#Romanian monarchy

[tiny-librarian]

Photograph of a ten month old Marie of Edinburgh, future Queen of Romania.

[grenade-maid]

Signalis, Authority, and History

There's a level of nuance to how Signalis presents the violence of the authority of the nation that doesn't call attention to itself but which I really appreciate. Which is basically just, all the officers and cops and spies who make life hell for people like the Gestalt mine workers, Ariane, and the Itou family--we get little glimpses into who they are in Adler and Kolibri's diaries and despite the propaganda and the authoritative tone they take in official communications, for the most part they don't seem to actually be particularly invested in the hard line of national ideology. They uphold it though, viciously, both because things were worse under imperial rule (we don't get hard details on what it was like but it's mentioned in passing enough that I believe it) and because they're scared that if they don't they will be decommissioned and easily replaced. They are literally stamped out of a production line after all. There's a subtext of well, if I don't do it my replacement will anyway and I'm not trying to die so what's the point of rocking the boat?

I think Kolibri stands out to me most clearly on this because in communications from the block warden regarding Ariane there is emphasis put on how it is unacceptable and suspicious that she should be so interested and invested in art and literature that does not serve the purpose of furthering the goals of the nation. But we know that Kolibris themselves are bookworms, Adlers are fiends for stimulating experiences, and both get miserable FAST when deprived of art and puzzles and entertainment and hobbies. Y'know, just like anyone. Far be it from being a paragon of The Nation only interested in productive labor, we are reminded that the block warden, too, hates this shitty town and wants to transfer but is denied. They're hypocrites, but not monsters, nor brainwashed puppets of the state.

The monstrousness at play is not contained within any particular subset of evil individuals, or even an inherent universal force of evil contained in the broad notion of The Nation. There is no cosmic evil force that makes them all do these things to each other. The monstrousness is within the social systems, the mechanisms of how authority perpetuates on a structural procedural level, held in place by fear and tangible threats of violence, each link in the chain restraining the next through those threats out of fear that if they don't, then they'll be next. Regardless how many, if any, of those people in this chain are true dogmatic hardliners, they must act as such because failing to do so opens them up to danger.

Here then I think of the quote that is so prominent, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl", from Lovecraft's The Festival. This is not just a chilling abstract visual that conveniently evokes a mineshaft-- in Lovecraft's story, this line refers to worms which ate the decomposing bodies of wizards whose wretched souls had remained after death, complete with the terrible powers they gained through contracts with demons. Those worms inherited both their power, and also the evil. The Nation, despite having overthrown the Empire, is built on imperial technology, in particular Replikas and bioresonance. So too, then, we can imply that The Nation inherited with those things some of the monstrousness of The Empire as well. There is no end of history, nor clean break with the past, no matter how violently it may seem to be rejected. That which remains from the past--and something inevitably always does--creates the present.

This is a game that is not shy about evoking East Germany. And I think all of this provides a sophisticated picture of repressive authority that we rarely see in fiction of the English speaking world, especially in games. The year the S23 incident takes place is notably 84, but, frankly, I find this to be more compelling and illustrative than 1984 (and I'm a librarian and have taught English classes so I get to say that). Orwell, let's be honest, presents a fairly one dimensional picture of authority, where people seize power and wield it against others out of seeming mustache twirling evil or malice.

Here though we get a more humanistic view. Authority did not come from nowhere and is not wielded arbitrarily out of gleeful cruelty or mindless brainwashed allegiance. People aren't "just following orders". Individuals have rich inner lives. They make decisions, and those decisions are based in the context they're in. Even the decision to carry repressive tools of the past into the present is a decision that was made strategically with the big picture in mind. Nobody woke up and decided to be evil that day. Everyone operates on self interest, and, we must assume, an earnest desire for things to get better. Even the [spoiler] program which served as an inspirational demonstration of The Nation's power, you can imagine the chain of officers and bureaucrats who genuinely wanted the people of the nation to believe in the future, to confidently trust that everyone was working together towards something great and beautiful. And, through a long chain of those people who couldn't say "No" without being decommissioned, we ended up with something unbelievably cruel.

We get to know Adler and Kolibri and the other officers not to say well they're human too, maybe it wasn't so bad that they condemned all those people to agonizing suffering, but to remember that if we keep looking for true monsters we will not find them. There are no monsters and there are no demons. There are only people making decisions. A better world is possible. A better world, where Adler is just a paper pusher who does puzzles after work instead of signing papers to authorize torture, where Kolibris are librarians instead of spies and cops, where EULEs can gossip and play piano and ARARs can do maintenance on facilities that don't contain torture rooms, is one that would not have led to the Ariane and Elster's tragic cycle and ultimate end.

