#aasa thessaloniki

[attichoney4u]

Note: Credits to the lovely @allbeendonebefore and her comic series @athensandspartaadventures. The character of Thessaloniki belongs to her.

Second note: The character of Sophia, capital of Bulgaria, belongs to me. I may change her design in later appearances (provided I'll use her).

Third note: Because the characters are personifications of cities, there's a possibility they may appear stereotypical (or even, racist). I feel obligated to add that I'm from South Greece, and since this comic fearures the personification of a city of North Greece, I may be bias and/or get things wrong. If you feel uncomfortable with their portrayal, please DM, explain why and I will delete my comic.

I made this comic a year ago, but only now I found the energy and time to finish it. Thessaloniki (the city) is based on what I recalled when I visited her three years ago, plus photos online of the Nike Avenue.

[allbeendonebefore]

Can you please draw Thessaloniki? I know that it appears later, but it's the second most important city of Greece and we call it "Co-capital".

Thessaloniki is way out of my time scope at the moment BUT i do have an older underused oc (fem!macedon) that I can easily recycle

Here’s my most basic lame impressions

- big hat (macedon’s sister - i guess he represents pella or something)

- heterochromia

- no one has seen her feet so for all we know she’s a mermaid

- fake greek girl

my most basic impression of the modern city is that she’s a bit of a party girl influencer type l m a o

[attichoney4u]

Big inspiration from @allbeendonebefore. The designs for Thessaloniki were based from her work!

As I was scrolling Tumblr today, I stumbled across this lovely pair of earrings from the Byzantine period.

I immediately recalled Thessaloniki, thinking that these earrings would fit her extravagant style and I drew her wearing them. Plus, she was an important centre in the Byzantine Empire, so it makes sense she would wear them. Here she is!

And here are the so-called earrings.

[attichoney4u]

Big inspiration from @allbeendonebefore. The designs for Athens and Thessaloniki were based from her work!

For whatever reason, I was inspired to draw a pretty rushed (as you probably can see) piece about Athens and Thessalonikia's (because this is how she was called in ancient times) first meeting.

Athens looks at her like this because that's the first time he sees her after she was born/founded (don't know how that works in Hapo's universe) wonders if she will ever amount to anything (spoiler alert: she does) and doesn't know yet that she's gonna be his biggest rival (and his biggest headache) for the next 2.400 years.

Thessaloniki looks at him like this, because she doesn't know he's an asshole yet (and also because she doesn't blame him yet for everything going wrong with her city).

That reminds me that I should make a post about Thessaloniki's founding story.

See you soon 😊!

[attichoney4u]

Big inspiration from @allbeendonebefore. The designs for Athens and Thessaloniki were based from her work!

Recently, I came across a post from the talented @margaretartstuff, which inspired me to do my own take of the "myth of the mermaid".

The human is Thessalonikia (that's how Thessaloniki was called in ancient times) and she converses with the person whom she was named after, Thessaloniki.

I don't know how popular this myth is outside of Greece, but I still wanna share it due to how tragic it is. It goes that when Princess Thessaloniki, Alexander the Great's half-sister, learnt about her brother's death, she jumped from a cliff to drown. She didn't die, but instead, she turned into a mermaid. Ever since that day, she stops every ship passing by and asks "Is Alexander the Great alive?". The captain must answer "He lives, and he reigns, and he conquers the world" if he wants to keep sailing safely, or else, the mermaid will send a fierce storm to crash his ship. This dialogue is depicted above. So, if you ever find yourself in Greece and a mermaid asks you about Alexander the Great, you know what you should answer. ;)

[attichoney4u]

Big inspiration from @allbeendonebefore. The designs for Athens was based from her work!

Here we have Athens in PASOK merchandise. The idea came to me after a discussion with myself:

My brain: Hey, remember Hapo's Athens?

Me: Yes?

My brain: What's his theme color?

Me: Green.

My brain: And what else is green?

Me: PASOOOOOK!

For those of you wondering, PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) was an influencing social-democratic political party during the '80s and '90s.

Most adults who grew up during that time period remember it as a "Golden Age", where the country met positive development (not just the big cities, like Athens and Thessaloniki, but small villages as well) and "even homeless people had a home to stay" etc.

But all good things must come to an end. The reason behind this development was mainly because we were borrowing money from other European countries and after a time, we had to pay them back. The problem was that we wasted that money on entertainment mostly and not on profitable activities, like business, trade, industry etc. That's one of the many reasons why we met the financial crisis at the end of the first decade of 2000. Actually, the reasons are much more complicated, but I am not an expert to discuss them, so I recommend you to check them out yourselves.

There's also a term named after it, called Pasokification, which refers to the decline of centre-left social-democratic political parties in European and other Western countries during the 2010s, often accompanied by the rise of nationalist, left-wing and right-wing populist alternatives.

I imagine that Athens (and the rest of Greece) still have their PASOK merchandise and wait for it to retrieve its power...

