t have to start from scratch. The problem is that, because he essentially works for me, he’s not going to be as strict as, say, the French teacher I had in Paris. Not that I’m not progressing. Recently I learned that Adrian calls his mother Gordita, which means little fatty. It’s a nice bit of information to start your day with, though it leaves me wondering, and phrasing the question to myself in Japanese, French, German, and now, tentatively, in Spanish, “What does he call me?”

Image: Nobody likes small talk. Yet it is an art worth mastering. (Photo by Anthony Rizzuto/Anthony Angel Collection/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

[A link to David Sedaris reading his essay below]

[myjewishjourney]

i’m feelin’ a lot of emotions right now and it’s for such a silly reason but i’m sharing anyway.

so here’s me talking about the rebecca american girl series

so i was having a tough day so i decided i would read an american girl doll book. i recently acquired the first three rebecca books (well, i had the first but i found the other two at a thrift store and wanted them so i got them)

for the uninitiated, the american girl books are children’s historical fiction that have dolls that go with each character. rebecca rubin was the american girl doll who’s story is set in 1914. she is a russian american jew from an immigrant family living in new york city. if you’ve never read an american girl book, they also have a section at the end explaining the real history of whatever the girl was dealing with in the book/her time period and a glossary that would have historical words a modern kid might not know and words in other languages if they were used (primarily yiddish in this case). anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

boy let me tell you that reading her first book brought back a lot of memories for me of reading it as a child. the first book has a big focus on shabbat. rebecca is nine and she really wants to be able to light the shabbat candles but her family won’t let her so instead, she seeks to buy her own candlesticks. and i just was flooded with a memory of reading this for the first time as an eight~ year old child and learning so much about judaism that i had never been taught before. i remember reading it and learning about shabbat and lighting candles every friday and thinking, ‘wow, that sounds so cool.’ i remember eagerly flipping to the glossary in the back to find out what each yiddish word meant. i remember reading it and yearning for something i couldn’t voice. i shared this with my mom and she was surprised and told me i used to go to shabbat dinner a lot at a family friend’s as a little kid but i don’t remember that. what i do remember is rebecca rubin and learning about judaism beyond just chanukah and bar mitzvahs for the first time in my memory. and so i read this book as a 20 year old who has now spent over a year of their life studying judaism and incorporating it into their life and imaging their fully jewish future and i just. i feel a kinship with a fictional rebecca, impatient to be able to light shabbat candles for the first time, despite the fact that i do light my own shabbat candles. i feel a kinship with rebecca as she taps on the challah to see if it’s finished. i feel a kinship with rebecca in book three as she struggles with being told that christmas is an american holiday and she should celebrate it, despite the fact it is not her holiday. and i know these books probably meant even more to the kids growing up jewish who got to experience reading it as a kid and saying “a character like me!”

things have come full circle; i no longer yearn for something i do not understood. i now have a word for it and a place in it. it was judaism i longed for and before i know it, i will proudly be able to call myself jewish.

thank you, rebecca rubin.

[its-callum-everybody]

I CANNOT DRAW. That’s how I’m starting this off. You see dear readers, I lack skill in art, so, since I can’t share my twisted oc with you that way. I’ll be doing it the best way I know how: In Depth Character Analysis!

Part 1 — Basic Character Information / Relationships

Part 2 — Everything to do with her Unique Magic

Part 3 — Lore

Part 4 — Appearance

Part 2 ➤

Unique Magic Time!

Starting off, her Unique Magic and Backstory took inspiration and elements from the Disney movie: The Black Cauldron. A movie which, if you know you know, was very ‘graphic’ for its time period. So her unique magic is kind of gory and if you have anything Against the TWs below don’t read this.

TW(s): Blood, mention of Self-harm (kinda), mention of blood loss and its many after-effects

With that out of the way, I’m gonna start this off simply by giving you all the name.

" Teival’s Lamb "

Starting off, The cauldron in the movie was never given a name. Nor was the Evil Emperor that was trapped inside of it ever given one. So I’ve decided to give him a name myself: ‘Teivel’

Teivel is, from what I can source, a Yiddish name meaning ‘The Devil’ and at the very beginning of the movie the narrator is noted to say that the emperor was ‘so cruel, so evil the gods feared him.’ And as we know he obviously has some monumental power. So what can of course a god fear and have equal, if not more power, to them? The Devil.

Lambs, more often than not, are depicted as beings of innocence and purity. Tis’ why there are many phrases which depict their innocence begin sullied or used in guise of something else. Like a Sacrificial lamb is something of purity to be killed or used to appeal to a greater evil.

So in this context the name of unique magic can be understood to mean: ‘The Devil’s Lamb’ Now why would the devil hang onto someone pure? He wouldn’t. He’d want to destroy it. That’s when we start getting into her actual ability.

Teival’s Lamb allows the user to morph their own blood into different objects or beings. Perhaps even to heal and rebuild matter. There is no limit to what they can create so long as they are willing to loose the blood.

Her ability can only be used if she is bleeding, or in most cases, causes harm to herself to make her bleed. Which is to be noted as to why she carries a dagger on her person at all times. Often referring to it as her prized possession second to her rapier.

This powerful ability is of course its own weakness. As blood loss comes with many side effects: confusion, drowsiness, dizziness, increased heart rate, vomiting, seizures, disorientation, shortness of breath, and just being very weak in general. She’s also more likely to develop Anemia than others.

In short, to us her unique magic she has to harm herself in order to ‘appeal’ to the devil. Sort of like in the movie we learn that one can use the cauldron but in the you can’t control it. It will always want more. Sort of like a monkeys paw. You can wish for something, but it will take something in return, often something a bit more than what it’s worth.

Her ability works in that exact same format. Even for something small, like, a tin can. She’d have to give blood to make it.

Now. I can’t go into much more detail until I explain her lore. So everyone’s going to have to wait until that part is uploaded. Until then, please, enjoy this lovely bit of analysis.

[fortressofserenity]

Sadly, she doesn’t speak Scots

When it comes to minority language speaker representation in the X-Men stories, it seems like there’s almost so few, if any, characters who speak a minority language that they’re underrpresented in a way redheads aren’t, which is saying when it comes to characters like Jean Grey, Rachel Summers, Cessily Kincaid, Theresa and Sean Cassidy, Shatterstar, Mystique, Firestar, Sapphire Styx, Hope Summers and even Alison Blaire at some point, if you consider strawberry blond to be a shade of red. Within the X-Men stories, there’s practically only one minority language speaker and that’s Kate Pryde whenever she does speak a word in Yiddish at all.

