#forest man of india

[dlyarchitecture]

[whenmemorydies]

Violence and Love in Monkey Man

Dev Patel's Monkey Man has played at my mind for two weeks now. This is for reasons that I'm able to articulate and for many that I probably have not yet been able to find the words for. This post is, in part, my attempt at sorting through some of my thoughts. My tumblr is all spoilers all the time. If you don’t want that, then please don’t read on.

Violence

Like most places in the world, systemic violence is a scourge in India. Monkey Man does not shy away from this reality and depicts Hindu nationalist state violence and violence against women and gendered minorities in the country to chilling effect.

We come to see this in the brutal rape and murder of Kid's activist mother at the hands of the police, while she tries to shield her child and her land from police and state terror. We see it in the treatment of (largely femme-presenting) sex workers in the two brothels featured in the film, including one frequented by the police and political elite. We see it in the violence and ostracisation meted out against the hijra, or third gender community by individual actors and the state more broadly. We see it in the state-orchestrated razing of an entire community after the land on which it sits is declared a "holy site". We see it in the movement of people from the regions to the city after their land has been stolen and the grinding poverty they face as a result.

Unlike so many action films, none of the violence in Monkey Man occurs in a vacuum. Even Kid's original means of making money in an underground fighting ring is done against the backdrop of his forced displacement from regional India to the city - a migration pathway that many in the country have been forced to take and which is a direct result of land theft and resource extraction in the regions by local and multinational corporations as well as federal and state governments.

The truth is that so much in relation to state and societal control is enacted in painful and violent ways on the bodies of the marginalised and oppressed. And I often think about how the horror and action genres are some of the best suited to speak about systemic injustice because of their capacity to make that violence uncompromisingly visible (one recent example is Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass which depicted the bloody fallout of the Christian missionary/colonial project in vivid crimson, splashed all over a non-descript maritime town in present-day America). The violence in Monkey Man is no different.

While Kid's realisation of the interconnectedness and heavy hand of the state not just in the violence experienced by his mother, but also by the hijra, and by sex workers like Sita comes later in the movie, we as the audience are given this insight earlier. Recall Kid pointing out to Sita that her tattoo is of a koel, not a sparrow as originally misidentified by the Australian client sexually assaulting her minutes earlier in the film.

Kid goes on to say that he grew up in the forest and woke up to koels singing everyday. Its the longest conversation that the two have but in those brief words, we understand that Sita too has likely been displaced to the city from the regions, probably under very similar circumstances to Kid. The way this displacement maps itself onto her body is distinctive to how it does so for Kid, with gender playing a large role in this.

Other factors like caste, class and religion also impact on how the characters in this film experience or perpetrate violence. I would write more on these intersections but then this post is going to get more unwieldy than it already is.

I will say though, that in India, where fascist Hindu nationalism is being used by government to harm minority communities, steal land and secure populist votes, Patel makes a distinction between revelatory and weaponised faith. Kid is raised in peace by his mother with the former, but as an adult he lives in a world where the latter has taken hold and is being used by those in power to shore up more of that power for themselves.

For me - as the descendant of parents, grandparents and great grandparents who lived through anti-Tamil pogroms led by Sinhalese chauvinists weaponising Buddhism as part of their fascism in Sri Lanka, who like the rest of us, is living in an election year for Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, and who is also frustratingly, helplessly bearing witness as the state of Israel and it’s allies conflate Zionism with Judaism in defence of the genocide being waged against Palestinians - watching this action film make the distinction between revelatory and weaponised faith was profound.

Love

Patel makes it a point in this film to show how Kid's most nourishing relationships, the ones that sustain him - indeed the ones that literally save his life - are those that he has with women and with people who don’t conform to the gender binary. In doing this, we see what Kid is fighting tooth (quite literally) and nail for throughout the film. We see what is at stake - what we stand to lose - if perpetrators get to rule without accountability.

Its also no mistake that these relationships are all tied visually to the natural world in the film: Kid's mother's deep ties to the earth, rivers, trees and roots that she leads him through as a child. Alpha and the hijra's sanctuary, the Ardhanareeshvara temple with its most sacred space being the roots of a holy tree. Sita and her koel tattoo: the memory of the forest carried on her skin while she traverses the brutal reality of the city. Patel is making a point here too. About nourishment of another kind, through our connection with the earth instead of extraction from it. The visuals in the film drive this point home, particularly when contrasted with the industrialisation and poverty of the city.

Two particular loving relationships that stood out for me were the love shared between Kid and the hijra community as well as between him and his mother.

Alpha, hijra Elder and the hijra community

Keeper of the Ardhanareeshvara Temple and hijra Elder, Alpha becomes a mother-figure to Kid after he is rescued with near-fatal injuries. It is Alpha who keeps watch over him as he recovers, helps Kid to confront the totality of his past memories which his trauma has kept fragmented, and who ultimately leads a veritable hijra army to join forces with him to assassinate some fascists.

Alpha's gentleness with Kid was so moving to see, in particular during the conversation they have about his attempt as a child to save his mother from the fire set by her rapist and murderer. That exchange moved me to tears.

Kid: I failed her.

Alpha: No. You tried to save her. You see scars. I see the courage of a child fighting to save his mother.

The wider hijra community at the temple also take Kid in and care for him during his recovery. Truly, the scenes at the temple were some of my favourite in Monkey Man. Outside of his memories of his mother, they are the only scenes where we see love, peace and joy on the faces of any of the characters in this film.

Also witness this moment of delight below as the hijra at the temple appreciate a fine ass man channelling his righteous anger and fucking up a punching bag full of rice. I note that the music during this training montage is simply stunning. Ustad Zakir Hussain's rapid fire tablas punctuated by each of Patel's landed punches and kicks and then followed by Jed Kurzel's achingly soaring instrumentals (listen to "The Kid" from the movie's score) were just *chef’s kiss*.

Another favourite moment for me was when Kid decides to go back to the underground fight ring one last time and not throw his matches (as he had been doing prior). He bets on himself and when he inevitably wins his fights, he takes the money and gives it to the hijra, ensuring that they can continue to live at the temple without fear of being evicted. We love to see a man who literally pays his rent.

Neela, his mother

Kid’s first teacher and the center of his life as a child. In almost every memory we are shown of her, Kid remembers his mother walking through a forest, sharing her ecological and religious knowledge with him and in doing so, positioning him within the wider world.

GIF by dailyflicks

We watch as he takes this understanding with him forward through the remainder of the film. His conversation as an adult with Alphonso as they drive through the city in the latter's tuk tuk is emblematic of this. "They don't even see us", Kid says of the elite who frequent the club where he has just gained employment, "they're all up there living and we are stuck in this."

