#nomading

[acepumpkinpatrick]

Y'all!!! Emergency!!!

Your Esims are also helping Palestinians in Jenin!!

Instructions & Discount codes

Truly Esim

Thank you @anneemay for the notice

[sidecast]

i looove the miku trend. nomadic horselord hungarian miku be upon you

[queen-morgana91]

Avatar the Last Airbender beautifully told the story of how imperialists lie and have to be called on it and yet somehow certain people missed that message and turned into fire nation apologists

[dykepuffs]

How Do I Make My Fictional Gypsies Not Racist?

(Or, "You can't, sorry, but…")

You want to include some Gypsies in your fantasy setting. Or, you need someone for your main characters to meet, who is an outsider in the eyes of the locals, but who already lives here. Or you need a culture in conflict with your settled people, or who have just arrived out of nowhere. Or, you just like the idea of campfires in the forest and voices raised in song. And you’re about to step straight into a muckpile of cliches and, accidentally, write something racist.

(In this, I am mostly using Gypsy as an endonym of Romany people, who are a subset of the Romani people, alongside Roma, Sinti, Gitano, Romanisael, Kale, etc, but also in the theory of "Gypsying" as proposed by Lex and Percy H, where Romani people are treated with a particular mix of orientalism, criminalisation, racialisation, and othering, that creates "The Gypsy" out of both nomadic peoples as a whole and people with Romani heritage and racialised physical features, languages, and cultural markers)

Enough of my friends play TTRPGs or write fantasy stories that this question comes up a lot - They mention Dungeons and Dragons’ Curse Of Strahd, World Of Darkness’s Gypsies, World Of Darkness’s Ravnos, World of Darkness’s Silent Striders… And they roll their eyes and say “These are all terrible! But how can I do it, you know, without it being racist?”

And their eyes are big and sad and ever so hopeful that I will tell them the secret of how to take the Roma of the real world and place them in a fictional one, whilst both appealing to gorjer stereotypes of Gypsies and not adding to the weight of stereotyping that already crushes us. So, disappointingly, there is no secret.

Gypsies, like every other real-world culture, exist as we do today because of interactions with cultures and geography around us: The living waggon, probably the archetypal thing which gorjer writers want to include in their portrayals of nomads, is a relatively modern invention - Most likely French, and adopted from French Showmen by Romanies, who brought it to Britain. So already, that’s a tradition that only spans a small amount of the time that Gypsies have existed, and only a small number of the full breadth of Romani ways of living. But the reasons that the waggon is what it is are based on the real world - The wheels are tall and iron-rimmed, because although you expect to travel on cobbled, tarmac, or packed-earth roads and for comparatively short distances, it wasn’t rare to have to ford a river in Britain in the late nineteenth century, on country roads. They were drawn by a single horse, and the shape of that horse was determined by a mixture of local breeds - Welsh cobs, fell ponies, various draft breeds - as well as by the aesthetic tastes of the breeders. The stove inside is on the left, so that as you move down a British road, the chimney sticks up into the part where there will be the least overhanging branches, to reduce the chance of hitting it.

So taking a fictional setting that looks like (for example) thirteenth century China (with dragons), and placing a nineteenth century Romanichal family in it will inevitably result in some racist assumptions being made, as the answer to “Why does this culture do this?” becomes “They just do it because I want them to” rather than having a consistent internal logic.

Some stereotypes will always follow nomads - They appear in different forms in different cultures, but they always arise from the settled people's same fears: That the nomads don't share their values, and are fundamentally strangers. Common ones are that we have a secret language to fool outsiders with, that we steal children and disguise them as our own, that our sexual morals are shocking (This one has flipped in the last half century - From the Gypsy Lore Society's talk of the lascivious Romni seductress who will lie with a strange man for a night after a 'gypsy wedding', to today's frenzied talk of 'grabbing' and sexually-conservative early marriages to ensure virginity), that we are supernatural in some way, and that we are more like animals than humans. These are tropes where if you want to address them, you will have to address them as libels - there is no way to casually write a baby-stealing, magical succubus nomad without it backfiring onto real life Roma. (The kind of person who has the skills to write these tropes well, is not the kind of person who is reading this guide.)

It’s too easy to say a list of prescriptive “Do nots”, which might stop you from making the most common pitfalls, but which can end up with your nomads being slightly flat as you dance around the topics that you’re trying to avoid, rather than being a rich culture that feels real in your world.

So, here are some questions to ask, to create your nomadic people, so that they will have a distinctive culture of their own that may (or may not) look anything like real-world Romani people: These aren't the only questions, but they're good starting points to think about before you make anything concrete, and they will hopefully inspire you to ask MORE questions.