Authority and its attendant cruelty is not contained, radiating forth from The Great Revolutionary and Her Daughter, it is within the social systems of control. When those two women die, that cruelty will continue so long as those social systems continue. Like Lovecraft's worms, no matter how long dead the evil of the past is, so long as it continues to be fed upon, that evil will not only remain, but evolve into something new in the present. A better world can't be achieved through the death of the old world alone, even if violent overthrow is warranted. There is no end of history. There is no clean break from the past.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

[warwickroyals]

Sunderland's Royal Jewel Vault (47/∞) ♛

↬ The Duchess of Glencairn's Circles Bandeau

The Glencairn branch of the royal family is arguably the most “royal”, with ties to Sunderlandian, Russian, and Danish royal families. This tiara originated from the trousseau of Grand Duchess Anastasia Georgiyevna, the ill-fated daughter of King George I of Sunderland. Anastasia inherited her mother’s theatrical side, and several jaw-dropping jewels are linked to her. The Bandeau was created in the 1890s and features diamond hoops intertwining around central pearl and diamond elements. The tiara is versatile; the pearls can be swapped with emeralds. It remained in Russia until the royal family was deposed in 1917, after which it entered the Sunderlandian royal family through the Grand Duchess’s granddaughter, Esther, Duchess of Glencairn. The tiara was worn by Esther and her second daughter, Princess Frances, who wore the bandeau as a young woman in the 1980s. The jewel parted with the family in 1994, having been sold to relieve the estate tax the Glencairns faced after Esther died in 1988. In June 1995, the tiara was auctioned at Sotheby’s, where a private buyer scooped it up for a staggering $200,000. Creation: Bolin in the 1890s Provenance: 1) Grand Duchess Anastasia Georgiyevna 2) Natalia, Viscountess Jungman 3) Esther, Duchess of Glencairn Other Wearers: Princess Frances of Glencairn Commissioned/Purchased by: George, Prince of Danforth Status: Sold

[mapsontheweb]

Language families of Austria-Hungary in 1910.

by hunmapper

Multinational Empire: Austria-Hungary was characterized by its diverse ethnic composition, encompassing a wide array of ethnic groups and languages. The empire included Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Italians, and others. Dual Monarchy: The Austro-Hungarian Empire was officially known as the Dual Monarchy because it consisted of two separate entities, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, each with its own government and institutions. The two entities shared a monarch (Emperor Franz Joseph I from 1867 to 1916), who ruled both parts of the empire. Germans and Hungarians: The Germans and Hungarians were the two largest ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary. The Germans were predominant in the Austrian part of the empire, while the Hungarians were the majority in the Kingdom of Hungary. The dual structure reflected the compromise reached in 1867 to balance the power between these two major groups. Slavic Diversity: The Slavic population was significant and diverse within Austria-Hungary. This group included Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The empire struggled to manage the national aspirations and demands for autonomy from these various Slavic groups. Nationalism Challenges: Nationalism was a major challenge for Austria-Hungary, as various ethnic groups sought greater autonomy and independence. The rise of nationalism contributed to tensions and conflicts within the empire, ultimately playing a role in its dissolution after World War I. Balkan Component: The empire extended into the Balkan region, incorporating territories with a mix of South Slavic, Romanian, and other ethnic groups. The Balkan component added another layer of complexity to the ethnic mosaic and contributed to the geopolitical challenges faced by the empire.

[argyrocratie]

turn out Sacher-Masoch recalled an anecdote about Bakunin at the time of the pan-Slavist congress of 1848 and funny enough the scene depicted still manage to be somewhat thematically what Sacher-Masoch is known for:

"The Baroness denied that the goal could be achieved through revolution.

“It was not the republic,” she cried, “that made the ideas of 1789 triumph, it was Napoleon. We need a man who is himself a power, and this man can only be the Tsar”

While she spoke thus with vivacity, as usual, and her large clear eyes shone, she looked, with her parafa and her gold brocade kazabaika trimmed with sable, like one of those intelligent and energetic tsarinas of the old Russia, accustomed to making the neck of any man who approached them a stool for their feet.

This witty woman developed her ideas with great sagacity and in a very brilliant way.

“Before long,” she said, among other things, “the political ideal will definitely be relegated to the background. All nations will no longer have but a single concern: achieving unity. This will result in the formation of large, very powerful States. This aspiration, the strongest because it is the most natural, will push all other interests into the shadows for a long time.

“The struggles of our time, almost all fought in the name of freedom, have little importance; in the very near future these struggles will become purely national struggles.

“The Slavs, like other nations, must aspire to unity and achieve it; but it must be recognized that they are less prepared for it than the Italians and Germans were. A number of small independent nations have been formed within the Slavic race, which will not easily give up their independence.”

