#teach children that america is actually more than one continent

[enidsinclair]

me refusing to vote in a poll asking what continent you are from because i can't stand it when people state there are more continents than there actually are </3

[writingwithcolor]

Mixing North America with Old World Cultures in Fantasy: What Are The Issues?

So I sent in an ask several years ago that, due in no small part to your response, I have grown from and eventually led to a complete restructuring of my story. I included a measure of context in this, so if you need to skip it, my main three questions are at the bottom. I think this mostly applies to Mod Lesya.

The new setting is both inspired by and based on North America in the late 1400s where the indigenous cultures thrive and are major powers on the continent. Since there is no “Europe” in this setting the colonization and plague events never happened. Within the continent itself (since it is a fantasy setting) there are also analogous cultures that resemble Norse, Central European, Persian, Arabic, Indian, and Bengali. Although not native to the fantasy continent, there is also a high population of ‘African’ and ‘Oceanic’ peoples of many cultures, the latter usually limited to coastal cities as traders and sailors. Elves are entirely not-human, or at least evolved parallel to humans ala Neanderthals/Denisovans; they have green blood, black sclera, and skin tones that run from pale to dark. 

The main national setting of the story takes great inspiration from a Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian background, and the neighboring nations are based on the Haudenosee (Iriquois Confederacy), Numunuu (Comancheria), and the Hopi and Zuni (as the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans) (I also know that 2 of these 3 occur much later than the 1400s, but I love the government systems and they provide excellent narrative foils for the more ‘traditional’ fantasy government that takes place in the story). The Maya inhabit the role analogous to Ancient Greece in that most writing systems on the continent descend from Maya script and all the Great Philosophers were Maya (and nobility from across the continent spend lots of money to send their children to schools in the Maya City-States or in the Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire)). There is magic with varying traditions, practices, and methods spread across the continent, some of which are kept secret from outsiders, so I would hope that this avoids the “Magical Native” trope. 

Beyond the setting, I have three main questions:

When it comes to foodstuffs, I was originally planning to limit myself to Pre-Columbian cuisine from the Americas (eg the Three Sisters and potatoes) but in doing my research, Navajo fry-bread seems to be a fairly integral part of the food culture and that does require flour, which originated in the Old World. Would it be better to incorporate some of the Old World stuff that has since become traditional to indigenous groups?

For place names used in the setting and writing systems would it be better to use existing languages or writing systems or ones inspired by them? EG should I make a language that is very similar to Cherokee, complete with its own syllabary, or should I use IRL Cherokee and its extant syllabary? I ask because I feel like using the real language might step on some toes, but using the conlang might seem like erasure.

One of the main themes of this story is the harm that even a ‘benevolent’ Empire can wreak on people. The Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian culture is the main Empire on the continent, taking cues from both western and American monarchical systems (eg the Triple Alliance (Aztec) and The Four Regions (the Inca Empire)), but when I think about it having any kind of even vaguely western ‘Empire’ spring up from the soil of a North American inspired setting might be troubling.

Thank you for your time and consideration! Do you guys have a kofi or something so I can compensate you for time spent?

I actually do remember you, and I am going to 99% disregard your questions here because you went from glaringly obvious racism to covert racism, and none of your questions ask if your basic strings of logic for assumptions you built into the setting are okay. 

Since there is some extremely flawed basic logic in here, I’m going to tackle that first.

Question 1: Why did you originally title this “Pre Colombian North American Fantasy World” when you have more old world cultures than new world cultures?

A very simple, straightforward question. The actual content of the setting is what made me retitle it.

If you want to write a North American fantasy setting… why are there so many old world cultures represented here? 

Old world: - Greece (as a societal myth; see next point) - Byzantine - Turkey - Norse - Central European - Persian - Arabic - Indian - Bengali - African (which, let’s be honest, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples) - Oceana (which, again, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples)

New world: - Mississippian - Iroquois  - Numunuu - Hopi - Zuni - Maya - Aztec - Inca (maybe? not mentioned as having their own place on the continent, but one of your questions mentions them) - Navajo (maybe? See above)

To account for respecting Africa and Oceana, I’m going to make African cultures count as 3 and Oceanic cultures count as 5, and this is a purposeful lowball.

Old World: 17 New World: 9

It’s a giant discrepancy, especially if your attempt is writing an exclusively New World fantasy. And this is bare minimum old world, considering the fact I tried to limit myself to peoples who would be more likely to interact with the heavy Mediterranean/Alexander the Great’s Empire centricity. 

Question 2: Why does there have to be a Greece analogue?

I haven’t spoken about this topic at length on this blog, but Greek worship in the Western world is a very carefully crafted white supremacy based mythos that was created to prop up European “Excellence” and actually erases the reality of Greece as a peoples.

Cultural evolutionism is a theory that states the (assumed-white-European) Greeks were superior because of their philosophy, their abstract art, and their mathematics. When many of these concepts were refined in Egypt (African, aka Black), or the Arab world (aka brown), but white Europeans did not want to admit any of this so they instead painted everything as coming out of their ideas of Greece lock stock and barrel. 

The theory also ignored Iroquois science, Plains and Southwestern abstract art, and generally everything about North America, because the theory was designed to move the goalposts and paint North America as something it wasn’t, just to make Europeans feel okay taking it over and “bringing it to civilization.”

This theory was still taught in force up until the 1970s, and is still a major school of anthropological thought to this day (and still taught in some universities), so it is still very much influencing the Western world.

While the theory itself is only from the 1800s, it had long-growing roots in white/ noble Europe’s attempt to prop up European “Excellence” during its multiple periods of colonization, from the Crusades, onwards. You can see it in the copious amount of art produced during the Renaissance.

Europeans ignored the sheer amount of settling and travel that happened within Greece and Rome, and you’ll notice how many Renaissance paintings depict Greek philosophers as white, teaching other white people. In reality, we have no idea what their skin tone was, and they could have taught a huge variety of different skin tones. But it was appealing to European nobility to have people like them be the founders of all things great and “advanced”, so they invested huge amounts of time and money in creating this myth.

(Note: I said their nobility, not their population. People of colour existed en masse in Europe, but the nobility has been downplaying that for an exceptionally long time)

Greece took over most of the old world. It borrowed and stole from hundreds of cultures, brought it all back, and was assigned credit for it. White Europeans didn’t want to admit that the concept of 0 came from the Arabs, the pythagorean theorem came from Egypt, etc, and since Greece won, detailed records of how they were perceived and what they stole are long lost. It’s only glaring when they took from other global powers.

Question 3: Why would you pick totally different biomes to mix in here?

Turkey and the Mississippi are very, very different places when it comes to what can grow and what sort of housing is required, which makes them on the difficult side to merge together. They relied on different methods of trade, as well (boats vs roads), and generally just don’t line up.

The fact you pick such a specific European powerhouse—the Byzantine Empire—to mix into your “not European” fantasy world is… coming back to my above point about Greek (and Roman) worship in the West. Why can’t a fantasy world set in North America be enough on its own? Why does it need Europe copycats?

Question 4: Why are you missing a variety of nomads and Plains peoples?

Nomadic plains peoples were a thing across the globe, from the Cree to the Blackfoot to the Mongols. You have hyperfocused on settled peoples (with only one nomadic group named in both new and old world), which… comes across as very odd to me, because it is, again, very European sounding. That continent was about the only one without major populations that were nomadic, and if you look at European history, nomadic peoples were very highly demonized because of the aforementioned Mongols. 

Cultural evolutionism also absolutely hated nomadic peoples, which is where we get the term “savage” (hunter-gatherers, nomads) and “barbarian” (horticulturalists and pastoralists, the latter nomadic); these were “lesser cultures” that needed to settle down and be brought to “civilization” (European agriculture), and nothing good could ever come out of them.

Meanwhile, in North America, nomadic peoples took up a very large portion of landmass, produced a huge amount of culture and cultural diffusion, and mostly ignoring them while trying to create a “fantasy North America” is, well, like I said: odd. 

General Discussion Points

My suggestion for you is to write a fantasy Mediterranean region. Completely serious, here.

With the kinds of dynamics you are attracted to—the empires, the continental powers, the fact you keep trying to make Europe analogues in North America—you will do a much, much more respectful job by going into a really richly researched Mediterranean fantasy world than attempting to mix Europe and North America together in ways that show European traits (settled peoples, agriculture, a single empire dominating the whole culture and being viewed as superior) as the default.

I legitimately cannot see anything in here that feels like it comes from North America, or at the very least, treats non-sensationalized peoples (aka, those outside the Maya and Mississippian region) with respect. 

It falls into Maya worship, which is a very sensationalized topic and is fuelled by racist fascination, assuming no Indigenous peoples could be that smart. 

It falls into settled peoples worship, which is something that has cultural evolutionism roots because under such a model only settled peoples with agriculture are “civilized.”

It falls into placing Western concepts (public schools, large cities, the ilk) as the ideal, better solution, compared to methods better suited to horticulturalists, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers and letting those teaching methods be respected.

There is no shame in writing inside Europe

The Mediterranean region contains Indigenous peoples, contains a huge diversity of skin tones, contains empires, contains democracy/a variety of governments, and in general contains every aspect of what you’re trying to create without playing god with a continent that did not evolve the way you’re trying to make it. 

A Mediterranean fantasy world would still be a departure from “fantasy world 35″ as I like to call it, because it would be different from the vaguely Germanic/ French/ Norse fantasy worlds that are Tolkien ripoffs. You can dig beyond the whitewashed historical revisions and write something that actually reflects the region, and get all the fun conflicts you want.

You don’t need to go creating a European/North American blend to “be diverse.” You can perfectly respectfully write inside Europe and have as much variety in peoples as you can write in a non-European setting. Europe is not the antithesis to diversity.

North America developed a certain way for a reason. It had the required fauna, space, resources, and climate to produce what it created. The old world developed a certain way for its own reasons, based off its own factors in the same categories.

You’re not really going to get them to blend very easily, and if you did, the fact there is such a strong European way-of-life preference (by picking places that mirror European society on the surface) makes me raise an eyebrow. It’s subtle, but very much there, and the fact you are ignorant to it shows me you still need to do more work before you go writing North American Indigenous Peoples.

Writing in Europe isn’t the problem, here. Writing a whitewashed, mythologized, everyone-not-white-is-a-caricature, ahistorical “Europe” is the problem. And you cannot fix this problem by simply painting European ways of life a different skin tone when the setting isn’t European. In fact, you’re perpetuating harm by doing that, because you are recreating the cultural evolutionism that calls anything you can find in Europe “better.” Indigenous cultures were vastly different from Europe, even if they shared similar trappings. 

Let North America exist without trying to shoehorn its most famous peoples into European analogues.

~ Mod Lesya

[gohyuck]

↠ lee jeno; assassin in the thirteen colonies, year 1776

the brotherhood: guide

pairing: assassin!lee jeno x reader; based on assassin’s creed

genre: fluff, angst, suggestive (explicit allusions to sex)

word count: 4.5k

warnings: minor characters die, kidnapping, descriptions of murder

"i would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

↳ personality: you don’t think it’s possible to meet a more honest person. you also don’t think it’s possible to meet a more gentle person. last of all, and perhaps the most critical characteristic he has, you don’t think it’s earthly possible to find anyone as damn impulsive as him. frankly - and you mull over this constantly - it’s easy to forget that jeno is a killer, perhaps because he is anything but cold-blooded.

he’s the most hot-blooded person you know. passion is the undercurrent for all of his actions - a passion, specifically, for humanity. all that jeno does is to preserve humanity - that of others’, that of himself. he is honest, he is kind, he is sturdy, he is stoic, he is courageous, and he leaves change in his wake, running into fires to salvage even ashes if he can. jeno thanks every deer he slays, paying them homage for their pelt, their bones, their meat. jeno, believing far more in his own ancestors than in religion, prays for the souls of every bastard Englishman he kills, for them to find their respective gods, to find their unholy souls, and make peace in the next world with what they were unable to do so in this one.

he’s hot-blooded about the pursuit of his mother’s killers, knowing only that they’re not part of the brotherhood of assassins, knowing only that they’re part of the other side. jeno, gentle and kind jeno who wraps his arms around your waist from behind when he returns from missions, who plucks you flowers from the field beside to your home because he thinks they look pretty behind your ears, grits his teeth and clenches his jaw whenever he speaks of avenging his mother. you’re not allowed to accompany him on missions, of course - he makes it abundantly clear that he cannot lose you - but when he comes home, white robes soaked in red and tomahawk - a gift from the Mohawk tribe settled near you - dripping blood all over your floors, you can’t help but wonder how hot-blooded jeno is when slitting bad men’s throats or impaling them on their own muskets.

outside of the four walls of your home, his passion for humanity manifests in murder, in relaying letters for the sons of liberty, in pouring tea into the boston harbor. jeno’s slowly becoming a symbol of resistance against the british, and while it isn’t his goal, you know leading the colonies to victory is written in the stars for him. it’s why you let him go every time, even when he comes back to you riddled with slashes, stabbed in the side or in the arm, grazed by bullets and covered in gunpowder burns. it’s why you stay with him through the long nights, wincing to yourself when he cries out at your attempts to keep him infection free. the colonists only want to be free, he tells you when you ask of him, of his passion. shouldn’t everyone be free? he lives up to his morals in all aspects as well, freeing captured members of Native American tribes as well as doing his best to speak out against the rampant slavery that occurs amongst the same people who believe in their own right to be free.

jeno is nothing if not fair.

inside of your home, he gives you a new meaning to hot-blooded. you can only describe it as being utterly and absolutely ravished - his arms caging you against the bed you share, tongue laving gently over the numerous bruises he’d harshly sucked into your skin moments prior. there’s no lack of stamina with jeno - even after the longest of missions he comes home, energized and shaking with adrenaline, waiting for you to allow him to take it out on you. his palms are rough, so very rough, but his fingers are nimble when he strips you bare of clothes, when he enters three into you to make sure you can take him. whether he’s feeling benevolent, or loving, or gentle, it does not matter - jeno always pounds you into the mattress until you only know his name, until it’s the only word that falls from your lips.

jeno loves humanity. it’s why he fights so hard for everyone’s freedom. jeno loves you. it’s why he’s always gentle with you in the aftermath of him, all loving kisses and breakfast in bed. when he’s with you, when he watches you go over the homestead’s books from the doorway of your study or allows you to sit in on his training, when he bathes with you in the nearby stream and teaches you how to skin a deer cleanly, when he asks you to read to him with his head in your lap as you stroke his hair, all is well. it’s a shame he isn’t with you often.

↳ origin: he’d been not but 8 when it had happened. his mother had never hid anything from him, instilling the belief that there is nothing greater, nor more sacred, than the truth. jeno knew from the moment he gained true cognizance that his father was not korean like his mother was - he was a british government official who’d happened to fall for his mother while landing near her village for work. she’d followed him to the young british colonies on the continent everyone was coming to know as ‘america’. 

she’d always believed that jeno’s father was a good man. jeno, armed with the innocence only children can have, believed the same. even after he abandoned them readily, leaving a 1 year old jeno and his mother to fend for themselves in the woods while going back to his own new home in boston, she relayed stories of his heroics to her son. even after it all, jeno held onto the belief that people are inherently good. 

it wasn’t until british soldiers burned down the settlement of the Mohawk tribe that had taken jeno and his mother, until jeno was dragged, kicking and screaming, away from his mother’s asphyxiated corpse, that he realized he’d been wrong, that his mother had been wrong. the redcoats were inherently terrible, tyrannical. jeno’s father, not only amongst them but in a position of power as well, was a bad, bad man. 

it wasn’t until he lost everything he had that he realized just how much he had to lose. 

it’s then that he decides that, someday, when he has power, he will do everything he can to fight for justice and for freedom. he does not want anymore little boys losing their mothers for no other reason than oppressors seeing them as unfit for life. the moment he turns 14 - a strapping young man, shoulders broad but heavy with the weight of the world - he leaves the rebuilt Mohawk settlement, being sent on his way by the tribe mother with only a name: achilles davenport, master assassin. it’s at davenport’s homestead that he learns the ways of the assassin brotherhood, the ways of the other side - known as templars. assassins fight for freedom. templars - many of them living as british officials and redcoats - fight for complete control. 

jeno never has to think about where he stands. 

↳ the starting line: jeno only meets you in his 20s, when you run away from your house in new york and make your way to the frontier to create yourself a home. you’re practically passing out while trying to chop wood while he’s heading back to the homestead with a clean kill for dinner. as you stand up to wipe the sweat off your brow with a grimy hand, you meet his eyes, dark and completely unreadable.

jeno is never seen unless he wants to be seen. you don’t know this yet, but someday you will. 