His mother showed him what it was to live: to be still and in concert with the world and the Divine around you, to be loved fiercely, and to thrive as a result. This is in stark contrast to what Kid has had to learn to do in the city: to survive, to merely exist. He is never depicted resting or at home as an adult. He's always working, hustling and planning for the next thing, his next step. When he loses his village, his land and his mother as a child, Kid also inevitably loses his sense of home. It’s no coincidence that the tracks “Home” and “Mother” on the movie’s score sound almost identical.

Later at the end of the film, we see Kid close his eyes, having done what he set out to do. The last thing he sees is his mother, smiling at him in the forest. Her face is the face of God he gazes at before he succumbs to his injuries. This devotion to his mother is not just that of a child to a parent. Its also deeply tied to his Hindu faith which calls on its followers to honour the Divine Mother, the supreme feminine energy, Aathi Parashakthi, in all her manifestations including in those who mother us.

The movie ends with Kid’s deep, revelatory faith - instilled in him by his mother - and with the death of the man who weaponised that faith for power and wealth. It left all of us in the cinema seated in stunned silence even as the credits began to roll.

To describe Monkey Man as simply a revenge film does it an absolute disservice. This is not revenge. It is defence borne out of deep love for community and righteous opposition to injustice. Seeing hijra warriors dressed as Kali, the goddess of destruction, dealing death blows against fascists while spinning in the most beautiful lenghas was exhilarating (I literally screamed “YESSSSSSS!” at the screen when they arrived). Seeing Sita take out pimp and sex trafficker Queenie got me cackling and yelling “whoooop!”. Seeing Kid, a masculine character act to defend women and people outside of the gender binary, from further systemic harm without any ulterior motive was absolutely unreal to witness on the big screen. Seeing a person of faith act in deep connection to that faith without judgment against anyone but those who perpetrate harm made me feel hopeful in a way that took me by surprise. Kid acted out of love and respect. I would argue that Sita, the hijra and Kid all acted out of recognition of a shared humanity.

And at a time when folks from marginalised communities are being subjected to horrendous violence worldwide, both interpersonal and systemic, watching the oppressed take their perpetrators out…and I mean out (see: a rapist and murderer getting bludgeoned to death with a glittery high heel and a fascist, self-proclaimed “holy man” being stabbed in his third eye by the blade he hid in his own “sacred” pathankal/paduka), well, it was cathartic to see.

Am I saying violence is the answer to systemic violence? I think the answer to that question is context-specific. Non-violent resistance has a place, but it’s by necessity a performance and requires an audience. What do you do when no one’s watching? What do you do when the people who are watching are doing nothing to stop your suffering? What then? These questions are what many liberals refuse to grapple with because the answers are too uncomfortable for their polite sensibilities. But if you keep your foot on someone's neck long enough, you should expect them to fight back, by any means necessary. In Monkey Man, we have an action film where we get to witness that resistance in all its visceral glory.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

Genderqueer Folktales (part 2)

I’ve gathered some new gender nonconforming folktales since making part 1, so it’s time for a new post! Again, please keep in mind these are all translations and products of their time. I will still attempt to put some modern-day labels on them to make them easier to navigate:

The Story of the Maiden-Knight Indian legend, published in 1916, based on the Mahabharata.

[Cw: being outed, threat of violence, awkward use of pronouns.]

A king prays for a son to go to battle his enemy, but the god Shiva reveals to him that he “should have a son who should first be a daughter”. Accordingly the child born to them – Shikhandi – is raised as a boy and married to a princess. When he finds out the situation the bride’s father is furious however, and wants to go to war over it. Shikhandi goes into the forest, in the hope that without him there will be no war. There he meets a kind Yakshas (nature spirit) who is willing to lend Shikhandi his manhood until he has saved his father from this threat. But when the king of the Yakshas finds out about this he decrees that the Yakshas will not get his manhood back until Shikhandi’s death.

The Stirrup Moor Albanian folktale, published in 1895.

[Cw: violence, king attempts to steal son’s wives, some uncomfortable descriptions of a black person.]

A prince, through his many adventures, wins the love of three wives: one human lady, one jinn princess, and one Earthly Beauty (a type of fae-like spirit from the underworld). The latter of the three regularly changes between her supernatural female shape and her chosen human form, that of a black man. In this male shape he is a formidable warrior and helps protect both the prince and the other wives. All four eventually live happily ever after.

The Boy-Girl and the Girl-Boy A Gond folktale from Central India, published in 1944.

[Cw: attempt at being outed, awkward use of gendered terms and pronouns, some doubt as to whether the AFAB protagonist is completely happy with the physical change.]

An AFAB child is adopted by a Raja, who accepts him as his son. Near the palace an old woman raises one of her many AMAB children as a girl and arranges a marriage for her. The young couple is very startled at finding out they have “the same parts” but there are not other repercussions. Later the young wife doesn’t dare to go bathing with the other women and meets the Raja’s adopted son, who has run away and changed himself into a bird. The bird offers to “exchange parts” and both protagonists end the story with a body matching their presented gender.

The Girl Who Became a Boy Albanian folktale, published in 1879.

[Cw: preoccupation with sexual ability, attempts to kill protagonist.]

AFAB protagonist answers the king’s call for warriors, dressed as a man. After several great deeds the young man wins a princess’s hand in marriage in another kingdom. He is liked at the court, but they feel obliged to get rid of him because he seems unable to consummate his marriage. He survives every dangerous task, however, and finally is sent to confront a snake infested church. The snakes curse him to become a boy, after which he returns to the court and all ends well.

With an affectionate mention for the 13th century French poem Yde and Olive, which was brought to my attention by @pomme-poire-peche. You can read about this brave princess-turned-knight married to a loyal princess here.

[princesssarisa]

In Cinderella Tales From Around the World, I've now reached the versions from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia: Iran, Palestine, Nigeria, Angola, Sri Lanka, India, and Kashmir.

