#ethnic coding

[writingwithcolor]

Characters reconnecting with their ancestral cultures in an interplanetary setting

@pixiedustandpetrichor asked:

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

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

Drawing inspiration from groups that have experienced colonization

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

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

Which aspects of culture you're portraying

Where these aspects come from

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In summary: think it through

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

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

which elements of contemporary Tuareg culture are pertinent to include

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

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

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

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

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

- Niki

Pulling from diaspora and TRA narratives of cultural reconnection

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

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

More reading: Japanese-coded girl from future

-Marika

Reconnecting with German heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–S

What do you mean by Germanic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Mod Sci

[historyhermann]

Hazbin Hotel Season One Spoiler-Filled Review

Hazbin Hotel is a mature animated series by Vivienne Medrano. It began as an indie animation by Medrano and her company, SpindleHorse Toons, along with Helluva Boss not long later, with both in the same universe. The franchise began as a YouTube pilot in October 2019 and garnered over ninety-four million views. Most recently, it was developed into a full-fledged animated series by the…

[rotzaprachim]

im shaking every single student organizer and screaming that they need to separate a demand to divest from arms funding from the demand for a university to cut off all contact with Israeli and Israeli-American scholars and students, a demand which no university will agree to because implementing it would in many cases be very illegal

[thefabelmans2022]

how do i say this without getting jumped....... i do think the movies miss something in not emphasising the racial/ethnic divisions in district 12 but i also don't understand people who constantly claim that any description of "olive skin" means non-white person.

[normal-thoughts-official]

It's still so funny to me that Mal tastes like dates and cinnamon. like. his mother's name is Maria. he is associated with dates. but also with cinnamon. is he coded as latino, south east asian, or middle eastern/north african? yes

[ntls-24722]

1Manband!

1Manband is a music man who is 1 guy. 1 Guy... with two bodies. Two bodies who identify as one... and are completely seperate unrelated people... 1 is wearing the other as a flesh suit... uh. This is gonna be really weird and really confusing to explain.

There's nullguy, who was supposed to be a featureless "Y/N" humanoid because he was what my mind conjured when I was thinking of his role yet had no-one to fill it. But now he's his own guy! Except no he isn't, and that's kind of his entire thing.

Nullguy wanted to be DJMM (Just called "music man in this world) with every fiber of his being. Yes in the regular trans way of wanting his body but also quite literally wanting everything about him, he'd be more himself if he were Music Man, and when Music Man heard his heartaches?... Nullguy became Music Man. Nullguy now spends most of his time wearing Music Man as a suit, and they have socially dissolved all distinctions between eachother. They are functioning under the presumption they are the same person, usually not even wanting to be referred to in plural when split, unless it's for explanation purposes. Nullguy's name isn't even nullguy anymore, it's music man, though for the sake of explaining, I'm gonna keep deadnaming the fucker, sorry💀 The "Music Man" nullguy and music man form is just named Music Man, but I call him 1Manband in meta.

Is completely stripping your own identity to become someone else healthy? Is it healthy to let someone wear you like a sweater for the rest of your days? Probably not, especially with all that you lose, which is "Everything About You." Does 1Manband care? Not really. Is 1Manband at least happy? Extremely. These two were sappy before 1manband and thank god they almost never split because they're insufferable now. BOYFRIEND IS YOU/ref

1Manband's best description of being himself is that he "lives with no regrets," that becoming 1Manband is the scariest thing he's ever done, so now everything that could happen comes second place to just walking and talking in front of literally anyone. He now has the confidence to self-express the way he never has had before and the body, the face, the name he's always wanted, and he would not give it up for a moment.

bonus: this second pic with all of 1manband's fits is the other half to nullguy's before and after - nullguy lost his individuality because he gave it 1manband, lol.

Also, their world is kind of a comically hypercapitalist dystopia made up of robot people. This was entirely to make it make sense that music man wears a suit 24/7 because he's a "worker drone".

Also putting him in the setting of an incredibly boring and lifedraining office job makes it easier to torment 1manband via forcing him to reinforce his identity of being a singular individual to coworkers who ask way too many personal questions and just about everyone who finds out (or HAS to find out) that 1manband is a guy wearing a music man flesh suit. Also the exhaustion post-work where he has to build himself back up is sweet and Fun.

[waluigistits]

wish there were more fics centered on Bruce and adult Dick’s relationship it’s so interesting

[luvrodite]

bruce wayne, patron saint of emotionally awkward parents

[misopossum]

finished reading mass effect andromeda: annihilation over the weekend and. it was good, a perfectly 3/5, pleasant but not mind-blowing read that focused on the lore and politics of the non-citadel races - which was super refreshing! however...however. (spoilers) the decision to punish the ultimate antagonist - a quarian woman - by *checks notes* stripping her of her enviro-suit and forcing her to be gawped at and touched in order to disseminate the cure to the disease she created until she ultimately dies of exposure was insane.

by hey, at least we ended it with drell-batarian MILF yuri.