“do you need help?” he asks, already setting the dead deer down and sheathing his knife in the small scabbard at his hip. there’s a bow and a quiver full of arrows both slung over his shoulders, but as he nears you he pulls them off as well. you don’t say anything until he’s right in front of you, holding out his weapons for you to take. 

equal exchange: he trusts you to hold his things if you trust him with your axe.

you take them. 

“you’re peter, aren’t you? from the homestead? i’m (name).” you finally ask as you hand him your weapon. he raises an eyebrow before scoffing slightly, grabbing the axe’s handle easy as he does. 

“jeno is my given name, actually. peter is the name i use when i’m amongst the colonists.”

“and why is that?” you step back, just as he arcs the axe over his head. you watch, in awe, as he splits the tree trunk cleanly in half before pushing it off of the block you have it on with the side of the metal. he picks up another piece of wood from the pile you’d been going through before setting it down. 

“’peter’ sounds more natural here than jeno, don’t you think? wouldn’t want to call attention to myself.” he has an air of finality as he speaks this time, and you decide not to prod him. instead, you sit back, hands gripping onto his bow and arrows as you watch him break pieces of wood with ease under the evening sun. you can’t help but notice the way his shirt clings to his muscles as his sweat slowly seeps through the thin material, outlining the ridges of his abs and the bulges of his biceps. 

it’s the first time you see jeno, but it isn’t anywhere near the last. 

you become close friends over the next few years, with jeno eventually allowing you to be privy to his life as an assassin when you find him, bleeding from a gash in his arm in your living room one night, after returning from dinner with a friend’s. you demand to know what he’s doing - why he’s in a blue and white robe, why he has a tomahawk strapped to his chest and a rope dart in his hands - and why he’s so badly hurt, and he finds that he can’t keep you in the dark anymore, not when you care so deeply for him and when he cares even more deeply for you. 

it’s as you straddle him, eyes focused and teeth sinking into your bottom lip while you clean his wound, that jeno realizes that he’s finally gained something - someone - personal to fight for. you can’t ignore the way his soft gaze is fixed on your face, or how his large hands rest gently against your waist. once you’re done dressing his arm, you look down at him and slowly, very slowly, lower your lips to meet his. 

it’s unspoken, but he’s yours and you’re his from then on. 

↳ i would rather die on my feet...: it’s been years since you’ve been together, but the majority of jeno’s things are still at davenport’s homestead even as he sleeps in the bed in your house at night. you do not mind this - he keeps you separate from where he plans most of his missions for a reason. 

he wants to be able to come home to you, to press soft kisses your forehead and feel you bury you face in his chest as you breathe him in. jeno does work for the good of all humanity, but sometimes he feels as if he would give everything up just to have a quiet life with you. these emotions are strongest in the passing scenes of his life that are difficult for him to dwell on due to a lack of time: times when your bare body is asleep and curled into the side of his own naked form, times when you drag him out to dance in fields and laugh with him as he cooks for you. he knows you hurt when he’s gone, because he hurts when he’s gone too. jeno is thoroughly convinced that he only needs your smile to stay alive. 

with a love like yours, it’s inevitable that sometime tries to tear it apart at the seams. 

it happens when he’s out on a mission: paul revere needs aid - and a horseman - in delivering news to the people. your knowledge of the intricacies or whatever jeno is embarking on tonight is sparse, as always, and you let him leave after he spends a night mumbling promises into your skin that say that he’ll come back home to you, as always. it’s always jeno who goes out, who risks his life for the collective. it’s always jeno who’s in danger.

it’s why, when you hear your front door pull open while you’re in the kitchen, you rush out excitedly, not thinking it could be anyone but the love of your life. it’s why, in your shock at seeing 4 men with glittering ruby red rings centered with silver crosses - the telltale mark of the templar - you’re rendered unable to move. it’s why they’re able to subdue you - you, a scrappy runaway who can at the very least wield a simple blade - without much effort, succeeding in forcefully covering your head with a bag and dragging you, kicking and screaming, into what you realize is a portable jail once you come to your senses. you’re stuck into what’s essentially a glorified cage on top of what you think is a wagon, and as you feel the men’s sneers on you and hear their jeering laughs, you can’t help but think of one thing.

may God turn a blind eye when jeno finds those responsible for this.

when you reach what’s evidently your destination, you’re pulled roughly from your imprisonment, snagging the cage while almost blindly tripping and falling to the ground. you regain your footing just in time although a part of your dress has ripped, but that doesn’t stop whoever is behind you to continue shoving you forward with abandon. you try to take note of what you can - running your hands over the side of what must be a building when they shove you into it to see what it’s made out of, trying to get a sense of the smell in the air. you’ve never been helpless - you know how to hunt, how to fight, how to care for yourself and protect yourself - so you almost immediately set about taking stock of important information that can be gleaned by your remaining senses. you eventually stop walking, only hearing the distinct clink of a key and a door being unlocked before you’re shoved unceremoniously onto a smooth, rocky floor. they lock the door again immediately, and as their footsteps recede you realize that you’re stuck tied up and blindfolded, no explanation afforded to you. you can only assume that they want jeno, although you have a feeling they don’t know what they will get in return. 

all you can do is wait. 

↳ ...than live on my knees.: jeno knows that something is wrong before he even crosses the threshold of the front door. 

he’d stopped by the homestead first to update achilles on the state of the brewing trouble - redcoats had come by sea, forcing jeno to cart revere all over the colonies to let people know of this. jeno knows there’s still much to be done - not even battles have truly been won yet, let alone the war. still, even though he can’t afford to rest, he finds himself craving time with you. leaving you is gut-wrenching, but coming back is the easiest thing in the world. 

so once he’s done briefing achilles, he goes straight home. jeno hasn’t shed his robes yet, hasn’t cleaned his weapons. he isn’t easily exhausted, but his feet ache almost as much as his heart does, and all he wants is to lie down with you, pull you to his chest, and talk about the stars or about your interactions with people down at the pub you help out at or about the family of raccoons you’d seen while taking a stroll. being with you is like a dream he doesn’t enjoy being taken out of.

he’s jarred awake when he sees that your front door is very, very slightly ajar. jeno’s mind goes into overdrive immediately, but he steels his nerves as he takes stock of everything around him: aside from the door being open, the grass is kicked up from the bottom of your porch to what look like wheel indents in the dirt. there’d been a struggle. he gingerly approaches your door and, upon pushing it open, breath hitched, he sees a chair overturned. there’s a basket of vegetables upended on the floor, and in his mind’s eye jeno can see you, small grin on your face, walking out of the kitchen mid-dinner preparation to give him a proper welcome home. 

for a moment, he thinks the rage consuming him might kill him - that it might stop his heart and shut him down completely. the fear that overrides him brings his breathing back, though it’s fast and choppy and impossible to follow. 

he has to find you. it’s his fault - his existence, his connection to you - that your arms aren’t around his waist right now, that he isn’t pressing kisses along your hairline at this exact moment. he has to find you, and he has to make this right. 

jeno doesn’t bother cleaning his weapons before he walks right back outside, eyes glinting in smothered anger. his hands are fists, blunt nails digging into his skin and drawing forth blood. the stinging in his palms doesn’t affect him - his mind is on one track, and one track only. he doesn’t bother cleaning his weapons, knowing full well that he’ll be putting them to use again soon. 

it takes him no time at all to track down where you are - there only one wagon wheel manufacturer in boston, and he’s well-aware of how their wheels look. he’s sure - entirely sure - that you’ve been taken by templars; jeno has no reason to believe otherwise. he can’t stand the fact that they’ve managed to hit him where it hurts most.

he can only take comfort in the fact that they have no idea what they’re up against.

by luck alone, it’s a new moon when he gets to you a day later, and jeno finds it even easier than usual to camouflage himself amongst the trees outside the redcoat fort he’s staking out. he’s already taken note of the wagon and cage that are on his right, his eyes having honed in on the piece of cloth stuck - he recognizes it from one of your dresses - to the cage’s hinge. there are numerous redcoats on watch, but jeno, his mind sharply focused on one thing and one thing only, finds clarity in his decision-making tonight.

he trails the perimeter, hidden amongst trees, until he finds a guard that’s about his stature. it takes little effort at all to pull the redcoat into bushes with a hand on his mouth, and it takes even less work than that for jeno to jab his hidden blade into the other man’s throat from behind, leaving him to asphyxiate on his own gurgling blood. jeno lets him die, not bothering to pray for his victim for the first time ever. instead, he’s as cold as steel as he strips the newly dead man, changing into the red uniform without remorse while amongst the bushes. he stashes his own robe and hides his weapons before he emerges, a man on a mission.

it’s easy to hide his face tonight, especially as he pulls his hat down low. the shadow engulfs his face, and when he returns to the dead man’s post, the other, tired redcoat beside him doesn’t even blink. jeno tamps down on the urge to kill him, too - part of him wants to leave no survivors, not when he doesn’t know if you’re safe or not. 

if he raises an alarm before he finds you, though, he risks you getting hurt if you already aren’t. this is the only thing that has him tipping his hat down kindly at the other man before leaving his post, murmuring something quietly about a bathroom. the soldier is too tired to register the fact that jeno’s voice isn’t one he’s used to. 

it takes him no time at all to get to what he presumes to be the makeshift prison - a small shed-like building made of wood and reinforced with brick. nobody bats an eyelid at his red-clad form, nobody makes to look at his face or question him. his tomahawk is uncomfortable against his skin, but he doesn’t care that it has to be underneath his uniform for once. 

breaking the lock on the prison is easy after he smothers the guard on duty from behind. he snaps the man’s neck, just in case - the ripping noise from within the dead man’s body doesn’t bother jeno nearly as much as it should. it takes everything in him not to pull the door off its hinges in his haste to see if you’re inside, and he finds luck on his side when he hurries in to find you standing, propping yourself up against the single set of metal bars within the shed. you’re blindfolded and your hands are bound, and his eyes are quick to find the exposed patch of skin in your side from where your dress had snagged, but you’re alive. you’re very much alive. 

“(name),” jeno breathes out, and you visibly perk up. 

“jeno?” your voice is hoarse, a little raspy, and he realizes with a pang that you haven’t spoken in hours. it’s likely you haven’t had water as well. 

“i’m here, my heart,” he responds, rushing over to you to reaching his fingers between the bars and run a hand over your hair. “step back for me, love.” 

you can tell how panicked he must be from the way terms are endearment are slipping off his tongue with ease. jeno is a quiet lover, a sturdy one. you know that you have his entire heart, and you know that you always will. he proves this with his actions often, but he’s far less inclined to do so with his words. he’s worried, and you want to soothe him however you can.

you step back. 

the sound of the lock breaking is high-pitched and scraping, and before you can react you’re being pulled forward into a chest you know better than you know your own features. jeno’s arms wrap around you, and one of his hands busies itself in untying your hands while the other easily pulls the blindfold off of your eyes. his tomahawk is by the door, right beside a smashed lock. 

“are you okay? do you ache? did they do anyth-”

“we need to get out of here,” you cut him off, looking your love directly in the eye. “immediately. they wanted to lure you here, and you mustn’t let them get what they want.”

it’s not fifteen seconds after jeno drags the two of you into the woods, forcing you to climb up a tree before following you up into it, that you both watch, hidden amongst the leaves and the stars, as tens of panicked redcoats rush into the place they’d had you held. you’re close enough to hear the fear in their voices when they discover their deceased brethren at the door, and you’re close enough to hear their shouts of anger when they discover that you’re gone. they double their patrol, keeping a hawk eye on the woods around them.

it’s hours before you and jeno are able to leave, shrouded in the darkest part of the night. it’s a day before you’re back home, resting your raw wrists in a bowl of cold water while jeno cleans his weapons for good. it’s weeks before you tell him exactly what you’d seen, what you’d heard the night you were taken.

it’s months before jeno can even try to forgive himself. for what, he’s unsure.

↳ in due time: “this isn’t a good idea.” jeno mutters, and you lift your gaze from your book to look over at him. he’s been lying flat on his back on his side of the bed while staring directly at the ceiling for the past few hours while you’ve been reading on your side. 

“what’s not a good idea?” you ask, not too worried about his response. jeno gets into moods often, and typically you can pull him out of them just by talking. it isn’t easy getting him to talk, especially not considering his line of work, but he’s never had trouble opening up to you. 

“us.”

the book slips from your hands, falling onto your chest, and he finally looks over at you. his face would be unreadable if the sorrow in his eyes wasn’t so obvious. 

“now what the hell makes you say that?” your words are incredulous, your tone more hurt than scathing. jeno loves you, this you’re sure of - so what is he talking about?

“being with me hurt you,” he sighs, pulling himself into a sitting position. “and it - i thought i was going to kill everything in my path. kill everyone. for a moment i thought i was going to kill myself, i- i-... fuck.” jeno drops his head into his hands, and you find yourself staring at his back.

for a moment, neither of you speak. neither of you move. 

you reach a tentative hand out, laying it square on his back.

“being with you is why i live.” you whisper, and you feel jeno’s back shudder underneath your fingertips. “jeno, when you met me, i was running from a life of-of pain, a life where i was unwanted. you were the first person to ever make me feel loved. you still are. i did not get hurt because of you - i got hurt because there are awful people, who want awful things, and you’re single-handedly standing in the way of them ruining the world with their greed and hatred. this is not a bad idea. this is the best idea either of us have ever had.” as you speak, you shift closer and closer to him.

“you don’t- you’re okay?” jeno turns his head to face you, and you can’t help but nod instinctively. you aren’t lying. you lean in, pressing a gentle kiss against the top of his spine.

“of course,” you murmur into his skin, moving so you’re situated directly behind him. you wrap your arms around his torso from the back and rest your chin on top of his shoulder. he slowly relaxes under your touch, leaning back against you, and you let him soften before you continue speaking. 

“i’m always okay with you.”

[mychemicalficrecs]

any good frerard fics that take place before the 2000s? so like anywhere from the 1990s-1600s or whatever it doesn’t matter to me :)

Hi Nonny!

There's a great variety of Historical AUs, have fun with these!

Frank/Gerard Historical AUs

You Sparkle Like My 6 Gun by jet6black6feeling6, 7k, Explicit. Gerard does drag at a prohibition era night club that mafia boss Frank owns. Duh.

The Heart I Left Behind by gloomboyz, 8k, Mature. Various scenes of how Gerard and Frank find each other throughout history.

Sincerely (Yours) by Tezy, 34k, Explicit. (Late 19th century AU) Frank is the son of a merchant, with no money, and no title. But he's smart, and he enjoys teaching, so when the opportunity arises for him to help with the two children of a particularly wealthy family, he decides it is worth the risk. The children are precocious, outspoken and they quickly become his favourite students. Their slightly peculiar uncle, however, is the real mystery for him.

timelines and sceneries by daydreamsago, 42k, Teen And Up Audiences. "My brain wants everything to be figured out so it can stop worrying about what life will be like in ten years or so," Frank admitted. "Time is such a weird thing, because one moment, you're young and dependent on your parents, then... boom. You're graduated and everything matters all at once. Time is consistent. It doesn't slow down, or speed up at all; our perception of it does."

Line-Crossing by orphan_account, 12k, Explicit. When Frank finally gets up on his feet, he finds a job taking care of the greenhouses in a manor house. He hopes this new beginning will help him forget and allow him to heal. Moving into the country, Gerard hopes he'll finally be left alone by all the people back home who can't seem to stop criticizing everything about him. He also hopes to find some peace and maybe even (yes, he actually dares to be that optimistic) happiness.

Shadows Fall Behind by anoceanmonster, 39k, Explicit. Just before the turn of the twentieth century, the Iero household experiences it’s second devastating loss. When Edward Iero, world renowned architect, replaces the recently deceased and much loved head of staff, Donald, with his eldest son, Gerard, no one knows if anything will work out. Frank is a book loving recluse who rarely sees the outside of his study, but when Gerard enters his house and his life, he gets a love story all of his own.

A Lovely Apparition (or, The One Where Gerard's A Crossdresser in the 1790s) by wordslinging, 22k, Mature. Michael didn’t seem particularly shocked when Gerard approached him with the idea, but then, Gerard had never seen his younger brother look particularly shocked at anything. He merely looked at Gerard, blinked once or twice, and repeated in a flat tone, “You want me to help you dress up like a woman.” “It’s the stays in particular I think I’ll need help with,” Gerard told him. “Well, and buttoning the dress, and perhaps the wig.”

A World So Small by wordslinging, 31k, Mature. When Frank, a sickly young man, is advised by his doctors to leave London for the country, he makes arrangements to stay with his friend Michael, who just so happens to be in possession of a large, old, and somewhat creepy manor house. What Frank has no idea of at the time is that Michael has an older brother, whose presence in the house he conceals. Gerard is an eccentric recluse who spends most of his time hiding in the attic and avoiding any kind of interaction with people, but he finds himself fascinated with Frank, who in turn realizes that the house has secrets, and becomes determined to uncover them. When he finally does discover Gerard, their first meeting is only the beginning of their story.