“That is perfectly right,” said Bakunin: “‘a union of the Slavic rivers losing themselves in the Russian sea,’ in Pushkin’s sense, would seem desirable neither to the Czechs, nor to the Serbs, nor to the Croats, and it would be energetically refused by Polish. This is precisely why the autocratic government of the Tsar must fall. The only form of government capable of satisfying all parties is a large and free Slavic federation, on the model of the United States of North America, which would include the Hungarians and the Romanians.”

“No! Bakunin,” cried the superb baroness, “you are wrong. We will achieve nothing until we know how to subordinate our political ideal to our national ideal.

“All by the Tsar! nothing without the tsar!”

“You defend the monarchy of the tsars, because you yourself are a great despot,” said Bakunin, smiling and passionately raising his adversary’s little hand to his lips. “It would be an idea to make you sovereign of our pan-Slavist state. I would be the first to throw myself at your feet and make myself your humble slave.”

“Ah! If I were mistress of all these crazy disunited heads,” she cried, “I would unite you all with the knout; because you need the knout, everyone, without exception!”

-Sacher-Masoch, “Choses vécues,” Revue politique et littéraire 25 no. 8(25 août 1888): 250-252. (X)

[best-braganza-tournement]

Introduction

Do you have opinions on the Serene House of Bragança (or Braganza) Do you wish to join the Brigantine Dynasty as it streches from East Timor to Brazil. Do you wish to eat Caldo Verde in a hot day in Portugal. Do you enjoy seeing drama, plotting, consorts more interesting than their Bragança husbands and the glory that is coming to Brazil? If so this defunct house of rulers that has had claimants and candidates to the thrones of Greece and Poland, as well as Monarchs of Portugal and royal consorts that have provided Monarchs such as Ferdinand of Romania? Dilettantes including the Infante Manuel de Bragança? and of course the Glorious Kings of Portugal and the Emperors of Brazil? If so, come to Brazil Join the tournament to discover the best Bragança!

Listen we may not be as dramatic as the Habsburgs or the Bourbons, but in terms of drama, we are the little house that could (so much drama (the War of the Brothers, the scheming of Carlota Joaquina, João V and his strong love of the catholic church)

Rules:

Who will be included in your lists? Much like notable brackets of Central Europe, we will include unconventional figures who may technically be considered members of other dynasties including *sighs*...at least a few Hohenzollerns (But unlike the @best-hohenzollern-ruler bracket, these will be ROMANIAN HOHENZOLLERNS; which is better).

We will also include the consorts from other royal families whose ambitions, intellect, and force of will may have outshone their admittedly mediocre Bragança spouses (Carlota Joaquina of the Bourbons is fascinating as is Maria Leopoldina of Austria)

Is propaganda encouraged?

Absolutely, as Lilia Schwarcz shows for Pedro II of Brazil, propaganda and pageantry are essential for the construction of the Bragança dynasty and monarchy! As such, It is also essential for this bracket!

Why is everyone a Pedro or João?

Hey, those are perfectly good names....but we also have two Marias who reigned in their own right (Actually, a lot more Marias in this bracket!) We also have some Afonsos

What regnal numbers will you be using?

Honestly, we will be using the Portuguese regnal numbers up until Pedro II of Brazil, who will have emperor in his title to distinguish him (Pedro I of Brazil/ IV of Portugal will have both)/ We will also include a few dukes.

Which language will you be using for the names?

Portuguese....do you really want to deal with a bunch of Johns and Peters?

How would you like it if, say a Habsburg Bracket, called Franz Joseph

Francisco José? It would be weird.

What is your relation to @best-hohenzollern-ruler, @best-habsburg-monarch, and the @best-bourbon-monarch?

Much like the Duke João of Braganza ( the future King João IV of Portugal) we bravely broke off from the @best-habsburg-monarch's bracket to form our own path! However, as is our want, we deeply appreciate the Habsburgs, the Bourbons, and the Hohenzollerns. Thus, we have maintained our propensity to intermarry into each of these families and their membership has joined us as well. So @best-hohenzollern-ruler @best-bourbon-monarch and @best-habsburg-monarch, friends? Also, @rulers-of-poland-tournament, Infante Manuel de Bragança really thinks y'all are swell!

[outsidereveries]

H O N E Y B U Z Z

vol. 4: 1 gossip about the countries in eu✌🏻 (some of them)

the countries are chosen randomly :)

italy and finland: someone's intimate life will get revealed.. they seem to have hooked up with a minor ...

italy | the world, 5 of pentacles rx, 6 of cups, the sun • 2 of cups

finland | knight of swords, 8 of pentacles, 6 of swords • 10 of swords rx

croatia: it wouldn't hurt for croats to prepare to spend more money on basic needs, some prices might go up.. yes, even more.

page of cups, 10 of pentacles, 5 of wands rx • 4 of swords

austria: good luck to the opposition. the elections are near, literally.