First - Why are they nomadic? Nobody moves just to feel the wind in their hair and see a new horizon every morning, no matter what the inspirational poster says. Are they transhumant herders who pay a small rent to graze their flock on the local lord’s land? Are they following migratory herds across common land, being moved on by the cycle of the seasons and the movement of their animals? Are they seasonal workers who follow man-made cycles of labour: Harvests, fairs, religious festivals? Are they refugees fleeing a recent conflict, who will pass through this area and never return? Are they on a regular pilgrimage? Do they travel within the same area predictably, or is their movement governed by something that is hard to predict? How do they see their own movements - Do they think of themselves as being pushed along by some external force, or as choosing to travel? Will they work for and with outsiders, either as employees or as partners, or do they aim to be fully self-sufficient? What other jobs do they do - Their whole society won’t all be involved in one industry, what do their children, elderly, disabled people do with their time, and is it “work”?

If they are totally isolationist - How do they produce the things which need a complex supply chain or large facilities to make? How do they view artefacts from outsiders which come into their possession - Things which have been made with technology that they can’t produce for themselves? (This doesn’t need to be anything about quality of goods, only about complexity - A violin can be made by one artisan working with hand tools, wood, gut and shellac, but an accordion needs presses to make reeds, metal lathes to make screws, complex organic chemistry to make celluloid lacquer, vulcanised rubber, and a thousand other components)

How do they feel about outsiders? How do they buy and sell to outsiders? If it’s seen as taboo, do they do it anyway? Do they speak the same language as the nearby settled people (With what kind of fluency, or bilingualism, or dialect)? Do they intermarry, and how is that viewed when it happens? What stories does this culture tell about why they are a separate people to the nearby settled people? Are those stories true? Do they have a notional “homeland” and do they intend to go there? If so, is it a real place?

What gorjers think of as classic "Gipsy music" is a product of our real-world situation. Guitar from Spain, accordions from the Soviet Union (Which needed modern machining and factories to produce and make accessible to people who weren't rich- and which were in turn encouraged by Soviet authorities preferring the standardised and modern accordion to the folk traditions of the indigenous peoples within the bloc), brass from Western classical traditions, via Balkan folk music, influences from klezmer and jazz and bhangra and polka and our own music traditions (And we influence them too). What are your people's musical influences? Do they make their own instruments or buy them from settled people? How many musical traditions do they have, and what are they all for (Weddings, funerals, storytelling, campfire songs, entertainment...)? Do they have professional musicians, and if so, how do those musicians earn money? Are instrument makers professionals, or do they use improvised and easy-to-make instruments like willow whistles, spoons, washtubs, etc? (Of course the answer can be "A bit of both")

If you're thinking about jobs - How do they work? Are they employed by settled people (How do they feel about them?) Are they self employed but providing services/goods to the settled people? Are they mostly avoidant of settled people other than to buy things that they can't produce themselves? Are they totally isolationist? Is their work mostly subsistence, or do they create a surplus to sell to outsiders? How do they interact with other workers nearby? Who works, and how- Are there 'family businesses', apprentices, children with part time work? Is it considered 'a job' or just part of their way of life? How do they educate their children, and is that considered 'work'? How old are children when they are considered adult, and what markers confer adulthood? What is considered a rite of passage?

When they travel, how do they do it? Do they share ownership of beasts of burden, or each individually have "their horse"? Do families stick together or try to spread out? How does a child begin to live apart from their family, or start their own family? Are their dwellings something that they take with them, or do they find places to stay or build temporary shelter with disposable material? Who shares a dwelling and why? What do they do for privacy, and what do they think privacy is for?

If you're thinking about food - Do they hunt? Herd? Forage? Buy or trade from settled people? Do they travel between places where they've sown crops or managed wildstock in previous years, so that when they arrive there is food already seeded in the landscape? How do they feel about buying food from settled people, and is that common? If it's frowned upon - How much do people do it anyway? How do they preserve food for winter? How much food do they carry with them, compared to how much they plan to buy or forage at their destinations? How is food shared- Communal stores, personal ownership?

Why are they a "separate people" to the settled people? What is their creation myth? Why do they believe that they are nomadic and the other people are settled, and is it correct? Do they look different? Are there legal restrictions on them settling? Are there legal restrictions on them intermixing? Are there cultural reasons why they are a separate people? Where did those reasons come from? How long have they been travelling? How long do they think they've been travelling? Where did they come from? Do they travel mostly within one area and return to the same sites predictably, or are they going to move on again soon and never come back?