Vampire AU by Andromedas_Void, 26k, Explicit. Mister Francis Anthony Iero, Junior, Your presence is requested this evening at 221 Upper Birch Lane, North London. A carriage will be awaiting you at 3:00 pm sharp. Cordially yours, Gerard Arthur Way, Esq.

Riot Grrrl!Gee by my99centdreams, 7k, Explicit. It’s the fourth party she’s been to this week if the one Taylor Kennick threw for herself while her parents stayed in their room counts (it probably doesn’t but whatever, the point is she’s been far too social lately and is just about ready to revert back to her hermit ways). Seriously, if it gets to the point where Mikey breaks out the password they created for emergency situations, and by emergency situations she means their lives have turned into a body snatchers movie, then she knows it's time to put on her pajamas, lock herself in her room, and eat ice cream straight from the carton.

This Tornado Loves You by theopteryx, 44k, Mature. 1933. Frank's been on the run a long time and he's forced to stop in his old hometown. At first things are about what he expects - old friends, unpleasant memories, and a less-than-desirable home life. Everything changes one night when he stumbles on an old hedge maze hidden in the woods. It's not the hedge maze that intrigues him the most, though, but the secrets of the house hidden inside.

NASAverse by fleurdeliser, 22k, Explicit. The second basement of Building Six at the Kennedy Space Center is not, Frank reminds himself, straightening his shoulders and stepping out of the elevator, one of the more intimidating offices in the NASA compound. It is, in fact, just one workshop out of many, where fabricators test out designs that come from the engineers upstairs--where Frank works.

Variations on a Fugue by mrsronweasley, 36k, Explicit. Frank Iero is a young nobleman currently living with his parents in the Lake District, where he plans on leading a quiet life away from London and its temptations. However, temptation moves into his neighbourhood in the face of one Gerard Way. (Early Edwardian AU.)

Public Enemy by tabulaxrasa, 21k, Explicit. In 1932, Gerard Way has been making a name for himself robbing banks up and down New Jersey. Frank Iero, analyst for J. Edgar Hoover's Division of Investigation, is determined to catch him.

Against the Wind by theopteryx, 21k, Explicit. Frank is the tutor for the two young children of Michael and Alicia Way. He has always been sickly, but when he begins to fall seriously ill he tries to hide it from his employers, terrified he will lose his position and have nothing. When Michael’s older brother Gerard unexpectedly returns from the continent, however, his problems only grow.

Can Never Wrong this Right by theopteryx, 24k, Explicit. Written for the hc_bingo challenge, for the square of 'forced soul-bonding.' It's 1949 and Dr. Way is a professor of Archeology and Frank is his constantly exasperated (and secretly pining) assistant. When their latest trek takes them to South America to locate the fabled Blood Stone, however, they both find more than they bargained for.

Love and Other Cliches by two_ravens, xaritomene, 29k, Not Rated. Bob Bryar is the best witch in the whole damn scene, even if he does say so himself. Which is just as well, because he's got responsibilities, most of which involve his charge, Gerard. Mainly, Bob's supposed to keep Gerard from falling down a well, or losing his sketchpad - little things, but Bob is a conscientious guardian. But when it becomes obvious that Gerard and Frank are hopelessly, silently in love with each other, Bob suddenly has bigger things to worry about. Nothing he's tried has ended in the declarations of love he'd been aiming for (not the fireworks, not the sunsets, not even the four hours they'd spent in locked in a closet). In a last, ditch attempt, he resorts to real spellwork, the epic, Cinderella kind, and now Frank and Gerard are stuck in a romance novel... with only one way out.

What Ships Are For by mwestbelle, 22k, Explicit. A ship is safe in a harbor, but that's not what ships are for. -William Shedd Gerard is most concerned when he finds that, while away at university, his father has taken in a new ward of his own brother's age. But upon his return home, he finds the young man to be particularly enchanting; unfortunately, according to the High Society he lives in, not only is Frank entirely too poor to be considered, but they might as well be brothers.

Like a Horse and Carriage by mwestbelle, 9k, Mature. Frank was raised wild, on a merchant vessel that sailed all around the world. When he returns home, an orphan, he is wed to a man with money and name that he has never met. A Victorian AU.

Illyria (King and Country) by tabulaxrasa, 57k, Explicit. Today, they'd woken up and Gerard was King of Illyria. Frank hasn't really been a stable boy since he ended up in the archduke's bed, but now Gerard's exile is over and he's king. Frank has to survive court, politics, and scheming nobles to figure out exactly what he is now.

[carewyncromwell]

Carewyn, if you had to choice to go to a different Wizarding school where would you go? Where would you have gone, Jacob?

[Carewyn considers this.]

Carewyn: “Hmm...I really like going to Hogwarts, so choosing another school would be hard for me. Maybe Beauxbatons? From what Aurelie and Madame Maxime said, it sounds like a nice place -- though I admit, the traditional ‘Beauxbatons walk’ is a little...’sparkly’ for my taste. (giggles)”

[Jacob, in contrast to his sister, is absolutely thrilled by this question -- he don’t need no stinkin’ Veritaserum, he’s going to geek out x 10, okay?]

Jacob: “DUDE! You win the award for best question, mate! Right on!”

[He leans forward slightly in his seat, his hands gesturing animatedly in front of him as he gabs on.]

Jacob: “So, like -- it’s one of my biggest goals in life to visit every single magical school on Earth -- taking a class there, teaching a class there, just stopping by for research or breaking a curse or afternoon tea -- don’t care. I want in. Beauxbatons’s definitely one I’ve been itching to visit for its history with Nicholas Flamel and its reputation of producing talented alchemists...but there are a good hundred magic schools in Africa alone, and not one of them is sub-par. The library at Hekanwit College in Egypt is supposed to contain some of the oldest magical texts ever discovered, and Uagadou School in Uganda has more registered Animagi among its alumni than any other school in the world. There’s also Durmstrang Institute in eastern Europe -- I’m telling you, if it’s the last thing I do, I am getting my butt in that place. Did you know it’s so heavily guarded that even its own students have their memories modified upon graduation so they can’t reveal its exact location? I mean -- dude! That is a school I absolutely must see for myself! Then of course there’s the smaller academies like the Salem Witches’ Institute and L’Ecole Laveau -- North American schools are particularly interesting since they often have a lot of different cultural influences in their architecture, and thanks to how underground the MACUSA is in the United States especially, a lot of schools often have to be mobile in some capacity, so they can location-hop before any Muggles catch wise. That’s actually part of the reason why quite a few communities in America prefer to have magical tutors or teach magic at home rather than send their kids to full private schools, so that those magical children can still go to Muggle school and live more ‘normal’ lives. Then of course there are cultural reasons for those decisions too.”

[Jacob grins broadly.]

Jacob: “So to answer your question -- I pick every single one!”

((OOC: Okay -- commentary time.

Hekanwit College and L’Ecole Laveau are not officially part of the Potterverse -- they’re names I invented. I’ve tried to be sensitive with the cultures represented, but if I have been tactless, please let me know: I have never lived in Egypt or in New Orleans, and I tried my best to research both areas before writing anything like this, but I am not above acknowledging my own ignorance and potential for blind spots. “Hekanwit” is a combination of two Ancient Egyptian words, “heka” meaning “magic” and “nwit” meaning “city” -- my thought is that it’s also one of the oldest magical schools still open today, though it is much smaller than the “more well-known” (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling-official) Uagadou School. L’Ecole Laveau literally translates to “The Laveau School,” and is named for the “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans” Marie Laveau.

The ideas of Africa and America having so many schools and Americans often teaching their kids magic at home rather than sending them to private schools are also completely mine. J.K. Rowling herself has only discussed one school on the entire continent of Africa (the aforementioned Uagadou School) and only two -- the Salem Witches’ Institute and the heavily criticized Ilvermorny -- in North America. As an American myself, I can’t help but feel as though having only two schools for everyone in my country is kind of farfetched, let alone for my entire continent (I mean, seriously, do Canadians not have any schools of their own?!). And we Americans can be so individualistic when it comes to state identity and have so much real-world historical baggage attached to our native population being carted off to European-style boarding schools that the “Hogwarts” model really doesn’t fit here as well as it does in the U.K. (And honestly, even in the U.K., it seems weird at points. Scottish kids really have to yank their butts all the way to London just to take a train that’ll take them back to Scotland?? XD;;;)

But yeah, so a lot of Jacob’s response comes from my own headcanons, but I’ve tried very hard to make sure those headcanons come from an informed place, and hopefully they’re not too intrusive. 💚))

Honesty Ask!

[xfulldreamerx]

About SKAM PERÚ: Peruvian people’s Geographical views

The National Republic of Peru. La República Nacional del Perú. Informally, we the citizens, like the rest of the world, know it, simply, as Peru. This sovereign country is located in the continent of South America, to the West, with the Pacific Ocean at its coast. Peru is one of the few megadiverse countries in the whole world. Peru’s three official languages are Spanish (Español), Quechua and Aymara. In Peru’s territory is located La Cordillera de Los Andes (The Andes Mountains), though not completely. In this post, I will explain how we Peruvians see and understand our country geographically.

We measure in meters, so in square kilometers, the extension of Peru is: 

1.285 million km²

In miles, that is: 798461.982 mi²

Peru’s population is: 

32.17 million

In a continental level

Here is a map of South America, with Peru in ORANGE:

To the north, we border with Ecuador and Colombia. To the east, we border with Brazil. To the southeast, we border with Bolivia. To the south, we border with Chile.

Here is a map of South America, with Peru highlighted:

I’ve always thought that Peru has a particular shape, and it kinda does. That’s due to all the territory we lost back in the day when we were at war with Chile (the Pacific War) and the with Ecuador, but that’s history for, maybe, another post.

In a national level

Now, this is the first way children learn to see Peru as a country: the three geographical regions.

From left to right:

In yellow, we have LA COSTA. The Coast/Desert Coast. 

In brown, we LA SIERRA. The Highlands. Here, we encounter The Andes Mountains.

In green, we have LA SELVA. The Jungle/Rainforest. Here, we encounter the Amazonas rainforest.

Oh and some people consider that The Peruvian Sea, EL MAR PERUANO, is the fourth region. This is not universal, though. 

I will talk about how stereotypes of people from these regions are in another post.

After that, in Primary School, they teach us a new way to see our country: LOS DEPARTAMENTOS, or, literally, departments. The formal term in English is, I think, the states. In the UK, that would be like the counties.

Peru has 24 departments. Here is a list of the departments with their capitals (Department - Capital City):

Amazonas - Chachapoyas

Áncash - Huaraz

Apurímac - Abancay

Arequipa - Ciudad de Arequipa

Ayacucho - Ciudad de Ayacucho

Cajamarca - Ciudad de Cajamarca

Cusco - Ciudad del Cuzco

Huancavelica - Ciudad de Huancavelica

Huánuco - Ciudad de Huánuco

Ica - Ciudad de Ica

Junín - Huancayo

La Libertad - Trujillo

Lambayeque - Chiclayo

Lima - Ciudad de Lima

Loreto - Iquitos

Madre de Dios - Puerto Maldonado

Moquegua - Ciudad de Moquegua

Pasco - Cerro de Pasco

Piura - Ciudad de Piura

Puno - Ciudad de Puno

San Martín - Moyobamba

Tacna - Ciudad de Tacna

Tumbes - Ciudad de Tumbes

Ucayali - Pucallpa

When you combine the three geographical regions with the departments, you obtain this:

IMPORTANT: Even though Áncash and Arequipa have a coast and, thus, should be included in the Coast region, they are not considered in it. Yes, in the map of the three regions the Coast has no interruptions, but that’s a generalization schools make for little children. A lot of people still view it that way, though, so sometimes that’s a problem. Still, Áncash and Arequipa are considered to be part of the Highlands. 

In a department/province level

Departments are divided into provinces. Look at a map of Lima as a department:

Lima, as a department, has 10 provinces. I, for example, live in the province of Huaura. Let’s take my province as an example of this: provinces are divided into districts. The province of Huaura is divided into 12 districts. I was born in the district of Huacho, three hours from Lima, the capital city of Peru. Almost every district has a city with its same name - for example, my district has a city also called Huacho, which is, actually, where I’m from and currently live in.

In a province/city level

Below the province of Huaura, you have the province of Huaral. Below the province of Huaral, you have the province of Lima. La provincia de Lima. It is essential here to understand that la provincia de Lima is always taken as a whole, and even though it’s a province, all Peruvians refer to it as the capital city, la capital. Why? Historical reasons, I guess. Look at its map: 

I know, I know, too many districts. That’s the province of Lima, which is so important that has special treatment. People from all over the country refer to it as just Lima, la capital. It is a province, but we all talk about it as a big, big city. I will be referring to it as such (“the city”). Formally, it is divided into 43 districts - one of them is, actually, called Lima as well, and it is located at the center of the province. Then, of course, we have the Constitutional Province of Callao, La Provincia Constitucional del Callao, or just El Callao. This one is special: it has its own government, but it’s still inside Peru and goes by all its laws and Constitution, of course - you can see it up there in the map, in pink, where it is also divided into districts despite being a part of Lima. El Callao is also a port, which has made the province known for fishing - they are big about that. Complicated? For us, not at all. 

You can see that, apart from El Callao, Lima is divided into four other sectors. These are not formal - they’re just a way of distinguishing four zones of the city: 

Lima Norte, North Lima (in green): Upper part of the city, borders with the province of Huaral and the province of Canta.

Lima Centro, Lima Center (in light blue): Middle part of the city, borders with all the other parts. 

Lima Este, East Lima (in deep orange): Side part of the city, the only one with no sea whatsoever. It borders with the province of Huarochirí.

Lima Sur, South Lima (in light orange): Lower part of the city, borders with the province of Huarochirí and the province of Cañete. 

Just to count, we have:

Lima, the department, divided into provinces

Lima, the province (also known as “the city”), divided into districts

Lima, the district, also known as Lima Metropolitana nowadays or Cercado de Lima, where the name comes from

Understood? Cool! Let’s have a closer look:

In this new map, you can’t see all the districts, but you’re able to focus on “the main ones.” See, as a lot of cities in the world, Lima is divided by socioeconomic class. It is true that all districts have their share of the middle class and even rich people, but generalization persists. There isn’t a map where you can see this type of division, so I’m going to write it down for you:

The north side (Ventanilla, Puente Piedra, Comas, Los Olivos, San Martín, Independencia, San Martín de Porres, San Juan de Lurigancho, Lurigancho, and even El Callao) is considered as the poor part of Lima.

The center (Lima, Breña, San Miguel, Pueblo Libre, Jesús María, Lince, La Victoria, and even Magdalena del Mar) is considered the middle-class part of Lima, with some traces of the upper-class and, sometimes, the lower-class.

The south side (San Isidro, Miraflores, Barranco and part of Surco) are considered the upper-class part, where all the rich people live. 

Part of the east side (Surco, San Borja, La Molina) is also considered for the rich, though, as they border with Santa Anita, Ate Vitarte, San Luis and El Agustino, lower-class districts, can have “poor parts” or a middle-class section. 

All the other districts are just a mixture of socioeconomic classes and are also considered for vacation.

When you come from a place outside of Lima, you are considered to come “from a province”, which means “de provincia”, in Spanish - that is, that you can be from the Highlands or the Jungle, or another place in the Coast that isn’t Lima itself (even me, who is from Lima the department, is considered “de provincia”, just because I wasn’t born in Lima the city). That is an informal term that is very commonly used amongst Peruvians. Peru suffers from centralization - Lima is the city that is “centralized.” All the good schools and colleges, hospitals and clinics, theaters and museums, are here. You wanna be someone? Come to Lima. I study in Lima. This centralization makes Lima the “place to be”. A lot of people from all over the country come here in search of opportunities and a brighter future, a better legacy for their families. Like, you have no idea. Lima is so full of people we are in a mild crisis, seriously. Lima is like the American Dream to all the people who were born outside the city. It’s a big statement that, I believe, just a Latin American would understand, because a lot of Latin American countries are centralized. 

Two curiosities of Lima as a capital: 

- It’s the only capital city in South America that has an exit to the sea.

- It’s the most populated city in Peru, with more than 10 million people, which is almost 10% of the entire population. This also makes Lima one of the most populated cities in Latin America, and places it on the Top 30 of most populated cities in the world.

That’s all, I think. If you have any doubt whatsoever, don’t hesitate to leave it in my ask box - I will be glad to solve it. Please, tell me what you think, and what you would like for me to cover next!