8 of wands rx, 5 of pentacles rx, 9 of swords rx • ace of pentacles

spain: something's going on in the parliament or with the parties but i can't decipher it yet😐 something, related to force to be in a coalition?

5 of wands rx, king of wands rx, page of swords rx • wheel of fortune

romania: i am trying to decipher with what exactly romanians will be heartbroken, or dissapointed, or mad.

the world, 3 of pentacles, knight of pentacles • 7 of pentacles

latvia: upcoming elections? it seems to be mutual desicion

ace of cups, strength, 9 of wands rx • queen of cups

france: to ensemble and npf, nice try. i sense someone was laughing at bulgaria. this is just the beginning. sorry for sensing your karma. be cautious of your knight of cups.

with love, a random bulgarian /gen

10 of pentacles, 5 of swords rx, knight of cups • 2 of cups

greece: lgbtq-related protests.. someone's mad

3 of pentacles, the magician, 2 of pentacles • judgement

germany: i sense sympathizers of afd trying to manifest early elections.

page of pentacles rx, the fool, 5 of wands rx • king of swords

denmark: someone seems to not support the government anymore, so another elections?

9 of pentacles, 9 of wands rx, page of swords • 9 of cups

i am giving up. will try to ask for the rest another time.

ps. i know some countries are monarchies, i asked overall stuff that i can feel and see.

[justdonotaskmewhy]

Comments from translation of the coronation:

Latin Americans: Diana is my queen!

Russians: Camilla is my queen!

Americans: Abolish the monarchy!!!

Romanians: HELLO FROM ROMANIA SO GLAD TO BE THERE HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY

[gemsofgreece]

Γεια σου! I’m a Romanian History student specialising in International Relations and I am about to enter the last year of my Bachelor’s Degree, meaning I will have to write a thesis in order to obtain a diploma. I also happen to be learning Greek. I have been fascinated by the history of 20th century Greece for a while now and have written almost every essay we were assigned on topics surrounding it, thus I have picked “Greece’s foreign policy in the 20th century” as the topic for my thesis. As for any other scholarly work, I will be in need of primary sources and I was wondering if there are any Greek digitalised archives which may contain relevant documents regarding Greece’s foreign affairs and so on? Thank you so much!

Γεια! Bună! :)

I don't know if I can come up with sources for exactly what you ask in specific but here's some stuff I found.

I would first recommend the captain obvious / sly way: Go to the page of the History of Modern Greece in Wikipedia. The page is very detailed and long and it links you to even more detailed main articles about all the historical events one by one. And there are all the references you can search more and the citations you can use there. I linked the English page - but do study the Greek equivalent simultaneously. Sometimes the English one leans towards British / French "inherent innocence" in regards to its involvement in Greek matters. So both together, with their links to extra pages and all the references can provide a generous amount of information that will be pretty safe.

Old publications released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They cover several of the years 1878 - 1921. Half are in Greek and half are in French though. Here's the link.

Here you will find the pdf of the standard senior high school book on modern and modern Greek history.

This is a pdf of the Topics on Modern Greek History, the schoolbook of the senior year in high school for those who plan to study humanities and social sciences in particular.

The link I am giving you below includes online catalogs from Greek libraries (National Library, Academy of Athens and Gennadius Library). It also has links to open access databases on Modern Greek studies. It's catalogs though, research guides. Not access to the books themselves.

One that might be useful is the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. It's the scientific journal dealing with Greek history and culture exclusively after the Byzantine era.

I would recommend the podcast of historian Giorgos Mavrogordatos - Διορθωτικά Μαθήματα Ιστορίας (Corrective History Lessons). It's very serious work, based on his books as well which he mentions so you can search for them and buy them for more info or in order to cite them. You will find his podcast everywhere, Apple, Spotify, and pod.gr . It has around 67 episodes I believe, the first nine discuss other incidents in Europe and the world which could be similar to Greece's situation and then all the rest are about Greece - mostly the events of 1922 but stretching before and after that, and then some episodes about the Greek monarchy. Of course the problem is that it is, well, a podcast, therefore you need to be acquainted with listening to Greek rather than reading it.

A history website that has great quality and a lot of stuff is Η ΜΗΧΑΝΗ ΤΟΥ ΧΡΟΝΟΥ. It has also articles about world history and its own podcasts. It has a huge archive of articles on Greek history and particularly the modern one, and a lot of little known events, people's documentations and experiences of said historical events, which can give a touch of spice to your thesis. Check out its history menu in this screenshot:

See, it covers the 20th century exhaustively. Of course, it's a website, so what you can do is that once you read something useful in this website, you then make a targeted search about it on the Internet to find the scientific sources and citations because they don't do it themselves often. But they are legit.

