#adoptee identity

[antiradqueer]

Since the most popular PRAT terms are all stolen, I (mod Adam) decided to make flags for the actual definition of these terms to try and take them back :)

Transage - Age regressors, dreamers, and chronosian people who prefer the term. Can also apply to those who feel sort of “age stuck” due to trauma or neurodiversity.

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Transracial Adoptee - A person of one race or ethnicity adopted into a family of another race or ethnicity.

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Transspecies - Nonhumans or alterhumans who prefer the term.

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Transabled - People with BIID who prefer the term.

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‼️ ALL THESE FLAGS ARE ANTI-PRAT ‼️

[rahnesinclair]

About to become a Norah defender on main because fandom can’t handle teenagers being stupid idiots as is developmentally appropriate.

[robinpronto]

Being Métis

The past few months have had me reflecting on what it is to be Métis, to me...

Most of my life I only knew it meant I was half Cree Indian and half French. And I had no idea what it was to be Cree or French. Adopted as an infant, it wasn't until I found my biological mother on facebook that I had any real desire to learn about my cultural heritage, nevermind practice. Any of it. Cree. French. Métis. Scandinavian (although this was unknown until recently - I only knew my father was caucasian with blonde hair and blue eyes, which I didn't at all identify with, looking in the mirror).

Growing up in suburban southern Alberta through the 80s and 90s, the attitudes towards 'indians' and francophones weren't so positive, which of course didn't encourage me and quite likely contributed to some self-loathing. I never experienced any racism directly, that I know of... however I often was privy to racist remarks and jokes about others of Indigenous and French heritage, and why would I want to identify with that? ...even though, subconsciously, I did.

As a young adult in the late 90s and early 2000s I held membership with the Métis Nation of Alberta, and even attended a youth entrepreneurship conference... however that changed with the new National Definition of Métis for Citizenship in 2003 and new MNA membership card in 2006... Without any information on family history, I could no longer 'officially' claim to be Métis. Labels like "non-status indian" and "pretendian" were among those that remained... and so I continued to ignore my heritage until facebook connected me with my mother.

Over the last five years, in addition to my mother, sisters, and nephews, I have met all my living aunties and uncles, many cousins, and my moshum, who has since passed. I have also reclaimed 'official' membership with the Métis Nation of Alberta as of 2021 and in 2023 attended both Métis Fest and Connecting Through Culture Métis Family Retreat at Métis Crossing with my children, and a number of other gatherings and events since. Further, I've learned that a number of my ancestors played important roles in Canada's history - like Cuthbert Grant (1793 ~ 1894) and Pierre Parenteau (1817 ~ 1893), among others. I have also learned that I have a significant amount of Scottish Métis ancestry on my mother's side, and that my father's ancestry allegedly connects us as descendants of Leif Erikson and Erik the Red, but the latter is a topic for another time.

So what is it to be Métis? Speaking Michif? Wearing a sash? Playing a fiddle? Canoeing? Hunting and trapping? Dancing the jig? There certainly was a time when these were all a regular part of daily life for generations of my ancestors, however I do not believe it was these things that defined who they were (and we are now), but rather it is the core Métis values:

Community, Networking, and Kinship - respect for elders, regular family gatherings, music and dance, sharing (especially food); wâkôhtowin - kinship, particularly one's relationship with, and responsibilities within, the communities and networks of which one is a part.

Traditional Storytelling - history and moral lessons were communicated through stories, rooted in spirituality and traditional indigenous cosmologies.

Mobility and Adaptability - traditionally semi-nomadic, following the reproductive and ripening cycles of flora and fauna (seasonal gardens, bison hunting, berry picking, trapping, fishing), and well-known for their adaptability, producing almost everything they needed to survive.

Resilience - the Métis people have repeatedly resisted colonial expansion and fought for their rights as a nation for over two hundred years. And that fight continues; otipemisiwâk - the people who own themselves.

The Métis were (and still are) people who lived in the spaces between what was and what is; we are from two very different worlds and often facilitated trade and connections between first nations and settlers. We belong to both groups and neither. We are a new nation of people, born of colonization. From both the old world and the new, yet belonging to neither.

From an evolutionary perspective, we are the product of human genetics that evolved separately for a very long time, bringing expanded variations and possibilities to human expression, not seen or even possible before... and from this perspective there are many new nations in the world today. I have truly been blessed with bougie heirloom DNA drawn from at least four separate cultures aged separately, resulting in an interesting blend of... me. 😂 And with all the personal archaeology I've done of late, I have some first-hand experience around the nature-nurture debate - a significant part of who I am as a person is literally in my bones (and they're both important).

