#the more i reconnect with my heritage

[mushkishoard]

Some asshat: ouwgh europeans brought the Indians technology and civilized life bwoulg

Shut up. You know what most native peoples have/had that settlers in the Americas STILL don't have?

No homelessness

What we would now call free healthcare

Equal rights and respect for male, female, and other genders.

Care for the elderly and disabled

No racism

Heart knowledge, or what we might call, mental healthcare

What we would now call free education

No one would starve cause of someone else's greed

Yeah, no society is perfect, and we have our faults. But whose society would you rather live in?

Now think about how all of that was stolen not only from natives, but the decendants of settlers too. You, settlers, could also have had better, had people in power been stopped. And it's still your responsibility, settlers, to stand by us and take away those evil people's power.

Land fuckin back.

[dammjamboy]

i realize i never posted these doodles here.. i plan to draw dipper mabel and abuelita eventually ! but enjoy these for now :^]

[werewolfdog]

This is the OC my love and I have been focusing on this past week with its project series and ngl, I'm really happy and proud with what we got so far!

M.un G.ae-b.yul was a feral child raised in a group of dogs, and then wolves when escaped from the hospital for the first time, before at age six, it was adopted into an abusive infamous clan of G.aeshin / Soulhound users who had leashed on dog spirits for their cruel benefits. G.ae-b.yul endured various forms of abuse from its clan until on a full moon when it was fourteen, its family disappeared, leaving behind only blood and bones. No one knew what happened to them and neither did G.ae-byul. G.ae-byul decided to leave human society and lived in the wilderness for four years until it was captured by a secret independent syndicate that studied and experimented on the supernatural beings. During its time at the laboratory, G.ae-b.yul learned it was a product of a L.ycanthrope and C.ynanthrope, being a rare specimen: L.yncyanthrope. When a full moon occurred— a blood moon— G.ae-b.yul transformed with greater power that could withstand the guards' grasps and slaughtered everyone in the syndicate. Old enough to become aware of the actions it committed across its' life, including with its murdered adoptive family, it ran from the location until the exhaustion took over it, only to wake up in a different side of the world where l.ycanthropic packs live. It found itself deep within the home of the Wild Bright that a legendary Leader once led— someone who was its l.ycanthropic father. Upon being given an offer from a wise Healer to join that was accepted for a reconnection with its true self-identity and heritages, G.ae-b.yul was deemed to be the grandest outcast of the l.ycanthropic society, especially for its relation to the S.oulhound users lineage. Although bearing exceptional skills in healing and endurance with a great star borne heart, it has been gradually becoming a brighter addition before it is allowed to stay on two sides of the world: One in humanity and another in monstrosity.

[pronouncingitwang]

.

[libraryleopard]

Adult Regency M/F romance novella

When down-on-his luck architect Simon is hired by an old flame to attend a garden party and design a folly, he asks Maggie, the hostess of a gambling den, to pose as his mistress for the weekend to keep his former lover off his back–but real sparks begin to fly between Simon and Maggie, complicating things

Explores class and Jewish identity in Regency England

Sephardic Jewish main character; bi main character; gay side character

[foldingfittedsheets]

No one made any distinction to me when I was growing up when a word wasn’t English. Andale was just another way to be told “hurry up,” and I was certain other parents told their kids, “Watch your cabesa,” when getting into the car. I laughed myself sick the first time I saw Dragon Ball Z because a ladies name was Chi Chi and I only knew that meant boobs.

All my moms family was brown and I desperately wished I was too. I wanted beautiful black hair like my mom and dark skin that didn’t burn. I didn’t like when people asked my mother if she was my nanny when they saw us together. I didn’t like that people told me I looked like my dad. They just meant I was pale.

I’d proudly announce to people that I was Mexican and become furious when they gaped or disbelieved me. My dads side has no cultural roots. When questioned my dad shrugs and says, “English maybe? I dunno.” I just wanted to be Mexican growing up. Alas, I’m only a quarter descendant of an immigrant family who vehemently didn’t want to be Mexican.