*The Iranian variant, The Story of Little Fatima, starts out much like the Italian La Gatta Cenerentola, but then turns into a "mother as animal helper" variant, with a middle section like the Portuguese The Hearth Cat. At the beginning, Little Fatima's female teacher tricks her into murdering her mother (!!!) so she can marry her father, then abuses her. But the mother's spirit comes back as a cow and shows her daughter unconditional love by magically aiding her chores. One day the cotton she's supposed to spin falls down a well, and the cow-mother advises her to go down after it, where she'll meet a div who will urge her to do bad deeds, but to only do good deeds instead. She obeys, and the div gives her a glowing moon on her forehead and star on her chin. The stepmother wants the same for her own daughter, so she sends her into the well, but Little Fatima lies to her stepsister that she should do all the bad deeds the div orders. As a result, the div gives the stepsister donkey ears and a tail. From then on, the story becomes a standard Cinderella, with the cow providing Little Fatima's finery, except instead of a ball, festival, or religious service, the special event is the wedding of a princess, the sister of the prince who falls in love with Little Fatima.

*The Palestinian variant, Thaljiyeh ("Snow-Maiden"), starts out like Snow White, with the heroine named for her skin white as snow, and her mother dying in childbirth. As Thaljiyeh is abused by her stepmother, a kindly jinniyah (female jinn) in a well takes pity on her and fills her bucket with jewelry, but when her two stepsisters draw water from the same well, the jinniyah fills their buckets with mud, stones, and insects. So they take Thaljiyeh's jewels and finally throw her out of the house. Fortunately, she comes to the home of a poor old woman who turns out to be her maternal grandmother and who takes her in; but unfortunately (so it seems), on the way she loses a red leather shoe that was a gift from her dead father. But of course a prince finds the shoe, and we all know what happens.

*The Tender-Hearted Maiden and the Fish from Nigeria is much like the Portuguese Maiden and the Fish – the heroine gets her finery from a fish that was meant to be cooked but which she set free. But in this version, unlike the Portuguese version, there is a wicked stepmother, and the fish really is a fish, not an enchanted prince. The heroine's love interest is a king, and the festival where he falls for her is a celebration of Eid al-Fitr. After her marriage, the stepmother and stepsister sneak into the heroine's bedroom at night and cut off her hands (!), but the fishes magically restore then. When the stepmother and stepsister try to publicly mock the new queen for having no hands, they only make fools of themselves.

*The Angolan variant, Fenda Maria and Her Elder Brother Nga Nzua, is very unusual. The heroine is an orphan who lives with her older brother, but when he marries the Lord Governor's daughter, his wife turns her into a slave. But in a forest she meets an old woman with leprosy and nurses her, and as reward, the old woman gives her boxes full of riches and dresses. The ending is unusual too: the heroine doesn't marry. Instead, when the Lord Governor discovers that the elegant lady who came to church is his son-in-law's sister, he punishes the couple (at the heroine's request) by dissolving their marriage and giving his cruel daughter to another man. From then on, the heroine and her repentant brother live together in prosperity, thanks to her magically-given wealth.

*As for the Indian versions, they vary widely:

**One is basically Finette Cendron without the ogres – a poor man abandons his daughters, they find a deserted wealthy house and take up residence there, and the oppressed youngest finds finery to wear to church in the house – but with a post-marriage ending. The sisters' steal the heroines babies and make her husband think she gave birth to inanimate objects, which drives him to lock her in a dungeon, but years later her children come back as beggars, and milk miraculously flies from their mother's breasts to their mouths, revealing the truth and leading to a happy ending.

**In another, the heroine is a princess who lives happily with her father and younger brother, until a seemingly-kind widow neighbor persuades her to persuade her father to marry her. The king resists a long time, but finally gives in, yet he warns his daughter that if her stepmother mistreats her, he'll do nothing about it. Sure enough, the new stepmother sends the prince away to boarding school and treats the princess like a slave. But the princess is helped both by a cow, who secretly feeds her, and by her dead godmother's spirit, who brings her finery for a dance at another king's palace. After the princess marries and gives birth to a son, her stepsister drowns her in a well and takes her place, but as in the Grimms' Brother and Sister, the princess's spirit comes back every night to nurse her baby, and when her husband finally sees her and catches her by the hands, she comes back to life. The stepsister is brutally executed and the stepmother driven away.

**The Kashmir variant follows the "mother turns into an animal" formula, but with a few differences from the norm. The mother turns into a goat when she thoughtlessly breaks a magical taboo against eating when her husband isn't home, the Cinderella character is just one of several siblings who are all mistreated by their stepmother, and instead of losing a shoe at a special event, she loses a nose ring while washing herself in a river. The ring is swallowed by a fish, which is caught and cut open by the king's cook. The king searches for the ring's owner and marries the girl, which lets her support her siblings and free them from the stepmother.

*@faintingheroine – I think Nihal would like some of these variants. Especially the Indian one where the heroine is neglected by her father and her little brother is sent away to school, since it parallels her own situation, and the Angolan one where the heroine doesn't marry in the end but gets her brother all to herself again.

*It seems strange that this book includes so few Cinderella stories from Africa. There must be more that exist!

Coming up next: tales from East Asia, beginning with what may be the very first complete Cinderella story, Ye Xian.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

[kashilascorner]

New entry for @queer-ragnelle May Day Parade!

Prompt: May 10-16 Month of May {Free Space/Flower Festival}

Behold --my attept at a comedy! You can read it here if you prefer. This is probably the last short story I write for this challenge. Enjoy ^^

He was meant to be someone's uncle, maybe. Definitely not someone's father at any rate. As the hot midday sun shone above his head, Sir Bors wondered what it was about him that he had ended up surrounded by kids. No, not kids. Kids were cute, with their chubby cheeks and their untamed opinions. What he had attracted was far worse: teenagers.

It was a beautiful day in mid-May. Flowers were blooming, birds were singing, horses were happy, and he was not being paid enough for this job. Actually, he was not being paid at all! In fact, by not being in his lands, he was losing money by the minute –but alas, he was not good at accounting anyways, that was work for his brother and his sister-in-law. It's not that Bors didn't like the lads, but he was beginning to understand Sir Kay's irritation towards the world at large given how much he dealt with youngsters all day, every day.

Galahad was a quiet boy. He thought of him as good nephew although he was a second cousin. That was good, with that he could deal. Perceval, on the other hand talked too much. He talked all the time. But there was someone who talked even more: his sister Dindrane. Good lord how much she spoke! Why was she even there in the first place? he wondered. And then there was the elephant inside the room. An enormous elephant all the way from India that definitely had no business in Britain’s forests: Elyan. His son. His actual, real, blood-of-his-blood son. Bors had never had much of an idea of how he should speak to him, so at some point he had decided to talk to him as a fellow comrade. It was his brother's advice: become friends with the lad, he said, get him to trust you, he said, all will be fine and follow the natural course, he said. Well, probably not the best idea to take advice from a man who had not yet been a father and had lost his own at a tender age. But alas, he didn't have much better opinions to go by. Who else was he going to ask for fatherly advice? Arthur? Lancelot? So Bors took the advice at face value. If Elyan had been a child maybe he could have worked out something, but no, of course none of the Lord's designs could ever be that easy. He was (almost) fully grown by the time they met. He even had a shadow of a shadow of something that kind of resembled a beard.