That's the best I could do. Inviting anyone knowing history professors' by name to give us links to their publications (cos I am bad with names and remembering sources and such) or if there is any digital archive database you know out there, help Anon out!!!

In the meantime, I still think the wikipedia can save a life when used carefully. And the podcast is good. In fact, if you search your pod app with Greek characters about "νεότερη Ελληνική ιστορία", it might give you several useful results.

BTW I was amazed to find out that we apparently do not have a Greek-based proper, modern, attractive, friendly to use website about Greek History (all of it), addressed to everyone interested and just being a good, extensive and easily accessible source of historiographical content. I have seen many other nations, even much smaller, having such and putting a lot of work in them (although to my recollection in some cases the contents are wild and not very scientific...). You'd expect Greece would have something similar (hopefully minus the unscientific part) about Greek history but nah. This is both sad and not surprising at all. I mean, η μηχανή του χρόνου is good but it's mostly Greek for Greeks. And other blogs that are very personal and subjective may lack in integrity. But an official modern state-supported website that could engage people from all over the world? Nah. I mean, the ministry itself suggests in the year of our Lord 2023 to use IE4 as a browser! Put THAT on your thesis Anon *laughs to hide the frustration*

[snakes-in-the-garden]

June 4th, 1920. Day of the Treaty of Trianon.

On this day, the Hungarian delegation signed a treaty that sealed the fate of the nation. We lost more than ⅔ of our country.

After the First World War, Mihály Károlyi, who did not know how to lead took over the power of the country. This man disbanded the army returning from the war because he was so pro-peace. However, Károlyi did not see that this was a huge mistake, because the country was hit by smaller attacks and he did not want to defend, so control slowly slipped out of his hands.

Károlyi resigned and was replaced by a party allied with the Soviet Union, so the country was suddenly under communist rule. The communists were in the country for 133 days and I won't rant about it for a long time because we all know what it's like when they rule. Though we can thank them for creating a strong, unified army that recaptured the Highlands in two weeks. Just a bad decision as a result, half the army withdrew and the communists resigned too, so we were left alone with a vulnerable country.

Meanwhile, the Romanians attacked us, and a very small part remained for us, around Lake Balaton. The different governments changed each other every week, and in the meantime a letter arrived from Paris. Of course, that was an invitation to the peace talks, but everyone knew that this would not end well. Yes, the country came out of the world war as a loser, but then it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Necause when the Germans dragged the Austrians into WW1, the then Hungarian Prime Minister (István Tisza) said that there was no question of war, but there was not much of a choice.

Count Albert Apponyi and Pál Teleki went to Paris to convince them of the better fate of the country, because a large part of the Hungarians would have been sent across the border. Teleki made a map, on which he marked the areas inhabited by Hungarians in red, and asked that the border line be drawn outside them. Apponyi gave a famous speech in English, but when the French responded in their own language, he gave it in French as well. Then in Italian. Then in Russian. The delegation was impressed, but not pardoned.

The new prime minister, Miklós Horthy, refused to sign the contract, so two insignificant people were sent. One of them signed while standing because he didn't want to pay respect.

The country decreased from 282,000 km² to 93,000 km². 3,3 million Hungarians crossed the border. The Hungarian army was capped at 35,000 and reparations had to be paid.

Hungary suffered greater losses than the Germans.

„Szánd meg Isten a magyart Kit vészek hányának, Nyújts feléje védő kart Tengerén kínjának. Bal sors akit régen t��p Hozz rá víg esztendőt, Megbűnhődte már e nép A múltat s jövendőt!“

Kölcsey Ferenc: Himnusz (részlet) (1823)

[royal-confessions]

“I feel like people only view the bad things monarchy has done. I mean, yeah, they did some bad things, but because of my country's own experience with monarchy, I cannot hate it. Most of our politicians today are Romanian and two of our kings were German, yet they did far more for this country than politicians ever thought about doing. It's sad watching your country fail and everyone leaving it, but I always hoped the monarchy may return to Romania, and maybe then we will stand a chance. Sadly, people look at the British monarchy or queen Rania and see how much they spend and just assume all monarchies are the same.” - Submitted by Anonymous

[mywifeleftme]

256: Maria Tănase // I

I Maria Tănase 1965, Electrecord

Maria Tănase’s Wikipedia entry repeatedly describes her as Romania’s Édith Piaf, and superficially I can see it: both are to my inexpert ear mezzo-sopranos, lived at the same time, died relatively young, and became cultural heroes in their respective nations. While Piaf remains a giant of global music and Tănase is little known outside her country, based on this 1965 compilation’s liner notes Tănase’s significance to Romanian music may surpass that of Piaf’s to France. As her biographer Harry Brauner (himself an interesting figure) tells it, Tănase was the artist most responsible for stitching Romania’s diverse folk traditions into a modern national music. Fascinated since girlhood by the folk songs taught to her by her parents and the peasant women who worked in her father’s plant nursery, throughout her life her hunger for music made her as much a folklorist as a popular singer. She amassed a repertoire of over 400 songs, many of them previously unrecorded pieces she learned directly from elderly peasants who were among the last living repositories of their regions’ oral traditions.