My great grandmother announced that we were American now, not Mexican. She embraced American culture as much as possible, while never learning English. My nana was put into school and punished anytime she spoke Spanish. She got caught halfway between both languages. Forced to spend her childhood raising her younger siblings she never learned to cook tamales with her mother and her friends.

When she had her own children she didn’t teach them Spanish. She used it to gossip with her own friends about them on the phone and resisted teaching them more than to come running when she shouted “Araña!” to kill a spider for her.

Thus came my mom, with her brown skin and dark hair, adrift from her culture but treated as lesser by her adopted one. My great grandmother would rejoice to see me as her descendant, white, ignorant of Spanish, the perfect American she wanted her family to be.

When I was born my nana shouted, “What’s that red on her?” only to realize it was my hair. She delighted in her palest grandchild, telling me often I was her favorite.

I’m used to the disbelief now when I tell people I’m Mexican. I can laugh and show pictures of my mom. My friend from work joked to me that I’m always coming out of the closet, over and over, because both my minority statuses aren’t as visible as her black skin.

I was recently lamenting this to a white southern friend the same one I cast psychic damage on during a DnD day. “I wish I could feel more connected to my culture, but I’d be such a fraud pretending my life is the same as other Hispanic people.”

“Skin color doesn’t matter,” he announced blithely to the choked outrage of our Indian friend in the kitchen, “You’re just as Mexican!”

I regarded him in astonishment and said, “I think skin color matters a lot. I am Mexican, but I don’t have the same cultural roots or experiences of people who are perceived as Mexican. My family didn’t pass the cultural heritage down. I think a lot of immigrant kids feel this way but it’s different for me.”

He rambled about how I’m just as valid and I quietly disregarded his advice. I could try to reconnect with my roots, but I know I’d just be another white girl pushing into a POC space.

Instead I make tamales by myself, sweating over the steaming corn husks, and I snap at people who make racist jokes about my family to me, feeling safe because my skin is the same color as theirs.

[madintersexmermaid]

For this Native American History Month, I wanna send a special shout out to intersex Native and Indigenous folks, to gender non-conforming Native and Indigenous folks, to nonbinary Native and Indigenous folks, to genderfluid Native and Indigenous folks, and especially to intersex Black Native and Afro-Indigenous folks, to gender non-conforming Black Native and Afro-Indigenous folks, to nonbinary Black Native and Afro-Indigenous folks, to genderfluid Black Native and Afro Indigenous folks.

I'm Black Native and Afro-Indigenous; I'm nonbinary and genderfluid, and in context with me discovering and reclaiming gender identities and gender expression descriptors from my Native/Indigenous culture and especially from specific Indigenous groups in my blood, I'm nadleehi (Navajo/Diné), asegi udanto (Tsalagi), sxints (Nuxalk), atsione (Tsalagi) and dilbaa (Navajo/Diné again). (I also have extensive heritage from Algonquin, Lakota, Blackfoot, Métis, Iroquois, Seminole, Nêhiyaw, Mi'kmaw, etc. and many, many, many, many other tribes.)

Then on top of that, I found out I was born intersex which I found out later in life, which along with me learning the history of how Native Americans have often held intersex folks, androgynous folks, feminine males and masculine females in high respect has been a very healing and enlightening part of my journey, culturally and expression wise.

In fact, I've been thinking about how American western culture fixates on sex and gender way too much and mainly in context of forcing colonialist eurowestern gender boxes on folks, especially black and indigenous folks, forcing labels or labelessness on us too often. And as an Afro-indigenous woman/femme, I've already been in the process of deprogramming from colonialist gender norms and reconnecting with my blackness and my Native/Indigenous American and Indigenous/Aboriginal roots, and at times my gender expression and identity intersects with that. Lily Gladstone (who uses she and singular they pronouns) worded it perfectly as decolonizing gender and that's the journey I've been on, and a journey that I'm still on as it's ever evolving and increasingly more nuanced and complex.