To me, being Métis is all of this. It is to be here on the frontier of human existence. It is to inherit all that came before, and to utilize it in ways that work for who we are now and where we're going, while still honouring and respecting the wisdom in the knowledge entrusted to us... It is to boldly claim one's place in the world and to honour the relationships and responsibilities that go with it. And it is knowing that we are, truly, all related. ♾️

[bonesfool]

idk if I think Brennan and Zac are the most equipped people to explore the facet of Gorgugs story that is a pretty specific allusion to transracial adoption, but I really hope that there are transracial adoptee fandom creators out there that see his potential as a avenue for expression of the very specific grief and anger that can be woven into that experience. I would love to hear peoples thoughts

[forensicsunshine]

Hiraeth: Yearning for the Unknown

A piece of me lies buried across the ocean grays and hues.

While I cannot remember the cold wind nor can I remember the smell of the sea air, I feel lost without it.

To know lineage is to understand history. Family trees and blood ties surround me but they are not truly mine.

I cannot say that I have my mother’s eyes nor can I say I have my father’s smile. I did not inherit their height nor did I inherit their quirks.

I am an unknown factor in a subset of known variables.

Loved, I am. Cherished, I am. I do not forget that. I have never known a world without them. But I cannot help but feel like I am encroaching on something that is not mine.

Emotions are such illogical and powerful things.

Maybe I could return to that town with the cold winds and smell the sea air. To experience the culture of a birthplace and exchange that for blood.

As I wait, I will collect and hoard the complex histories of my island, both the light and the dark. I will claim cultural knowledge as my lineage.

Someday soon, I will be standing on the north shores of Hokkaido, staring across the bay. And one day, I will safely set foot on that land once more.

And maybe then, I will collect that missing piece of me.

But who knows? Maybe I wont even need it when I get there

[levil0vesyou]

🤦‍♂️ I just keep finding weirder and weirder "movements" on this site (and probably elsewhere if I were to look) like...

There's this subgroup of people who I'm not gonna name cuz they're probably kids and I don't want them harassed who like... position themselves as the "good" lgbt+ ppl who are making the community better for other lgbt+ folks, especially ones who also experience other forms of marginalisation, which is, in theory, a nice goal.

And some of their ideas check out, they clearly understand the paradox of tolerance, they're expressly anti-terf, anti-exclusionism, anti-racism and more. But then they also are anti things that make no fucking sense to exclude (on the basis that they're not "valid") such as people with "contradictory" identities such as transmasc lesbians, also they're for some reason really obsessed with hating non-traumagenic systems? Like... those people are not your enemy, they are literally just chilling.

How's that saying go? There's only two types of people who don't belong at Pride: those that are in acute medical distress (who should go get patched up and then they can come back) and those that are attacking others. The same should be applied to the community in general tbh. And no, a trans woman having "fag" in her bio doesn't mean she's attacking you.

Like... who cares if someone's identity doesn't make sense to you, personally? Who cares if you can't wrap your head around it? You know who else casts people out because they think if they don't personally understand every aspect of their identity that means it isn't real? All kinds of lgbtphobes. Homophobes, classic transphobes, terfs, transmeds, aphobes, ... they think like that.

Kill the cop inside your head. You don't have to understand it, you simply have to accept it! I don't understand many things. I don't 100% understand kinnies. I still don't fully get how systems work. I don't see the appeal of nounself pronouns. I've tried my best to familiarise myself with these groups, but I'm still not up to speed. And that's okay! Generally, I do this: if someone tells me something about their identity, be it gender, orientation or whatever, I tend to take them at their word and respect their wishes. Because if anyone knows, it'd be them!