It’s already pretty disproportionate that within the world of the X-Men stories there are more redheads than there are minority language speakers, you might say I’m generalising things and that some languages are harder to learn. But I personally believe the latter belief undermines any sincere efforts at revitalising a dying tongue, especially if it’s been endangered for so long and the odd possibility that somebody else would learn such a language with ease and effort. That’s from my experience bothering to learn some Scottish Gaelic, with my father finding that language difficult or something. But the thing here is that even if some languages are tricky to learn, there will always be somebody eager to learn it anyways.

But it seems almost none of the X-Men writers are minority language speakers, none of them are eager to learn a minority language which undermines efforts at using mutants as a metaphor for ethnic discrimination. Especially when almost none of the mutants themselves speak a minority language that they’re going to be really underrepresented in a way redheads aren’t, that it must be a pretty sad situation where we could’ve gotten minority language speaker representation with more mutants onboard. Rahne Sinclair could’ve been a Gaelic speaker, but I could settle for her speaking in Scots. Sadly neither language gets represented in any of the X-Men stories.

It would’ve been nice to see more mutants speaking in languages like Scots, Frisian, Scottish Gaelic, Comanche, Cheyenne, Lakota and Apache, but I suppose that’s going to take more effort and actual enthusiasm for any minority language to have it take off big time. Like I said before it’s kind of unfortunate that there’s not a lot of minority language speaker representation in the X-Men stories, which is ironic because X-Men writers love pushing the minority angle yet have no real interest in or experience with minority languages themselves. That only makes it worse really.

We could have characters sparking people’s interest in learning a minority language, like what Scottish and Irish folk music did for me before. Some characters like Rahne Sinclair again could be reimagined as speaking in a minority language like Scots, but it’s the road that’s barely ever taken by both X-Men writers and X-Men fans. X-Men writers want to advocate for minorities, but when it comes to other aspects of the ethnic minority experience language is one of the things they don’t do much so far. Even if it could help revitalise a language, so it wouldn’t hurt if she spoke Scottish Gaelic for instance. Or for another matter, have Pixie speak Welsh.

Or even Theresa and Sean speaking Irish, but it doesn’t just have to be Celtic language speakers that need representation.

[keptin-indy]

When the Angels Left the Old Country review

Full disclosure: I won this book in a giveaway, so I feel like I'm morally obligated to write a public review instead of just talking to people in real life about it.  You are free to view me as an unpaid shill, or a shill who has been paid with one (1) book.

A little background on my perspective: I am Jewish, but not very good at it and I have extremely strong feelings on Good Omens going back more than 20 years.  I have cosplayed Aziraphale more than once like 10 years ago.  I looked up a whole lot of Yiddish words before I realized there's a glossary in the back, so learn from my mistakes.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and was sad when it started wrapping up! If the idea of a Good Omens / Fievel: An American Tail crossover sounds like a good time to you, you will probably enjoy this book.

It's a very quick and engaging read, but I happened to start reading it right before the latest round of internet discourse on antisemitism, which made for a fairly distressing combination and a solid day of Jewish navel-gazing in the middle.

It starts a little slow, both plot-wise and genre-wise, but picks up in the second half.  By genre-wise, I mean that there were long sections of the book where I could practically forget that two-thirds of the main cast were supernatural creatures.  Yes, they talked about it, but after a short burst in the beginning, they basically don't do anything with it until the second half of the book.  Even with more going on in the latter half, this is a very low magic book, so don't expect a Good Omens level of miracles and major supernatural characters outside of the main pair.  Yes, they do exist, but this is a much smaller scale story.  This isn't a bad thing, it's just different and I want to set the correct expectations.

Also speaking of expectations, this is much more a Jewish story than it is a queer one.  Yes, there are baby lesbians and what is technically a non-binary character (though I feel that a being that doesn't have a sex to begin with is a very different, less queer thing than someone who is born into the presumption of having a sex and gender).  Now I am wholeheartedly in favor of stories where the focus is not being queer, the characters just happen to be queer people and the plot does not revolve around their identities, so this was fine.  But if you're expecting a romance focus, this doesn't really have one beyond the bog standard "at the end of the narrative, the people who seem compatible get together".  Yes, the angel and demon are devoted to each other and the story treats that as very important, but I've seen a thousand stories where the same level of devotion could be played completely platonically as well.

To quibble, there are some inconsistences, where the author forgot something they'd said earlier or else made changes during writing and didn't go back and bring some other things in line, as well as some things that aren't adequately explained in my opinion, but they didn't detract much beyond occasionally breaking me out of immersion to scratch my head and go right back to reading.  It could perhaps have used another editing pass, but it's far from a major problem.

Very mild spoilers with my opinions on the main characters below:

Little Ash: I'm going to be frank here and say I didn't hugely like Little Ash because he's the kind of character that seems designed to appeal to a certain demographic of YA reader, e.g. the nonthreatening Bad Boy, who is a Rebel with a reputation for Doing Bad Things but who never actually does any of those bad things except when they're morally justified.  If you like Loki in the Thor movies and complain about him being too mean in the Avengers, or TV show!Crowley, or any of the various YA novel love interests of the leather-pants-Draco variety, you'll probably like him much more than I did.  Of the two divine beings, he's the more fleshed out and the one who feels more like a POV character the reader is supposed to identify with, which I of course was a little irritated by.

The angel: The angel's relationship with identity is the most compelling thing in the book to me, but it is unlikely to be a popular character with people who don't view strong senses of Duty, Purpose and general lawfulness as positive, which is frankly most of tumblr.  I would have liked more emotional responses to the changes in its identity, but I guess it was also learning emotions so maybe I shouldn't expect that of it yet.  While becoming more yourself is a good thing, not all parts of the experience are positive at the time, and when it encounters some of these parts, the angel mostly shrugs about it and moves on instead of mourning the loss of what it used to be.  It's a very sanitized transition.

Rose: I like her, as the sort of too-sensible girl you find in middle grade fiction, which I have utmost respect for.  She felt realistically like a young person who did not know what she was about but was convinced she definitely knew what she was about, which is just how being a teenager is.