Anyways, I just wanna say that I love you guys, I see you and I wanna send out as much love, light and warmth to many of you as possible. 💕💕

[magnetothemagnificent]

the brainrot is brainrotting

any headcannons on bucky's hebrew name? I was thinking yosef chaim but I genuinely do not know where that idea came from... apprently james tangentially comes from yaakov though so maybe that?

also same question about magneto. wikipedia says erik means something like ruler or king, so maybe melech? or, if that's too literal, yehuda, shul, david, shlomo... I think shaul works. the midrashim are very clear that, despite it all, shaul was still a tzadik. something something great man making awful mistakes...idk

BUT if we're going by max, google is saying mordechai...thats more boring imo

sorry for rambling in your asks :>

My headcanons for Bucky's Hebrew name:

MCU Bucky: Yaakov Shimshon. His family called him Yankele and his sisters called him Yanky.

616 Bucky: Yaakov Baruch

Headcanons for Magneto's Hebrew name:

Moshe, and his mother called him Moishele

Bonus other Jewish character name headcanons:

Arnie Roth: Aharon

Anya Eisendhart: Tikvah Chana, because Max Eisendhart (Erik Lehnsherr) found comfort in the birth of his daughter after the devastation of the Holocaust, and she was his hope for the future

Quicksilver: Peretz Chaim, because he burst out with life after such immense loss (and also the Peretz in Tanakh was also a twin)

Scarlet Witch: Mazal Chava, because her birth defied bad omens and instead was a fortune for life

*Pietro and Wanda weren't given their Jewish names until later in their life when they reconnected with their Jewish heritage

Billy Kaplan: Aryeh Leib, because of his ferocity like a lion

Tommy Shepherd: Tzvi Hirsch, because of his speed like a deer/gazelle

*According to Jewish tradition, parents have a spark of prophecy when they choose the Jewish name of their children, and of course Wanda had an extra strong dose of that prophecy when naming her kids

Kitty Pryde: Chava Chana (this one is semi-canon, it's implied she's named after her aunt Chava who was killed in the Holocaust, and I added the Chana because her middle name is Anne)

Luna Maximoff: Lila

Lorna Maximoff: Hadassah

[writingwithcolor]

Characters reconnecting with their ancestral cultures in an interplanetary setting

@pixiedustandpetrichor asked:

Hi! I am writing a novel with three main female characters in an interplanetary setting. They grow up as orphans in an Irish-coded country and as children are mostly exposed to solely that culture, but they leave after becoming adults. Character A is Tuareg-coded, B Mongolian-coded, and C is Germanic-coded. It isn’t central to the story, but I would like them to get in touch with/learn more about their ancestral cultures, especially in terms of religion. A does this by actually visiting the planet her parents came from, but B and C do not. What can I do to depict their relationships with said cultures and their journey to reconnect with them? Would it be realistic for each of them to have different mixed feelings about participating in these cultures and for them to retain some sense of belonging to the culture they grew up in as well? Thank you for your time.

Hello, asker! WWC doesn’t have Tuareg or Mongol mods at the moment, so we're not able to speak to the specifics of cultural and religious reconnection for these particular groups. Still, I want to take this opportunity to provide some general context and elements to consider when writing Tuareg-coded characters, or other characters from groups that have experienced colonization in the real world. My fellow mods will then share thoughts about cultural reconnection in general and with respect to Germanic heritage in particular.

Drawing inspiration from groups that have experienced colonization

As you’re probably aware, the Tuareg are an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. As with many indigenous groups, they have experienced colonization multiple times over the course of their history. Colonization often leads to the loss or erasure of certain aspects of culture as the colonized people are pressured to conform to the culture of the dominant group. In many cases, it’s near impossible to say what the ancestral culture of a colonized group was prior to colonization.