[plastrickland]

Review of Annette L. Becklund’s Ancestry Discoveries: What Happens Under the Sheets Doesn't Stay There

  I had a Holiday Vacation goal. (I had several goals, but reading a book was one of them. ; ) Ancestry Discoveries was a great choice for many reasons. For one, I needed to complete an unfinished read from a while back, but the chaos of work life + personal life was getting the better of my time and attention span. 2- At the NAAP/ Right To Know Untangling Our Roots summit back in March-April, I…

[beamorgan]

Favourite Reads of the Year

I will not be ranking these, because that would hurt my heart. Buckle up folks, there are a lot of amazing books out there

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I know, I KNOW, I'm late to the party but omg this whole series is just as good as people say!!! I know I said I wouldn't be ranking, but if I was these would be fighting for the top spot. I have already relistened to all the audiobooks. I anticipate rereading them literally every year from now on. I would die for Murderbot, which it would think is a stupid thing for a human to do when there is a SecUnit right there. [adult, scifi]

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Sequel to last year's fav Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, this follows a bullheaded academic trying find the magical door that will let her faerie boyfriend back into his faerie kingdom. Chaos ensues in the Alps. It's fabulous, and the author's approach to using folklore is very similar to my own writing, which I love and also get imposter syndrome about. 10/10 recommend [adult, historical fantasy]

Model Home by Solomon Rivers

Would you like to be repeatedly punched in the gut? Look no further than this story of racism and child abuse in a Texas McMansion, with gorgeous prose and a genderqueer protagonist and the laundry list of content warnings you can expect with the genre. It hurt so good. [adult, contemporary gothic horror]

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

This love affair between a baseball play and a sports reporter was recced to me by the lovely @colubrina and boy was it worth the two-day binge it inspired! Romance can be very hit-or-miss for me, but this knocked it out of the park (please enjoy my pun). I didn't even have to know anything about baseball to love it! [adult, historical (1960s) romance]

The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir

Another tumblr fav, FOR A REASON. Gideon is hilarious. Harrow is an absolute mess. Nona is BABY, my beloved. (Camilla and Palamedes have my whole entire heart). Also, the audiobook narrator is fantastic. In the words of the author, the buns are also fried chicken. [adult, sci fantasy]

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

This one is @elodieunderglass's fault. Historical buffoonery on boats. The main characters are ridiculous. The sailing jargon is incomprehensible. It's great. [adult, historical fiction]

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

This is a gorgeous memoir of an interracial adoptee trying to make contact with her birth family while pregnant with her own child. It grapples thoughtfully with reconnecting to a lost culture, the complexities of family history, and the social and legal barriers adoptees face to learning about themselves. [adult, memoir]

Death in the Spires by KJ Charles

I devour everything Charles writes, so I was EXCITED for this mystery. She made it very clear on social media "It's not a kissing book!!" (it's kinda still a kissing book). She wrote a stonking book, as usual, with an underdog protagonist revisiting the murder that happened during his toxic time at Oxford university. [adult, historical mystery]

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

My favourite literary fiction read of the year, this meditation on Iranian diaspora identity is written by a poet and you can tell. I would suck the prose up through a straw if I could. The protagonist is an addict and also quite suicidal. It was fun :) [adult, literary fiction]

She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan

and the sequel, He Who Drowned the World. I don't even know how to sell this, all I want to do is flail incoherently about how amazing it is. IT'S AMAZING. JUST READ IT. (wait I know: this satisfied the part of me that was obsessed with Mulan as a kid) [adult, historical fantasy]

A Little Trickery by Roseanna Pike

The voicey-est book I've ever read. I screenshot like every other page. It follows an orphaned girl trying to survive in Tudor England through various means, such as faking a miracle in the church where her gay best friend is priest. [adult, historical fiction]

At the End of the River Styx by Michelle Kulwiki

My friend wrote a book! It made me cry!!! They were delighted with this!!! Please give this to any teenager in your life who needs to see thoughtful representation of grief and depression and boys in love. [YA, contemporary fantasy]

[inuette]

Official (Anti) RQ Archive

[PT: Official (Anti) Radqueer Archive. END PT. ]

　Last Updated (DD/MM/YY): 08/01/24. This archive will be updated over time, so make sure to check back regularly if you can! If you have anxiety regarding opening links, no worries! All these posts are archived under our "archived" & resources tags.

Anti-RQ Terms/Flags

'PRAT' meaning

'Fluffy Para'

'Arissomei'/'Arissodic'

'Atypical Dysphoria Awareness' (Creator Boundary)

Reclaimed Transage, Transracial (Adoptee), Transspecies and Transabled Flags

Reclaimed Transabled Flag 2 + Symbol

BIID Flag + Symbol

Parahealth

RQ Terms/Flags

'Faux Cult'/'Fult' and Flags

Xenoanarchism

Other Terms

Doc

PSAs

Radparas

'Kandiqueer'

'Xenosatanism' and Xenosatanist Flags

'@//sophieinwonderland'

The Angel's Web "Fult"

'Not All Radqueers'

Initial 'Fult' PSA

"The Ezra Files" (Content/Trigger Warning: (Pro-C) Pedophilia, Incest, Bestiality, Zoosadism, Toddler/Baby Abuse, Grooming, CSEM Trading, Rape, Abduction, Admissions Of CSA, Admissions Of Incest, Admissions Of Bestiality…)

TransN*zi Symbols

Other Resources

What IS A Radqueer? Why Are They Bad?