[cornaviruscarwreck]

Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history.

“in fourteen hundred and nightly three, Columbus stole all he could see.”

Someone recently said to me that America has the greatest propaganda system ever created. Then my mom said to me that the people protecting the Columbus statue at Marconi Plaza in south philly probably do not know all the horrible things he represents. That I am blessed to have an education and an interest that is more expansive. She said they don’t know what they are depending. So I decided to compile a list of the things that make Columbus basically one of the worst historical figures. He is known for two things. 1- stealing the land and the genocide of indigenous peoples. 2- starting the transatlantic slave trade. I have provided ample primary sources as evidence. I am not clear on where the confusion lies….willful ignorance? Thats as kind as I can go.

So one concern may be that its not right to judge historical figures based on todays standards. Columbus was a slaver and a pedophile. The founders were slavers and the Greeks were pedophiles but we revere them. The point is not that Columbus did these things, the point is the way he did them was barbaric and inhuman. The point is that Columbus was not just a slaver or pedophile but a war criminal who committed atrocities against indigenous peoples and stole their lands. But MY point is that the story of Columbus has an insidious message, the history we teach our children is full of lies created as a system of propaganda and myth building. The myth of Columbus teaches us to identify with the oppressor, to ignore the perspective of those the land was stolen from, and the rhetoric of discovery implies only the feats of the white man matters.

“Not understanding their past renders many Americans incapable of thinking effectively about our present and future”

“Students of the dominant social group are taught lies in the guise of fact creating an ‘inverted world’ view which hide the unjust distribution of power in the past so they do not have the tools to identify them in the future.”

Myth: Columbus was bold and brave, ahead of his time while his crew was fearful of sailing over the edge of the world. “The people of your earth believed the earth to be flat; Columbus proved it was round.“-star trek 

Fact: In Columbus’s time all educated people and most sailors believed the earth was a sphere.

Proof: It looks round. It casts a circular shadow on moon. Sailors see its roundness when ships disappear over the horizon, hull first, then sails.

Proof: Washington Irving made up flat earth fable in 1828

Propaganda: The lie makes Columbus a man of science who corrected our faulty geography That those who direct social enterprises are more intelligent than those nearer the bottom.

2. Myth: Columbus on the first voyage with the pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria braved a dangerous journal and the crew almost mutinied.

Fact: It was smooth sailing and at worst rained only the last day when they knew they were close to land

Fact: there was no mutiny, at best some grumpy sailors

Fact: the journey was no more than a month and they stopped at the Canary Islands and were given aid.

Propaganda: Columbus bravely succeeded in an arduous journey even while dealing with superstitious sailors.

3. Myth: Columbus was a skilled navigator and leader who hid the distance of his journey from the crew so they would not think they had gone too far from home.

Fact: Columbus had false entries in the log of Santa Maria to keep the route to the Indies secret. Columbus was a less experienced navigator than the Pinzon brothers who captained the Nina and Pinta

Proof: Columbus admits this later in his journal

Proof: argument from Salvador de Madariaga that we would have to think the others on the voyage were fools. Columbus had no special method available only to him whereby distances sailed could be more accurately reckoned than by the other pilots and masters

Propaganda: Those at the top are smarter than those at the bottom. Columbus was a genius navigator.

4. Myth: Columbus died alone and poor without recognition for his deeds

Fact: Columbus died well off.

Proof: He left his airs well endowed with the title: ‘Admiral of the Ocean Sea’ now carried by his 18th generation descendant

Propaganda: Columbus’s story is a tragedy of a brave man wrongly treated by the world

5. Myth: Columbus did not know he had reached a ‘new’ continent

Fact: He knew.

Proof: His journal entries

Propaganda: to humanize Columbus and maximize his greatness

6. Myth: Columbus discovered a ‘New World’

Fact: It was new only to Europeans

Proof: People had lived in Americas for thousands of years

Propaganda: the white European conquest was right and natural. Implies we have a right to this land and subtly says it was empty of anyone who mattered

Propaganda: justifies American exceptionalism and natural right to the world. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush invoked Columbus as a role model for the nation: “Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith.”

7. Myth: Columbus ‘discovered’ America

Fact: Columbus not the first to discover America but the last

Fact: the rhetoric of discovery has been used to justify the stolen land

Proof: How can one person discover what another already knows and owns?

Propaganda: All the important discoveries are traceable to white Europe

Propaganda Analysis: “So long as our textbooks hide from us the roles that people of color have played in exploration, from at least 6000 BC to the twentieth century, they encourage us to look to Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they say ‘discover’ they imply that whites are the only people who really matter.” -Lies My Teacher Told Me page 66

Use of Propaganda: words matter: In 1823 Chief Justice John Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court decried that Cherokees had certain rights to their land in Georgia by dint of their ‘occupancy’ but that whites had superior rights owing to their ‘discovery’. How American Indians managed to occupy Georgia without having previously discovered it Marshall neglected to explain.

8. Myth: Columbus was the first to voyage to the Americas across Atlantic.

Fact: The Norse, The Phoenicians and Africans sailed to America long before Columbus.

Fact: Columbus was not the first, just the first white catholic to make it

Fact: Phoenicians beat Columbus by over 2000 years

Fact: at best students are taught the Norse came a little earlier but they failed where we succeeded. No mention is made of the vast amounts of evidence that show other peoples traveling across the ocean

Proof: There were people already there and all humans originated from same place, so the indigenous peoples had to have traveled somehow

Proof: the huge face stones in Mexico have distinctly African features

Proof: archeological discoveries of tools and art

Propaganda: Only the feats of white people matter. All important developments can be traced to white Europeans

Propaganda: students learn that black feats are not considered important while white ones are.

9. Myth: Native Americans walked across the Atlantic in an Ice Age

Fact: Native Americans came to the Americas between 70,000 and 12,000 BC, from Siberia to Alaska

Proof: It is impossible to walk across the ocean even in an Ice Age

Propaganda: the natives people were primitive and European whites were smarter and more advanced

10. Myth: Columbus came for exploration and trade

Fact: Columbus’s purpose from the beginning was conquest and exploitation for which he used religion as a rationale to force the indigenous peoples to work for him

Proof: the Spanish sought gold, they killed Indians, and Indians fled and resisted.

Propaganda: Columbus’s venture had good intentions and his efforts were religiously motivated

11. Possible Myth: Columbus was a Catholic Italian

Fact: this is an unproven story

Fact: some scholars believe he was a jewish convert from Spain hiding from the inquisition.

Proof: He wrote in his journals in Spanish and could not write in Italian

Propaganda: Italian American Nationalism

12. Probable Myth: Columbus yelled ‘Tierra!’ Or ‘land’ when he spotted the coast and his first act on ground was to thank god

Fact: There is absolutely no proof this is the case

Proof: Considering all the other embellishments to the myth of Columbus it seems reasonable to think this is a lie as well.

Propaganda: focus white American identify with Columbus and the moment of ‘discovery’ not what Columbus did to the native peoples and lands he ‘discovered’

13. Myth: White Europeans invented navigation and sea fairing ships

Fact: Not true. White history says the design started with Henrey the Navigator of Portugal between 1415 and 1460.

Fact: Egyptians and Phoenicians where sailing long before white Europeans. Portugal probably saw their designs and that is where Columbus got his ‘new ship’.

Fact: There was nothing special about Columbus’s navigation abilities

Proof: massive amounts of archaeological data, including coins from ancient Rome.

Proof: If everyone originated in same place, then how did any people get there before Columbus?

Propaganda: all important discoveries came from white europeans and the natives where primitive and fortunate to be ‘civilized’

14. Myth: White Europeans conquered because they are/were naturally the stronger smarty people

Fact: History tells us it was one man but it was actually many cultures

Fact: White Europeans learned medicine and without the help of the native peoples would have starved for lack on knowledge of local agriculture

Fact: Democracy came from Indigenous Peoples

Fact: ‘Syncretism’ is combining the ideas from two or more cultures to something new.

Proof: Muslims preserved the wisdom of the greeks and enhanced it with ideas from china, india, and africa, then passing it on to Europe via Italy and spain

Propaganda: only white Europeans are strong and a multiracial society is not rational. Clearly, all advancement and progress has come from the white man.

Propaganda: European world domination is natural and inevitable

Propaganda: all culture and modern Tecnology comes from white europeans

15. Origin Myth: He was good and so are we.

Fact: Some people cannot accept Columbus as a villain. “But an honest account of history does not mean Columbus was bad and so are we. Textbooks should show that right morality or immorality cannot simply be conferred upon us by history. Merely being part of the United States, without regard to our own acts and ideas, does not make us immoral or moral human beings. History is more complicated than that.”

Truth of the Legacy of Christopher Columbus:

Columbus changed the world and revolutionized race relations.

His Legacy: the class of cultures and system of domination that still exist today

A bloody atrocity that left a legacy of genoicide and slavery that endures to some degree to this day.

Christopher Columbus changed the world in two ways: Colonization in the form of genoicide and Slavery

The taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in Western Hemisphere, leading to their near extermination.

Sunday October 14th 1492: “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased.”

Columbus returned with Haitian Slaves and Ferdinand and Isabella outfitted Columbus for a second voyage with 17 ships, 1200-1500 men, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs.

The War of the Worlds allegory

When the ‘primitive’ peoples were terrified by the advance Tecnology of the aliens Wells wanted us to sympathize with the natives on Haiti in 1943 or on Australia in 1788 or in the upper Amazon jungle today

Haiti

Conquer them he did. Columbus and his men demanded food, gold, spun cotton, women, ect. 

 Columbus used punishment by example to ensure cooperation

When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose. Disfigured, the person was sent back to his village as living evidence of the brutality the Spanish were capable of

At first the resistance was passive but eventually they took up arms, their resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war

Ferdinand Columbus’s biography of his father: “The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike and with God’s aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.”

Columbus’s created a tribute system where natives received a medallion after paying tribute and were safe for three months where they would have to provide another tribute or have their hands chopped off.

The encomienda system came later but was of Columbus’s design

Pedro de Cordoba wrote a letter to King Ferdinand in 1517 describing the Haiti that Christopher Columbus had created, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth . . . Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery.” -Lies My Teacher Told Me pg 57

The Haitians impaled themselves, drank poison, jumped off cliffs, hanged themselves and killed their children

Haiti Pre-Columbian

Estimates as high as 8 million.

1496 estimates of 3 million

1516 estimates of 12,000

1542 estimates of 200 full blooded Haitian Indians

1555 none.

The methods unleashed by Columbus are the larger part of his legacy. Other Nations rushed to emulate Columbus. “In 1501 the Portuguese began to depopulate Labrador, transporting the now extinct Beothuk Indians to Europe and Capa Verde as Slaves. After the English established beachheads on the Atlantic coast of North America, they encouraged capture and sell members of more distant tribes. Charleston South Carolina, became a major port of exporting American Indian Slaves. Pilgrims and Puritans sold the survivors of the Pequot War into Slavery in Bermuda in 1673. The French sipped virtually the entire Natchez nation in chains to the West Indies in 1731.” 

2. The transatlantic slave trade which created a racial underclass

Columbus sent the first slaves across the Atlantic 

Columbus sent more slaves across Atlantic than any other individual (5,000)

On Haiti Columbus did not find gold at first so he found another source of wealth

Columbus in letter to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1496 on Indian death rate: “Although they die now, they will not always die The negroes and Canary Islanders died at first.”

“there now began a rain of terror in Hispaniola”- Hans Koning

On The sexual slave trade

Columbus rewarded his lieutenants with native women to rape. They raided villages for sex and sport

Columbus wrote to friend in 1500 “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a women as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from 9 to 10 are now in demand”

African slave trade

To replace dying Haitians, the Spanish imported tens of thousands more Indians from the Bahamas, to extinction 

 Because the Indians died, Columbus imported slaves from Africa. Beginning the massive slave trade the other way across the Atlantic, from Africa

Haitian revolution

Site of first large scale revolt, when blacks and American Indians banded together in 1519. The uprising lasted more than a decade and brought to end by Spanish in 1530s 

In 1791-1804 Haitians Revolted in the first successful slave rebellion in the West

Who are our US History Textbooks written for?

Who are ‘we’? Columbus is no hero in Mexico even though Mexico is must more Spannish and might be expected to take pride in this hero of Spanish history. Why not? Because Mexico is much more Indian than US, and because Mexicans perceive Columbus as white and European.

‘the fundamental epistemic asymmetry between typical white views of blacks and typical black views of whites: these are not cognizers linked by a reciprocal ignorance but rather groups whose respective privilege and subordination tend to produce self-deception, bad faith, evasion, and misrepresentation on the one hand, and more veridical perceptions, on the other hand’

Continuing to use terms like ‘discovered’ and ‘civilized’ allow whites to think of selves as master to the native (even though colonization is over) and superior morally and intellectually.

“When history textbooks leave out the Arawaks, they offend Native Americans. When they omit the possibility of African and Phoenician precursors to Columbus, they offend African Americans. When they glamorize explores such as de Soto just because they were white, our histories offend all people of color. When they leave out Las Casas, they omit an interesting idealist with whom we all might identify. When they glorify Columbus, our textbooks prod us toward identifying with the oppressor. When textbook authors omit the causes and process of European world domination, they offer a history whose purpose must be to keep us unaware of the important questions.” -page 69, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

[speakinghistorically]

Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Of course, by the time most people will read this, it won’t be Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it. Before I start, I want to warn you that this post will be longer than usual and will mention American politics. I’m sorry, but I promise it is important.

The second Monday of October is Canadian Thanksgiving, as well as Columbus Day. It is a day to be thankful for friends and family, but it also celebrates a man whose legacy is one of genocide and slavery. For decades Indigenous activists have fought to have critical discussions of Columbus and his legacy enter the public sphere. They have been working for decades to educate the public about the atrocities Columbus committed. For much of the last few centuries, Columbus was portrayed as a brilliant explorer who fought the ignorant belief that the world was flat and sailed across the Atlantic to find the New World. And that is where the story ended; “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. But because of the tireless work of activists, we have a much better picture of the real Columbus in our collective minds. The image of the whitewashed explorer is being eroded by a steady stream of actual history. Christopher Columbus, like most educated people in Europe, knew the world was round. He underestimated the size of the globe and thus came to the New World by accident. Once he was here, he began a regime of slavery and genocide that would eventually kill millions, all in the name of finding gold. His actions were seen as atrocities even at the time, as we can see based on the writings of Bartolome de las Casas, who witnessed Columbus’ impact on the New World. De las Casas said of Spain’s impact on Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) “What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade (being the trade of Indigenous slaves) as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.” Even at the time, people knew what was happening in the West Indies was wrong. It would be wrong of us as modern historians to dismiss Columbus as “a product of his time”.

But there is hope. As more and more people become educated about the negative effects of colonization, the conversation surrounding Columbus and his contemporaries has changed markedly in the last two decades, moving from educators uncritically teaching children that Columbus discovered America to devoting more time to learning about the millions of people who already lived here and the impact colonization has had on them. Governments changing this day from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a small step, but it is a step in the right direction. I am not saying the way North Americans are taught about Columbus is perfect, or even really good. We have a very long way to go before we can say that. But because of the work of activists and legislators, there has been progress toward fixing this false narrative of Columbus discovering an untouched paradise, rather than a continent inhabited by millions of people. I feel secure in saying that the next few years are going to chip away further at this myth and the real Columbus will no longer be able to hide behind the white-washed version of his actions. The tide of historical facts is turning.

Which it is so strange to me to see people who should know better defending Columbus. I am talking, of course, about the White House Proclamation that was issued on October 9th, 2020. In addition to being incredibly condescending to Italian-Americans and failing to mention the millions of Indigenous people still living in the United States, it is also an absolutely terrifying document to be issued by a standing government. I know everything that comes out of the White House for the last 4 years has been awful, but this one is particularly awful in terms of public history. There is one section that is particularly bone-chilling:

“Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy.  These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions... We must not give in to these tactics or consent to such a bleak view of our history.  We must teach future generations about our storied heritage, starting with the protection of monuments to our intrepid heroes like Columbus.  This June, I signed an Executive Order to ensure that any person or group destroying or vandalizing a Federal monument, memorial, or statue is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law...I have also taken steps to ensure that we preserve our Nation’s history and promote patriotic education... In September, I announced the creation of the 1776 Commission, which will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and honor (sic) our founding.  In addition, last month I signed an Executive Order to root out the teaching of racially divisive concepts from the Federal workplace, many of which are grounded in the same type of revisionist history that is trying to erase Christopher Columbus from our national heritage.  Together, we must safeguard our history and stop this new wave of iconoclasm by standing against those who spread hate and division.”