When coding a fictional culture based on a group that was colonized in the real world, it's important to ask questions about:

Which aspects of culture you're portraying

Where these aspects come from

Whether you're ready to tackle their implications for the world you're building

It’s not necessarily wrong to use elements of coding that draw from cultural aspects influenced by colonization. As I said, it can be very difficult, even impossible, to portray a “pure” culture as it would have been had colonization not occurred–because we simply can’t know what that alternate history would look like, and because so much has been lost or intentionally suppressed that the gaps in our knowledge are too wide to breach. But it’s important to be aware of where these cultural elements are coming from.

Where is your coding coming from and what are the implications?

For example, while the Tuareg today are majoritarily Muslim, this was not the case prior to the Arab conquest of North Africa. Some elements of Tuareg culture today, such as tea ceremonies, are derived from the influence of Arab and Muslim culture and likely did not exist prior to the 20th century. As you’re developing the culture of the Tuareg-coded group in your fictional setting, you have to decide whether to include these elements. There is no right answer–it will depend on what you’re trying to do and why.

Is your setting in our far future, in which case we can assume your Tuareg-coded group is distantly related to today’s Tuareg?

In that case, they will probably have kept many cultural aspects their ancestors acquired through their interactions with other cultures around them–including cultural groups that colonized them. They may–let’s build hopeful worlds!–have reclaimed aspects of their ancestral culture they’d been forced to abandon due to colonization. They may also have acquired new aspects of culture over time. This can be very fun to explore if you have the time and space to do so.

I would recommend speaking with Tuareg people to get a better grasp of how they see their culture evolving over the next however many centuries or millennia, what they wish to see and what seems realistic to them.

Alternatively, maybe your setting is a secondary world unrelated to ours and you only want to draw inspiration from the real-world Tuareg, not represent them exactly. In that case, you need to decide which period of history you’re drawing from, as Tuareg culture is different today from what it was 50 years ago, and different still from 200 years ago or 1000 years ago. You’ll need to research the historical period you’re choosing in order to figure out what was happening at that time and what the cultural influences were. If it’s pre-colonial, you’ll probably want to avoid including cultural elements influenced by colonization from groups that arrived later on.

Finally, if the time period you’re drawing from is post-colonial:

Are you planning to account for the effects of colonization on Tuareg culture?

Will you have an in-world equivalent for the colonization that occurred in real life?

For example, will the Tuareg-coded characters in your world be from a nomadic culture that was forced to become sedentary over the years and lost much of their traditions due to colonial pressure to conform?

Where did this pressure come from in your world–is it different from what happened in ours? If so, how different? And what are the consequences?

Writing about colonization can be quite the baggage to bring into a fictional setting. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it will certainly require sensitivity and care in portraying it.

In summary: think it through

I’m not saying all this to discourage you, but to point out some of the considerations at play when drawing inspiration from a real-life culture that has experienced colonization. Similar challenges arise for coding based on any other indigenous group in the world.

My advice to you, then, is to first sit down and decide where and when in history your coding is coming from, and what you’re trying to achieve with it. This will help you figure out:

which elements of contemporary Tuareg culture are pertinent to include

How much your coding will be influenced by the Tuareg’s real-life history

To what extent that will inform the rest of the world you’re creating

This, in turn, may help in deciding how to portray your character’s reconnection journey.

Again, I am not Tuareg and this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of considerations for writing Tuareg-coded characters, only a few places to start.

If any Tuareg or Amazigh readers would like to chime in with suggestions of their own, please do. As always, please make sure your comments adhere to the WWC code of conduct.

- Niki

Pulling from diaspora and TRA narratives of cultural reconnection

Marika here: This ask plotline could also pull directly from diaspora and TRA narratives of cultural reconnection. Many diaspora and TRA cultural reconnection stories are, in effect, about navigating the difficult process of resuscitating, or renewing ties to culture using limited resources in environments that often lack necessary cultural infrastructure or scaffolding.