RQ Original Coining Info

RQs are a Cult

RQs and Stochastic Terrorism

The Insult of 'Cisdisabled'

BIID and RQ Grooming

RQ '2024 Calendar'

Talk of Atypical Dysphoria

WHY Misuse of Transrace and the term 'Trace' are Bad

Talk of "Transautism"/being "Transautistic"

You Cannot 'Coin' A Medical Disorder/Talk of "MUDs"

Intrusive Thoughts About =/= Actually Believing in Them

'I have intrusive thoughts about ...' isn't a 'Valid' Excuse

Transitioning When It Comes To TransIDs and TransX Identities

Transethnic People Aren't Valid (Focuses on East Asians & Koreans)

There Are Better Ways to Cope with Atypical Dysphoria

Why Arissomei/Arissodic is its Own Term

Racial Hierarchy and Being "Trace"/"Transracial"

Blackface is Blackface — Your "Intent" Doesn't Matter

Alternative (Non-TERF Rhetoric) Anti-Radqueer Arguments

Suibaiting Radqueers ISN'T Okay

If You're Thinking of Leaving the RQ Community

'Cracker' is Not a Slur

Suibaiting RQs isn't Welcome Here

Radinclus does NOT Mean Radqueer

Misusage of Languages in RQ Spaces

How-To's

Reporting a RQ for Inciting Violence

(Fighting Against) RQs Rebranding Terms as 'RQ Terms'

Coping with Atypical Dysphoria

Getting Out and Staying Out Of the Community

General Tips

Reaffirmation

Reaffirmation of Why RQs are Bad (TWs included in the post)

BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder) =/= Radqueer (Affirmation)

[writers-potion]

can you make a list of specific relationships tropes(platonic or romantic) pls🫶

List of Relationship Tropes <3

Hope this helps! :) If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram!

Romantic Relationship Tropes:

Friends-to-lovers

Enemies-to-lovers

Forbidden love (it can be an external or internal taboo)

Stuck together - 'trapped in an elevator'

Secret identity (billionaire/royal/celebrity in hiding)

Best friend's brother/sister/ex

Seconc chance romance

Soulmates (soulmate AU prompts)

Fake relationship

Wedding fever - runaway brides/best men/wedding planners/ jilted

Amnesia/mistaken identity

Holiday romances/flings

Opposites attract (similar to enemies to lovers)

Academic rivals (high school/ college)

Unrequited love

Sunny vs. Grumpy

Pen pals to lovers

Matchmaking gone wrong

Sworn off a relationship (then falling in love, of course)

Single parent with new love

Arranged marriage (Arranged Marriage Prompts)

Return to hometown & fall in love with your childhood friend

Bully turned out to be the nice guy

One person being afraid to commit + the other chasing them

Falling in love with someone from the past/future

Tiny guy, huge girl

Other Character Dynamic Tropes:

Badass and child duo (usually, the child will be extraordinarily mature/capable)

Battle couple (like Mr. and Mrs. Smith vibes)

Blood brothers

Brother-sister team - bickering but working perfectly together

Intergenerational friends - being best buddies with your grandparents, which your parent doesn't understand

Translator buddy

Talker plus Doer duo

Student and Master team

'Sensitive guy + the most macho guy ever' duo

Rivals-to-friends

The Shy Guy/Girl + the outging wingman

The popular girl/guy + the copycat

Ride-or-Die found family

A childhood enemy becomes a central part of a friend group

Parents who see their kids become best friends too

Orphans from the same orphange

Long lost siblings finding themselves in each other

A straight girl + lesbian as bffs / a straight guy + gay guy as bffs, becoming each other's wingmen/women

a secret handshake or unique SOS sign that only they know

Girl code/bro code/friendship code

Having set routines, like meeting under ---- tree at --- hour

Family Tropes

Adoption angst

adult adoptee - an adult character is adopted into a different family despite being legally of age

Awkward parent-child bonding efforts

Babies ever after - the child is forever a baby to the parents

Black sheep/ugly duckling

Cannibal clan

Feminine mother, tomboyish daughter

Obnoxious in-laws

Twin Tropes

Angst surviving twin - on twin dies so that other becomes nervous

Single-minded twins - can have a creepy twist...