Elyan seemed content enough by the treatment, Bors thought with some relief. A good lad he was. His mother had made a good job, Bors nodded to himself, she should be proud. But Galahad visibly cringed every time they interacted. This angered Bors. Was he doing it so wrong? He felt very judged, negatively, by Galahad's gaze. And who was Galahad, of all people, to judge? And why did Bors even care about his opinion? Bors thought of himself as a competent enough father, even if not a good one. Sure, he had not provided for his son, but only because he didn't know he existed at all! Come think of it, maybe only God was a good enough Father, and still his main fathering method was throwing His children into the world without warning and with only thin skin as their protection. Not even scales or a thick poisonous tooth or two to defend themselves. Bors did better than that: he’d given his lad an armor, and a seat in the most prestigious knight order of the age. So, actually, he had done fairly well by comparison, had he not? Even if the reasoning was a bit sacrilegious in nature.

“Say, Uncle,” spoke Dindrane. Bors, at the head of the party, had to fight his innermost demons not to roll his eyes and let out a long, long sigh. Her excessive familiarity annoyed him. Lads he could deal with, but how in Heaven was one even supposed to deal with a fifteen-year-old girl? “Who would win a fist fight, Sir Gawain or Sir Lancelot?”

“Obviously Gawain!” retorted young Melehan, with a tone that informed Bors the kids had been, no doubt, arguing about this one thing all morning. Obviously Melehan was going to defend his uncle. Bors had not intended to travel with a band of teenagers, but least of all had he planned to borrow Sir Mordred's eldest son, a boy of twelve, as a squire while they went to meet with the rest of the knights. How much he missed his loyal Achilles! Should have never knighted him, honestly, but it was too late to regret it now. Bors had never realized how hard it was to get a good squire until he lost a great one –which Melehan, certainly, was not.

“They would never fist fight in the first place.” Bors said, trying to sound very grave. “And knights don't fist fight.”

“But if they did,” insisted Dindrane, Elyan and Perceval in unison.

“He's going to say Lancelot, he's not impartial.”" complained Melehan, very softly for them to pay attention.

“Obviously Lancelot would win if he ever happened to lower himself to such standards,” commented Galahad, who, even by his standards had been astonishingly quiet.

“Are we talking midday or night fight?” Asked Perceval all of a sudden, like he had just realized it was an absolutely crucial difference.

“Gawain at midday, definitely,” said Elyan, trying to sound very serious (or had his voice really become this deep?) “But at night...”

“Still Gawain!” insisted Melehan.

“No way, not at night.” Galahad scoffed.

“Oh, so you admit he would lose in the morning?” Melehan smiled. Bors turned slightly to look at the little blond boy. Damn, did the boy look like his father.

“Knights don't fist fight.” Insisted Bors.

“I know you have fist flighted,”" said Perceval, cryptically, disconcerting Bors and forcing him to turn his body on his horse to look at him, like an owl turning its head.

“When?”

“You have a brother, sir Bors,” said Perceval, “and brothers fist fight all the time.” he added, in unison with Dindrane, like it was an obvious fact everyone knew. What kind of relationships did the offspring of Pellinore have? Bors thought with horror for a moment, what horrors went behind those walls--then he thought of how Lamorak had turned out. Ah, it made sense.

“We could say that sometimes it can happen, yes,” he conceded. "But I never in my life fist fought Lionel." He had, indeed, fist fought Lionel and broken his lip in the process multiple times, but no reason for the youngsters to know that. It seems like they had enough examples about it not to need any more.

“My cousins and I once had a very big fight, I don't see how it would not be the same between brothers.” Melehan commented.

“And who won?”

“Florence.”

“Ah.” Bors nodded. The boy was a marvel. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree –especially if the tree is Gawain. Right before breaking a smile, he remembered he was trying to give a good example. “Well, you should try to avoid those things. One day you will be knighted, so you keep your hands to yourself and use your sword and your lance honorably, as it is meant to be.”

“Ha! Tell that to the boys, I will throw punches my whole life.” Dindrane laughed, tilting her chin up petulantly. Galahad all of a sudden seemed very uncomfortable. He had grown in a monastery, had he not? He probably never saw a woman talk so shamelessly. Had he ever even seen a girl his own age at all? Probably not. Women could be terrifying, Bors had to give him that. And Dindrane, it seemed, was at least half savage. Melehan had made the horse trot a little faster so now he was on Bors' left side, blushing, instead of nearer Dindrane where he had been riding all morning. He blushed a lot when it came to Dindrane, Bors realized. Maybe he didn't like her? Only the Lord could tell, these youngsters were a mystery.

Bors stole a glance from Elyan, on his right side. Come think of it, perhaps they shouldn't be knighting boys this young. Then he thought of how Perceval was a good two years older than his Elyan and still had much less common sense, so maybe it didn't have anything to do with age after all. Bors smiled at his son, and got his horse a little closer to his. Elyan smiled back, shyly, but pulled out his chest in a show of being a great horseman.

“Who do you think won when they fought, my Lord the King or the Seneschal?” asked Perceval, breaking the silence.

“The King,” said Dindrane and Elyan.

“The Seneschal,” replied Melehan, Galahad and Bors. The lads stared at Bors, and Dindrane smirked maliciously. They had trapped him.

“So who would win, Uncle, Sir Lancelot or Sir Gawain?”

“Who would, who would?” all of them asked.

There was no escape. Bors took a deep breath.

At least this would only go on for a couple more days, then they would meet with Gawain and Lancelot's parties, switch members and begin the quest proper.

But as things were going, he wondered: was the Grail and its promise of divine redemption even worth this much effort? Maybe he should turn back to tournaments and rescuing ladies. It was certainly a more reasonable line of work.

[lordkingsmith]

I’ve already come up with all the shifts of the characters who are indeed shifter fae/just able to shape shift into an animal. I don’t have the animal selves drawn or all the characters but I’ve got some of them. So; I’ll do what I’ve got lol.

The coats are matrilineal. They are passed down from mother to child. If you go into the forest willingly you can gain your own coat from the species your family is. Not always but enough for it to be a fairly good rule. You’ll also get the…species quirks of the fae aligned to the animals. Rabbits can get pregnant male or female for example. They’re fertility fae. One of those “if you need to populate an area FAST toss a couple of these guys in there” groups. Kingfishers are partially nocturnal bird people with the eyesight and dexterity to match. And so on.