[attichoney4u]

Welcome to another blog of "what I'm doing with my life?!". In this one, I'm presenting my own biases regarding the differences between Athens's former and ancient rival, Sparta, and Athens's current rival, Thessaloniki.

The idea came to me, since Hapo tends to do this with her characters (like between Athens and Calgary and Athens and Persia) and I wanted to give it a try.

Before we get further into this, I would like to point out that this post is created for fun and all information here is based from the work of the lovely Hapo and from stereotypes that we Greeks have about Modern Thessaloniki (and it's mostly my headcanon about the personification of the co-capital).

Note: The drawings were not made by me. They were made by @allbeendonebefore and you can check both her blogs, @athensandspartaadventures (if you want a silly comic about ancient greek city-states) and @battle-of-alberta (if you want a silly comic about canadian cities).

Now, we're talking about this, I tried to find a canadian city that matched Thessaloniki, either in personality or in vibes. I ended up settling for Grand Prairie, aka Josephine. I'm not that sure about this decision, since Josephine doesn't appear that much in the comic and Hapo, unfortunately, doesn't talk about her often, so take this with a grain of salt.

Here are some similarities between these two cities (or rather, personifications of these cities).

That's all I've got to offer! Hope you enjoyed my post and have a lovely day or night! Bye! 😚

[attichoney4u]

Note: the series was inspired by @athensandspartaadventures by Hapo (@allbeendonebefore ) and has no intention to insult you, rather to entertain you. Without further ado, enjoy!

Big inspiration from @allbeendonebefore . The design for Sparta was based from her work.

After a long, LONG time, I finally figured a way to present Modern Sparta. To be honest, I had such a hard time, mainly because Modern Sparta is such an obscure town in Greece. No kidding! For a town that had such an influence on Ancient Greece, almost no body talks about its modern incarnation and it's ALWAYS about the ancient city.

Ok, maybe I'm wrong. There was a time that Modern Sparta was indeed talked, but that was because of all the weird shits that happened in its City Councils and it was popular to make fun of the Spartans because of that (one thing that you should understand about as Greeks is that we don't uplift each other and whenever we have the chance, we will make fun of each other). Not helped by the fact that for many Greeks outside of the Peloponnese, this was the first time they heard about Sparta after the Peloponnesian War and… it didn't have a good image on their heads. Then, the City Counsils stopped being interesting and Sparta faded into obscurity once again. So, in few words, that's the image that the majority of Greeks have about this town.

Then, I became friends with a girl from Laconia and she told me some things about Sparta. Here are some notes:

The Spartans are extremely tall [ironically, she's short (for their standards, for our standards, she's considered of average height)]

They're also extremely laconic (ironically, her twin brother is extremely talkative and he feels out of place there for that reason)

They're just introverts who need an extrovert to do all the talking for them

Now, that we've got that covered, let's move on some notes of this comic.

The upper image depicts Sparta hitting an olive tree to make the olives fall. Mani, which is in Laconia, is famous for its olive oil production. He says "I'm working like a helot".

"I'm working like a helot" is a phrase that we Greeks use when we overwork ourselves ("wHaT?!" a Northern European might wonder. "GrEEks oVeRWorkInG thEmSElves To DeaTh?! tHaT's ImPOssibLe! ThEy'rE lAzY!"). It's derived (if what I know is correct) from the slaves of Ancient Sparta, the Helots, who were said to work on harsh and brutal conditions. I was torn between having either Messene (Mr. Helot, in the original comic) or Sparta to say that, but I decided with the latter, since it would be funnier because… irony.

The American tourists in the middle image are, of course, refering to "This! Is! Sparta!" meme from 300.

That's all I have to offer. Have a good day (or night depending on what time exactly you're reading this post) 😘

[attichoney4u]

Note: the series was inspired by @athensandspartaadventures by Hapo (@allbeendonebefore ) and has no intention to insult you, rather to entertain you. Without further ado, enjoy!

Big inspiration from @allbeendonebefore. The design for Ionia/Miletus was based from her work.

Ok, let's get down to business 🎶to defeat the Huns.🎶 Two months ago, a greek movie called "Smyrni mou agapimeni" (english translation: "Smyrna, my beloved") circulated in theatres and it had to do with (as you probably have guessed) the great catastrophe of Smyrna back in 1922.

As someone who lives in a town that was founded by immigrants from Asia Minor and since a century has passed from that event, I was intrigued and I immediately started a draft, but due to exams, I didn't finished it until much later.

Inspired by this, I took Hapo's character, Ionia/Miletus and had her star in the poster of the movie. And yes, I know that Ionia is the personification of Miletus, but technically speaking, Miletus is located in Asia Minor, so it makes sense.

We will start first with a historical note to help foreigns understand. I should advise you that I'm no historian, so it's gonna be oversimplified and it would be much more preferable to search the Internet. Here are some links: link 1, link 2. And as always, you can help me add more stuff or correct me for the things I was wrong.