Evil twin

Playing their own twin

Twin telepathy - twins can pick up on each other's thoughts/emotions

[zazozaliad]

ramble I keep saying I'd make about sunday wrt adoptee trauma

so this is the promised screed where I talk a little (a lot) on the way society treats adoptees, which Sunday and Robin are & which I think is uhh a detail we're kind of easily prepped by Orphans As Media Trope to not really dwell upon on a deeper level. and I get it. but star rail is in fact writing these two on a level where this is an extremely important detail of who they are as people, it's intrinsically part of how they TICK. they don't just have a Complicated Flock of Dad Situation, they don't just have religious trauma, they have the adopted child version of these things which is every normal part of it but also backwards on roller skates while someone calls you ungrateful for wanting to stop and fix your skates' laces when they start coming untied.

from my own admittedly limited perspective — I am one, but it was a kinship adoption; I thus recognize the limits in my point of view and also want to try and elevate the voice of other adoptees whose experiences of displacement were different than mine. for instance: here's a great article by mirah riben, that also comes full of links for further reading.

anyway. they're adopted. this is an extremely critical decision in the halo sibs' design, and going further into the narrative foils territory the Aventurine and Sunday similarities don't stop at 'Aventurine and Sunday both lost their home and parents.' There is a next step, and it is 'Aventurine and Sunday were both once trafficked children.'

Soooo let's get to it! Ahem. Adoption, as it exists in modern society, is a multi-billion dollar industry. it is not, in fact, a noble act of salvation, undertaken by adopter on behalf of adoptee. It is, in blunt distillation, an intentional act of putting a human being under another's care — or, "mercy," how about we call it? That's a great word, isn't it.

With them at his mercy, Gopher Wood treats Sunday and Robin, these 'twins of Order,' as his golden opportunity. He used power and influence to secure the chance to raise them, after the senseless disaster that uprooted their lives. This last bit is a fact neutral statement, by the way; even if he turned out to be the coolest flock of birds dad ever, he still plucked them up like they were some choice shinies left laying around. They perfectly suited his personal needs, so that's the whole reason he's in their lives, and that they're in his.

I'm framing this merest act of adoption in a highly uncomplimentary way for a reason. By the way, peep the bits of canon showing Robin and Sunday as really young children, and how they aren't explicitly being called 'Robin' and 'Sunday' there. But moving on!

Adoption, and not just the circumstances leading toward adoption, is traumatic. It doesn't always result in unresolved trauma, because different people have different levels of resiliency to different things; a stressor is a stressor, whether you tanked it well or not. It is a disconnect with, or even a destruction of a portion of one's personal identity. The places we are from, the way those before us lived, these are intrinsic parts of our selves an adoptee loses partial or full access to.

Star Rail is pretty decent at showing this, actually; we've met adoptees in every major area (even arguably Amphoreus, if we stretch for the case of Pasithea) and each and every time you can see how the experience complicates. Bronya discovers the bittersweet answer to that hollow in herself in front of us in real time. Yanqing is maybe one of the Softest depictions of this, and he is still a relentless workaholic who itches to show himself as worthwhile. Because that's the thing.

Because society frames adoption as benevolent sacrifice, there's that weight, always there, in the mind.

In truth, adoption is acquisition, the factual motion of a supply (of people. of a person) meeting a demand. You don't, actually, pledge to take care of a child on accident. That's not a real thing. A child adopter is, when we ignore all pretentious sentiment, a person enacting a desire to acquire a child.

Sunday, I think, is my favorite depiction of a Star Rail adoptee thus far. He continues to commodify himself into adulthood to the point we see him literally turn himself into a big craftwork of unfeeling metal and porcelain. But they specifically chose to Not make him unrelentingly gracious toward his 'rescuer,' a move that has given me terminal brainrot about him, irrevocably, forever! ...And actually, by the time we meet him, he's gotten kinda fuckin' bitey at his "father," while still carrying out his Big Plan? It's a fascinating thing to see and a breath of fresh air, because it would have been pretty easy to write him a different way, and may have even made him more 'sympathetic' by showing him as just being some poor misled soul waiting for a wake-up call in the form of a train to the face.

but instead we have who Sunday actually is.

Sunday is, in fact, well aware of the wrongness of his own lived experience getting exploited for the Oak Family Order Conspiracy's ends, but ….