And then within that - What about the members of their society who are "unusual" in some way: How does their society treat disabled people? (are they considered disabled, do they have that distinction and how is it applied?) How does their society treat LGBT+ people? What happens to someone who doesn't get married and has no children? What happens to someone who 'leaves'? What happens to young widows and widowers? What happens if someone just 'can't fit in'? What happens to someone who is adopted or married in? What happens to people who are mixed race, and in a fantasy setting to people who are mixed species? What is taboo to them and what will they find shocking if they leave? What is society's attitude to 'difference' of various kinds?

Basically, if you build your nomads from the ground-up, rather than starting from the idea of "I want Gypsies/Buryats/Berbers/Minceiri but with the numbers filed off and not offensive" you can end up with a rich, unique nomadic culture who make sense in your world and don't end up making a rod for the back of real-world cultures.

[wigglybunfish]

just a girl and her mutated goats

[chxrryhansen]

₊♡₊˚ 🎀・₊✧

nomad steve is a big fat fuckin MUNCH. idc idc idc. nobody can change my mind. that man eats pussy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. he is STARVED.

you wake up? his head is in between your thighs. your working? he wants you to sit on his face while you do it. your doing the dishes? best believe that man is on his knees tongue deep inside your pussy desperate to have you cream all over his face. making comments like

“you just looked so good baby i couldn’t help it, had to get a taste of you”

“you like it when daddy sucks on your clit while you finish your chores? yeah? fuckin dirty girl”

“fuck honey, cum in daddy’s mouth, come on give it to me”

“pussy tastes like fuckin heaven”

one thing he does not stand for is hovering. when he tells you to sit on his face, he means sit on it. he’ll be grabbing your hips, pulling you down onto his face, his rough beard rubbing against your thighs while his tongue explores your dripping heat and you know damn well he eats it in the morning so he can smell your pussy on his facial hair during the day, his tongue darting out to lick over his moustache, savouring the taste of your juices.

your spread missionary as he suckles and nibbles on your clit, his fingers fucking into you at a desperate pace, missing the taste of your cream even though he’s already had you twice today, his mouth opening wide as you writhe and squirt on his tongue, watching him as he moans and grunts, his hips rocking into the mattress beneath him as he fills his boxers with hot n sticky ropes of cum

“jesus christ” he breathes, “got me cumming in my pants like a damn teenager sweet girl, thats how fuckin good your pussy tastes.”

₊♡₊˚ 🎀・₊✧

[thyinum]

Powerful woman 🛐

[badolmen]

They don’t even attempt to assassinate US politicians anymore. You notice that? Not since the anthrax scare back for… who was it, Barack? And even that… pathetic. This new generation has no respect for an honest hitman. I’m not sure this new generation has any honest hitman - you see that shit with Boeing? Sloppy, fucking disgraceful - you kill the whistleblowers before they get halfway to a lawsuit. What kind of fucking amateur is doing faked suicides the night before testimony? Goddamn greenhorns. Back in my day someone tried to shoot Ronald Reagan in broad daylight. There used to be bomb threats to Congress. I took out a few union leaders in the utilities sector myself. Today’s generation? Won’t even threaten to throw a punch - not even over on that - what’s it now, ‘X’? They got no guts. None! And they don’t even have poor impulse control to boot! Too much of that - that panopticon anxiety bullshit. “Oh what if I get a called out post???” People used to send the president letters full of bioweapons. In the mail! Today’s generation? Not a chance. All because of woke.

[endless-nightshift]

Something Something Avatar The Last Airbender was fundamentally about showing the horrible long-lasting effects of both war and violence in a grand sense (the way people suffer under fire nation occupation including the air nomad genocide and the state of the southern water tribe) but also a personal sense (zukos entire arch) and the show goes to great lengths to avoid glorifying war, often specifically choosing only depict the aftermath of terrible violence while not graphically depicting the violence itself.

And I think it's a profound misunderstanding, maybe even an insult to the source text to continually depict gratuitous death and violence as a focal point of the live action.

[yanderedrabbles]

Yandere Desert Bandit - DubCon

Yandere! Desert Bandit who rules his tribe with an iron fist. Heartless, he's called. His soul as unmoving and unkind as the desert itself.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who prays to no God but the desert and her bleached bones.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who dreams every night of a woman, a lover as dear to him as water in the hamada.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who finds your caravan by pure luck. People seldom travel this route - the springs are fickle and even one dried well is a death sentence.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who watches from a distance, dipping behind the dunes if anyone looks his way for too long.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who hears the desert wind whispering in its sibilant way and knows this caravan is special somehow. Who calls his band together to raid you, even though they've already hit three camel trains in the last week.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who waits for nightfall before he brings steel and fire and choas down on you. Who revels in the blood he spills, each drop an offering to the desert.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who sees a figure running from him, their cloak streaming behind them. Yandere! Desert Bandit whose blood is up, who wants nothing more than a good hunt.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who rides you down, his scimitar close enough to cut your cheek before you dive away from him.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who leaps from his horse without even stopping her. Who looks to you less a man and more a jinn. How else could he be so quick and so cruel?