So here’s the finished human/oid portraits matched up to their chosen animal species and breed! So far, at least. I’ll get the others up as I do them.

Waylan Mellark;

A Belgian Hare, speficiallt with a cinnamon coat (no matter what form the man is eternally ginger)

Hutch Narvey;

A spotted giant. Heterochromia isn’t common in the breed but this is fantasy lol. He’s a big spotted bunny with mismatched eyes. Hutch has a romance with the prince, who is a woyote shifter. After all is said and done they do decide to have a kid. It prompts them to get in contact with the prince’s mom, who’d been estranged. Unlike her ex husband, she’s lovely. She passes the woyote coat on to her granddaughter. When Hutch and Graybelle are animals, Hutch is taller than him on his hind legs. The largest giant rabbit recorded is four feet, and Hutch is 3.5. Which is taller than the average woyote height at 2.5.

Al Jr Narvey;

A silver marten rabbit

The Fisher’s Daughter/Quill (eventually Quill Narvey)

An Indian Kingfisher. Like the prince, Quill is a love interest to one of the Narvey kids. Speficially, Maev Narvey. When they have their kids Maev and Quill choose to have them inherit the kingfisher coat. While there are kingfishers native to America, Quill’s was not. Due to trespassing on the king’s land the price was leaving one of their young behind, and Quill was left behind. Once freed from the King’s deal, her first move is taking her girlfriend/future wife to India to meet her family. I like imagining they travel there often once their own hatchlings are born.

[therukurals]

The reclamation of such images appears to be Patel’s goal—one he shares with numerous Hindu leaders who have continued to battle Hindu nationalism. But the use of Hindu imagery as a call to violence, reminiscent of the Hindutva project, is central to Kid’s mission, resulting in narrative dissonance. In comparison, the movie’s villains only use Hinduism as a façade for violence and financial gain, rather than as a sincere fixture of their fanaticism. They represent Hindutva only in the abstract, echoing its power structures without its ideology. Kid, meanwhile, perhaps inadvertently, embodies it in both belief and action. In a key flashback, Rana—acting on Shakti’s orders—clears out Kid’s forest-adjacent village so the land can be used for industrial growth. This bears a striking resemblance to the Indian government’s recent attempts to evict thousands of Muslims along India’s Eastern border and millions of indigenous people from tribal lands. The BJP’s political opponents believe these land seizures are an attempt to transfer tribal resources to corporate allies, not unlike Shakti’s plan for Kid’s village. However, the metaphor is muddled. Rather than framing Kid’s community as an oppressed caste, religion, or tribe, the only visible culturally specific moment involves the villagers enjoying a marionette re-telling of the Ramayana, which is interrupted by incendiary violence. In the movie’s purview, Hinduism is under attack from something non-Hindu, or falsely Hindu, rather than from dangerous factions of Hinduism itself. This grants Kid permission to weaponize it freely, sans conflict or spiritual reckoning—a thematic tension the movie never reconciles.

[samairathewriter]

A Stark In The Ocean- Chapter 1

Title: A Stark In The Ocean.

Pairing: Namor xDesi Reader!Stark

Summary: Y/N Stark, the beloved yonger sister of Tony Stark just wanted a day for herself away from the chaos of thr city and the over protectiveness of her brother for a weekend. So when she decided to visit her beach house in the outskirts what could go wrong? Actually every thing when CIA gets involved and forces Y/N to play the hero even on her day off.

Author's Note:

Since I am not sure how to translate English to Namor's native language I will highlight the conversations in italics if it happens in Namor's native language. And the chapter is not proofread so please forgive me for silly mistakes, I will proofread it once I free.

Chapter List: Chapter 2

Chaper:One

When Y/N decided to get away from the chaos of city for the day, rescuing a two people who looked like they came out of Avatar movie from a group of CIAs was never on her to do list.

 Being the adopted little sister of Tony Stark and one of the powerful members of the Avenger guaranteed a little peace in her life in the past few years. So, when she finally got a day for herself all she wanted was to spend some in one of the many beach houses Tony owns in the country. This particular house is situated near a forest and they both build a tree house in the forest near the cliff facing the sea when she was a kid. And the tree house is the favorite place in the entire world since it contained only happy memories.It's been so long since anyone visited this house as both the stark siblings were too busy in the past few years saving the world. So when she finally decided to take a well deserved break from being a hero she decided to visit the tree houses and spend the weekend reading her favorite novel.Apart from the stark siblings only the care takers visited the property weekly once to clean it and Tony had a complete surveillance of the property for security reasons. So when she saw a SWAT vehicle couple of km from house cleverly hidden behind the trees, she was confused wondering why Tony was not alerted of the activities since his surveillance covered the area where she found the suspicious vehicles. Without wasting a second she parked her bike before anyone could see her behind a tree and changed into her superhero outfit with a snap of her finger.

‘‘  Peacefull day here I come’‘ Y/N with the sarcastic words walked towards the lone vehicle activating her power. 

Y/N’s power was the result of her father’s experiments when she was in her mother’s womb. He father who worked for Hydra was a genius man who aimed to create the most powerful mutant in the history and married her mother who belonged to a lower middle-class family in India for the sole purpose of experimenting on her. And her naive mother who was barely 19 fell for his price charming acts and married him without a second thought when her grandfather fixed the arranged marriage between the two. Y/N’s father belonged to one of the royal families in Rajasthan and with his power, money and charm he trapped her mother’s entire family promising a happy and bright future for their daughter. But all the promises turned into lies from the day her mother got pregnant with her. The day her mother shared the good news of her pregnancy, her nightmares started. Her father finally got what he wanted and dropped his charming acts by showing his true colors. And till her delivery Y/N’s mother was literally used as a lab rat and multiple experiments were performed on her. With every passing day her father become more obsessed with his creation and did inhuman things to her mother. Her father’s plan was to kill Y/N’s mother after her delivery and Y/N if the experiment failed. But before her father could kill her, her grandfather who lived in Jaipur came to know about his son’s hideous plans killed him once he found him in his lab in the basement of the palace and saved Y/N from the cruel plans he had for her. But unfortunately, he could not save her mother since she died from the childbirth after her body became too weak from the various experiments. Then her grandfather raised her like a princess which so much love and joy. But everything changed when she started showing her power on her fifth birthday and her grandfather was forced to give her up to the shield to keep her and everyone around her safe. Fortunately, her grandfather was close with Peggy Carter after he helped her during one of her missions and Peggy immediately decided to help after discovering about Y/N and her powers. After months and months of test peggy with the help of Hank Pym and Howard Stark found the extent of damage the experiments cause her DNA. Y/N’s at the age of give could actually heal others, control all the five elements at her will and everything that is made of the five elements. She even showed the signed of mind reading but none of the three shield agents wanted to test any further considering the stress it put her through. But with the already know fact Howard,Peggy and Hank know Y/N is not safe with her grandfather as they suspected Hydra may find out about her soon. So, with a heavy heart her grandfather allowed them to take Y/N with them to keep her safe and give her the necessary training to control her power after Howard promised he will legally adopt her and love her as his blood and fresh. And to cut any unknown ties Y/N has with hydra because of her monster of a father her grandfather declared that she decided due to an illness and even conducted a properly funeral by burning an unknown death body from the mortuary. After six month Howard legally adopted her like he promised and from the day she became Y/N stark.