Like her contemporaries Atahualpa Yupanqui in Argentina and Pete Seeger in America, her work brought together traditional songs from various regions of her country at a time when that nation’s identity was still being forged—in Tănase’s lifetime Romania had expanded from the so-called Old Kingdom of Moldavia and Wallachia to include Bessarabia, Banat, Bukovina, and Transylvania, and bounced between monarchy, fascism, and communism. Between these regions (and within them), there were many distinct traditions, and the presence of a transcendent star who represented a cross-section of these styles had a unifying effect. The tracks compiled on Maria Tănase I attest to this diversity: the alternately somber and snaky “Lac-așa” recalls the historical influence of the Ottoman Empire; “Aseară ti-am luat basma” has the flavour of Eastern Jewish or Romany music; the steadily-increasing tempo of “Ciuleandra” puts me in mind of a Russian dancing game where the musicians keep speeding up until only the most athletic dancer remains standing.

Most of these songs are arranged for smaller combos (sometimes just a few violins and woodwinds) as befits their modest origins, though Tănase’s accompanists are the Orchestra de muzică populară a Radioteleviziunii, likely some of the best musicians in the country. In other words, these are not Alan Lomax-esque ethnomusicological recordings but represent an artist accustomed to performing on the continental stage, with the professionalism that entails. Still, my favourite piece by far is the haunting and minimal “Doină din maramureş,” a starkly theatrical shepherd’s lament with a wordless refrain that sounds like Tănase vocally channeling a flute. Brauner describes it as “a personal creation, in which the singer combines a number of elements existing in different regional doinăs” (doinăs being a style of improvised Romanian music). Tănase’s reading of the text is poised and hooded, ratcheting up the tension to the point of shivers, only to let the song descend back into near silence. Eastern European languages strike my ear as intrinsically gothic (thanks no doubt to the pervasive cultural influence of Dracula), and Tănase’s Romanian lends “Doină din maramureş” and the rippling black shroud that is “Cine iubește și lasă” an air of foreboding romance that would be lost in any other tongue.

As an underknown (to the West) but major artist in her time and place, Maria Tănase is ripe for rediscovery by those with a taste for early twentieth century music from outside the usual cultural centres.

256/365

[spookieloop]

Alright, so in honor of Sherlock Holmes becoming public domain, I’ve accidentally spent the last hour (as of the time of writing this I have been awake for an hour and four minutes) just RAPIDLY spawning my own Sherlock Holmes Meets Dracula story out of thin air on accident by a series of What Ifs that Spiraled out of control. The Crux of the story revolves around Holmes and Dracula(not exactly canon OG Dracula, but portrayed heavily as a fucking loser—I cannot stress enough WHAT a fucking loser he is) teaming up to take down Jack The Ripper—as The Ripper was my PRIMARY hyperfixation through my childhood and teenage years, and I feel I can finally use all that weird background knowledge.

I’m going to bullet out points for the story, apologies if it doesn’t make perfect sense—I am putting it under a cut because it will get LONG.

• Sherlock is an autistic He/Him Lesbian; specifically He/Him because I want him being a woman to fly under the radar of Victorian Cops who would disrespect him for being a woman(I want them just to hate him for being smarter than them, and have NO idea that he’s a woman).

• Mary Kelly will have been Sherlock’s best friend, through whom he became acquainted with her estranged half-brother, John Watson, a gay war veteran who vehemently hates the monarchy and is prone to “Wild” conspiracy theories about Queen Victoria harvesting the organs of the impoverished for lavish and perverse purposes.

• Holmes and Watson team up to solve the murder of his sister and hopefully stop her killer from continuing his rampage through the streets of Whitechapel.

• This is how they will have their first run-in with Dracula, who disappears mysteriously when Watson straight up pulls a gun on him. (Much later at a crucial point in the story the gun will be revealed to be unloaded, as Watson’s PTSD deters him from actually using firearms; I do think he’ll get to bludgeon The Ripper to death with the gun toward the end of the story though)

• I think the gun should belong to his lover who was killed during the war in a “Friendly Fire” incident, which led to his own discharge.

• Dracula will be in England SPECIFICALLY because he was forced out of Romania by fed up Romanians and a particularly ferocious Convent of Nuns. Dracula will be copycatting a VARIETY of local serial killers in the Whitechapel area to lay low and feed—this is to account for the strongly held belief that The Ripper had an active copycat DURING the Ripper Murders.