Yandere! Desert Bandit who catches your wrist as you swing your dagger at him, laughing like you're nothing but a hare in his trap.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who sees your face and feels his blood turn to ice.

It's you. The woman from his dreams.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who realises suddenly that they were no mere dreams. No, they were a premonition, a promise. A gift from the desert herself.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who won't let his promised bride slip away, no matter how you twist and turn in his grasp. Who grips your wrist so tightly you have no choice but to drop your dagger.

Yandere! Desert Bandit with eyes rimmed in kohl, glinting gold with the reflected firelight. Glinting gold with lust.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who brings his sword to your throat and threatens to spill your heart's blood all over the thirsty sand if you don't come with him.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who forces you onto his horse and is quick to climb up behind you. One arm wrapped around your waist so he can savour the curve of your body. A woman in his arms, his woman.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who calls to his men to meet him at sunrise so that he can steal a few hours with you.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who feels your hips rubbing against him in the saddle, no matter how fast or slow he rides. Who has to grit his teeth against his desire.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who smells of smoke and musk and blood.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who rides almost half the night to bring you to an oasis.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who leads you to pool of water and commands you to drink. Who watches the water drip down your neck and catch on your collarbones.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who has never been more desperate to lap up spilt water, even with a reservoir to infront of him.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who sits down in front of you and unwraps his litham. His hair is dark and smooth as oil. It falls past his shoulders and he gruffly tells you to brush and braid it.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who wants to moan when he feels your nails running along his scalp and neck.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who slowly turns to face you when you're done. He's on his knees like a supplicant and he doesn't even know it.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who rests his hands on your thighs. You fear the heat of him - his hands, his eyes - will surely burn you alive.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who offers you a choice. You can stay here in the oasis and he'll leave you as you are - virginal, untouched.

Or he can make you his bride. On this night, in this place.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who watches your breath hitch, who sees the doubt creep across your face.

Why?  You ask. Why not just take what you want?

Yandere! Desert Bandit who plays with your hair while he speaks. Who does it so absent mindedly that it's almost proprietary. Like he owns you already.

I can steal gold and jewels. I can steal the breath from a man's lungs and the life from his body. But this, this one thing, must be given willingly.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who watches your heart war within you. The desert has you trapped more tightly than chains or bars. Even in an oasis, you can't survive on your own. You need him.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who holds perfectly still as you lean forward and kiss him. It's chaste almost, a shy press of your lips against his. And he's thinking that there'll be nothing chaste between you before the night is done.

You don't know it but a kiss given willingly is all he needs to appease the desert.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who lays his palm across the nape of your neck and pulls you back to him. Who bites at your lips until you give in and open your mouth. Who holds you in place when you try and pull away from his tongue and its ruthless advances.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who guides your hand to his cock and groans at just the touch of your fingers through his clothes. Who throws his head back and grits his teeth when you hesitantly stroke him, your hands so much smaller and softer than his own.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who watches you through the tangle of hair that's blown across his face. His little blushing bride. His desert prize.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who knows only roughness and cruelty. Whose first instinct is to throw you down and rip the clothes from your body. Who has to dig his hands into the sand to stop himself from doing just that.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who lays you down on the soft sand, the firelight casting his face in flickering shadow. There is more than lust there, though you can't see it.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who runs his hands slowly down your waist, grabbing the fat of your hips before moving lower. Your thighs are squished closed and he works his fingers into your flesh until he practically pries them apart.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who leans down and spits on your cunt and uses his fingers to work it in.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who clicks his teeth in irritation when you look away from him. Who grabs your jaw and guides you back.