From the day Y/N entered the stark mansion Maria fell in love with her and even Tony couldn’t resist her innocent eyes after a week of ignoring her. Withing weeks she literally wrapped everyone in the stark mansion around her finger with her cuteness. And when Tony found her building her own computer from the spare parts in his father’s lab he understood she is another prodigy in making. So both of them bonding in no time after they discovered their shared interest and Maria couldn’t be more happier seeing both her children so happy and loving towards each other. But that happiness lasted only six more months and the winter soldier appeared in their life. After Maria and Howard’s death Tony vowed to keep Y/N safe and promised to love her and protect her till his last breath. And she is the reason he joined the avengers, forgave Bucky and steve when he found out Bucky never harmed her when she was actually with Howard and Maria when the accident happened and finally decided to do the snap just to being her back after he lost her to the mad titan’s snap. 

Once she returned to Tony after the snap and managed to save him with her power, Tony became a protective mama bear and refused to allow her even to leave the city without him or any one of the avengers in the fear of losing her once again. And it took her almost months to convince Tony to let her have a weekend for herself away from the city. But when the weekend arrived it seemed the universe had other plans for her, and she is now entering the suspicious SWAT Van after making the ten guards unconscious by controlling their blood flow to their brain. Y/N looked around the van once she entered and what she found inside almost made her jaws drop in shock.

‘‘What in the James Cameron’s shit is this?’‘ Y/N muttered in shock looking at the two creatures inside two individual large glass chamber bring restrained with various wires. The creatures looked like Avatar came to life with blue skin and some sort of mask was covering their mouth. One of the creatures looked like an adult but the other one is definitely a kid and looking at the painful wires keeping them restrained and unconscious filled Y/N body with rage.

With determined step she moved towards their tubes and placed her bracelet on the keypad to hack the lock.

‘‘GREY unlock the chamber’‘ Y/N order her AI which was connected to her suit.

‘‘Y/N I would advise against it since the host inside looks hostile’‘ At GREY’s concerned reply she looked up to find the creature looking at her with uncontrolled fury. Y/N understood his anger and tried to calm him down assuring that she is not the enemy.

‘‘Look I know you are confused and angry, but I promise I am here to help. So just don’t kill me once I open this chamber because if I die my brother will kill me once again after finding a way to bring me back to life. So please cooperate. Do you even understand what I am saying?’‘ Y/N waited for couple of second as the created looked at her without blinking after her explanation. After what felt like hours the creature gave a firm nod and Y/N with relief ordered GREY to open the chamber once again. Within seconds the chamber opened and Y/N helped the creature out of , then made him sit on a table near the chamber. As much as she wanted to heal the him she is not sure if her power will even work on him and decided not to take the risk of experimenting her powers right now and decided against healing him.

‘‘Okay I have a lot of questions running in my overactive brain right now. But I know this is not the right time or place to have a rapid-fire round to know about your life history. But you have a let me know where you come from or at least where I should take you both to keep you guys safe. So tell me sometime that could help us right now’‘ Y/N carefully phrased her words as she didn’t want to sound noisy by asking anything that the creature cannot reveal.

‘‘Ocean’‘ The creature’s one worded monotone replay was enough for her to realize that he did understand her words and thanked the heavens for making sure at least she is not struck with someone who cannot understand her.

‘’Okay. So you want me to take you to the ocean. I get it. The sea shore is actually in walkable distance from here. But can you keep up with me since I can’t carry you as I have to carry the Junior there. And can you tell me your names since it sounds weird and offensive to address you both as creatures in my mind’‘ Y/N said as she opened the chamber with the kid and carefully removed the painful wires from his body. Then she carefully cuddled the kid to her chest and looked back only to find the adult one looked at her with soft eyes now.

‘‘Attuma. Fabio.’‘ Attuma muttered their names and Y/N smiled slightly at the progress with the hostile Attuma.

‘‘Great. I am Y/N. Since our introduction is over we must escape from here. I am not sure the kind of back up these people have right now. so we must hurry right now. Though I can fight them all the entire night in any other day, I have to keep you both safe now.So can you keep up with me?’’ Y/N questioned and Attuma stood up with a nod though he is weak after the surface dwellers sucked almost all the moisture from his body and injected some toxic chemicals in his blood stream.

‘‘Okay great. Now follow me and stay behind me’‘

Y/N then got out of the van after making sure all the ten guards are still unconscious followed but Attuma. Then both of them started running towards the cliff as Y/N cuddled Fabio more tightly to her chest. 

‘‘Y/N I find a team of 25 armed men coming this away.’‘ GREY alerted her after five minutes of running and Y/N cursed the CIA in her mind.

‘‘Dammit. Attuma their back up is arriving. I will hold them and take you both to the cliff as it will take more time to reach the seashore. Once we reach there you jump with Fabio and I will make sure they will not follow you. Okay?’‘ 

At Y/N’s words Attuma looked bit conflicted since he did not want to leave her to fight alone with the bad men. But he know in his current state he can only protect Fabio and agreed with her since he will always choose his people over any surface dweller even if she is good.

‘’Good. Now just stay behind me.’’ Y/N ordered when she saw men coming towards them in bikes with guns in their hand. Once they reached the distance she wanted she handed Fabio to attuma and closed her taking a deep breath. In seconds she felt the familiar energy following through her vein and the next moment she opened her eyes which looked green now, raised both her hand and fisted her hand tightly. The moment her nails dug into her palms she saw all the men getting crushed by the branches and roots of the trees which obeyed her command and she smirked when she saw Attuma looking at her with disbelief when she turned back.