• A convent in the area will be absolutely enthralled by Sherlock—the most important to the story nun will be Liska, a transfer from the very same convent that wrecked Dracula’s shit, and he will rightly be terrified of her.

• Dracula and Holmes will end up teaming up when it becomes clear that The Ripper is doing his killings/collecting the organs for some kind of fucked up supernatural purpose that would be Very Bad for Dracula and also perhaps The World(I have not decided what this is yet) and perhaps will be payrolled by The Crown, but that detail wouldn’t become clear until later. I will take any opportunity to dunk on the British Monarchy.

• Holmes will consult the convent OFTEN, much to Dracula’s horror, and Liska will be ACHING to join them.

• Liska was transferred to England in the first place because she had a “Dangerous Inflation of The Ego” after chasing Dracula from Romania and was accused of being “Too Bold in her Actions”, so she was sent to England because she had become too much of a rockstar to the local WLW population.

• Holmes has no idea he’s seduced Liska until she’s kissing him and locking the door, because we LOVE clueless lesbians and I am a SLUT for historical lesbians who enter convents to avoid marriage.

• Also BECAUSE The Ripper murders where my primary hyperfixation back in the day, a SIGNIFICANT portion of the book will be dedicated to Dunking on George Lusk—the fucking Moron British Chief of Police who refused to use the more advanced Forensic Techniques the French had because he considered it “Voodoo Witchcraft”(likely why The Ripper was able to get away with his killings in the first place).

• Dracula will sweat BULLETS when one of the cops fearfully suggests “Maybe it’s Vampires”, but Lusk will react like “Don’t be a fucking idiot”, to highlight that his superstitions about Forensics are less about ACTUAL belief, more about a smug conservative arrogance against using modern techniques, and science in general.

• Sometimes, a friendgroup can be an Ancient Bisexual Loser Vampire, an Autistic He/Him Lesbian, A Monarchy Hating Gay War Veteran, and a Rockstar Nun. And they ALL hate the cops.

• If I mention the OG Dracula Squad at all, it will be a brief cameo of Lucy Westenra living her best life, because she deserves an adaptation in which she simply gets to be happy.

• UPDATE: I have decided what the ritual The Ripper is attempting is. He is “Sacrificing” the wombs of his victims to creating a “Birthing Pit” for the apocalypse. Queen Victoria herself is behind this because she wants the world to end with her reign. Perhaps there will be an absolutely horrific scene toward the end where we see Victoria still alive but with the open gory wound of her own womb having been Rippered, where she will have a monologue about the Glorious End to a World that was Hers.

[starisinsane]

LANGUAGE HCsssss!!!!!!!!

Ooh! Ooh! New headcanon!!!11!!!!!1!!!1!!

Dark is fluent in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, Chosen can speak most Arabic languages/dialects, Yellow really likes learning new languages and is fluent in just about anything you can find, Blue likes obscure languages like Silbo Gomero and Xhosa, Green...well..."I'm fluent in music!" -Green, 2023. Red can understand animals well, but they can't directly communicate with the animals. Second knows Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and a few others, he has the ability to pick up on a language decently quickly, so if it is spoken around him for a few months he will learn it. Purple knows Korean, Kannada (Indian language), and Spanish, Mango knows French (in theory) and German, Orchid knows Korean, Regular Blue knows Spanish (Purple taught themself Kannada), Gold knows French, Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian, and Romanian (lol I definitely didn't have to put Bulgarian and Romanian in there because I speak both and could easily make a comic in those languages), and Victim...Well, they can learn a new language just by hearing/reading it once, so they basically know all the languages by default.

Obviously, they all know English, but their accents will vary. My headcanon is that King's family has British accents. (I mean Britain has a monarchy and King is King so uhhhh) So, King and Gold would have British accents. Purple switches between American English and British English, ROYGB all use American English, but Second sometimes slips into a British or Australian accent for no reason at all. Regular Blue has an Australian accent, Orchid uh *runs out of variations on English* *does canada have its own accent* *lemme google that real quick**okay no* Orchid just uses American English. Dark has a slight Scottish accent, because it'll make his existence even more of a joke whenever he says something evil and I just imagine that in a Scottish accent, Chosen switches between American English and Britsh English. Victim...uh...every word they say is in a different accent so I have no idea how to define that, thank you very much.

Uh, and that just about wraps it all up for now! :D (Keep in mind, these headcanons are only my opinion, and are not meant to insult anyone! ^^)

oh also Reuben speaks Pig and Enchantment Table.

[hazardous-waste-containment]

Almost every individual element of Kahanism that would raise questions (albeit pedantic ones) about whether it can fully be considered fascist does arguably have a parallel in some other fascism.