I wanted there to be more Grandmother Rivke.  This is my biggest complaint.  She was great.

[bibookmerm]

libro.fm has a reading challenge starting today, so I'm going for it. (logging how many hours of audibooks you listen to from July 16 - July 26). I finallyyyy started a book I've been wanting to read forever, When The Angels Left The Old Country by Sacha Lamb.

Pretty sure I have already reblogged quotes and fan art here, lol. I can already tell 2 hours in it's a new favorite of mine. new comfort character acquired ("I only met Angel Whose Name Is Whatever Verb/Emotion It Is Currently Embodying today, but if anything happened to it..."). love where this is going, love the narrator's voice and the hijinks ensuing.

I also jumped back into a yiddish class today! I'm feeling so nostalgic because reading a fantasy novel with a pretty similar concept is what inspired me to start learning yiddish in the first place.

Class went okay. We did some review and I believe I chose the right level. A lot of older people, whereas I'm used to my class with people my age, but anywhere outside the one specific teacher I started with seems to be retired folks and grad students only, more retirees than students, lol.

Even being at the age where I could easily be in grad school, I feel out of place. But idk. I'm gonna be a nerd doing nerd shit whether I am doing so in an official capacity or not. Toward an end or not. The cool thing is if you want to be there and you pay for the class, you belong there just as much as any researcher, journalist, translator, academic etc. Even if you just wanna chat with people about trivial things and read fiction in the language and enjoy the music. That is okay.

[bixiebeet]

Tldr: Janine and Egon have a beautiful and rare Jewish love story that was ahead of its time. Thank you fellow shippers for helping to celebrate this.

“Some artists argue that making light of prejudice, or turning purveyors of it into absurdities, robs hatred of power. I’ve been persuaded by that idea, and like many secular types, a Jewish sense of humor is more integral to my identity than any religious observance. It’s also a source of pride. A resilient comic sensibility that finds joy in dark places is one of the greatest Jewish legacies — as is an ability to laugh at ourselves.”

“When a gentile plays a Jew, the results are often more affected, the mannerisms pronounced, which can often mean the difference between someone playing Jewish vs. inhabiting a Jewish character…”

“I never questioned the idea that Jews had been well represented in popular culture until I read Jeremy Dauber’s book “Jewish Comedy: A Serious History” and learned that not one leading character on prime-time television clearly identified as Jewish from 1954 to 1972 and again from 1978 to 1987.”

“How much did it matter that as a boy I saw no Jewish couples on television? I’m not certain — draw your own conclusions about the fact that I married a non-Jew.”

This essay captures a key part of what I adore about the Egon-Janine ship: two Jewish characters getting a chance to be together. And mainstream people dig it!! Like the author, I was a Jewish child who hardly saw this depicted in TV and film.

I think many people don’t realize that Egon and Janine are Jewish, because they don’t look like caricatures of Jewish people that you often see in media. Especially caricatures delivered for laughs. This is the difference between ‘playing Jewish’ aka being over the top versus ‘inhabiting’ a Jewish role.

Janine’s surname, Melnitz, suggests an Ashkenazi (European) Jewish background. Many Polish, Russian, and other Slavic Jewish surnames end in “-itz.” (Think Manischewitz, Saffitz, Wolowitz, etc.) Janine is sassy fashionista, like a Brooklyn-born predecessor to Fran Drescher in The Nanny. Some online articles say that J. Michael Straczynski, a leading writer for The Real Ghostbusters series, even confirmed that Janine is Jewish.

Egon as played by Harold Ramis epitomizes a culturally Jewish character who isn’t acting like an exaggerated Jewish person. Ramis played A LOT of subtly Jewish roles, including: Moe Green in SCTV, Russell Ziskey in Stripes, Steven Buchner in Baby Boom, Harris Stone in Knocked Up, etc. He even played a Hasidic record producer who speaks Yiddish in the 2007 movie Walk Hard.

Ramis spoke at length in many interviews and speeches about how Jewish comedic traditions shaped his sense of humor. That worldview has more to do with depicting a Jewish character than what many people think it means to be Jewish (‘a very special episode’ when someone celebrates Hanukkah, which by the way is a minor holiday). According to Violet Ramis Stiel, her dad acknowledged the visual change from Egon in the ‘84 movie to The Real Ghostbusters like this: “I think we have a ways to go before we get a hunky Jewish cartoon character.”

Ramis and director Ivan Reitman were both Jewish. Reitman’s mother survived the Auschwitz concentration camp. They contributed a Jewish sensibility to Ghostbusters just as much as other actors and writers brought their own points of view.

All this to say, I rarely saw subtle Jewish characters like Egon and Janine growing up. And when they are on screen, they’re the quirky friend, not the hero or love interest. It’s meaningful to see how many people (especially non Jewish people) adore them as individuals and together. It really warms my heart. Thank you for reading!

[wonderlandleighleigh]

Hi! I have a question for you concerning TMMM and identity.

Since Jewish culture is an integral part of this show, it's natural that anyone who wants to write a TMMM fic would have to learn about Jewish humor and traditions and quite probably use them in their writing. Do you think it's appropriate for people of other ethnicities to touch upon those subjects (e. g. when writing about Midges standup or family interactions)? Or should goyish people just avoid the Jewish ethnicity topics in their fics altogether? I'm more inclined to believe the latter, especially with jokes, but what do you think? 

P.S. I'm not Jewish, just a curious Ukrainian. I thought about writing a TMMM fic, but then imagined how I would feel if I saw a shitty portrayal of my people.

P.P.S. I hope it's polite to ask. Feel free to tell me off if it's not. 

Hi there!

So I'm going to preface this by saying: one Jew does not an entire people's opinion make. So whatever I think? It's just kinda what I think.

I think that if you're willing to sit down and do the research on Jewish humor, identity, and family life/dynamics, and portray them in a way that, yes, is funny and truthful, but also shows some respect, then it's totally fine. Write away!

The great thing about this show is that it shows an ENORMOUS swath of different personalities. Midge, Noah, Moishe, Joel, Shirley, Rose, Abe and Lenny are all Jewish, and they are SO DIFFERENT! And it's not something we see on television very often. Usually there is one token Jew, and they are one of two things:

an insulting stereotype

"Jewish" but they don't practice Judaism and we don't get to see the dynamics of their family or how being Jewish informs their life.