‘‘ Fascinating right?’‘ Y/N winked with a smile. And asked Grey how many more are left.

‘‘There are five more men left and it seems they have air support in the form of jet wings. I advise you to reach cliff soon’‘ Y/N let out a frustrated groan at GREY’S warning.

‘‘There are five more men on the way. Let go’‘ Y/N started running again taking Fabio back in her arms. After couple of minutes, they almost reached the cliff when she heard GREY warning her to look back and she crushed a bullet at the last moment before it could enter her skull. She then saw five men with Jet wings flying towards them and Fabio who gained consciousness whimpered in fear seeing the men who kidnapped him.

‘‘Shhh Fabio. I promise you will reach your home safe’‘ Y/N promised and deflected the bullets coming their way.

‘‘Attuma take Fabio and run. I will cover you both‘ Y/N shouted covering him and Attuma started running towards the cliff with Fabio in his arms. Once Fabio was taken from her,her eyes changed into ash grey and before the five men could even predict what is happening, they were thrown few kilometers away from the sudden force of the wind. Once the men were removed from there she followed Attuma to make sure he reaches the ocean.

After couple of minutes, she smiled when she saw Attuma standing at the edge of the cliff, few meters away from her and jogged towards them with relief.

‘‘You both are safe now. You can go home and I will make sure no one will know about you or what happened here.’‘ Y/N promised with a reassuring smile. And Attuma for the first time in his life felt gratitude towards a surface dweller and nodded with a sincere thank you.

But as he was about to jump Fabio muttered something to him and Attuma shook his head with annoyance before forwarding Fabio back to Y/N. Y/N with a confused smile took Fabio back in her arms and looked at him with questioning eyes.

‘‘Thank you’‘ Fabio muttered hugging her neck tightly burying his face in the crook of her neck and Y/N literally melted by the gesture.

‘‘Oh sweetheart you are most welcome’‘ Y/N muttered placing a kiss on the top of his head with love and affection.

‘‘Y/N LOOK OUT’‘ GREY’S desperate voice screamed in her ears and in seconds she heard a gun going multiple times and she saw one of the men from the motor bike team leaning against a tree with gun pointed towards them. In slow motion she saw the bullets coming towards them and she know it too late to deflect them. Without thinking twice she pushed Attuma off the cliff to save him from the bullet and she turned using her body as a shield to protect Fabio. The next second she felt a burning pain in her back and shoulder and without thinking twice jumped from the cliff holding Fabio tightly to her chest.

Once she hit the cold water, she felt pain from the bullet getting unbearable and she can feel the blood leaving her body rapidly. She felt her muscles getting weak and Fabio’s concerned face was the last thing she saw before the water filled her lungs and darkness engulfed her vision.

****

When Y/N started gaining conscious her throat felt like sandpaper and eyelids felt like osmium when she tried to open it. After a couple of minutes of struggle she opened her eyes to find herself tied to a cot with heavy ropes inside a cave. Seeing herself restrained and her bracelets missing Y/N started to panic wondering if the CIA got her along with Attuma and Fabio. 

‘‘I mean if I am in a friendly place I won’t be restrained right?’‘ Y/N reasoned with herself and decided to search for the kid and Attuma praying they are still alive. She promised she will save the kid even if that’s the last thing she will do and hoped Tony will understand why she risked her life to save another kid from being experimented on. Once she cut the ropes without much struggled after making a long knife using the stone beneath the cot and sat up forgetting that she was actually shot.

‘‘Goddammit’‘ Y/N cursed as she felt burning pain on her back and shoulder as she sat up. After catching her breath for couple of seconds she looked up to see glow worm on the ceiling and surrounded by crystal clear water.

Y/N the stood up carefully not putting any pressure on her wounds which are covered bandages now and immediately hid behind a huge rock when she heard someone enter the cave. As she sensed someone coming near her eyes changed into light blue and she decided to use the water as her weapon at the moment. And the moment she saw a man entered the cave and not a blue looking Attuma or someone like him she formed a spear out of the water and with launched it toward the man with a lightning speed.

The man groaned in pain when he was slammed against the wall of the cave with a spear made out of water stabbing him in his shoulder.  

‘‘Where is Attuma and Fabio?I won’t ask you twice so you better answer me before I send another spear through your heart. Usually I don’t like killing people, but heartless monsters like you who experiment and torture children don’t deserve to live. So if you tell me where they are I may consider letting you live or make you death painless’‘ Y/N almost growled walking towards him the man with pointed ears and wings on his ankle.

‘‘Both of them are safe and they are my people. You are safe as well so calm down’‘ The man’s words only angered her further and Y/N expanded the sharp edge of the spear towards his heart smirking as the man bleed with another groan.

‘‘They are your people? Rightttt then I am their queen" Y/N scoffed at lies before continuing her warning

"I warned you not to lie. If they are really your people and safe like you claim you will be looking like Attuma and not like a hybrid between legolas and bird and I won’t be restrained. Now tell me where.are.they?’’ With Y/N every word Namor felt the spear reaching near his heart and wondered how she is overpowering him so easily. It felt like all of his organs became weak from the moment she started walking towards him and he felt his heart rate becoming dangerously slow.

‘‘Fine. I will find them myself. Since you are no use to me I will end your pathetic existence’‘ Y/N with a final warning formed another spear now using the stones from the cave and was about to stab him in the heart when she heard a familiar voice shouting her name.

‘‘Y/N STOP. THAT’S KUKULKAN. OUR KING’‘ Attuma’s sharp voice stopped her and she immediately turned towards his voice to find Attuma standing completely healed with little Fabio beside. On seeing Fabio Y/N immediately dropped the spear and ran towards the kid taking him in a tight hug.

‘‘Thank god you are fine. Are you hurt Fabio?’‘ Y/N asked with concern looking his body for any signs of bullet wounds. Fabio shook his head negatively and hugged her soft to reassure her that he is fine.

‘‘He is completely fine. Thanks to you. Now can you please release our king’‘ Attuma spoke using the translator and Y/N looked back at the man who is still stabbed with the spear and rushed towards him leaving Fabio.

‘‘I am extremely sorry. I thought you one of the men who attacked us. I will remove the spear now. But stand still and don’t move’‘ Y/N instructed softly and carefully removed the spear from his body. Once she removed it, the spear turned into water mixed with Namor’s blood and splashed on the floor and Attuma helped his king to stand as he felt the weakness of his body.