In addition to standing by Columbus as a shining paragon of discovery despite the increasing movement to de-canonize him as a saint of American history, which I personally find incomprehensible, this document also presents a deeply troubling vision of historical thought. In the world view this excerpt describes, there can be no criticism of historical figures. It is as simple as that. Any historical scholarship that threatens the vision of America as “miraculous” is not to be accepted by the government as legitimate. Any movements to question the existing narrative or the monuments that reinforce that narrative will be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”. Policies like this will not only undo decades, if not centuries, of efforts to create a national history that reflects all of the nation’s past, the good and the ugly. Marginalized voices that have been speaking about injustices for centuries will be silenced. Students will be taught only one version of history. Columbus will remain a hero, his statues will stand over land that was stolen by him and people like him. History that is hard to hear or upsetting will not be told. Worst of all, students will be taught to never question this history. If that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will.

[goodjobcornjob]

I was tagged by @icedchailatte, people like never tag me in these things I feel so honored lmao.

Don’t feel obligated by any means if you’re in this list, but I’m tagging @pumpkin-queef @msblam @cydoniadreamland @flaccid-robot-penis @borjaxton @lethargicthylacine @coffeeofthegay

1. Do you prefer writing with a black pen or blue pen? Black.

2. Would you prefer to live in the country or city? Country, then I could have sheep!

3. If you could learn a new skill what would it be? Fencing! I took a week long fencing class once when I was little and have wanted to get into it more since.

4. Do you drink your tea/coffee with sugar? I drink coffee with a blinding amount of sugar, but with tea it really depends. Usually some sugar but not much.

5. What was your favourite book as a child? Not to be a furry on main but the warrior cats books were my JAM.

6. Do you prefer baths or showers? Showers. I used to prefer baths but then someone pointed out to me that bathing is stewing in your own filth and now I’m grossed out by them. Do love bath bombs tho.

7. If you could be a mythical creature, which one would it be? Does shapeshifter count? That would be best for my indecisive ass.

8. Paper or electronic books? Paper. The physical thing just hits different yknow?

9. What is your favourite item of clothing? Either a Ghost band shirt I have, since they’re one of my fave bands and my partner gave it to me, or this t-shirt I got from a friend with a smug looking frog face that says “yikes” on it.

10. Do you like your name or would you like to change it? Already changed it baybee ;)

11. Who is a mentor to you? I have a friend who’s like a master class level cosplayer who’s slowly but surely teaching me The Ways Of The Cosplayer™️.

12. Would you like to be famous and if so, what for? Sometimes I think so, I’d love to make a huge number of people happy either by being funny or with my art, plus I’d love to be able to help spread awareness and end stigmas through fame, but then I remember how paranoid all that attention would make me. Long story short, no.

13. Do you consider yourself a romantic person? Not really, but I can be if I wanna be.

14. Which element best represents you? Personality quizzes reliably tell me earth, so earth I guess?

15. Who do you want to be closer to? My friends from college. We never talk unless it’s in person and I don’t get to see them much :(

16. Do you miss someone at the moment? Yeah. I cut ties with my old Favorite Person (a thing related to BPD) about 1 1/2 years ago because she’s toxic af, I still regularly think about/miss her.

17. Tell us about an early childhood memory. When I was 11 I pulled out my two front teeth (not baby teeth, the actual legit ones) pulling open a drawer with my mouth while pretending to be a cat. I had to get a root canal to put them back in place, and was a lil celebrity at my dentist for years because of it. All the dentists loved root canal cat kid xD.

18. What is the strangest thing you have eaten? My childhood house is so dusty I could (and regularly did) catch dust in my mouth like snowflakes until I learned what it was.

19. What are you most thankful for? How well my transition has gone so far/the fact I’m able to transition at all.

20. Do you like spicy food? I desperately want to cause so much food from other cultures is spicy, but my acid reflux prevents me from building much of an immunity to it so I’m way too much of a wuss.

21. Have you ever met someone famous? I shook Bill Nye’s hand when he visited my hometown for a talk.

22. Do you keep a diary or journal? Yes, for therapy mostly, but I usually forget to write in it.

23. Do you prefer to use a pen or a pencil? Pencil. I goof way too much to not be able to erase.

24. What is your star sign? Virgo. I don’t care about or believe in astrology at all tho.

25. Do you like your cereal soggy or crunchy? Crunchy, I’m no heathen.

26. What would you want your legacy to be? I just wanna be known for being helpful.

27. Do you like reading, what was the last book you read? I love reading, but haven’t regularly since early high school. Last book I read was a wholesome manga called Merman In My Tub. I recommend it.

28. How do you show someone you love them? I usually send them lots of things related to stuff they like and make gifts for them.

29. Do you like ice in your drinks? Absolutely.

30. What are you afraid of? Spiders (not nearly as much as I used to be thanks to exposure therapy), ticks, parasites, death, confrontation, losing my friends.

31. What is your favourite scent? Probably either rose or campfire.

32. Do you address older people by their name or surname? First name unless they tell me otherwise.

33. If money was not a factor, how would you live your life? I’d live on a commune with my close friends. We wouldn’t be totally self sufficient, but we’d grow/make at least half the food and clothes we use. I’d come as close to having a private zoo as a person can actually ethically do without cramping/neglecting the animals. I’d play video games more than I worked. I’d regularly house people with nowhere to go. I’d sell sewing commissions and work somewhere like an animal rescue facility. A guy can dream 😔.

34. Do you prefer swimming in pools or the ocean? Pools. If I think too much about how much poop has to be in any natural body of water it sets off my OCD (I’m fine if I forget to think about it tho).

35. What would you do if you found $50 on the ground? Keep it. There’s no way to track who’s it is, if there was I’d try to return it.

36. Have you ever seen a shooting star? A few times.

37. What is the one thing you would want to teach your children? I don’t want kids, but if I did I’d want to teach them how to recognize differences in cultural practices without putting value judgements on them.

38. If you had to have a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it? I already have one (zelda tattoo on my shoulder), and am planning many more. Next one I want is a paw print from my cat on my stomach where he likes to knead.

39. What can you hear now? The wind in the trees outside, the fan, my partner shifting his feet, I think cicadas?

40. Where do you feel the safest? The living room when I’m alone in the house, listening to music and snuggling with my cat.

41. What is the one thing you want to overcome/conquer? Either my misophonia or my fear of confrontation.

42. If you could travel back to any era, what would it be? Pre-colonialism North America. I’d love to see this continent in its not fucked up state.

43. What is your most used emoji? Tie between 🅱️, :’) and 😬

44. Describe yourself using one word. Clown.

45. What do you regret the most? Never standing up for myself or my friends as a kid/teen.

46. Last movie you saw? Hamilton. Very good but also overrated.

47. Last tv show you watched? Something I don’t remember the name of on PBS about octopi.

48. Invent a word and it’s meaning. Schlumple. It’s like when you’re sitting slumped and squished in on yourself you’re sitting all schlumpled. My rats do it all the time.

[creepingsharia]

Tax-Payer Funded Islamic Propaganda Forced on Teachers in Michigan, California, Georgia, Texas, Florida

"teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed”

TMLC Uncovers Tax-Payer Funded Islamic Propaganda Forced On Teachers

A SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

August 22, 2019

ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has uncovered evidence of a well-orchestrated Islamic propaganda campaign aimed at teachers in school systems throughout Michigan and several other states.

Concerned about a two-day mandatory teacher-training seminar on Islam conducted by a Muslim consultant hired by Michigan’s Novi Community Schools District, TMLC filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the workshop.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center, commented on the results of their investigation, “We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers.”

Moreover, during the past five years the school district has presented no teacher-training seminars focusing on Christianity, Judaism or any other religion – only Islam.

The hired Muslim consultant was Huda Essa, a resident of the Dearborn area and of Arab descent. She appeared before the Novi teachers in a hijab, the Muslim headscarf, billing herself as an expert in “cultural competency” and “culturally responsive teaching.”

Most disappointing was the fact that of the more than 400 teachers attending the workshop, not one teacher challenged Essa’s denigration of Christianity or attacks on America.

TMLC inspected dozens of internal school documents, including audio recordings of Essa’s presentation.

The information on Islam she provided to Novi teachers was riddled with falsehoods and errors of omission that were clearly meant to deceive.

Essa provided no truthful information on Sharia law and jihad, two of the most important aspects of Islam. All references to terrorism were dismissed as having nothing to do with Islam. White Christian males, she suggested, are more dangerous than Islamic radicals.

Essa is the face behind Culture Links LLC, a Michigan-based consultancy. She describes herself on the Culture Links website as an advocate of social justice who encourages children to “take pride in their many identities.”

But, as TMLC discovered from the Novi documents, the one identity Essa does not celebrate is that of patriotic Americans who believe in our nation’s exceptionalism. 

And her message extends far beyond Novi.

Essa’s client list reveals she has been spreading her “trash America first” philosophy to colleges, universities, schools and professional educator associations throughout Michigan, California, Georgia, Texas, Florida and beyond. In Michigan alone her website lists nine school districts as clients – Oakland County Schools, Ann Arbor Schools, L’Anse Creuse Public Schools, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, Roseville Community Schools, Farmington Public Schools, Dearborn Public Schools, Birmingham Public Schools and Melvindale Public Schools.

Under the banner of promoting diversity, inclusion and a multicultural approach to education, Essa sets about comparing Islam to Christianity, calling them “mostly similar.” The one big difference, she claims, is that Islam is the world’s “only purely monotheistic religion.”

Islam’s holy book, the Koran, came straight from Allah to the prophet Muhammad and, unlike the Jewish and Christian scriptures, has never been altered or changed, she told the Novi teachers. Significantly, the Koran commands Muslims to “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.” (Koran 9:5)

Her message was clear: The Koran is superior to the Bible. But she did not address the fact that it calls for the extermination of Christian and Jews.

While quick to indict America as guilty of “cultural genocide,” Essa was silent on the 1400 years of actual genocides, also known as jihads, in which Muslims wiped out Jewish tribes on the Arabian Peninsula, and slaughtered millions of Christians throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the European Continent. Referring to Islam, Winston Churchill wrote, “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Novi’s Islamic teacher-training is just the latest example of professional Islamic indoctrinators infiltrating U.S. public schools even as Christianity has been forced out of the classroom.

“This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public-school systems,” Thompson said. “No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools.”

Only action by patriotic American parents will put a stop to the indoctrination of teachers and students. They must attend school board meetings and call their board’s attention to the existence of unconstitutional Islamic propaganda whenever they find evidence of it in their children’s schools. And when their board is unresponsive, they must be willing to take legal action to stop it whenever the law permits.

TMLC has several active cases involving public schools bending over backwards to promote Islam while trashing Christianity.

In New Jersey, seventh-grade students at Chatham Middle School were taught “Islam is the true faith,” required to learn the Shahada, or Muslim creed, and forced to watch videos that sought to convert them.

TMLC is representing another student at La Plata High School in Maryland, where pupils in world-history classes were taught that “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian” and “Islam at heart is a peaceful religion.”

Jihad, meanwhile, was introduced to La Plata students as a “personal” spiritual struggle, having nothing to do with using violence to spread the faith. And, like in New Jersey, the Maryland students were forced to learn the Five Pillars of Islam and memorize the Shahada.

A SERIES OF DECEPTIONS

Essa spent a great deal of time in her Novi presentation talking about Muslim women, whom she described as victims of Islamophobia on the part of bigoted Americans.

...

Here are some other facts uncovered by TMLC’s Freedom of Information Act requests:

Novi school district has no guidelines for the selection of presenters for teacher-training events.

The school district did not fully vet Huda Essa before selecting her as a presenter and providing her with data about the school district and its students.

Essa was given access to data from student and teacher surveys.

The school district said it had no records that would indicate it ever conducted a factual analysis of Essa’s presentation.

The school district signed a contract on August 2, 2017, agreeing to pay Essa $5,000 for her two-day seminar on August 28 and 29, 2017.

Read the entire disturbing press release at the link below.

[allyourprettywords]

“60 Songs About Quilting,” Sammie Bordeaux-Seeger

1) Sometimes all the heirlooms you make have to be sold to cover your daughter’s rent.

2) Selling some quilts is like selling children.

3) Some quilts you make scare you, just like stories writers tell scare them, even as they tell them.

4) I remember the first quilt I made when I was 22. I didn’t finish it because all the others in that class who finished their quilts used them for funerals.

5) That class taught me that the making of quilts was the beginning and end of grief.

6) I remember the quilt I was first groped under. I was nine. My mother’s boyfriend/my brother’s father, it was a quilt my mother made that had nine diamonds, not the usual eight you find in a star quilt. She tells stories about that quilt and laughs. I only remember the hand forcing me to hold a penis for the first time under that quilt.

7) Quilts can be both a comfort and a terror.

8) This quilt I am currently pressing has holes in it. All quilts are full of holes, but some can be seen, some not. I mend all the holes as I come to them.

9) It is a heartache to let go of a quilt I have made with my hands.

10) I sometimes wonder if we give away pieces of ourselves in these quilts.

11) I have found pieces of myself in quilts.

12) Every star quilt I have ever made now belongs to someone else.

13) I made quilts for my children for their graduations. One of my children has never graduated. She will get the best quilt.

14) Washing a new quilt before someone sleeps under it is washing away the quilt luck.

15) My quilts reek of smoke because I smoke while making them. I smudge. I smoke. I pop M&Ms like they’re pills to make me quilt faster. They work.

16) My friend told me M&Ms are my version of self-medicating. I told her the quilts are the medication.

17) I have made death quilts for all the people I loved who have died. I have watched my sad quilts lowered into graves with the remains of my beloveds. Those quilts glowed.

18) They say the Lakotas began to make star quilts to replace the buffalo robes meant to honor men for their greatness.

19) I say Lakota winyans began to make star quilts so they’d have something to do with their hands that wasn’t stabbing men for their greatness.

20) I am not a man hater. Do you honor a man for his greatness by wrapping him in a robe that shows your own greatness?

21) Lakota star quilts are made up of diamonds which form stars

22) Rihanna’s song “Diamonds” understands this. This is a Lakota song. “You and me, we’re like diamonds in the sky.”

23) There are 36 diamonds in one quilt block of an eight-pointed star. Each diamond is cut at a 45 degree angle. 288 diamonds make a star. I cut each diamond individually. I sew each diamond individually using ¼” seams. There is some math involved in quilting.

24) That white math teacher at the college believes Indians can’t do math. She doesn’t understand how math-y life and survival actually are.

25) The population of Indigenous people on this continent was estimated at 50 million pre-white contact. Some scientists believe it may have been as high as 100 million. At our lowest point it was only 200,000, post-massacres, diseases, and starvation. Today we are up to 2 million. Still less than 1% of the total population if you don’t count Mexicans, but we do. We count all our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Indians are the fastest growing population in South Dakota, and Indigenous are the fastest growing population on this continent. Someday we will be the majority again. How’s that for math?

26) Imagine how many baby star quilts it would take to welcome every newborn Indigenous baby.

27) That white math lady is paid by money generated by Indians going to college. She’s paid more than the Indian instructors for her trashy opinion that Indians can’t do math.

28) My poetry teacher told me to take the quilt pieces off my wall and put my poems there. That’s how I finished my master’s thesis. I wanted to say, I can write while I quilt. I am poeming and piecing all the time.

29) So many quilters make quilts with words in them. One put the treaties in her quilts. Another wrote “I can’t breathe” in black fabric on her quilt. I like to think my quilts speak without the need of words, but let’s face it, sometimes a quilt, like a poem, needs to be obvious.

30) I don’t hate white people.

31) I learned as much about quilting from whites as I did from Indians.

32) Quilts need all colors to be successful.

33) No one is ever going to write “All quilt lives matter!” so I will here. It doesn’t make sense.

34) I learned to speak white so I could write this poem in your Native language.

35) I didn’t really have a choice about learning to speak white.

36) There are some good white people. I don’t say this to appease or patronize. I mean good white people have enriched my life. If they did it out of guilt, I don’t care.

37) There are some bad Indians. I might be one of them.

38) I am both bad at being Indian and bad at speaking for Indians or speaking to Indians

39) I am not going to be good at being Indian until I stop judging my Indian-ness using shallow white terms.

40) I am a half-breed. The Lakota word for half-breed is “ieska.”

41) Ieska means “speaks white”. Also, “Interpreter” or “translator”.

42) Lakotas inherently distrust translators because of what happened to Conquering Bear.

43) I don’t speak fluent Lakota. I couldn’t begin to translate much beyond the shortest phrases. I “know” Lakota by listening to tone of voice and understanding about five hundred words and phrases.

44) To some Indians and whites, where you come from and how you were raised matter as much as your DIB, Degree of Indian Blood.