But you have the intellectual, upper class set in the Weissmans, right? Art, Science and Mathematics. We're shown that Rose's family is very wealthy. We are led to believe that Abe's family also had money if he was chosen by the matchmaker for Rose.

Then you have the working class, climbed the class ladder Maisels. They're loud, they're anxious, they're combative. They are everything that we think of when we think of Jews. Old Jews especially. What keeps them from tipping into stereotypes is that we see vulnerable moments with them. We get to experience life with them.

(on an unrelated note, Joel's insistence that he is an underdog, even though he's not, likely comes from growing up with parents who WERE underdogs. Who really scrambled their way up.)

And Lenny is there, waving his lower class, Jewish show biz fam "I'm from Long Island and my mother was a stripper comedian and likely did Vaudeville before it totally died" flag.

All Jews. All from intensely different backgrounds. All intensely different people.

So in thinking about all of this, I'm not so sure if it's about writing Jewishness, so much as it is about writing these specific Jewish characters in character as related to their Jewishness. Obviously using Yiddish words and centering things around Jewish holidays and going to Synagogue on Saturday mornings/Friday nights will make anything with these characters more authentic, but you don't have to if you don't know how.

But also, keep in mind, that as a modern Jewish person, I am ALSO a little out of my depth! These characters were all born 1933 and beforehand, and their Jewish lives are so intensely different from my own. Their challenges were different. They were so much closer to events like the Holocaust. During season 2, during that big number at the end of the Catskills trip, where it's all the kids (and Susie) doing that around the world skit, Shirley comments about the poor taste in having a Russian segment in a room full of Jews.

Which. To be honest, I mean. Lots of Russians still don't like us LOL. But it's nowhere near as fresh! If Shirley's parents were Russian, it's likely they were murdered and run out of town by pogroms.

Keep in mind that Abe was born 1898. His mother was likely born in the 1870's. Rose's time spent in Paris in her youth happened in the 1920's. Which is 100 years ago now. Viewed through a modern lens, their lived experience was so long ago, it feels a little staggering.

While I have a leg up in having grown up with Jewish grandparents and great grandparents, it's no substitute for a lived experience.

So! If you're willing to do the research, and not rely on lazy stereotypes, and also realize that you might get some things wrong (we all do!), then I say go for it!

I hope this helped! <3

[disneydancepants]

Headcanon: the Disney Americas

When I was writing up my Disney Villains name list, I came across an interesting tidbit. Unlike Yzma or Kuzco, Kronk actually has a confirmed full name: Kronk Pepikrankenitz.

What started with little hints in Emperor's New Groove and really culminated in Kronk's wedding daydream during Kronk's New Groove turned into actual confirmation that Kronk is Jewish! You can read more about it here:

Wait, you may be thinking... How is an Incan character Jewish? How did Judaism reach Peru prior to colonial genocide? Well, strap yourselves in! I have a tale to tell you.

I was reading about Sapa Inca (Incan Emperors) to try to find a possible full name for Kuzco when I came across this info on Wikipedia:

"Túpac Amaru became the Inca ruler after Titu Cusi's death in 1571. Titu Cusi's close companion Martín de Pando, who had worked as a scribe for the Inca for over ten years, and Augustinian Friar Diego Ortiz were blamed for killing Titu Cusi by poisoning him. Both were killed."

Emperor Cusi was killed by his scribe/close companion, who he had known for over a decade, and that scribe's (presumably hunky) minion? Via POISON?!

Cusi? Kuzco? Cusi?! KUZCO!

There's no evidence that Kuzco is based on or inspired by Titu Cusi, but that's a crazy coincidence. Kuzco's name is actually taken from the ancient Incan city of Cusco, and he was originally going to be named Manco Capac--the first Incan ruler and founder of Cusco, iirc. Despite initial drafts, Kuzco ultimately was NOT meant to parallel the actual Manco Capac. For starters, Yzma lived through emperors prior to Kuzco taking the throne. So he clearly isn't the founding ruler.

Here're my thoughts. Judaism, spinach puffs/empanadas, and all the other anachronisms exist because the Disney Inca have already had European contact. Titu Cusi was one of the last Sapa Inca before Pizarro and the Spanish murdered them all.

The real Inca didn't have Yzma. Y'know the diabolical dinosaur who also happens to be a scientific and alchemical genius. The genius who makes the potions. The potions that can turn humans into animals. Those potions.

Trivia time! Anyone remember who the only other animal besides Kuzco in Emperor's New Groove is who talks? No, not the squirrel. He only speaks squirrel.

That fly. You may have come across internet theories saying that fly is also a polymorphed human, and I agree with them. I believe that fly is the last remaining member of Pizarro's conquistadors.

Yzma saw through Pizarro's facade and...

Fly potion in their soup. Boom, baby. The Inca liked some European influences though and adopted them into their culture. Kronk's parents or grandparents liked the idea of Judaism and converted. Maybe, somehow, some Jewish people sought asylum from the Inquisition by coming to New World and integrated. The diner waitress knows some Yiddish, so Kronk isn't isolated in his faith.

This takes us to Pocahontas. When the English arrive in Virginia, Ratcliffe or somebody mentions the "Spanish success" finding gold in the New World. I guess they didn't hear the full story of what happened to Pizarro. Or Cortes...

Yeah, killing all the Aztecs and taking their gold didn't work out so great...

The peace agreement I vaguely sorta remember King Jimmy making with Pocahontas in her sequel apparently doesn't hold up, as eventually the United States are formed (see The Princess and the Frog).

I'm still trying to wrap my headcanon around Bayou de Orleans being in Auradon on the Descendants map. I feel like Fairy Godmother, Genie, and Sofia the First (her Amulet of Avalor has magic that can transcend time-space) must have gotten together and done a Convergence of the Spheres type thing a la The Witcher.

I kind of want to write a fanfic now about King Adam/Beast forming that treaty. You know Beast tried to get Mr. Cedric thrown into the Isle, but there's no way Sofia was having that.

[zaftikat]

On Aurebesh and cursive

I'm migrating a Twitter thread to Tumblr because twitter threads are hellish.