...he still chooses to do what he does because sure. You can know. You can know it's all fucked up, you can have that conversation until everyone involved is blue in the face, but there is a version of reality you would prefer to be true and then there's the version of reality that you personally live in, and Sunday, if anything, is quite used to feeling like he's the person starkly forced into facing the latter, so much so, he thinks, okay. What if I could make it so that I was the only one who ever had to live that, from now on?

…

there are no easy answers to tragedy. The 'answer' Sunday has dedicated the majority of his life to is that if he could simply personally suffer enough, conform enough even through the bitterest moments, everything will become easier and more harmonious for the world at large. this belief propels him on through acts of great endurance, into doing some real mean shit, and also, into crafting a fake fantasy version of reality ("I am okay with this state of affairs") to push other people to live in because things will be more convenient that way.

This is, in fact, "the vibe," of being an adoptee, In The RL. It doesn't matter if you win the fucking lottery and get adopted by the sweetest person to ever live, the messaging of society at large is still gonna blare ever in your ear: you're so lucky. you should be grateful. aren't you grateful? why aren't you grateful? what's wrong with you? if you won't appreciate what you have, you should imagine what it's like if it gets taken away.

an adoptee doesn't have to imagine what its like to lose what they have, by the way. even if their adoption happened when they were an infant. and even as sunday tries to seize the mantle of becoming 'the strong,' to reforge himself into a guiding star, he speaks from the perspective of one who has been 'the weak.'

I do not have my fandom PhD in Robin studies yet so I don't feel like I can get as in depth here as I like, but also, the trauma of being an adoptee is where I feel that a lot of Robin's more implicit characterization comes from, and also where a lot of potential misunderstanding of her comes from, because people I think.. don't very easily relate to the adoptee perspective, and instead think of it like a more 'normal' (bunny ears) (massive. massive bunny ears) family dynamic where there isn't that particular sword over the head. I am extremely understanding of this! if you haven't lived it, it can be hard to grasp how bone deep it goes into you. in everything. every moment. every day.

but. uh. TO ME, there are so many moments she is saying "blink twice" to Sunday while being very careful to not potentially have him pull away, because she sees him as way more 'in deep' and indoctrinated than she is. I think Robin sees her brother for most of the plot and fears she's looking at a Grateful Adoptee(TM), and it is a brick wall between their ability to communicate earnestly with one another. have you seen the letter Sunday almost-but-didn't-send her by the way? ho-ho-holy shit. I need someone to write that canon divergence yesterday, but that's also me huffing copium over the idea that that letter would have ever made it off planet when people were canonically reading sunday's mail.

...by the way, I think it's really interesting that robin's activist work seems to be aimed to try and stabilize areas in need, rather than rescue people from those places. this, too, is a mark of someone who understands The Problem With Adoption, To Me,

uhh. I don't really know how to end this. I just really need people to think more about this specific angle of his character other than it just being a source of sadness in his background he has moved past because it's actually extremely formative of his Everything and also I stare into the darkness between stars when we talk about Welt signing adoption papers. It's fine. I'm not gonna come for you for saying that even if I try to remove it from my own vocabulary. But oh my God. Oh my God. Please commit to EXPLORING THE CONNOTATIONS I would love to see people make fanworks of him reckoning with the extremely mixed and difficult emotions that "Welt attempts to dad at him explicitly" would inspire.

ok... peace..... I've spent way too much time writing this when I am sick and should be resting....

[your-local-crypt1d]

More WRA and Roseblings headcanons 🥀

Part 1!

Gem inherited her mothers' green eyes, whereas fWhip inherited his father's blue. After she transitioned, people would often say she looked just like their mother, to the point it was uncomfortable. Gem never knew her mother, she doesn't share the grief of her people (as much as she understands why they grieve, she finds it hard to sympathise), and being thrown mournful glances and overhearing hushed whispers of the late empress left a bitterness inside even if she knew it was illogical to be upset over it.

"What do you know of my mother? I did not even know my mother!" Has been a phrase Gem's regrettably snapped more times than she'd like privy

Just the complicated feelings/experiences children of a mother who died during childbirth having to deal with growing up, especially when that mother was such a beloved political figure as Grand Empress MelodiaRose of the Wither Rose Dynasty

All traditional Grimmish names are compounds. it stems from their language having a logographic writing system (e.g. Chinese), so it contains a separate glyph for each word or phrase. Traditionally, Grimmish parents choose two words and/or names and compound them together for their children.