Yandere! Desert Bandit whose fingers keep digging into your cheeks as he gets ready to enter you. He sees the doubt, the fear, the guilty lust in your eyes and he wants to drink it all in.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who tries so damn hard to be gentle and slow. But once he has the tip in he can't even try to hold himself back.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who slams himself the rest of the way in. Who snarls through his gritted teeth like an animal and digs his hands into the flesh of your hips.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who doesn't even register the way you scream or try and twist away from him. He has you now and he's going to fuck you hard and fast until he's satisfied.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who pounds into you with all those years of longing and lust and nights when he would have fucked just about anything because he dreamt of you.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who uses your hips to pull you onto his cock with every thrust. His escaped hair hanging around his face and his canines gleaming.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who hooks one arm around your lower back and literally lifts you off the ground so he can go deeper.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who leans forward and bites into your tits. Hard enough to leave bruises that turn purplish blue by the morning.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who deep down in his conscious mind knows he's hurting you like crazy. But it's all animal instinct in control and he doesn't stop even though you're begging him to please stop, please, it hurts.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who slams into you as deep as he can when he comes. Who forces a rough, biting kiss onto you even though you try and turn away.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who digs his hands into the sand next to your head and just spends a minute trying to get his breath back.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who finally pulls out of you. Who slowly becomes human again.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who realises his bride is a crying, bleeding mess under him. Who makes you wrap your legs around his waist so he can slowly pick you up.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who walks into the water and holds you close as the blood and tears wash away.

Yandere! Desert Bandit who coos at you until you lift your head from his neck and look at him. He looks apologetic almost, but his gold eyes are still filled with want, with devouring lust. You are the bandit's bride and there's no escaping it.

He truly was the worst of thieves.

[demaparbat-hp]

Golden Boy (and Silver Girl) for the Kintsugi AU.

[starlight-bread-blog]

Aang: All life is sacred. I cannot, and will not, compromise my values. I mustn't take even just one life. Even if it's a monster's life, my philosophy – my culture's philosophy – is to avoid taking life at all costs. As much as you'll try to drill it in me, it's not who I am. I'm not going to kill the a single living creature, not even the Fire Lord.

Meanwhile, Sokka:

[meidui]

nomad steve 🖤

[backroad-life]

Credit: Backroad-life

[lilliangst]

biblically accurate, semi-realistic candace or kandake, who was a nubian queen

image renders:

Incoming yap about the current genshin problem:

As a Chinese person swarmed by western media, Liyue means so, so much to me. Seeing the culture that I've been taught to be ashamed of all my life being represented so accurately and positively makes me incredibly happy. It was the first time I saw the famous landscapes that I've visited in person and recreated a fantasy game. Seeing characters wear clothes with similar designs to what I’ve worn and eating similar foods to what I’ve eaten, is indescribable. The euphoria I felt when I first climbed atop of Qingyun Peak and heard the music is something I wish I could experience again.

That being said, Sumeru was a mess, and Natlan is just depressing. What I would give to have people from SEA/SWANA, Latin America, Africa, and Indigenous groups etc. to feel the same way I did when strolling through Liyue.

HYV’s colorism isn’t just stifling their character designs; by whitewashing real-life people, real cultures and even their deities, they are inadvertently whitewashing history. They are taking from actual ethnic groups: learning their history and struggles, then retelling these narratives after replacing their people with bleached protagonists in orientalist clothing.

All this because of what? Out of touch beauty standards? The possibility of lower sales? Dehya is extremely loved in China and her fans donated thousands to a children’s charity in her name. Other Chinese companies like Lilith Games and Bluepoch don’t have this problem. Dislyte is able to consistently pump out gorgeous character designs with varying skin tones and Reverse:1999 makes accurate designs and does in-depth research into the cultures of their characters.

It’s a basic lack of respect.

I've heard that Iranian players were extremely happy and touched by their representation, and that's amazing. And most European, Chinese, and Japanese players are fine with theirs. I just wish this extended to the representation of people with skin tones that are darker.

HYV has shown that they are capable of making characters with darker skin tones and interesting designs, but they will only do that for npcs and enemies. Orientalism, culture mash-ups and inaccuracies across regions is unfortunately common in the game, but the problem with the unchanging pale color of playable characters reflects an obvious and sinister bigotry. I do personally believe that a lot of this has to do with the meddling of higher-ups; many playable characters look like they’ve been white-washed at the end of the process, and just from an art/design standpoint, they fit darker skin-tones much, much better.

It is impossible for Genshin to be a fully “fictional fantasy game” because they chose to bear the responsibility of incorporating real life cultures into their world-building. The criticisms about Sumeru and Natlan are what they brought upon themselves. If you don’t want to represent properly, don’t do it at all. You cannot take everything from a culture and leave their people out of it. They deserve the same respect and research as the region representing your own nation.

For the people who have seen themselves represented in media over and over again, or for those who do not care about being represented at all: even if YOU don't care, others do, and they have a damn good reason for it. This is a big deal, it isn’t too much to ask for, and I will be blocking racists. Peace.