As a brief intro, I created a handwritten version of the Aurebesh for use on ChicksWithDice, because the current planet they're on uses paper books and pens. This post is going to be about orthography, and how to construct logical graphemes based on an extant ConAlphabet. So buckle up for a wild ride through proto-Canaanite scripts (namely Phoenician), modern Hebrew cursive, and the development of a cursive system.

Like most grapheme-based writing systems (as opposed to logograms and syllabaries) Aurebesh has a pretty direct connection to the Proto-Canaanite script system (and the alphabets derived thereof like Phoenecian and proto-Hebrew).

Let's take a look at a grapheme that exemplifies the connection. We don't need to go far to find our first culprit: A, א, and 𐤀. In Aurebesh, the character Aurek.

There's a pretty direct connection to be made from Phoenician directly to all 3 other characters. So in developing a handwritten system, I looked to the handwritten version of modern cursive Hebrew for inspiration (since I'm currently learning Yiddish for fun).

What stood out to me was how well cursive א translates into a cursive version of Aurek. It also worked for Besh/ב/B, Dorn/ד/D, Leth/ל/L and Resh/ר/R. I used the graphemes from ע, ס, and כ in other places as were appropriate, but they don't exactly correspond 1 for 1.

That leaves a hell of a lot of characters to fill in. So, I started thinking about how symbols would evolve as they were written over centuries, and people got lazy with their writing. The first thing I looked at was stroke count. When you need to write quickly you're looking at limiting the number of times you need to make distinct motions. Printed Aurebesh characters have a tiresome number of distinct movements. Aurek is a 6 stroke character. Besh is 7.

If we could take Aurek from 6 to 2 using cursive Hebrew as a guide and Besh from 7 to 3, the rest of the alphabet should follow similar conventions. Cresh could literally just be 1 stroke instead of 3 distinct lines. Esk could be written as 2 strokes instead of 4.

This ended up working for a large portion of the graphemes, which made life super easy. The hard part comes in dealing with graphically similar characters like Cherek and Krill, or Osk, Wesk, and Xesh. In their printed form, it's pretty clear each of these characters is distinct, but in a system where speed is emphasized, especially as we look to limit strokes, they tend to bleed together.

As an example, Cherek and Krill could both reasonably be represented by the cursive כ (see above). Cherek would also be a 1 for 1 phonemic correspondence to cursive Hebrew in that case, but graphically, Krill makes for a better analog. Krill would use the cursive כ and an alternative grapheme needed to be developed for Cherek. In that process, I looked at other alphabets and syllabaries that I had studied previously. Hiragana in particular stood out since the kana つ (tsu) has a similar vibe. Eventually, those inspirations evolved into what you'll see at the end of this post. My instinct for Osk was straight up just an O or something akin to cursive ס, which is honestly just what I went for. Then I got to Wesk and went, "oh kriff". I took a look at my handy cursive Hebrew chart that I have hanging above my desk for reference, and tried to come up with something. I came up with a version of cursive פ but in all honesty, I'm not happy with it especially when I could have opted for cursive ם, which is literally right there. I think Wesk and Yirt are my weakest graphemes, and I am liable to redo them as I work on this project more. With all that said in this long post, I probably owe you the actual Aurebesh. It's laid out as Roman, Printed Aurebesh, Handwritten Aurebesh. This is all subject to change, but I'm still pretty proud of the work I put into this! Thanks for reading this far!

If you'd like to support this kind of bullshit, and my Actual Play series visit the Soses Media Patreon

[meirmakesstuff]

1/2 Hi Meir! I saw your answer on WWC, and since you mentioned you're professionals, I figured I'd ask directly: I'm writing a second world fantasy with a jewish coded people. I want to be clear in the coding but avoid the "if there's no egypt, how can there be passover?" so I called them Canaanites. I thought I was being clever by hinting in the naming that the whole region does exist, but I've since read that it might've been a slur in fact? Do you have any advice on this?

2/2 I did consider calling the group in question Jewish, but aside from how deeply Judaism is connected to the history of the Israelites, I haven't used any present-day real-world names for any other group, (I did use some historic names like Nubia). I feel like calling only one group of people by their currently used name would be othering rather than inclusive? Or am I overthinking this?

Okay so I want to start out with some disclaimers, first that although WWC recently reblogged an addition of mine to one of their posts, I am not affiliated with @writingwithcolor​, and second that the nature of trying to answer a question like this is “two Jews, three opinions,” so what I have to say about this is my own opinion(s) only. Last disclaimer: this is a hard question to address, so this answer is going to be long. Buckle up.

First, I would say that you’re right to not label the group in question “Jewish” (I’ll get to the exception eventually), and you’re also right in realizing that you should not call them “Canaanites.” In Jewish scripture, Canaanites are the people we fought against, not ourselves, so that wouldn’t feel like representation but like assigning our identity to someone else, which is a particular kind of historical violence Jews continue to experience today. I’ll get back to the specific question of naming in a moment, but because this is my blog and not WWC, and you asked me to speak to this as an educator, we’re going to take a detour into Jewish history and literary structure before we get back to the question you actually asked.

To my mind there are three main ways to have Jews in second-world fantasy and they are:

People who practice in ways similar to modern real-world Jews, despite having developed in a different universe,

People who practice in ways similar to ancient Hebrews, because the things that changed us to modern Jewish practice didn’t occur, and

People who practice in a way that shows how your world would influence the development of a people who started out practicing like ancient Hebrews and have developed according to the world they’re in. 

The first one is what we see in @shiraglassman​‘s Mangoverse series: there is no Egypt yet her characters hold a seder; the country coded Persian seems to bear no relation to their observance of Purim, and there is no indication of exile or diaspora in the fact that Jews exist in multiple countries and cultures, and speak multiple languages including Yiddish, a language that developed through a mixture of Hebrew and German. Her characters’ observance lines up approximately with contemporary Reform Jewish expectations, without the indication of there ever having been a different practice to branch off from. She ignores the entire question of how Jews in her universe became what they are, and her books are lyrical and sweet and allow us to imagine the confidence that could belong to a Jewish people who weren’t always afraid.

Shira is able to pull this off, frankly, because her books are not lore-heavy. I say this without disrespect--Shira often refers to them as “fluffy”--but because the deeper you get into the background of your world and its development, the trickier this is going to be to justify, unless you’re just going to just parallel every historical development in Jewish History, including exile and diaspora across the various nations of your world, including occasional near-equal treatment and frequent persecution, infused with a longing for a homeland lost, or a homeland recently re-established in the absolutely most disappointing of ways.