[cinematicendevaourz]

"Emilia Perez" And Why Zoe Saldana Is A Textbook Tether

Zoe Saldana has hit a rough patch in her career since deciding to star in "Absence of Eden". "Emilia Perez" has just extended the missteps in her filmography into what is now a full downward spiral.

There's something to say about a Latina actress who is so adamant to portray nationalities across the Latin diaspora, aside from her own - which is decidedly D.R. - yet as in "...Eden", Saldana once again portrays a Mexican on the big screen.

To further complicate identity politics, the film sees Saldana portray a lawyer who gets wrapped up in assisting a cartel boss' sex change.

In "... Eden" Saldana played an illegal immigrant, in "... Perez", she's a crooked lawyer that has the nerve to give aid to the Mexican cartel.

With illicit pharmaceuticals flooding the States as well as illegal immigration being hot button issues in my country of origin, I don't believe that Saldana's latest films should have had a theatrical U.S. release.

The medium of film should be used to tell unsung stories and should be used as a tool to make public unspoken truths. I disagree with the film industry being used as a blatant propaganda tool to destabilize nations, which I believe "Perez" and "Eden" share in common, other than just their once A-list starlet.

Like Sammy Sosa (a prominent D.R. celebrity before her), Saldana has been unashamed to follow the eugenics agenda ascribed to the Latin Diaspora via Jose Vasconcelos - not in the sense of bleaching her skin, but by mating on and off-screen with white-identifying latinos, in an effort to bleach her bloodline.

Since she's unashamed to do this, she should not have a right to complain about black social issues, even if briefly in a song number featured at the start of "Emilia Perez".

Saldana's lawyer character states that the reasons of her perception of being held back in her otherwise prestigious career is because of her age, her attractive curves (that she underlines in the musical number but can contribute to her indeginious Taino lineage), and blatantly states because she's black, she can't open up a law firm.

I had to pump the brakes there.

In a North American country such as Mexico, the agenda of Euro-colonization is as present as it is anywhere else in this world.

In the late 2010's, Mexico began recognizing their indigenous Afro-Latino population within their countries census. "Emilia Perez" was shot in 2023.

The film opens with Castro (Saldana) helping a wealthy Euro-Latino getting off uxoricide. Then her next case is with the cartel head who wants a sex change.

In "Eden", Saldana opens the film as a stripper and - surprise, surprise - gets mixed up with the cartel, and is now on the run from organized crime more than ICE.

The disconnect between making Saldana a sympathetic lead in these films is that she is constantly in bed with a criminal element that furthers the destabilization of my country of origin and further pushes my ethnic group within it lower down it's colorist caste system.

But then the biggest problem is that she tethers herself to the plight of the African diaspora while supporting Euro-colonization through her choices off-screen for roles on-screen that are supportive of Euro-Latin crime organizations - whether it be the under the table deals made with the U.S.' illegal immigrant population or the outright defense of Cartel members and assisting them with their every whim.

This film wasn't advertised as a musical and the ill-timed trailer of the film prior to it's screening made no mention of the glaring LGBTQ+ subplot.

As a heterosexual man, I felt bamboozled into even sitting through the hour of "Emilia Perez" that I did.

I was glad I didn't pay to see it. Just as well, I found it in good fortune that now local theaters with unoccupied screens end up having a film such as "Emilia Perez" shut off halfway through - because why waste a projector on a picture no one wants to pay for.

I see why no one wanted to pay to see "Emilia Perez" despite the bait of Saldana on the bill.

Saldana's choices have now resulted in her not being qualified to attach herself to any black struggle since on and off screen she wants to side with Euro-Latinos and their agendas which are inherently against the Afrocentric.

Her self-hatred is a disappoinment to the point I've felt physically uncomfortable seeing her on-screen since "Amsterdam". Had I been taught ethnopolitics as a child, Saldana would have made me sick since "Curse of The Black Pearl". "Emilia Perez" was the reminder I didn't need that at least on "Avatar", Cameron had the since to have Saldana bedwench in blue to at least put a few degrees of separation between the plot of the film and her own self-hatred.

-

C.V.R. The Bard

21st/Jan.2k25

* As an aside, what's up with the bag-over-the-head asphyxiation kink? Is that fetish exclusive to the bedwench community and being spearheaded by the likes of Saldana or FKA TWIGS (see : The Crow)? I'm asking for Marilyn Manson.