45) I am 35/64’s Sicangu Lakota.

46) I am enrolled at the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

47) I was born and raised at Rosebud, South Dakota.

48) My tribal enrollment number begins 345-U-#####

49) It does matter that I am an enrolled member of a federally-recognized tribe if I want to sell my quilts as “authentic” Indian art. There is a federal law that mandates this.

50) Why is it called “Mandate?” Man + Date = An Order?

51) Who made up these rules and words anyway?

52) Hey, White Math Lady, Indians can do fractions, too! If nothing else, we know our fractions.

53) Can someone tell the white math lady that I learned algebra from a Lakota math professor who earned his Ph.D. in math from Notre Dame University?

54) Maybe you could also mention that he wrote an algorithm that is used to provide water to much of South America. Math = MniWiconi

55) To you White Math Teacher, I offer this proof that Indians can do math:

56) The star quilt is made up of pieces cut at precise 45 and 90 degree angles. The Isosceles triangle is not easy to create in fabric. The balanced 45 degree diamonds are faceted by 48 other 45 degree diamonds that must be perfectly pieced in order to fit together correctly, or the quilt with ripple.

57) Look at the perfectly square squares in each corner, how they create the straight line that bisects the center of the quilt.

58) Tell me about math, about geometry, about the Golden Mean, and I will show you the Lakota Star Quilt.

59) I offer you this proof that you have nothing to tell me about Indians and math and competency tests that you give as proof of your assertion: Indians were making star quilts before they had ever met fabric. They were called buffalo robes.

60) Perhaps if you believe Indians can’t do math, White Math Lady, you should go back to teaching your own, mathematically-competent people?

61) This quilt is made up of holes, of wholes, of halves and quarters and tiny stitches and big stitches and words and pain and memories and laughs and sweat and smoke and chocolate and my grandmother’s hands. This quilt isn’t about math or Indians or treaties or men.

[mykindof]

Decks of a Slave Ship of the Middle Passage

The Middle Passage was the leg of the Atlantic slave trade that transported people from Africa to North America, South America and the Caribbean. It was called the Middle Passage because the slave trade was a form of Triangular trade; boats left Europe, went to Africa, then to America, and then returned to Europe. They also made a stop in the West Indies for food, supplies, or traded molasses or rum for the slaves.

Slave traders acquired slaves by purchasing them from numerous ports in Africa. They were able to pack nearly 300 slaves and approximately 35 crew into most slave ships. The men were normally chained together in pairs to save space - right leg to the next man's left leg - while the women and children may have had somewhat more room. The captives were fed very small portions of corn, yams, rice, and palm oil, normally just enough to sustain them. Sometimes captives were allowed to move around during the day, but many ships kept the shackles on throughout the journey.

It is estimated that of the 15 million that made the journey, 3 million did not survive. Disease, starvation, and the length of the passage were the main contributors to the death toll. Many believe that overcrowding caused this outrageously high deathrate, but amoebic dysentery and scurvy were the main problems. Additionally, outbreaks of smallpox, measles, and other diseases spread rapidly in the close-quarter compartments. Slave ships might take anywhere from one to six months to cross the Atlantic depending on the weather conditions at sea. The death rate rose steadily with the length of voyage, as the risk of dysentery increased with longer stints at sea, and the quality and amount of food and water diminished with every passing day.

Precise records are not available to provide an actual death toll, but it is estimated that as many as 8 million slaves may have perished to bring 4 million to the Caribbean islands. This number does not include the slaves brought to North or South America. Here we have a holocaust that is hardly mentioned and acknowledged by the western world. yet is ever bit as significant as the Jewish holocaust. And has had far more a impact on a group of people, than the vile acts of the second world war

The Atlantic

The Atlantic slave trade was the purchase and transport of Africans into bondage and servitude in the New World. It is sometimes called the Maafa by African Americans. This term means holocaust or great disaster in kiSwahili. The slaves were one element of a three-part economic cycle-the Triangular Trade and its infamous Middle Passage-which ultimately involved four continents, four centuries and the lives and fortunes of millions of people.

Research published in 2006 [1] reports the earliest known presence of slaves in the New World. A burial ground in Campeche, Mexico suggests slaves had been brought there not long after Hernán Cortés completed the subjugation of Mexico. Contemporary historians estimate some 12 million individuals were taken from west Africa to North, Central and South America and the Caribbean Islands by European colonial/imperialist powers.

Origins

The slave trade originated in a shortage of labour in the new world. The first slaves used were Aboriginal peoples, but they were not numerous enough and were being decimated by European cruelty and diseases. It was also difficult to get Europeans to emigrate to the colonies, despite incentives such as indentured servitude or even distribution of free land (mainly in the English colonies that became the United States). Massive amounts of labour were needed for mining, and especially for the plantations in the labor-intensive growing, harvesting and (semi-)processing of sugar (also for rum and molasses), cotton and other prized tropical crops which could not be grown profitably - in some cases, could not be grown at all - in the colder climes of Europe. (It was cheaper to import them American colonies than to import them from the Ottoman empire, etc.) To meet this demand for labour European traders thus turned to Western Africa, especially Guinea as a source of slaves.

There, Europeans tapped into the African slave trade that saw slaves transported to the coast of Guinea where they were sold at European trading forts in exchange for muskets, manufactured goods, and cloth. As a rule [citation needed], they were not stolen by the Europeans but captured in tribal wars, in many cases even started with a view to the capture of fellow Africans- given the modest prices they asked, African labor was clearly considered abundant, not very valuable.

The principal areas of the slave trade in Africa were Senegambia (present day Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea Bissau), Sierra Leone (including the area that later became Liberia), Windward Coast (modern Ivory Coast), Gold Coast (Ghana), Bight of Benin (Togo, Benin and western Nigeria), Bight of Biafra (Nigeria south of the Benue River, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea), Central Africa (Gabon, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Southeast Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar).

The number of slaves sold to the new world varied throughout the slave trade. The most widely accepted statistics [citation needed] claim Senegambia provided about 5.8%, Sierra Leone 3.4%, Windward Coast 12.1%, Gold Coast 14.4%, Bight of Benin 14.5%, Bight of Biafra 25%, Central Africa 23% and Southeast Africa 1.8%.

The first slave traders were Portuguese who desired workers for their mines and sugar plantations in Brazil. When the Dutch seized much of Brazil and became the dominant trading power in seventeenth century they became the leading traders selling slaves to both their own colonies and to British and Spanish ones. As Britain rose in naval power and controlled more of the Americas they became the leading slave traders, mostly operating out of Liverpool and Bristol. By the late 17th century, one out of every four ships that left Liverpool harbour was a slave trading ship [citation needed]. Other British cities also profited from the slave trade. Birmingham was the largest gun producing city in Britain at the time, and guns were traded for slaves. 75% of all sugar produced in the plantations came to London to supply the highly lucrative coffee houses there.

The slave trade was part of the triangular Atlantic trade, which was probably the most important and profitable trading route in the world. Ships from Europe would carry a cargo of manufactured trade goods to Africa. They would exchange the trade goods for slaves which they would transport to the Americas. In the Americas, they would sell the slaves and pick up a cargo of agricultural products, often produced with slave labour, for Europe. The value of this trade route was that a ship could make a substantial profit on each leg of the voyage. The route was also designed to take full advantage of prevailing winds and currents. For example, the trip from the West Indies or the southern US to Europe would be assisted by the Gulf Stream. The outward bound trip from Europe to Africa would not be impeded by the same current.

The slave trade was supported by church teachings and the introduction of the concept of the black man's and white man's burdens. Under this black men were expected to labour because they were not Christian and white men were charged with the duty of imposing the conditions of labour upon them.

Slavery was involved in some of the most profitable industries of the time: 70% of the slaves brought to the new world were used to produce sugar, the most labour intensive crop. The rest were employed harvesting coffee, cotton, and tobacco, and in some cases in mining. The West Indian colonies of the European powers were some of their most important possessions and they went to extremes to protect and retain them. For example, in 1763, France agreed to giving the vast colony of New France in exchange for keeping the minute Antillian island of Guadeloupe (still a French overseas département).

By far the most successful West Indian colonies in 1800 belonged to the United Kingdom. After entering the sugar colony business late, British naval supremacy and control over key islands such as Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados and the territory of British Guiana gave it an important edge over all competitors; while many lost their shirt, some made enormous fortunes, even by upper class standards. This advantage was reinforced when France lost its most important colony, St. Dominigue (western Hispaniola, now Haiti), to a slave revolt in 1791 and supported revolts against its rival Britain, after the 1793 French revolution in the name of liberty (but in fact opportunistic selectivity). The British islands produced the most sugar, and the British people quickly became the largest consumers of sugar. West Indian sugar became ubiquitous as an additive to Chinese tea. Products of American slave labour soon permeated every level of British society with tobacco, coffee, and especially sugar all becoming indispensable elements of daily life for all classes.

End of the Atlantic slave trade

In Britain, and in other parts of Europe, opposition developed against the slave trade. Led by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and establishment Evangelicals such as William Wilberforce the movement was joined by many and began to protest the trade. They were opposed by the owners of the colonial holdings; despite this Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, imposing stiff fines for any slave found aboard a British ship. That same year the United States banned the importation of slaves. Denmark, who had been very active in the slave trade, was the first country to ban the trade through legislation (1792) to take effect from 1803. The Royal Navy, which then controlled the world's seas, moved to stop other nations from filling Britain's place in the slave trade and declared that slaving was equal to piracy and could be punished by death.

For the British to end the slave trade, significant obstacles had to be overcome. In the 18th century, the slave trade was an integral part of the Atlantic economy. The economies of the European colonies in the Caribbean, the American colonies, and Brazil required vast amounts of man power to harvest the bountiful agricultural goods. In 1790 the British West Indies, islands such as Jamaica and Barbados had a slave population of 524 000, while the French had 643 000 in their West Indian possessions. Other powers such as Spain, the Netherlands, and Denmark had large numbers of slaves as well. Despite these high populations more slaves were always required. Harsh conditions and demographic imbalances left the slave population with well below replacement fertility levels. Between 1600 and 1800 the English imported around 1.7 million slaves to their West Indian possessions. The fact that there were well over a million fewer slaves in the British colonies than had been imported to them illustrates the conditions in which they lived.

How did the abolition of the slave trade occur if it was so economically important and successful? The historiography of answers to this question is a long and interesting one. Before the Second World War the study of the abolition movement was performed primarily by British scholars who believed that the anti-slavery movement was probably "among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages ... in the history of nations"

This opinion was controverted in 1944 by the West Indian historian, Eric Williams, who argued that the end of the slave trade was a result of economic transitions totally unconnected to any morality. Williams' thesis was soon brought into question as well, however. Williams based his argument upon the idea that the West Indian colonies were in decline at the early point of 19th century and were losing their political and economic importance to Britain. This decline turned the slave system into an economic burden that the British were only too willing to do away with.

The main difficulty with this argument is that the decline only began to manifest itself after slave trading was banned in 1807. Before then slavery was flourishing economically. The decline in the West Indies is more likely to be an effect of the suppression of the slave trade than the cause. Falling prices for the commodities produced by slave labour such as sugar and coffee can be easily discounted as evidence shows that a fall in price leads to great increases in demand and actually increases total profits for the importers. Profits for the slave trade remained at around ten percent of investment and showed no evidence of being on the decline. Land prices in the West Indies, an important tool for analyzing the economy of the area did not begin to decrease until after the slave trade was discontinued. The sugar colonies were not in decline at all, in fact they were at the peak of their economic influence in 1807.

Williams also had reason to be biased. He was heavily involved in the movements for independence of the Caribbean colonies and had a motive to try to extinguish the idea of such a munificent action by the colonial overlord. A third generation of scholars lead by the likes of Seymour Drescher and Roger Anstey have discounted most of Williams' arguments, but still acknowledge that morality had to be combined with the forces of politics and economic theory to bring about the end of the slave trade.

The movements that played the greatest role in actually convincing Westminster to outlaw the slave trade were religious. Evangelical Protestant groups arose who agreed with the Quakers in viewing slavery as a blight upon humanity. These people were certainly a minority, but they were a fervent one with many dedicated individuals. These groups also had a strong parliamentary presence, controlling 35-40 seats at their height. Their numbers were magnified by the precarious position of the government. Known as the "saints" this group was led by William Wilberforce, the most important of the anti-slave campaigners. These parliamentarians were extremely dedicated and often saw their personal battle against slavery as a divinely ordained crusade.

After the British ended their own slave trade, they were forced by economics to press other nations into placing themselves in the same economic straitjacket, or else the British colonies would become noncompetitive with those of other nations. The British campaign against the slave trade by other nations was an unprecedented foreign policy effort. Denmark, a small player in the international slave trade, and the United States banned the trade during the same period as Great Britain. Other small trading nations that did not have a great deal to give up such as Sweden quickly followed suit, as did the Dutch, who were also by then a minor player.

Four nations objected strongly to surrendering their rights to trade slaves: Spain, Portugal, Brazil (after its independence), and France. Britain used every tool at its disposal to try to induce these nations to follow its lead. Portugal and Spain, which were indebted to Britain after the Napoleonic Wars, slowly agreed to accept large cash payments to first reduce and then eliminate the slave trade. By 1853 the British government had paid Portugal over three million pounds, and Spain over one million in order to end the slave trade. Brazil, however, did not agree to stop trading in slaves until Britain took military action against its coastal areas and threatened a permanent blockade of the nation's ports in 1852.

For France, the British first tried to impose a solution during the negotiations at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but Russia and Austria did not agree. The French people and government had deep misgivings about conceding to Britain's demands. Not only did Britain demand that other nations ban the slave trade, but also demanded the right to police the ban. The Royal Navy had to be granted permission to search any suspicious ships and seize any found to be carrying slaves, or equipped for doing so. It is especially these conditions that kept France involved in the slave trade for so long. While France formally agreed to ban the trading of slaves in 1815, they did not allow Britain to police the ban, nor did they do much to enforce it themselves. Thus a large black market in slaves continued for many years. While the French people had originally been as opposed to the slave trade as the British, it became a matter of national pride that they not allow their policies to be dictated to them by Britain. Also such a reformist movement was viewed as tainted by the conservative backlash after the revolution. The French slave trade thus did not come to a complete halt until 1848.

AS THE JEWS, QUITE RIGHTLY INSIST THEIR HOLOCAUST BE REMEMBERED. SO TO SHOULD THE DESCENDANTS OF SLAVES, BLACKS / NEGROES OF THE AMERICAS INSIST THAT THE WORLD REMEMBER AND ACKNOWLEDGE THE CRIMES PERPETRATED AGAINST THEM IN THIS PERIOD AND SINCE.

[rumandtimes]

College Must Be Abolished

Peter Marrows

Senior Academic Contributor

In the United States, colleges are not so much educational centres as they are economic epicentres for local communities. Ask any small town mayor of a so-called “college town” what the municipal budget will look like or prioritise, and he will not tout his citizens, but will probably refer to the local college as an “economic engine” that needs to be expanded or preserved.

In America, the sector of tertiary education is one of the largest employers on the continent. A college of even just 1,000 students hires dozens of menial staff, hundreds of faculty, and as of late hold onto even more administrators and administrative assistants than faculty. Those thousand college students attending a middle-of-nowhere, no-name college are eager to burn their parents’ money rather than continue the pretence of mediocre education, which leads merchants to set up around the campus borders and tailor to those wasteful impulses.

As such, a college in the United States is not a place of learning but a hub of services. Millions of dollars in inflated tuition, unnecessary salaries, and questionable impulses pass through the halls every year, not to mention propping up the technology and real estate sectors in seasonal laptop and apartment sales, both of which start to become overpriced much like everything else purchased by and marketed towards students.

But there may be no need for college at all.

The open sewer of fraud and bad faith loans that college recruiters depend upon to scam American high schoolers into supplementing their own government paycheques and educational subsidies is both a lifeline and a goldmine: for small towns that dragnet underachieving students with promises of the mythical university degree, despite their bad grades and lazy demeanour that would pre-empt them from a scholarship or acceptance to a better place of learning; and for shady universities who tell high schoolers that their campus will give them some kind of non-existent prestige or exclusivity, because they prey on students with 3.5–4.0 GPAs yet still offer an education that is left wanting versus a Udemy or Khan Academy course.

As students are lied to about what the nature of colleges are, they can often miss the signs that a college is not useful to them at all. Colleges are not meant to educate students above all else, but meant to exploit students for financial gain.

In North America, tales are told to high schoolers that anyone who wants to live a normal life needs to go to college, to get a respectable salary requires college, and that only the rich or high-achieving will ever go off to a college campus and escape the relative trappings of home. If this is not the mythology of a scam, akin to a snake oil salesman or the common fearmonger, then what is?