Without that loss of homeland or a Mangoverse-style handwaving, we have the second and third options. In the second option, you could show your Jewish-coded culture having never been exiled from its homeland, living divided into tribes each with their own territory, still practicing animal, grain, and oil sacrifice at a single central Temple at the center of their nation, overseen by a tribe that lacks territory of their own and being supported by the sacrifices offered by the populace.

If you’re going to do that, research it very carefully. A lot of information about this period is drawn from scriptural and post-scriptural sources or from archaeological record, but there’s also a lot of Christian nonsense out there assigning weird meanings and motivations to it, because the Christian Bible takes place during this period and they chose to cast our practices from this time as evil and corrupt in order to magnify the goodness of their main character. In any portrayal of a Jewish-coded people it’s important to avoid making them corrupt, greedy, bigoted, bloodthirsty, or stubbornly unwilling to see some kind of greater or kinder truth about the world, but especially if you go with this version. 

The last option, my favorite but possibly the hardest to do, is to imagine how the people in the second option would develop given the influences of the world they’re in. Do you know why Chanukah is referred to as a “minor” holiday? The major holidays are the ones for which the Torah specifies that we “do not work:” Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and the pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot. Chanukah developed as a holiday because the central temple, the one we made those pilgrimages to, was desecrated by the invading Assyrian Greeks and we drove them out and were able to re-establish the temple. That time. Eventually, the Temple was razed and we were scattered across the Roman Empire, developing the distinct Jewish cultures we see today. The Greeks and Romans aren’t a semi-mythologized ancient people, the way the Canaanites have been (though there’s increasing amounts of archaeology shedding light on what they actually might have been like), we have historical records about them, from them. The majority of modern Jewish practice developed from the ruins of our ancient practices later than the first century CE. In the timeline of Jewish identity, that’s modern.

The rabbinic period and the Temple period overlap somewhat, but we’re not getting into a full-scale history lesson here. Suffice it to say that it was following the loss of the sacrificial system at the central Temple that Judaism coalesced an identity around verbal prayer services offered at the times of day when we would previously have offered sacrifices, led each community by its own learned individual who became known as a rabbi. We continued to develop in relationship with the rest of the world, making steps toward gender equality in the 1970s and LGBT equality in the 2000s, shifting the meaning of holidays like Tu Bishvat to address climate change, debating rulings on whether one may drive a car on Shabbat for the sake of being with one’s community, and then pivoting to holding prayer services daily via Zoom.

The history of the Jews is the history of the world.  Our iconic Kol Nidrei prayer, the centerpiece of the holiest day of the year, that reduces us to tears every year at its first words, was composed in response to the Spanish Inquisition. The two commentators who inform our understanding of scripture--the ones we couldn’t discuss Torah without referencing even if we tried--wrote in the 11th and 12th centuries in France and Spain/Egypt. Jewish theology and practice schismed into Orthodox and Reform (and later many others) because that’s the kind of discussion people were into in the 19th century. Sephardim light Chanukah candles in an outdoor lamp while Ashkenazim light Chanukah candles in an indoor candelabrum because Sephardim developed their traditions in the Middle East and North Africa and the Ashkenazim developed our traditions in freezing Europe. There are works currently becoming codified into liturgy whose writers died in 2000 and 2011. 

So what are the historical events that would change how your Jewish-coded culture practices, if they don’t involve loss of homeland and cultural unity? What major events have affected your world? If there was an exile that precipitated an abandonment of the sacrificial system, was there a return to their land, or are they still scattered? Priority one for us historically has been maintaining our identity and priority two maintaining our practices, so what have they had to shift or create in order to keep being a distinct group? Is there a major worldwide event in your world? If so, how did this people cope?

If you do go this route, be careful not to fall into tropes of modern or historical antisemitism: don’t have your culture adopt a worldview that has their deity split into mlutiple identities (especially not three). Don’t have an oppressive government that doesn’t represent its people rise up to oppress outsiders within its borders (this is not the first time this has occurred in reality, but because the outside world reacts differently to this political phenomenon when it’s us than when it’s anyone else, it’s a portrayal that makes real-life Jews more vulnerable). And don’t portray the people as having developed into a dark and mysterious cult of ugly, law-citing men and beautiful tearstreaked women, but it doesn’t sound as if you were planning to go there.

So with all that said, it’s time to get back to the question of names. All the above information builds to this: how you name this culture depends on how you’ve handled their practice and identity. 

Part of why Shira Glassman’s handwaving of the question of how modern Jewish practice ended up in Perach works is that she never gives a name to the religion of her characters. Instead, she names the regions they come from. Perach, in particular, the country where most of the action takes place, translates to “Flower.” In this case, her Jewish-coded characters who come from Perach are Perachis, and characters from other places who are also Jewish are described as “they worship as Perachis do despite their different language” or something along those lines (forgive me, Shira, for half-remembering).

So that’s method one: find an attribute of your country that you’d like to highlight, translate it into actual Hebrew, and use that as your name.

Method two is the opposite: find a name that’s been used to identify our people or places (we’ve had a bunch), find out what it means or might mean in English, and then jiggle that around until it sounds right for your setting. You could end up with the nation of the Godfighters, or Children of Praise, The Wanderers (if they’re not localized in a homeland), The Passed-Over, Those From Across The River, or perhaps the people of the City of Peace.

Last, and possibly easiest, pick a physical attribute of their territory and just call them that in English. Are they from a mountainous region? Now they’re the Mountain People. Does their land have a big magical crater in the middle? Craterfolk. Ethereal floating forests of twinkling lights? It’s your world.

The second option is the only one that uses the name to overtly establish Jewish coding. The first option is something Jews might pick up on, especially if they speak Hebrew, but non-Jews would miss. The third avoids the question and puts the weight of conveying that you’re trying to code them as Jewish on their habits and actions.

There’s one other option that can work in certain types of second-world fantasy, and that’s a world that has developed from real-world individuals who went through some kind of portal. That seems to me the only situation in which using a real-world name like Jews, Hebrews, or Israelites would make sense. Jim Butcher does this with the Romans in the Codex Alera series, and Katharine Kerr does it with Celts in the Deverry cycle. That kind of thing has to be baked into the world-building, though, so it probably doesn’t help with this particular situation. 