See this question here to the Japanese team for suggestions of how to handle such a storyline in a similar sci-fi setting.

More reading: Japanese-coded girl from future

-Marika

Reconnecting with German heritage

Hi, it’s Shira. I’m not sure whether German-Jewish counts as Germanic for the purposes of your post but since German Jews were more assimilated than other Ashkies, Germanness does feel real and relevant to my life (especially because my father worked there for approximately the last decade of his life.) NOTE: when I see “Germanic” vs German I think of cultures from 1500 years ago, not 100-200 years ago, so I can’t help you there, but I’d be surprised as a reader if a character focused on that for reconnection to the exclusion of the 19th century etc.

People in the United States specifically, reconnecting with German heritage, often lean into Bayerischer/Bavarian kitsch, I’ve noticed. Personally, though, what I find most relevant is:

1. The food (although I’ve come to learn that what I grew up eating was closer to veal/chicken scallopini than actual schnitzel because it was drenched in lemon, but I do like the other foods like the potato salad and sweet and sour red cabbage etc.) Your character could try making one of these “ancestral” foods as a way to reconnect?

2. The classical music, because I’m a second generation professional musician – if character C plays an instrument, leaning into that might be meaningful (Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and her husband Robert, etc.)

3. The nature, especially specifics that I enjoyed during my time there – personally, I loved the bright pink flowers all over the chestnut trees, but there are a lot of choices especially because of the Alps. If C is an artist maybe they can sketch something Germany-related from old photographs they found on the Space Internet?

I think it is VERY realistic for the characters to remain connected to the culture in which they were raised, by the way, whether or not they have positive feelings about it. Culture isn’t an inherited trait. Sure, if they want to completely walk away, they can, but I bet there are still ways it will creep back in without them realizing it simply because it’s really hard to have universal knowledge of the origins of all our quirks. Plus, not everyone feels alienated from their raised-culture just because they’re genetically something else.

P.S. There is also Oktoberfest, which I don’t really get into but is a thing, and beer, which is another point of German cultural pride.

German gentiles, weigh in – y’all have your own stuff, I know! OH YEAH so for German Christians, Christmas “markets” are a whole thing. That’s worth looking up. 

–S

What do you mean by Germanic?

Hello it’s Sci! I had to study German history for my historical fantasy novel set in the late 18th century Holy Roman Empire. I am not sure what is meant by Germanic as that can encompass a variety of things.

Germanic people: from the Classical Period of Roman Empire and early Middle Ages. Similar to Mod Shira, I unfortunately can’t help very much here.

The Germanosphere: regions that spoke German, which includes modern day Germany, Austria/Hungary, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Belgium, and Luxembourg. I generally define this as the regions captured in the Hapsburg Empire along with Switzerland usually encompassing “Central Europe.”

Modern German national identity (i.e. German): post Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (> 1815) only including the territory of modern day Germany.*

I ask this because modern German national identity is surprisingly recent since Germany only popped up in 1871 under Otto von Bismarck. Previously, Germany was divided into smaller states and city states as a very decentralized region under the German Confederation and before that, the Holy Roman Empire. Depending on the era, you can see different conflicts and divides. During the early days of the Protestant Reformation started by Martin Luther, the northern and southern German territories generally split along Protestant-Catholic lines. The 18th century saw Austria and Prussia as the foci of global power who warred against each other even though both were part of the Holy Roman Empire.

Other states and city-states like Baden-Wurttemberg or Saxony sometimes had power but it was typically more localized compared to Austria. Post-WW2, you saw the split of Germany into West Germany run under capitalism and East Germany run under communism as a satellite Soviet state leading to more modern cultural divides. Due to heavy decentralization historically, each region had its own character with religious and cultural divides. 