The government does not protect students from these lies, but shovels them into such a predatory system by subsidising colleges with loans and loosely defined accreditations. This is why American children are signing away their souls, coming away $250,000 USD in debt at the age of 23 for a “piece of paper.” Some might call $250,000 a small pittance for a high quality education in good skills and a guaranteed lifetime of a high-paid and rewarding career, but, as referenced before, the quality of the American college education is extremely low and often does not confer any kinds of skills of really information at all on many students, and there is no significant increase in prospects for employment or a job when it is all over.

Of the students who do find a pipeline to a job after graduation, it usually has absolutely nothing to do with the colleges, but instead internship programmes which companies run that discriminatively seek out young people and upperclassmen as students. The students who actually learn something during their time in college are routinely those students who go “above and beyond” the college curriculum, and education themselves on their own time, merely under the guidance of a professorship. They are learning, but not being taught, it just so happens that they are at a college while teaching themselves.

The question should be asked, what if these job training and internship drives were open to the general public and not purposefully made exclusive to juniors and seniors in colleges? And what if people were allowed to educate themselves and apply for an accreditation like a degree, similar to how home-schooling works in the United States, instead of getting tied into the college system?

Colleges like to admit the most accomplished students for two reasons: those students give the illusion that the college teaches their students, and those students do not need to be taught. Culling the applicants for the 4.0–5.0 GPA applicants means that colleges want people who already have an education, not as a baseline for improving that education, but as an easy grab for a student they can simply coast to a degree on the back of their secondary school education. If colleges were interested in educating and improving people’s lives, they would be marketed as a remedial and second chance option for straight-C students, the students who actually still have something to learn. Straight-A students are pretty much a finished set as soon as you get them, and often don’t need any additional help.

Colleges like to sign job agreements with companies, ostensibly so that qualified students can find a job and so that companies can find qualified applicants, but in reality it only makes it more difficult for normal people, the 75% of American children who do not go to college, to find a job. Colleges are therefore not building, but destroying the job market, by positioning themselves as a harmful man-in-the-middle (MITM) to progress in life. There is also the concern of just how “qualified” the most qualified college graduate is, as new hires are still put on a several-years-long job training suspension after being hired anyways.

College is above all dangerous for the average American student. The ubiquity of bullying, drug culture, hazing culture, abuse in sororities and fraternities, alcoholism culture, rape culture, defiance of due process, and financial exploitation makes college on of the riskiest times for American adults, and leaves countless millions of the 17–25 year olds beaten, changed, and alone during their time away from their parents and hometown friends.

What if there were no more colleges? The lacklustre American education programme could certainly be accelerated to accommodate college curriculum into high schools; most high schools in America have a program that teaches high school students up to the sophomore level in college already. Elementary education could mandatorily begin in preschool. Primary or middle school education could begin in elementary school. Secondary or high school education could begin in primary school. And college education could begin in secondary school. This is often already the case for so-called “advanced” students, but these opportunities could be made uniform, and undercut the cartel of colleges since elementary, primary, and secondary education are free.

What this would look like in the mathematics would be: Counting in preschool; Times tables in early elementary; Prealgebra in late elementary. Algebra in early primary; Precalculus in late primary; Calculus I, II, and III in secondary; Mathematical theory the year of graduation. Currently, many American students are still in precalculus at the college level, which is not only a disgrace in itself that needs to change, but both inflates the necessity and diminishes the use of American colleges. Undergraduate or community college can then become the equivalent of what graduate school is now. Any student that falls behind should be left behind; if a student fails the eighth grade, let them stay in the 8th grade until they pass. There should not be a stigma or a minimum age requirement on graduation from school. A school was never meant to be the pure and complete centre of a person’s social, familial, developmental, and professional life, much like it currently is in the United States.

As for hiring, if companies were prevented from discriminating in their internships and job training programmes and had to hire from the general populace, and were required to provide job training to all hires rather than outsourcing that requirement to colleges, employment and employability in the United States would increase in an equitable manner, and those employees would be better at their jobs because they would jumping right into the real-world scenario, not going over abstract theory of what it might be like to one day have a job in a detached college classroom. That would be no small task, as that theory would still need to be taught, but tailored to the individual company. No matter how difficult a transition, it would surely have to be more efficient to train on the job than to nationally spend billions of dollars on colleges that leave hundreds of thousands of graduates unemployed, and unemployable, with no option of a reset button for the rest of their life.

The most costly aspect of colleges and their patented system of delayed education and gatekeeping to the job market is Time. The age of a graduate is 22 to 27 years old. The minimum age to become president of the United States is 35, a job that was meant to only accept people who are old, and at a median or end point of their career. The mid-twenties is a long time to wait to start a life, especially when the rest of that life is not guaranteed to you, and the conventional retirement age is around 60. With the current system of education and employment, you get around three decades to live your life, following three decades of being treated like a child in the education and new hire system, and proceeding just one or two decades of retirement before you die and your being is permanently erased from the Earth itself.

Students should be able to have lives while they go to school, and that schooling should end around the age 19, and around the mid-to-late-twenties for post-graduate professionals like medical researchers. It’s difficult to fathom where the current assumption in the educational system for the United States came from, that people have unlimited time and money to burn.

Abolishing College has the benefits of giving a longer, more fulfilling, more educated, and freer and equitable life. The only detractors of such a cause might be the drug addicts and serial rapists who prey on college students; or the multi-billion dollar, government-subsidised education market, that small town mayors have come to be enamoured with. The college cartel has no place in the economic sector or in the social sector of people’s lives, and their polluting and corrupting interests represent a battle the American people must have to improve their country.

Just as the pharmaceutical and insurance cartels lavished for generations in the lies that they were the good guys while letting their clients die on the operating floor, people must wise up to the harmful and counterproductive place colleges and universities have in American life. The battle to topple those massive corporations as a historically bad track record in the modern United States, yet is another battle Americans must have for the improvement of the lives, education, and health of themselves and their children.

Americans colleges are unnecessary, overvalued, and place a significant strain on the economy. It is long time for education to strengthen itself, and do away with the parasites of four-year, degree-offering universities and colleges.

[davidjjohnston3]

/ first love / things of first love / looking on my parents as my first love / who looked on me as her first love / (but) "My Greatest Love' / commitment to truth about love / minjung theology / "total christology" - / returning love to the first love and greatest love (john 3:16) / "The Roommate" - Westfield (NJ) Snow - the Kim brothers - Trader Joe's - Zegna shirtmaker(?) - Tracy Espiritu - "The Faces on the Heights" (2008) - from social media, my governor's school friends, Mona (Monna?) Yao I never met, who made Chingwen stop hating Shanghainese, ECE girl from RU GSE (Graduate School of Education not Governor's School of Environment) - very black eyes - She wanted to buy the Minnie Mouse dress from the Disney Store - Jessie Lee, he drinks a diet coke then goes running - "California" is a frisbee play I thought only I know - Jessie wanted to be my friend or so b/c my brother is excellent - "That play is called California [dumb----] - Always California is a Law School Discussion person whose essay I told her what she meant / where she was going with her past-future but nowadays Millennials etc. can actually form a face-intent without finding themselves first and go forward forever instead of "whatever shrapnel in my back pocket could afford" or people who try to base their plans on available resources instead of aiming then looking for resources / materials.  Jessie told Lydia Han "Take care of yourself" - She was playing DDR at Fusion Ti and not talking to me - I don't remember her last words to me - They were making noodles in Edison - / what did i ever do that was not writing about my friends / alden's vanilla bean ice cream (maria / change mind), 2 everything bagels davidovich, earlier a few ginger coconut candies from h-mart but made in china, coconut oil for brain, MiO energy thing Acai Berry and Ginseng, earlier 8th continent soy milk thing, almond silk, spanish mixed nuts, 7 almonds (obama?) - i had more - avocado butter - drinking canola oil - californian olive oil burns - i have a cold sore - i can't have canned tomatoes anymore - 183 pounds AHC "All His Children" / my password used to be for tassadaromega... canisexmachina... then I changed to impluveam impluveam11 impluveam11et - jaeyoung's son "fullness" - a glass of white wine at centraal the full measure of god's spirit (sauvignon) - mushroom soup i didn't touch - Why did I not follow through on what was demanded not to talk a word with him - the beginning of "Stepfather" - It is clean at the Food Court at Mayfair Mall  - I feel powerless and pure - I will read the paper with you and explain why you should not take "Parasite" as a Gospel message about what has to happen, or... but it is easy for me to promise 'strong benevolence' is better than immediate economic justice or - In my first dream of "Searching For Towards the Eastern Empire" "lily Sarah" moved with her baby wrapped swaddled in light dove gray right to left through the woods to the field / meadow, in a cool spring or so, now past a frozen lake through the colors of "Elizabeth's Nightgown" or the summer colors of 2012 2021 left to right, the whole procession, carrying lanterns too, a bit like Caspar David Friedrich colors and a bit like that frozen lake out in the suburbs of Madison where Nikki called me and the phone vibrated on my heart to tell me Chi Hye tried to call me on Valentine's Day night - I called her - I forget - someone's phone ran out of batteries - the next day we got (?) at (?) Japanese "I really want to eat rice" - and a bit like "Fantasia Night on Bald Mountain" - the procession of the Saints with the lanterns, "we all of us."  The rainy cliff, the Korean refugees(?).  The image from "The Admiral" where the civilians flag Yi Sunshin from the cliffside shore.  In my 645 rendition they are walking, the notes are like babies on their heads.  But the image of the peasants signalling to YSS in another vision are chained together and being gatling gunned which is why I say some people want to kill all Koreans.  Maybe it is because of that short from Apocalypse Now or maybe it is because of and why I named Segalchik "Danilov" from "Enemy at the Gates" the Commissar who wants to build a new world and man and whose dying words are "There will always be rich in love and poor in love," then allowed Koenig to shoot him in the head to draw him out for his "teacher only friend" because I guess enemies are enemies and friends are friends and Russians are loyal, even in failure, like how Nabokov synaesthete said "loyal is like a gold fork," and Putin doesn't forgive traitors.  Putin reminds me of Houellebecq's voice from the end of Particulaires "This book is dedicated to the human race who saw beyond themselves" - as and with the poem from the beginning, "Now that we dwell in the eternal afternoon we can revisit the end of the old world order" - and in the end "the medieval grace and sin" - "ontology of states not space" - I still remember the bruised skin on the cover, which would come from limited beatings or a certain kind of holding sex - My favorite Houellecq poem is "Liquid Birth" from "Art of Struggle" - "This world has never been written of" - It makes me cry like thinking about Kendi's beauty - "It's there, at least possible." - What's Macron up to - He married his teacher(?) - "My thoughts are too complicated" - Putin's too - Russian elementary piano teachers hold the student's hand and split the fingers for toward cantabile - I learned the Goldbergs and the only book I'll touch anymore is Kempff's organ transcriptions with his precise description of pedaling like a certain kind of chapel organ - "Kempff played better than he could (Liszt's Saint Francis preaching to the birds) - and when he played "Berceuse" in 1946 it's like saying to Germany "Dream for a while" defeated in WW2 - He lived to be 95 - father-like.  Wilhelm Kempff is "saenggi(?)" - "Oh [Dave]."  He doesn't try to give, or make.  He just "says."  Like "the wave said what the sea broken once laboriously spoken."  That's why I say he's the best; he's one of the best pianists ever.  "Sospiro" final fioritura - I wrote "sospira" where the piano-teacher is mandatorily retired and euthanised after his best student - Arrau said relax use your soul - I drove through Indiana corn fields listening to his "Emperor Concerto" 1st movement - "Beethoven America power" - but Kempff does'nt rely on his own soul, he "waits for the Spirit of God" or "waits on the Lord' - "asks the sky."  This is why I like Stritch University Francis statue with the birds as well and Francis PP.  St Francis of Assisi from whom Michelangeli claimed to be descended and I bought Michelangeli's op 111 DVD at Seoul Arts Center at the Liszt Society concert actually married his secretary in secret or something and "loaded" pieces whereas Kempff loaded nothing, ABM offered to teach Martha Argerich who is my favorite Andante Spianato like Josephine Park but I don't think she took him up on it, he smoked, he practiced at night, his head exploded(?), he died in Lugano.  A pianist is a pianist (not a brand, franchise, go into teaching).  Jenny / Jaein said I want to be a pianist.  My first "Lullaby" was Idil Biret, IDK if the clock motif left hand is 1 2 3 4 5 6 or 1 2 3 4 5 ().  A steady lake lapping, not a clock.  In "Being Kim Poor" Krystal Jung fell asleep in the rowboat on the lake in Switzerland after the wedding in the chateau and trying to eat / hang out with the caterers.  KP is an ex-soldier, her bodyguard, his friend is a Southerner like those Blackwater / Academi types who got rich quitting SF gov't to do contracting but Paul / Poor won't really.  I thought about Sunny something something cyber stalkers in Whitefish Bay walking up the hill where I also listened to Fifth Season SSWFL later and in the neighborhood of the Obergefell blackout.  "Free firewood" a chopped-up desk - am I an "afterburner" for having a desk and "free."  

The original love-truth-faith-promise.  The Minjung Theology book is "whiteness-words," holiness.  

I feel like I almost arrived all in one piece for a while.  I put on my white shirt.  I weighed 160(?).  The caseworker said she couldn't imagine me another weight.  Pop was writing letters to the caseworker.  I recommended "Whisper of the Heart" to for her son.  

Now I feel like Hananim / God will let 300 saints die young so one sinner can be saved.  "I was born in 1970" - I thought she meant "I became an angel in 1970" maybe.  

[texanpeanut]

Why Am I Here?

I think a lot. Probably too much by some standards, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps. Once upon a time I believed if I made it to this position I would be forced to think less and do more. However, over the past six months I’ve experienced the opposite. Without mind-numbing mental distractions like Instagram and Facebook readily available while I’m in my rural site, and with the heat-forced downtime that occurs between noon and five p.m., I find myself thinking all the time. Not just in a hazy, half-aware state, but actively considering a handful of topics over and over again trying to find some satisfying conclusion that may or may not exist. So I’m not sure if the amount I think has changed since coming here, but perhaps the way I do has. Maybe now it’s more focused, more linear, less wiggly and sporadic. Maybe it’s more dense and easier to hold in my hand, like pudding versus water. Maybe it hasn’t changed at all and I’m just making it all up. 

One topic currently seems to have a more substantial presence in my mind than the others, though. Sometimes it burns like a roaring campfire and I’m completely captivated and sometimes it nags silently like a mango string caught in my teeth that I run my tongue over again and again without actually making an effort to remove. When I sit on the floor of my hut at 6:30 am drinking Nescafe, when I fill my water bucket at the forage in the silent woods, when I escape the afternoon sun by doing crosswords in bed, when I sit with my family in the evening as we wait for dinner to finish cooking, I always come back to the same thought - why the fuck am I here? 

For anyone reading this who doesn’t know, Senegal is a small West African country that happens to be the furthest western point on the African continent. I honestly don’t know that much about Senegalese history because all the empire formations and and dissolvements make my head spin, but I do know that it is certainly a very rich and diverse history, which has led to a very rich and diverse culture today. Although French is the national language, apparently 36 different languages are spoken in Senegal today, and each language corresponds to a different ethnic group with it’s own stories and traditions and beliefs. In my own region of Kedougou, I can travel between Bassari, Pular, and Jaxanke villages in just a few hours, and then if I travel up to any of the northern regions I find myself surrounded by Wolof or Pulaar du Nord or Serer. 

So, take a trip in a time machine back to maybe the 7th century and you’ll find all these groups of people living their lives, forming empires and kingdoms, disbanding, migrating, adopting Islam, you know, whatever, the usual, until the advent of globalization at the end of the 15th century. At that point, Europeans began competing for trade and conquest in Senegal (like they did in almost all other non-white countries, as y’all know. I have a few other colorful ways to describe this but since I have family reading and I already dropped a fuck once (twice now, sorry) I’ll keep it tame.)* until 1677 when France won by gaining control of Goree Island, which is known for being a purchasing base in the Atlantic Slave Trade. 

Travel forward in the time machine to 1961 and Senegal becomes independent from France. After centuries upon centuries of existing as a region under various kingdoms, then 300 years under French rule, Senegal becomes a country with a border, a tax system, a school system, elected officials, all that stuff. Now travel forward in the time machine to today, 2018, 57 years later. 

SO MUCH BACKDROP. Was all that even necessary for what I’m about to talk about? We’ll see, I guess. 