The idea that religious law should inform the law of the state: The Polish Falanga thought that all of Polish society, from culture to government to law, should be suffused with Catholicism, while their revolutionary rejection of all other traditional institutions still distinguished them from Catholic conservatism. The League of the South wants independent Dixie to be governed by Biblical law, though they have a non-confessional membership policy, and in any case their political libertarianism and hesitancy about revolution puts their own fascism into some doubt.

The idea that the land was promised to the nation by God: The Romanian Legionaries saw the borders of Romania as divine and eternal, sanctified by the will of God as much as by the blood of the ancestors that fought for it. The same can be said of Afrikaner fascists.

The idea that the nation has a special mission in the world from God: This is the entire thesis of South African Christian Nationalism, purporting that God entrusted Afrikaners with a unique (Calvinist) religious destiny to realize an Afrikaner homeland in South Africa and battle the forces of Satanic evil.

A free-market capitalist economic policy: George Lincoln Rockwell promoted “free enterprise” as an authentically American economic system, though he still called himself anti-capitalist on the grounds that ‘capitalism’ was merely a Jewish perversion of true free enterprise (certainly he never would have identified, as Kahane did, as an “economic liberal”). Only other comparison might be the free-market economics of early Italian Fascism in power (1922-24), which was similarly presented as unleashing the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit.

The two features that can’t be accounted for this way are 1) Kahane’s outright rejection of secular nationalism, and replacement of ethnic solidarity with religious solidarity in a manner more like the Islamic ummah (even this the Legionaries toyed with in the Christian context, but never went as far), and 2) most importantly, when pressed for a specific political doctrine, Kahane suggested that a truly Jewish state would mean the resurrection of the Sanhedrin, possibly under a monarchy; this is pretty clearly reactionary rather than fascist.

At the same time, the mobilizing myth of Kahane’s politics roughly conforms to palingenetic ultra-nationalism, with a myth of decadence (a “spiritual Holocaust” brought on by the multicultural liberalism of the Jewish Establishment), a myth of the organic nation (the “authentic Jewish Idea,” what Kahane saw as the strong, heroic Judaism created at Sinai, though arguably this is more of an attempt at fundamentalism), and the myth of rebirth (the imminent renewal and salvation only to be found in the rule of Kahane and his party).

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.21 (before 1970)

455 – Emperor Avitus enters Rome with a Gallic army and consolidates his power. 1170 – The Kingdom of Dublin falls to Norman invaders. 1217 – Livonian Crusade: The Estonian leader Lembitu and Livonian leader Kaupo the Accursed are killed in the Battle of St. Matthew's Day. 1435 – The Congress of Arras causes Burgundy to switch sides in the Hundred Years' War. 1745 – A Hanoverian army is defeated, in ten minutes, by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. 1776 – Part of New York City is burned shortly after being occupied by British forces. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point. 1792 – French Revolution: The National Convention abolishes the monarchy. 1809 – British Secretary of War Lord Castlereagh and Foreign Secretary George Canning meet in a duel on Putney Heath, with Castlereagh wounding Canning in the thigh. 1843 – The crew of schooner Ancud, led by John Williams Wilson, takes possession of the Strait of Magellan on behalf of the Chilean government. 1860 – Second Opium War: An Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Palikao. 1862 – Taiping Rebellion: The Ever Victorious Army defeats Taiping forces at the Battle of Cixi. 1896 – Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan: British forces under the command of Horatio Kitchener take Dongola. 1898 – Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China. 1921 – A storage silo in Oppau, Germany, explodes, killing 500–600 people. 1933 – Salvador Lutteroth establishes Mexican professional wrestling. 1934 – A large typhoon hits western Honshū, Japan, killing more than 3,000 people. 1938 – The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500–700 people. 1939 – Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu is assassinated by the Iron Guard. 1942 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis send over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaitsi to Bełżec extermination camp. 1942 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews. 1942 – The Holocaust in Poland: At the end of Yom Kippur, Germans order Jews to permanently move from Konstantynów to Biała Podlaska. 1942 – The Boeing B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight. 1953 – Lieutenant No Kum-sok, a North Korean pilot, defects to South Korea with his jet fighter. 1957 – Pamir, a four-masted barque, was shipwrecked and sank off the Azores during Hurricane Carrie. 1964 – Malta gains independence from the United Kingdom, but remains in the Commonwealth. 1964 – The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world's fastest bomber, makes its maiden flight from Palmdale, California. 1965 – The Gambia, Maldives and Singapore are admitted as members of the United Nations. 1969 – Mexicana de Aviación Flight 801, a Boeing 727–100 passenger plane, crashes during a landing attempt in Mexico City, killing 27 of the 118 occupants.