As mentioned in the previous part, fwhips' name is a poor translation between mythic and common, and it means "someone who gets back up after being knocked down".

Gemini comes from the tradition of the firstborn heir being named after a constellation or celestial body, and then Tay is a synonym of May in Grimmish. May/Tay in Grimmish has to do with the rising sun, and it symbolises the heir being the rising Emperor of their nation. Not that that happens with Gem, though.

So Gem has a very similar name to her father (like John vs. Jack levels of similar) and looks almost identical to her mother.

Unlike in other empires, adoption in the Grimmish royal family means being included in the line of succession, and having the same rights to inheritance as blood-related children.

With a large portion of the population being non-human ("monsters"), monster hunters historically have been a very big problem for the residents of the Grimlands. The heads on spikes and towering walls are to keep the hunters out.

This leads to many orphaned children in the Grimlands and surrounding empires, especially orphaned vampire children since Vampires are fiercely protective of their young to their dying breaths. Adoption is a large part of Grimmish culture, and they take it very seriously.

Their foster system is the best in the realm, support workers for children in the system are highly regarded (in the same way soldiers and doctors are), and as mentioned, royal adoptees have the same legal rights to inheritance as their adopted siblings.

Hence why Sausage, an adopted child, was allowed to become king of Mythland when he had no blood ties to the royal lineage.

Speaking of, I think Sausage would make iron friendship bracelets for the other Wither Rose Alliance members. Pearls' has sunflowers carved into the metal and inlaid with yellow gems. Gems' has amethyst pendants in the shape of magical symbols. fWhips' is painted black with little spiked studs painted red.

Sausage has a lot of scars from growing up, and when asked about them he has a running joke of always coming up with inconsistent and elaborate lies on how he got them, fWhip is in on it too. He's told the same advisor three different stories about how he got the scar on his upper arm (a warden, falling down a cliffside, stabbed by an assassin). No one knows the real story except Sausage, not even his siblings, but that's just Sausage for you.

With the surplus of crops, especially wheat, in Gilded Helanthia, I think baking would be a very popular and cheap hobby. Also popularised by their Queen taking an interest in it. Pearl usually makes pastries, tarts, and breads which she'll bring to WRA meetings for taste testing.

Gem doesn't have traditional courtiers as most rulers do, she has a large family of Allays who live in her tower and do nice fae things like cleaning up and bringing her important documents. Only occasionally do they hide things from her, or take coins, but Gem finds it hard to be mad when they technically "work" for her unpaid. The Allays don't seem to mind, though.

Along with that, Copper Golems aren't an uncommon sight in the Grimlands and Pixandria, the copper supplied from the latter and the engineering from the former. The Copper Golems around Eastvale are what inspired a young fWhip to take up engineering in the first place.

And native to the northern regions of Gilded Helanthia and further up north into Mythland and the Codlands are Glares. Just to round it all out. I imagine the Glares around the swamp have the moss cloaks (like depicted in-game), whereas ones from Mythlandic dark oak forests lean towards liverwort and fungus, and the ones from the Plains of Gilded Helanthia coontails and vines.

[beardedmrbean]

South Korean governments committed numerous human rights violations over decades in a controversial programme that sent at least 170,000 children and babies abroad for adoption, a landmark inquiry has found.

It said the government's lack of oversight enabled the "mass exportation of children" by private agencies that were driven by profit, and found examples of fraud, falsified records and coercion.

Since the 1950s, South Korea has sent more children abroad for adoption than any other country, with most sent to Western countries.

South Korea has sinced moved to tighten its adoption processes, but some adoptees and their biological parents say they are still haunted by what they went through. The BBC spoke to one woman who claimed her adoptive parents "took better care of the dog than they ever did of me".

"This is a shameful part of our history," said Park Sun-young, the chairperson of the commission, at a press briefing.

"While many adoptees were fortunate to grow up in loving families, others suffered great hardship and trauma due to flawed adoption processes. Even today, many continue to face challenges."

The report was released on Wednesday by the independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission following an investigation that began in 2022.

Since then, 367 adoptees - all of which were sent overseas between 1964 and 1999 - had filed petitions alleging fradulent practices in their adoption process.

Some 100 petitions have been analysed so far, of whom 56 adoptees were recognised as victims of human rights violations. The commission is still investigating other cases, with the inquiry set to end in May.

In the aftermath of the Korean war, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world and few families were keen on adopting children.

South Korea's government then began a transnational adoption programme handled by private agencies, which were given significant powers through special adoption laws.