Living here, I see a lot of European and North American presence. Asian presence too, actually - a lot of the roads being built are Chinese construction projects, and the Renaissance Monument in Dakar was given as a gift from North Korea. There are other development organizations like UNESCO and World Vision, some religious missionaries, some adventurous tourists traveling on their own, some old French women sunbathing on the beaches of Mbour, and of course the obnoxious buses crammed full of European tourists coming to see a waterfall and stop by the surrounding towns to take photos of ~village life~ as if strolling through a zoo. 

As a white person here I’m perceived differently based on which of these groups of white people Senegalese people have interacted with more. When I travel anywhere outside my village I hear the children sing-song chant “toubako okkan cadeau!” which means “westerner, share a gift with me!”. Sometimes the adults engage me too when I go to a boutique or wait for a car at the garage. They like to ask me if I’ll take their baby with me back to America, if I’ll give them my earbuds, my cell phone, or my dress, or if I’ll marry their old crusty-ass uncle I don’t even know. When I travel up to Thies I don’t get chanted at quite as much and am almost ignored, which is nice. The few times I’ve been to Mbour I’m almost ignored except for the occasional beach-walking knick-knack seller begging me to be their first customer of the day. 

Even though they are just children, I get so incredibly annoyed sometimes by the chanting. I usually ignore it and go about my day but sometimes I just want to scream “my name is not Toubako, it’s Binta, and I don’t have a fucking gift, leave me alone and let me walk or bike or buy a piece of bread or whatever the fucking I’m doing at the moment.” The adults can be just as irksome, too. I don’t usually get into it and play these comments off as jokes but they make me so uncomfortable. I want to tell them “stop asking me for things. Every time you see me you only ask me for things. I came here to teach, to work, to plant at least like one fucking tree, not to take your baby or marry your god-damn uncle.” 

I think I’m up to four fucks now, sorry. God, that’s five. 

But I don’t respond because in some ways I feel like I deserve it. Even though I wasn’t here between 1677 and 1961 selling humans from Goree Island, even though I’m not one of these oggling, bus-going, camera-toting tourists, because I’m white I’m still part of that story. And in some ways isn’t “international development” another form of colonialism, of imperialism? Western groups coming in with resources and knowledge trying to fix what they perceive as problems? If the people of Senegal continuously rely on foreign aid organizations to supply resources and technical expertise, how sustainable is that for development in the long run? 

So this is where my thoughts lead me every day. What’s my role as a volunteer here? How can I act as a white person without perpetuating colonialism? How can I work and learn here while being the least imposing as possible? In Peace Corps we’re told the role of a volunteer is to be a mentor, a teacher, a co-facilitator, a co-planner, etc. There’s a huge focus on “people-centered” work. Don’t do anything your village doesn’t want. Don’t force your own projects because when you leave no one will continue it. I think I feel comfortable with this part. So far I’ve really been trying to feel out my village for what they want, what they need, and what they’re willing to work toward. If no one wants to make a compost pile or build a tree nursery, I’m not going to force it. I try to see myself as a supplier of information, not an iron-fisted environmental ruler. 

But even if I am trying to work with my village, even if I am truly trying to be this mentor/teacher/facilitator figure, and not a tyrant or giver of gifts like some other development organizations can be, why is that my responsibility as an American? All my technical training in Thies was done by Senegalese people. Wouldn’t this whole program be way more effective if Senegalese people trained other Senegalese people? People who live here and truly understand their land and their culture? People who don’t have to spend a year just trying to learn a language and fit in? People who aren’t going to go home to America or Canada or Japan after 2 years? 

Well then I think maybe it’s not just about the work. The work is so fun, it’s a blast, it’s been my favorite part in village. Helping someone build a tree nursery, doing a small training, getting my hands dirty planting seeds or amending a garden bed - it’s fantastic and I say that without a single drop of sarcasm. But there’s three goals in Peace Corps - the first is about the work, the second is about sharing American culture with the host country, and the third is sharing host country culture with Americans. And I think many volunteers have a fourth, personal goal of learning about themselves or some kind of self improvement. That’s my other favorite part so far. The opportunity to challenge myself, to learn, to think in a focused way and not just bounce all over the place. But did I have to come all the way to Senegal to do that? Are there experiences I could have had in America that would have been this formative? If I’m here just to learn, is that another form of exploitation? Am I just using my village’s daily life and culture as a means to only better myself? Maybe I should really focus my efforts on this whole cultural exchange part? 

I don’t know! I don’t know anything!

I’m not sure what my goal is in writing this post, but there was something inside me nagging me to put it down in type and send it into cyberspace. I do really appreciate my service in Senegal so far. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to go home. But I think this topic is something I will continue to come back to again and again over the next year and a half. Maybe other volunteers will see this and relate or offer some insight? Maybe some history nerds will call me out on all the mistakes I made in the earlier paragraphs? Maybe people will tell me to shut up and get back to the cool tree stuff or post more pictures of my dog? 

Like I said, I don’t know. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading. That’s all for now. 

-Maggie 

*Way earlier in this post I put a little asterisk, if you remember. I have a book recommendation. If you’re interested in globalization, colonialism, and/or potatoes I highly recommend 1493 by Charles C Mann. It’s the story about how the face of the Earth completely changed with the first Europeans coming over to North America. It tells a very, very interesting story and I encourage anyone interested in learning even a little bit to read it. 

[imjustthemechanic]

The Stone Knight

Part 1/? - Two Statues Part 2/? - A Curious Interview Part 3/? - John Doe Part 4/? - Escape Attempt Part 5/? - Making the News Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - More Impossible Part 8/? - The Shield Thieves Part 9/? - Reality Sinks In Part 10/? - Preparing a Quest Part 11/? - The Marvelous History of Sir Stephen Part 12/? - Uninvited Guests Part 13/? - So That’s What It Does Part 14/? - The What and the Where Part 15/? - Gearing Up Part 16/? - Just Passing Through Part 17/? - Dinner with Druids Part 18/? - Kracness Henge Part 19/? - A Task Interrupted Part 20/? - The Red Death Part 21/? - Aphelion Part 22/? - The Stone Giants Part 23/? - Nat the Giant Killer Part 24/? - An Interrogation Part 25/? - Guilt Part 26/? - Rushman’s Brilliant Idea Part 27/? - Hunter in Hiding Part 28/? - Ridiculous Part 29/? - The Guy from Barton Part 30/? - Sherwood Forest Part 31/? - Buckeye’s Fall Part 32/? - Robin Hood Part 33/? - Fantasies and Consequences Part 34/? - Swords of Damocles Part 35/? - The Road to London

Sir Stephen is confused by democracy, Nat does more worrying, and Robin Hood thinks skyscrapers are cool.

           They stopped for lunch in Leicester, and then Sharon took over driving while Nat moved to the back of the van, next to Robin, to eat a take-out sandwich.  Robin Hood had been talkative before they’d stopped in Barton-in-Fabis, but now he was quiet, looking out the window at the countryside rolling by and chewing thoughtfully.  Nat wondered what he was thinking.  Was he imagining the life he could have with Marian?  Wondering what had possessed his alternate self to abandon it?  Pondering the nature of reality?  She didn’t want to interrupt by asking him.

           Besides, she had thoughts of her own to get lost in. Natasha had escaped the secret agent business and gone into hiding as a nobody academic at a university that wasn’t known for the field she’d chosen, because she wanted to be a normal person.  It was a lie, of course – she had never been and would never be normal… but ‘truth’ and ‘lies’ were no longer meaningful categories.  If she really wanted it, that kind of life was within her grasp.  All she needed was another Grail fragment, and she could be Natalie Rushman or any other identity she wished to assume.  

           Really, Natalie Rushman would not be a bad person to be.  She’d grown up in a suburb with parents who loved her and usually had enough money to get by. She had, as Allen had said, danced in ballet recitals and built snowmen and angsted over career choices.  She’d probably done things she’d later regretted, because everybody did that at some point, but she was mostly pretty happy with her life – and, most importantly, she’d never tortured or killed anybody, or been locked up in the cold or forced to abandon a friend on the tundra.  That had been the whole point of creating her: Natalie Allyson Rushman was perfectly, beautifully ordinary.

           But she also wasn’t Natasha Romanov.  The terrible things that Natasha had seen and done in her past had brought her to where she was today, and had taught her lessons that Natalie Rushman would never have had the opportunity to learn. Natalie Rushman wouldn’t have been able to fight her way through the mooks on Flotta, or knock out Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, or work out how to destroy the Red Death’s golems.  The situation Nat was in now needed Natasha Romanov.

           Even after this was over, though… no, the thought of re-writing her past in such a literal fashion made Nat recoil as if she’d just found a tarantula crawling up her arm.  There was a lot of ugly truth in her past, and she had told a lot of lies to cover it.  In the future she would continue to tell lies, because it was the only way she could avoid being thrown in prison, but she preferred to remember the truth, even if nobody else did.  Maybe that was another of the reasons she’d chosen archaeology – because you could learn from the truth.  The ugly parts of it told you the worst that could happen, and you could look back on them and decide to do better in the future.  Lies could not teach, they could only disguise, hiding the painful lessons so that you couldn’t learn or grow from them. They stuck you right back where you started and forced you to make the same mistakes all over again

           “Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,” she murmured.

           “Hmm?” Robin asked around his mouthful of sandwich.

           “Nothing,” said Nat quickly.  “I probably ought to warn you guys about London.”  Robin Hood and Sir Stephen would have thought of the London of their own centuries as a teeming metropolis.  They’d been absolutely astonished by the size of Inverness and Nottingham, but that wasn’t enough to prepare them.  “The government doesn’t move around anymore, like it did in the Middle Ages.  It stays in London.  Sometimes the Queen stays in other places, but Parliament, which actually rules the country, is in London, and it’s also the economic centre of the country.  It’s one of the biggest cities in the world, with a population of… I think eight million?”  She was pretty sure she’d read that somewhere, but couldn’t recall where.

           “Million?” asked Sir Stephen.

           “Yes, million,” said Natasha.  She took another bite of her sandwich, which she’d almost forgotten about as she pondered.

           “How many is that?” he wanted to know.

           Nat hadn’t realized he didn’t know what the word meant – she’d assumed he just didn’t believe the figure.  She quickly chewed and swallowed so she could explain.  “Oh.  A million is a thousand thousands.”

           Sir Stephen, sitting in the seat directly in front of her, didn’t answer.

           “Do you know how many a thousand is?” asked Nat.

           “Of course I do,” said Sir Stephen.  “So if you were to divide all the inhabitants of London into cohorts of a thousand men…”

           “Men, women, and children,” Nat said.  “We count heads nowadays, not families.”

           “A thousand people,” Sir Stephen corrected himself.  “You could do so eight thousand times?”

           Poor man, he probably thought a thousand was a large number – William had conquered England with only ten thousand men, and at the time that had been an almost unimaginably large army.  As it turned out, an army was exactly what Sir Stephen was thinking about.

           “If half of them are male,” he mused, “and a mere quarter of fighting age, your Queen could call up a force the like of which has never been seen on earth.  That, from London alone!”

           Nat shook her head.  “It doesn’t work that way,” she said.  “These people aren’t soldiers.  The Queen can’t just order them to fight for her.  If there were a battle in London, they would have to be evacuated.”  She hadn’t thought of that yet, but if worst came to worst and the Red Death showed up to take the Grail by force, he would have no end of people to stab or buildings to knock down.  Not to mention the unbelievable carnage if something like the golems got loose in a densely populated area.

           “If she had enough weapons to arm them,” Sir Stephen insisted, “or even just asked them to take up their pitchforks and axes…”

           “They don’t have pitchforks and axes, because they’re not farmers either!” said Nat.  “They’re… they’re merchants and tradespeople and scholars and… and other things you won’t know what they are.  The Queen can’t force people to fight when they’re not trained for it.”

           “If your Queen cannot pardon a criminal nor raise an army, what can she do?” Sir Stephen asked, exasperated.

           “She cuts a lot of ribbons,” said Sam.

           “Shakes a lot of hands,” Sharon agreed.  “Waves at crowds.”

           “She’s on your money,” said Allen.

           “Who makes the laws?” asked Sir Stephen.  “Who leads you in battle?”

           “We vote on that,” Nat explained.  “Like the Romans did, but with less bribery.”

           “But…” Sir Stephen began.

           Sharon interrupted him.  “We haven’t seen any sign of the bad guys in a while, have we?” she asked in a louder voice than necessary, to make the point that she was changing the subject on purpose.

           “No, we haven’t,” Nat agreed – which was odd, now that she thought of it.  Up until they’d left Inverness, Zola and the Red Death had been in step with them the whole time.  They’d gotten to Dr. Hughes and stolen the map, they’d arrived at the henge on Flotta at about the same time, and they’d terrified Darren O’Herlihy.  Now, however, Natasha and the others had been to Barton, to Sherwood Forest, and were on their way to London, and hadn’t encountered any opposition even once.  “What do you think that means?” she asked.  Should they be worried?

           “Perhaps it only means that the ivy and horseshoes are working,” Sir Stephen suggested.  “I never thought I would say such a thing, but bless the witches who sold them to us. Clearly they know their work well.”

           “Or it could mean they’re doing something important while we’re distracted by things they figure are irrelevant,” Nat said.  “If they already knew that Francis had used up his fragment, they might have gone to America or the Continent to look for some that are still active.  Or even directly to the druids, who knows?”

           “Or they know that we’re going directly to the Grail, and they’re following us on the down-low,” said Sam.

           “They don’t seem like down-low types of people,” Sharon observed.

           Having been raised in Russia and worked mostly in America, Natasha was still occasionally startled by just how small Britain was.  Driving the length of a country sounded like something that ought to take a long time, but a determined person could go from Durness to Dover within twenty-four hours.  It had been around ten in the morning when they’d left Barton, and they reached the suburbs of London before two.

           It took the two time travellers a while to realize they were already in the city, and then, as Nat had predicted, they were absolutely astonished by this urban landscape that seemed to go on forever in all directions.

           “A man could live his whole life within the confines of such a city,” Sir Stephen said quietly, “and never know anything existed beyond it.”

           “I think a lot of people do,” Nat said.

           Driving through London, where traffic was thick, almost seemed to take longer than driving to it, especially when they got into the city centre near the Thames.  Natasha started to feel a little shaky when she spotted the outline of the White Tower above the buildings ahead of them.  This was it – they were about to find out whether her theory were correct, or whether she’d wasted everybody’s time.

           At the time it was built, the Tower keep had been the tallest building in London, and it had stayed that way for centuries. It would probably still be impressive to Robin and Sir Stephen if they saw it up close, but for the moment they didn’t even seem to notice it.  Instead, their eyes went past it and up, to something that towered over it by nearly a thousand feet.

           “What is that?” asked Sir Stephen.

           “That’s the Shard,” said Sharon.  “It’s the tallest building in the United Kingdom.”

           “The Tower of London is coming up on our right,” Nat added.  “That’s where I think William the Conqueror hid the Grail.”  It did look rather insignificant with downtown Southwark all around it.  Even the Tower Bridge was over a hundred feet taller.  Time had rendered it nearly impossible to imagine the impact this giant stone keep would have had on a Saxon world, used to timber buildings and defensive ditches.  William’s ambitions now seemed modest indeed.

           Robin and Sir Stephen, however, were still focused on the Shard.  “Do they let people climb it?” Robin asked.  He’d figured out how the windows worked, and now rolled his down so he could stick his head out like a dog for a better look.  “From up there you’d be able to shoot almost anyone in the city!”

           “There’s glass in the windows,” said Sam.

           “Actually, they’ve got an open-air platform at the top, I think,” Sharon said.

           “But they wouldn’t let you take your bow up there anyway,” Nat added.  She was starting to think… Zola couldn’t see or hear what they were doing in the van because of the ivy they’d sellotaped around the windows, but if he were following them he’d definitely know where they stopped.  Why clue him in before absolutely necessary.  “But yeah, you can pay admission and go up, like in the Willis Tower.” Not that they knew what that was.

           “Can we do that?” asked Robin eagerly.

           “We’re not here to sightsee,” said Sharon.

           “Actually…” Nat glanced up at the building again, then shut off her turn signal and headed for the Tower Bridge instead of turning off to the castle itself.  “He’s right – that’s a good vantage point.  If we get some binoculars, we can scope out the whole castle grounds without ever setting foot in them.  It’ll keep the Red Death in the dark a few hours longer.”

           The Shard was even more impressive standing at the base of it looking up.  Everybody craned their necks to see if they could make out the top of it, which was almost lost in the low fog.  They must look, Nat thought, like a bunch of gawking tourists.

           “It looks as if it were built out of air,” said Sir Stephen, taking in the shining steel and glass of the structure.  “I’m not sure I trust it not to fall out from under me.”

           “It’s stayed up so far,” said Nat.  “Let’s see what we can see.”