Assuming that the Germanic character is not from the classical period or early Middle Ages but not from the 19th century either, you can include your character reconnecting to classical folklore like that of Krampus (if they’re Christian), German literature and music like the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Mozart, or German philosophy like Immanuel Kant.

*A major wrinkle: German royals and nobility married into other states and nations frequently with Britain and Russia being notable examples. In Britain, the House of Hanover took over after the Stuart House died without clear direct heirs. When Queen Victoria married the German prince Albert, they celebrated Christmas with a tree and brought the German tradition of a Christmas tree to Britain and the British Empire. Only during World War I did the royal family’s house of Hanover name change from House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more “English-sounding” Windsor. As a result, the German cultural influence may be even more widespread than we think.

However, without more specific descriptors of what Germanic means in the context of your story, it can be difficult to determine which aspects of German culture your character could reconnect to.

-Mod Sci

[rhyaxxyn]

a writeblr resurrection

my name is rhyannyn, and i'm looking to get more involved into the writeblr community after a lengthy hiatus of getting myself and my works in order. i'm always willing to follow new people, and reconnect with writeblrs i knew a few years ago when i was consistently on tumblr (going as kennedy :b)

if you write any of the following, are intrigued by any of the following, or just want to hang out and rip my OCs apart (i've got a list of where you should start, by the way) please feel free to follow and I will follow back. i'm really looking to find writeblrs right now who blogs are focused on writing, as i always love finding new things to read, and new stories to support :)

tragic characters--characters who see no way out, characters who are icarus coded and sisyphus coded AND antigone coded, characters caged by their duty and love and faith and it destroys them

in turn, complex characters with really rich backgrounds

stories influenced by slavic cultures (polish heritage plays a large part in one of my fantasy cultures)

queer fantasy stories by queer voices

FANTASY! CONTEMPORARY FANTASY! SCIFI FANTASY! DARK FANTASY! HIGH FANTASY! URBAN FANTASY! I WILL SCROUNGE THE FLOORS FOR FANTASY AND GORGE MYSELF ON IT!

stories that are anti-colonizer. i like seeing indigenous people win, and i love stories with irish, native american, sammi, and kurdish influences. i like seeing characters cling to who they are and old gods and kind ways while colonizers try to take it away, and i like seeing indigenous people prevail.

worldbuilding with a major focus on family values, religion, and magic.

any and all things dark

slowburn lovers, slowburn friendships, slowburn found family. make it teeth-gritting and loving and heart gouging. i will devour it.

characters who are hurt and traumatized and it isn't the end. characters in the dark who keep going even when there isn't any light in sight.

all things divine and demonic and grimy. i have a taste for violence as long as it serves a purpose to the story and isn't done just for fun

this is a list of things i write, and what i particularly love to read in literature, but i'm willing to follow any writeblrs and hopefully connect with some new and old accounts!

again, i've been off of tumblr for an official two years now (yes my bad, but alas i had the strangest hyperfixation on the job i despise and totally disappeared), but i am holding myself by the throat and forcing myself to resurrect because i am trying to publish a book right now!

oh and my wip page sucks. please avoid it at all costs while i try to edit it :3

[mehilaiselokuva]

actually am i allowed to be angry about christian missionaries/general influence erasing so much finnish history and folklore. because i kinda am. i love learning about not just the finnish language but finland itself as a person with mainly nordic (finnish included) heritage looking to reconnect with their culture, and i felt like stumbling across a barren, black crater where rich history once stood

sorry if this is too off-topic/heavy for this blog i just saw that one ask you answered and saw red :p

Hi!