[irishk0rn]

headcanons

[freak1demon69]

Days ago I saw Ginger art that lightened her dough color (I think it was just meant to be a pastel palette bc I think Bobette’s color palette was also softened, but the thing is that nothing else about Ginger’s design changed color wise ?) and I genuinely got war flashbacks to the Pastry Dash days I like Gen had to click off that post with rapid haste

[tyrannuspitch]

thinking about jotun culture again

as it currently stands my headcanon on why the jotuns we see (all adult men + warriors) are wearing very little is that it's basically posturing, which is expected of warriors specifically, and even then probably not 24/7.

it's not clear exactly how impervious jotuns are to the cold. a lot of people assume that abandoned jotun babies would die of the cold, but it's not actually stated - they might be left to starve. and even if they are, we're still talking about babies, often ones already judged as "weak", so... your average jotun adult might have basically no lower limit on the cold they can endure.

and if that were the case, there wouldn't be much reason for them to wear clothing at all. after all, there are plenty of real life cultures where the traditional clothing is as little or less than we see on mcu jotuns, or nothing at all, because the climate is such that it just isn't necessary.

but if jotun's practical need for clothing is zero, and their everyday clothing is minimal but not zero... then why wear it? modesty taboos, sure - but where do those taboos start? i'm not an expert on these things at all, but i kind of feel like they have to be outside influence...? and if jotunheim and asgard do have a long and closely intertwined relationship, as they do in my headcanon, then that's a possibility...

but we should also consider the armour. mcu jotuns don't just wear little clothing - they wear little armour. they have a sort of short, fitted, armoured skirt/kilt, and then high status warriors like laufey have tiny, decoratively arranged metal pieces over the arms, torso and head that are probably better described as jewellery than as armour.

deliberately making yourself vulnerable can be an effective intimidation technique. it's not very tactical, though, and if it were a new idea it would probably cause panic/loss of trust... which suggests it's deeply engrained in jotun culture. it's not, for example, the jotuns getting desperate after the war and their subsequent isolation left them with a total dearth of resources to make armour with.

and then. there's the fact that the jotun warriors we see aren't only minimally clothed or armoured - they're also all completely hairless.

we know jotuns grow hair. loki in his jotun form keeps all his hair, including eyebrows. but the jotuns raised on jotunheim have neither. all jotuns, including loki, are also beardless, in contrast to the norm for asgardian men.

i've seen it suggested that loki doesn't have a beard because he can't grow one, possibly because jotuns in general can't grow them. but then why the hair, and why the eyebrows? i think it's actually the opposite - both loki and other jotuns choose to shave their beards.

(and incidentally - surely the presence of any hair, from an evolutionary perspective, suggests that they aren't actually 100% impervious to the cold...)

i think, for most jotuns, it's part of their male gender role, and a point of pride, to have as little protecting them from the cold / the elements / harm in general as possible. no armour, no warm clothing, not even their own hair. they actively choose to remove even what naturally occurs - perhaps symbolically linked to actively choosing to face the dangers of battle for their people?

it might sound odd on the surface to say that removing a "male" characteristic like a beard is a male gender role, but there's plenty of real-world precedent. iirc, ancient rome was pretty strictly (socially) anti-beard and thought shaving was a sign of Civilisation. and modern europe has emulated this at various points, although we're not currently strict about it.

which gives jotun men an interesting possible perspective on asgardian men. having hair on their heads could be seen as weak and feminine. but having hair on their faces could, potentially, be seen as barbaric, animalistic, and hypermasculine in a threatening way...

and on the flipside - i think asgardians probably find clean-shaven men intimidating, because they look like enemies such as jotuns and dark elves. but then they're simultaneously being cast as powerful, probably hypermasculine "beasts", and as womanly, and therefore weak...

and in fact, beyond connotations, thor actually canonically views jotuns simultaneously as super powerful monsters who could overrun asgard any day now, and as cowards.

and of course, if we remember half of what's going on with loki... often "weakness" and "cowardice" and "effeminacy" are pretty clearly seen as threatening in and of themselves, even while people claim the opposite...

so. demonisation for contradictory things at the exact same time. the enemy is both weak and strong. this is a very common part of bigotry, but it's always kind of psychologically fascinating to me.

[freelancearsonist]

🐮

Yippee :33

send me a 🐮 for a randomized pinterest moodboard

i actually really dig this sdfsdjfksjf

[vicontheinternet]

I’ve come to notice that we can’t have a show/movie that doesn’t center whiteness in some way mainstream or not because white ppl can’t picture themselves in characters that aren’t white while that’s all we had to do

[ambivalentatmosphere]

Name meaning tea part 2

Corduroy - It's the fabric (but the word itself is derived from cord as in rope)

Yuri Dimas - Yuri is a Slavic name written as Юрий, derived from the Greek word γεωργός which can be broken down into γῆ (meaning earth) and ἔργον (meaning work), roughly translating to one who works with the earth or, more simply, farmer. Dimas is a Greek surname derived from the word Δήμας, meaning sunset.

Since Cordie's a huge weeb, his given name sounds identical to an actual Japanese name meaning lily (although that version of Yuri is feminine). Dimas is also a reference to Saint Dimas, also known as the penitent thief, who is typically associated with the tradition of Easter.

By the way, if you're good at Greek you probably already know that the most common modern version of γεωργός is George but that didn't hit the same