This is a roundabout route to what I imagine you were hoping would be an easier answer. The tension you identified about how to incorporate Jewishness into a world that doesn’t have the same history is real, and was the topic of a discussion I recently held with a high school age group around issues of Jewish representation in the media they consume and hope to create. Good luck in your work of adding to the discussion.

[supercantaloupe]

okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

[valhallanrose]

Zelda Mannerism Alphabet

Prompts can be found here

I think I’ve done a few of these before in asks, but I have the energy to write these days and none of the ideas, so I’m going to slowly flesh these out for each of my crew because I like that they make me think and develop them in little ways. Also, references I can come back to! 

It’s entirely selfish and I’m making excuses but on we go lmao

A. Accent: What accent does your character have? Are there any words or phrases they use more often than other people? How good is your character at imitating other accents and sounds?

Zelda has a little bit of a Nevivic (Russian) accent, though granted Vesuvia is as multicultural as it is, it’s never really presented an issue. 

Sometimes she’ll use colloquialisms she would have grown up with, which don’t always translate well, but she likes her versions better - her favorites are “I write like a chicken with its foot” and “I feel like a sleepy fly”. She’ll also go for the Yiddish term for something if the equivalent doesn’t have the punch she wants in the moment; like kvetching over complaining, mishegas over silliness, schmuck or putz over jerk (a favorite to mutter under her breath when she deals with a rude client). 

She’s not great at imitating accents and sounds that fall outside the Slavic language sphere (learning Venterran was a struggle for her), but she can manage it with time. 

B. Bold: Does your character mock other people nonverbally? Have they ever gotten in trouble for making a sarcastic facial expression?

Zelda has, in a way, trained herself not to do it in front of people due to her job, so she’s never been caught - but she’ll take a chance she’s got her back turned to roll her eyes when people are nitpicking how her shop is decorated, or saying anything that’s rude/entitled while she’s trying to help them.

She doesn’t stand for outright abuse in her shop, but she’ll put up with some attitude due to a (sometimes unfortunate) wealth of patience and a lot of concern for the health of others. It’s good story fuel, though, when she sees her friends. 

C. Confidence: What mannerisms does your character have when they’re confident?

The ones you’ll see most often is the change in her posture (standing tall, shoulders back and down) and that she walks with a very clear sense of purpose. Wardrobe wise she displays her confidence in loud, vibrant colors and patterns - they’re eye catching, and she won’t mind the attention, because she knows she looks good. 

D. Dance: How does your character dance? Are they good at it, or bad at it? Do they dance confidently, even if they’re bad at it, or do they get embarrassed?

She’s....fine. Fine is a good way to put it, lmao. She’s not atrocious but she doesn’t dance often, and honestly, she rarely dances unless she’s with someone - she doesn’t like dancing alone. Nor is she really winning competitions with her ability, but she’d dance to have a good time above all else, anyway. 

E. Entice: If your character were to flirt with someone else, how would they go about it? Are they generally perceived as charming, or not-so-charming?

She does a lot of your ‘contact flirting’ - a hand touching your forearm or back, a light touch to the face when there’s a reason for it (ex. moving hair), etc. She’ll also twirl the end a piece of her hair around her finger, or play with her own dangling earring, and she can never quite hide the happy little smile she wears at being in your company. I don’t know if I’d say she’s charming, but she’s certainly confident when she does flirt. 

F. Filler: Does your character commonly use “buffer words,” such as “uh” or “like,” or are they more concise in their speech?

Zelda tends to use more of the ‘like’ buffer without realizing it, but especially when she’s excited about something. She’s also a sort of long-winded story teller, where she talks about three other adjacent stories before finally getting to her original story, and she can fit a lot in one breath if you let her when she’s on a tangent. But pointing it out makes her incredibly self-conscious, and then you hear more of the buffers, the like/um/uh trifecta while she tries to pull it together and tamper her excitement.

G. Grow: Has your character picked up any mannerisms from other characters? Do they tend to imitate other people without realizing it?

Not that she consciously realizes, but when she and Tamryn are in the same space, you can see it in their physical behaviors. Most noticeably is that they sit the same way in a chair - legs crossed at the ankle, leaning on their right elbow if the chair has arms; standing with their weight on their left hip and arms crossed over their chest or hands on their hips. She also picks up turns of phrase from friends if she’s around them enough, so she has a somewhat eclectic vocabulary depending on who she spends the most time around.

H. Hair: If applicable, how often does your character touch their hair? Do they toy with their hair absently? Do they twirl their hair when they’re nervous, or to flirt?

I touched on it a bit with E(ntice), but she will twirl the ends of her hair when flirting, or pull it forward over her shoulders. When she’s nervous she tends to leave her hair alone, and when she’s working you’ll see her take a moment to stop and braid or put up her hair if she hasn’t already - the humidity and heat makes it pretty frizzy once she gets the fires going. 

I. Impression: What do other characters first think of your character, based on their body language and way of speaking? Is this first impression usually accurate?

It’s usually pretty easy to pick up she’s Nevivic, for one, and her usually brightly-colored attire I think indicates someone cheery and warm, which would be a correct assumption. If you meet her at work she’s a mix of warm and serious, because she knows what she’s doing and wants to reassure you she does, but doesn’t want to seem incredibly full of herself. 

J. Judge: Is your character quick to judge other characters on their mannerisms, or do they prefer to get to know someone before judging?

Zelda usually likes to sit back and wait - very much in the mindset of “people will show their asses on their own” if you give them time - but she’s usually quick to note body language 

K. Kick: Is your character quick to physically fight or intimidate other people? Are they good, bad, or somewhere in-between at fighting?

Absolutely awful at fighting, she’s never been one for physical contact like that. Nor is she one for physical intimidation, though if you push her buttons too much - knowing she is an incredibly patient person - she will not hesitate to verbally rip you a new one. 

Though, as a child, she did bite someone for picking on her brother. 

L. Location: Does your character use any regional slang? Are any mannerisms more common in their home location than in other places?

Definitely a few that overlap with both her Russian- and Polish-coded background, so let’s go:

Upon introduction, she defaults to a firm handshake, and always holds eye contact. She was taught that looking away is rude and shows indifference, so she’s never shy on that front.