I am angry as well. There must have been so much culture and folklore lost during Christianization out here! I did a presentation about ancient Finnish traditions for my English class, and my (British) teacher wasn't even aware of what happened to the Finnish and other Uralic cultures in this area. Many of my Finnish classmates were unaware of ancient Finnish culture as well. (Unfortunately, that was expected, since people here aren't aware of cultural history that wasn't taught in school! Not many people know what Karelian culture is about. Not many know about the traditions of the Sámi or the Romani here. etc etc)

I feel like the study and preservation of culture, in general, is very important as it's so easy for the dominating population to kill the cultures of smaller populations. We could also put more effort into preserving languages and cultures and teaching languages to the young generations regardless of how "useful" the language is! While we cannot reverse time and stop our culture from being erased, we can still put time and resources into preserving languages and cultures of the world to possibly save them from this fate! Maybe with research and raising awareness lets us rediscover culture that was lost!

[watcherintheweyr]

Are people willfully ignoring that the devs said part of the reason Davrin was one of the two for that choice was bc of him surviving at weisshaupt?

Bc I've seen three people saying the devs said him just bc of assan and while I agree that comment was in poor taste that... isn't what the whole statement was. At all.

It's because he's a Warden who has lost 3/4 of his Order. It's bc he survived killing an Archdemon, which he was trained for years to sacrifice himself to kill.

Davrin's whole story isn't just about Assan. It's about resolving yourself to live past what you thought was your 'expiration date' and how to come to terms with surviving what you thought would kill you.

It's about growing to be more than you'd ever imagined or allowed yourself to be (A Warden destined to die in the Blight, the griffon bodyguard, to the hero who helped save the veil and kill gods, to the hero who saved the griffon species anew, to the hero who survived the killing of an archdemon- a fear only ever (possibly) completed by the HoF, granted they fulfilled Morrigans ritual.) He even starts to reconnect with his Dalish roots and heritage and family. To grow upwards like tree branches and to reaffirm his roots.

It's about accepting that you are more than what you thought were more and that you can have and be more. And then, depending on Rooks choices- after he has accepted that he could have a future, that he could do and be more, that he's allowed to want and to be more... he loses that future. To save the world. To give his team a chance they would never get again.

Davrin has always been more than just Assan and yet half the people I see complaining about his arc 'just being about Assan' are the very ones.. reducing his arc to that.

(I'll never ever be able to sacrifice him, but... yeah)

Like I have my own issues with some of what the devs said (like 90% of what was said about Solas, the Assan vs Harding comment instead of recognizing Davrin's importance as DAVRIN)

But like. At least be accurate in what you're criticizing

[possibly-polish-poser]

Reconnecting with Polish heritage is something that feels so silly while I'm doing it, but also like I'm a poser sometimes. Like I am somewhere I am not supposed to be. That's the issues growing up German and trying to find out what being Polish means.

If I reconnect through food I always wonder if my recipes are accurate, if I go for music I have to find the recommendations of others. Everything is behind the Polish language, which isn't easy to learn.

There's also the fact that I am German more than I am Polish, and that's not something I can easily square. What right do I have to cry at the memorial for the rising? What right do I have to see the Polish flag made from the flowers I am named after and see myself?

But I also love Poland, and my Polish heritage. My grandmother died not knowing where she was born, after fleeing the soviets, but I know where she was born now. But at the same time, I grew up calling her Omi, not babcia.

[le-regrems]

DC Can we please have more comics in which Dick is slowly reconnecting with Romani culture? I'm not saying that it has to be like main focus of them, but like in background. Or at least acknowledging his heritage.

Because I feel like a lot of people are walking around the world thinking my boy is white.

[foldingfittedsheets]

Um, I originally wrote this as a reblog to your post about being Mexican and white-passing, but I realized it could potentially sound like I was trying to call you out and I'm really not, I'm coming from a place of grief and solidarity. The way you talk about yourself reminds me of my younger sibling. So I figured I'd send it as an ask and let you decide if and how you want to engage:

OP I am so sorry that this has been your experience. I am a first generation Mexican immigrant but I am also half-white (Ashkenazi), I also grew up wishing I had my mom's skin so that the white people around me would agree that I "count" as a POC. So, believe me that I am not trying to invalidate your pain and your sense or alienation, but

"I could try to reconnect with my roots, but I know I’d just be another white girl pushing into a POC space." <- I'm sorry, this is nonsense. No, you're not. I have two redheaded cousins, born and raised in Mexico. I had a classmate in karate that looked like you. "Being mexican" is a multiracial space. There is no single "Hispanic experience" that you are left out of, there's a lot of us holding on by our fingernails to avoid being completely subsumed by whiteness.