But there was a "systemic failure in oversight and management", which led to numerous lapses committed by these agencies, according to the report.

The report noted that foreign agencies had demanded a set number of children every month and Korean agencies complied, "facilitating large-scale intercountry adoptions with minimal procedural oversight".

With no government regulation on fees, the Korean agencies charged large amounts and demanded "donations", which turned adoptions into "a profit-driven industry", according to the report.

Other lapses include adoptions conducted without proper consent from birth mothers and inadequate screening of adoptive parents.

The agencies also fabricated reports that made children appear as if they were abandoned and put up for adoption; and intentionally gave children wrong identities.

Because many adoptees had false identities listed in their paperwork, they now struggle to obtain information about their birth families and are left with inadequate legal protection, the report noted.

The commission has recommended the government deliver an official apology, and to comply with international standards on transnational adoptions.

'I have had a painful and miserable life'

South Korea has moved to tighten its adoption processes in recent years. In 2023, it passed a law ensuring that all overseas adoptions would be handled by a government ministry instead of private agencies, which is due to come into effect by July.

The South Korean government has yet to respond to Wednesday's report.

Inger-Tone Ueland Shin, 60, was one of the petitioners whose cases were investigated by the commission. She was adopted by a Norwegian couple when she was 13 - and discovered later on that her adoption was illegal.

The couple, who were in their 50s at the time, had initially applied to adopt but were rejected by Norwegian authorities as they were too old.

They then travelled to South Korea and visited an orphanage, where they selected Inger-Tone and took her with them to Norway.

The couple only submitted an adoption application to Norwegian authorities years later. The authorities approved it, despite acknowledging the illegality of Inger-Tone's situation, because they determined that by then she had "no connection to Korea anymore".

Inger-Tone told the BBC she had great difficulty adjusting to life in Norway, and also alleged her adoptive father sexually abused her.

"They took better care of the dog than they ever did of me," she said. "It was so painful. I wasn't able to talk or express myself, other than crying at night".

In 2022, she successfully sued her local government in Norway and was awarded damages. She also received her local government's acknowledgment that it was liable for "failing to supervise" her adoptive home.

Her adoptive parents have since died.

"They have never spent time in prison for what they've done to me. They criminally picked up a child outside of the country... nobody has taken responsibility for what they did to me," she said.

While she is satisfied with the results of the commission's investigation, she said: "I have been living in the wrong country and I have had a painful and miserable life."

"I don't wish this for anyone and I sincerely hope they do not adopt any more children out of Korea."

[spooky-dice]

are we ready for the transracial adoptee gorgug conversation cause. it’s literally the core of his identity.

[small-but-mightyy]

It’s adoption awareness month, so…

Here’s to the adoptees who don’t know their family origins

Here’s to the adoptees who don’t know their medical history

Here’s to the adoptees who don’t have their original birth cirtificate

Here’s to the transracial and international adoptees who feel isolated from their cultural identity

Here’s to the adoptees who are rejected by their biological and/or adoptive families

Here’s to the adoptees who were taken from their biological families through coercion or pressure

Here’s to the adoptees who are illegally sold, stolen, and/or trafficked through the adoption industry

Here’s to the adoptees that haven’t survived to tell their stories

[loumandliker]

the whole thing irt marimand and marius truly trying with amadeo& amadeo loving and trusting marius so much is also why i don’t personally rock with the cartoonish racism some people attribute to the marimand dynamic.. like was marius racist? well certainly yes, but he is also the type of enlightened self-absorbed hand-wringing moralist who thinks of himself as so morally high and mighty in sort of the same way as (show) lestat who also considers himself to be kind of post-racial in some ways, in that he would, in my opinion, not be calling amadeo slurs and certainly wouldn’t be making disparaging comments about him as an extension of his culture. the whole point with the amadeo project was that andrei was a completely blank slate for marius to do whatever he wanted to because there was nobody to stop him and because he was so mentally broken there was very little that was capable of resisting these rewirings he was doing in his brain, and i expect this to be the case in the show as well. like: the cultural violence is of course extremely present even with ukrainian andrei, but it is mostly paternalistic and condescending as opposed to violent and outwardly hateful, which might be a small distinction but one i think matters especially because i think it affects how armand would see himself and his birth culture/racial identity/ethnicity etc, in a way very similar to how many modern transracial/cross-cultural adoptees might feel about having been raised in passively racist white families [as opposed to ones that were openly/directly hateful].