She gestures with her whole hand, never pointing with one finger, to indicate something

If invited over to a friend’s home, she’s rarely without some sort of gift. Typically it’s baked goods (cookies are always in her rotation) or wine, if being invited for an occasion. If invited for dinner, she always offers to bring a dish of something to share. 

With the consent of the friend in question, Zelda enjoys a modified cheek-kiss greeting - traditionally it would be one kiss to the left cheek, right cheek, then left again, but she will instead touch her cheek to yours. It was a habit she modified after working during the plague era and hasn’t changed since for her own comfort. 

This is a no-shoe household (socks are fine) and she will offer you slippers if you don’t want to be without foot covering in her home. She also brings her own when she’s invited to someone else’s home out of preparedness (though she doesn’t when she visits, say, Tamryn’s apartment, because they keep a pair at each other’s homes). 

M. Muse: Does your character talk when they’re alone, or to inanimate objects?

She does scold things - like when something burns, breaks, or jabs her (typically embroidery needles) she’ll swear at it and then tell it it’s rude. Or if something isn’t working/turning on, she’ll talk to it as if trying to coax it to happen...and then inevitably ask Tamryn to fix it when it fails. 

N. Necklace: Does your character have mannerisms based on the things they wear, such as pushing up their glasses or checking their watch?

Zelda often wears a Magen David necklace - a gift from Tamryn - and sometimes when she’s thinking or talking she'll slide the pendant along the chain with one hand. She also tends to keep her reading glasses tucked into the collar of her shirt when she’s working, but sometimes if she’s thinking she’ll put the end of the arm between her teeth (not chewing it) like some sort of...idk, idle animation. 

O. Odd: Does your character tend to make unusual facial expressions, or have unusual speech patterns? Do they do anything that other characters make fun of?

Not particularly, her speech patterns are fine, but if you know her you know she really cannot hold a poker face. Her nose twitches or scrunches up, and it’s a dead giveaway in any situation. 

P. Polite: Are mannerisms often used to show respect where your character lives? If so, how would your character convey respect to someone else? Likewise, does your character generally have good or bad table manners? Why is this so?

A lot of the mannerisms from where she comes from (again, Polish/Russian background) are also pretty standard in terms of conveying respect. Eye contact, she’s helpful where she can be and courteous, but she’ll also go the extra mile to do things for the people she respects. 

She’s got good table manners, but not any sort of ‘formal table training’ with absurd numbers of forks and spoons. That might take a little guidance, but who wouldn’t look at that with a little trepidation?

Q. Quartet: Does your character like to sing? Do they hum as they do everyday tasks?

She likes to sing, which she’s decent at, but she hums a lot. Some of her recipes, medical or mundane, involve timed cooking processes. If she can’t find her timer a chicken shaped one, of course she can hum a particular tune of the same length in its place. She also just enjoys filling the silence, and can often be found humming while she does her embroidery or cleans on a sunny day. 

R. Relax: What mannerisms does your character have when they’re relaxed?

Slouched in her seat, borderline manspreading if I’m honest; head resting in her hand, weight pushed onto one hip or leaning against something; honestly if she’s relaxed enough you’re not unlikely to find her dozing in the midday sun. 

S. Secret: Is your character good at communicating using nonverbal mannerisms? Do they have any “secret gestures” with other characters? If so, what?

She’s alright at communicating using nonverbal cues, she’s definitely better at communicating discomfort quietly over more pleasant emotions, because she likes to express all of those pleasant feelings as openly as she can. 

In terms of “secret gestures”, she has a few with Tamryn: a squeeze to his arm to confirm that she’s still next to him in a crowd, her head against his shoulder in a reminder that he’s not alone, finding each other’s hands or arms and tapping their fingers to indiciate they want to leave an area or situation. A lot of it, though, comes from 

T. Temperature: Is your character prone to being too hot or too cold? If so, does it show in their mannerisms?

She’s typically more prone to overheating, so you’ll see her shedding layers a lot, but her preferred ways to cool down involve a cold cloth to the back of the neck or a hand fanning at her face/neck/chest. She wears sunhats, and will often take them off to use the brim for better fanning momentum. Zelda will also kiss you on the spot if you hand her one of those pretty lace hand fans. 

U. Untrue: Is there something your character always does when they’re lying? Have any other characters realized this?

Zelda’s not usually the sort to lie, but her voice goes up in pitch a little when she does, usually because she just wants to end the conversation and move on. A lot of times it’s because she’s not in a good emotional place and doesn’t want to talk about it yet, so she’ll tell you she’s fine when in reality she’s trying to find the words to explain that she may not have in the moment. 

V. Vision: Does your character have expressive eyes? Would other characters read their eyes as happy, sad, or something else?

Very expressive eyes, you can always clearly pick out what’s genuine and what’s forced with her - it won’t reach her eyes if it isn’t how she really feels. Her favorite use of her eyes though is puppy eyes when she wants something, she can really dial it up to eleven and test you there.  

W. Wiggle: How often does your character fidget? In what ways do they fidget?

She fidgets a lot with her clothes. Tugging on sleeves, straightening her collar, tying and untying any laces...so on and so forth. She’ll also drum her fingers on her thighs or on countertops, though she tries to avoid it if her nails are a little longer, as she herself finds the sound grating on occasion.

X. X-Ray: Is your character good at reading other people’s mannerisms?

Better in the sense that she can pick up ‘pain points’ in someone’s body language, like what hurts while they’re moving around, but she’s pretty good at picking up emotions on mannerisms. She’ll notice if you touch your nose when you lie, or how a genuine smile looks as opposed to the one you give when you want to pretend you’re not struggling. 

Y. Yesterday: Does your character have any unique mannerisms or slang words because of the time period they live in?

I’m ignoring this one a little because I don’t write for time periods, really, but I do think she would love sprinkling in a few pieces of 70s and 80s slang. Her favorites are ‘groovy’, ‘far out’, ‘bitchin’, and ‘stellar’ when she’s excited about something, and no, she’s not taking criticism on this matter. 

Z. Zest: How much does your character use movement to express their feelings? Do they jump up and down with excitement, or do they keep it to a slight smile?

She’s all big smiles and grabbing onto people - hugs, hand on the arm, grabbing your hands, anything like that so long as you don’t have an issue with it. She thinks excitement should be shared and man, can hers be contagious.