It all started way back in the 19th century, after Greece was freed from the Ottoman Empire. Back then, a plan named "Great Idea" was formed, where we would try to retrieve the terrains that were originally inhabited by Ancient Greeks (namely, South Balkan and Ionia).

This "Great Idea" was finally realised in 1919, with the help of Eleftherios Venizelos and of Entente. At first, the Greek army came victorious and we penetrated even further to the Turkish land.

So, what went wrong? Well, in 1920 Venizelos loses the elections and King Constantine comes to power. This disgruntled many army officers in Asia Minor who were in favour of Venizelos, as well as with the Entente, who never really liked Constantine (since Constantine didn't hide his admiration for Germany's militaristic discipline). All this, combined with the rise of Mustafa Kemal turned the tides in favor of the Turkish army and the Greek army started to back off.

The saddest moment has to be the catastrophe of Smyrna. Smyrna for Greeks was an important city, as the Greek spirit/element was prominent there (more than half of its inhabitants were Greeks). The Smyrnians, as well as other Greeks from Asia Minor, came to mainland Greece as immigrants, desperately looking for a new home and support…

Now, on an critical note: while I don't hate this piece, I don't think that it's one of my best works either. I would prefer a font that it's exactly like the one of the poster, but I couldn't find it on ibis paint. In case you're wondering, this is the poster:

Also, in case you're wondering, NO, we don't want to retrieve Asia Minor anymore. We're passed that.

Next time on the unofficial sequel of AaSA: I finally figured out what to do with Modern Sparta :)

[attichoney4u]

Click fore better quality!

Note: the series was inspired by @athensandspartaadventures by Hapo (@allbeendonebefore ) and has no intention to insult you, rather to entertain you. Without further ado, enjoy!

Big inspiration from @allbeendonebefore . The designs for Corinth based from her work!

So, a few notes to better understand the humor in this page:

Euro (€) is the currency we use. For non-European readers (and Europeans who belong in the European Union, but don't use €), 1€ = 1,08$.

Quite many Greek series and movies often depict us Greeks selling souvenirs to foreign tourists (we understand they're not from Greece from the fact they speak English) in a ridiculous high price. The reason for that, you may ask? Well, foreign tourists (especially the ones from North Europe and North America) are rich and we Greeks are currently dealing with an economic crisis, so we need their money. If you want a lower price, show some respect for Greek culture, maybe try to say a few Greek sentences (in Modern Greek, not Ancient, there's a key difference). It will still be a bit expensive, but not that expensive. And if you want that souvenir in it's original price, try becoming friends with the shop owner. Once they like you, they'll be open towards you (thankfully, we Greeks pride ourselves as being warm and friendly people and we strive to live to that positive stereotype).

For @athensandspartaadventures readers, I imagine Corinth still being into a merchant job or something, so that's why I had her working as a shop runner.

If I was wrong about something or confused you, plz tell me and I will keep that in my mind or help you.

Thanks for reading my post and have a lovely day (or a lovely night). Bye! 😘

[attichoney4u]

This post contains product placement

To celebrate 2022 as the year of "Athens and Sparta Adventures", I drew a fanart of Attica, aka fem!Athens and added a modern spin to her.

Here, you can see her posing wearing a casual outfit and holding a tin with honey. Specifically, "Meli Attiki" (literally, "Attica's Honey"). I'm not sure if that honey is produced in Attica, but I imagine that Attica would love to show off a popular product that has her name upon it.

Attica is a character that I'm quite fond of, despite not having a great role in the original comic (she appeared only once and she didn't even speak), mainly because she's the personification of the region where my town is located.

According to @allbeendonebefore (the creator of the aforementioned comic, as well as of this character), Modern Attica lives on the countryside nowadays.

I imagine her being a light version of her male counterpart, in a sense she isn't as proud and loud as Athens, but she can boast quite about herself. After all, some of the major events in greek history took place there and the capital is located there, so yeah. She isn't as stylistic as him neither (then again, this trait is based on my personal observations: I've noticed that women in Athens dress rather in a messy style [no offense, it doesn't apply to all of them], while the men there take care about their appearance [in Thessaloniki, btw, it's the exact opposite: it's the women who put great effort on how they look, while the men don't really care, but this is also based on observations when I visited Thessaloniki last summer]), but she doesn't really care.

Athens visits her often, especially during Spring and Summer and she's the only one who genuinely likes him, as the rest of Greece can barely tolerate his arrogance and ego, due to him being the capital and the centre of the country.

I believe that Modern Attica is more outgoing than her ancient counterpart, considering she had few rights back then, Athens isn't strict to her and I think he regrets how misogynistic he behaved in ancient times, but doesn't want to admit it (after all, the rest of the world for the majority of human history wasn't any better either).

Attica loves to travel and seeing new places, given she's now free. She doesn't have a "specific" favourite destination, but she likes the Aegean as well as the Ionian islands.

That's all I have to offer. Have a good day (or night depending on what time exactly you're reading this post) 😘