Some spark of mexicanidad miraculously survived all the way down to you, please don't smother it because you think you don't deserve it. Please keep nourishing it

I definitely see this, my grief is centered around my traditions not being passed down to me. I have interacted with Hispanic coworkers and gotten smirking condescension when I try to even say I have Mexican heritage.

Because I don’t speak Spanish, because we didn’t celebrate traditional holidays, because I didn’t have a quinceanera, my skin isn’t the only part of my heritage that’s been watered down.

I could try to shove into spaces but I’ve gotten a taste of what that looks like for people like me and it just makes me feel like a poser.

My beloved is on the same page as you though and does try to urge me to find places I can engage more with our culture.

[mxescargot]

Chinastuck: the beta kids

tl;dr for the uninitiated: what if all homestuck characters were chinese people

John Egbert: 光勇 (Guang Yong). Lives in Beijing (im sorry /j). Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry.

egbert means "bright edge" and guang means "bright" and also sounds a little like john even if its the surname. john means god is gracious, which is not really a type of name chinese people give their kids so i just went with a common masculine name that sounds good with guang: yong, which means "brave" which i thought was fitting. i think dad egbert definitely calls them by the diminutive yongyong.

June Egbert might choose the name 小玉 (Xiaoyu), meaning "little jade", in reference to her sister.

Rose Lalonde: 刘秀兰 (Liu Xiulan). Lives somewhere in Jiangsu, probably Shanghai. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry.

i literally just went with a random common surname that vaguely sounded like lalonde here. xiulan means elegant orchid, so it's a flower name like rose and i think it fits her vibes. she shares the character xiu with roxy's name, tianxiu.

transmasc rose probably steals his name from a book character.

rose is very similar to canon i think, except she lives in a penthouse in central shanghai. i want to say initially she feels her heritage doesn't matter to her but later in life she tries to reconnect with not being "100% han".

Dave Strider: 赵大伟 (Zhao Dawei). Lives in Chongqing. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry (same as Rose).

zhao has a similar meaning to strider and was also a surname of the emperors so it has a connection to royalty. this works for both the lotr reference and king david. dawei is... a generic chinese boys name thats the name you give your kid if you want their english name to be david. it means "extraordinary".

david means "beloved" and every single chinese name like that is feminine. Dove Strider takes this as inspiration for the name Xinyan, spelled either 心燕 meaning "beloved swallow" or 心焱 meaning "beloved flame" instead of the more conventional 心妍 meaning "beloved beauty".

dave struggles with their cultural heritage more actively than rose does, and thus leans hard into their sichuanese identity. i headcanon them as making fun of chengdu (chongqing's rival in representing the cultural center of sichuan) in addition to making fun of northern chinese culture. SICHUAN RAHH

Jade Harley: 林玉平 (Lin Yuping). Lives in rural Shaanxi. Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry (same as John).

lin has similar meaning to both harley and halley, meaning grove/forest. yuping means "peaceful jade".

Jude Harley might choose the name 洋 (Yang), meaning "ocean" in the sense of expansive, or he might not feel a need to change his name. swapping names with his sibling is also a possibility.

i think her upbringing just translates to the rural northwest well? also i think its kinda cool she'd grow up near a section of the great wall of china. i could see her engaging in cultural traditions like papercutting and folk singing :> also buddhist jade real and true im not projecting trust

thanks for coming to my ted talk be on the lookout for more posts like this ft me struggling with traditional characters and cantonese pronunciations

EDIT: @ask-chinastuck exists :)