‘‘Attuma. Make him sit on the cot. I have to make his blood flow normal in his body which I slowed down before’‘ At Y/N word Attuma looked at her with a glare.

‘‘YOU DID WHAT?’‘ Attuma shouted in rage realizing how close she is to causing so much damage to his king.

‘‘Hey don’t you dare shout mister. I did all this to save you and Fabio. So don’t behave like tried to kill you King on purpose’‘ Y/N defended herself with a glare and Attuma kept quiet realizing her reason were valid.

Once Attuma helped Namor to sit on the cot Y/N kneeled down infront of him and gave Namor with an apologetic look. 

‘‘I am really sorry. I swear I was not trying to hurt anyone who is innocent’‘ Y/N apologized once again and expected Namor to feel angry or resentment towards her. But he surprised her by giving her a soft smile.

‘‘You don’t have to apologize Y/N. Though your actions were bit reckless your intentions were pure and selfless. You did risk your life and almost died saving my people who are completely strangers and a different species. So you did not do anything for which you have to seek my forgiveness ’‘ Namor’s words calmed Y/N down and she gave him a soft smile back.

‘‘Thank you for understand. Now give me your hand.’‘ Y/N asked and Namor placed his hand on hers. He then saw her closing her eyes and within seconds he felt his strength returning to him as his heart beat turned normal.Once Y/N opened her eyes after regulating his blood flow she saw the wound on his shoulder inflected by her spear and flinched seeing its depth.

‘‘Shall I?’‘ Y/N asked for his permission hovering her hand near his injured shoulder and Namor just gave her a soft nod. Y/n then placed her hand on his wound and hoped her powers will heal him. In seconds she saw a purple glow covering her hands as the wound started to heal. Once the wound completely healed without even a scar Namor stood up and gave a hand to Y/N and helped her to stand up. 

‘‘I don’t know who you are Y/N. But I am indebted to you for the kindness you showed towards me and my people. I know you have a lot of questions, and I will answer them. But right now, you need to rest and heal. I have already called my healers and they will be here soon.’’ Namor’s words seemed reasonable and Y/N herself felt becoming week from the blood loss, using her power to attack Namor and healing him. So she just agreed with him and groaned when her head started to spin.

‘You are actually right. But I think I need to sit down before I fall flat on the floor and break my nose’’ Y/N slurred and as she took a step towards the cot her eyes rolled back and Namor caught her in his arms before she could fall.

‘Attuma ask the healers to come soon to my room. She will stay in my room till the healers heal her’’ Namor asked lifting Y/N bridal style as her head fell on his chest.

‘Sure Kukulkan. I will be there with them in few minutes’’ Attuma left to fetch the healers and Namor went to his chambers with the unconscious Y/N in his arms followed by Fabio who wanted make sure Y/N fine.

Once Namor placed Y/N carefully on his bed, she covered her with a blanket to keep her warm and sat beside her on the bed. He then gently tugged her hair behind her ears which fell lose on her face and took her small soft hand in his placing a gentle kiss on the back of her hand. Namor for the first time felt something other than hate and disgust for a surface dweller because of the kindness, selflessness she showed while saving Attuma and Fabio. And the fierceness with which she fought him to save them both made him respect her immediately. He wondered who this beautiful warrior is and how she possess so much power in her small delicate body. He remembered Attuma's words about her bending the nature at her will and it seemed unbelievable. But after witnessing her wrath and being at his receiving end of it Namor was fascinated with her and wanted to know everything about the woman who laid on his bed looking like a kid now and nothing like the fierce warrior who was ready to kill him to save his people just few minutes back

" Rest my warrior. I will protect you till you regain your strength to fight the world again'' Namor muttered softly caressing Y/N's forehead when she frowned in her sleep probably from the pain. Like a gentle symphony, Namor's voice calmed her and the frown disappeared which made the serpent God to smile with satisfaction. Then he felt a gentle hand on his legs to find Fabio looking at him sad eyes. Namor with a smile lifted Fabio and placed him on his lap understanding reason behind the boys sadness.

"Don't worry my little Fabio she will be fine" Namor assured which eased the little boy as he know his king will never lie to them.

"Can i see her again once she leaves after she is fine kukulkan? " Fabio who already loved Y/N asked Namor as he know the rule of his kingdom and how much his Kukulkan is against strangers entering their territory.

"It depends on her decisions Fabio. Though I cannot allow you to visit the surface again after considering what happened, she will be always welcomed in our home. So you ask her once she is fine if she would like to visit you again" Namor said and Fabio smiled brightly at his words.

"Then I will convince her. She cannot say no to my cute respect" Fabio replied with confidence.

"I hope so Fabio. I hope she will visit us again“ Namor thought as he wanted to know everything about this woman who turned his world upside down in few hours.

Namor then saw Namora entering his room with the healers and decided to leave to room to give them the privacy giving ne last look to Y/N

I will update the next chapter soon. I hope you guys enjoy it and forgive me if you find any grammar mistakes since english is not my first language.

[hetacupid]

Hetalia Human Names

NOTE: This is my personal interpretation and the names may diverge from canon and established fanon. Also I might update this every so often to make it more accurate, depending on the information I find.

Table of Contents

The Main Characters

Western Europe

Northern Europe

Eastern Europe

Southern Europe

Western Asia

South Asia

East Asia

Southeast Asia

Oceania

Micronations

Former nations

The Main Characters

Italy Veneziano: Feliciano Vergano

I chose the name Vergano instead as it keeps the essense of the original surname, but is actually Italian.

Italy Romano: Lovino Vergano

Germany: Ludwig Beilschmidt

Japan: Kiku Honda

Prussia: Gilbert Beilschmidt

America: Alfred Franklin Jones

I like the headcanon of his middle name being "Freedom", but Franklin is my personal favourite.

England: Arthur James Kirkland

I came across this in a fic a while back and never looked back. This man needs a middle name.

France: Francis Bonnefoy

Russia: Ivan Braginsky

China: Yao Wang

Canada: Matthew Williams

Western Europe

Austria: Roderich Edelstein

Belgium: Laura Janssens

Liechtenstein: Erika Vogel

Luxembourg: Henri Janssens

I've also used the name Gabriel before, but it doesn't seem to be used much in Luxembourg, so Henri would be more fitting.

Monaco: Louise Bonnefoy

The name Louise and it's masculine variant, Louis, appear a few times in the Monaguesque royal family.

Netherlands: Willem Janssens

Willem appears a few times in the Dutch royal family, and it sounds a bit older than other suggested names, which reflects his age and general vibes imo. I really like this name.

Switzerland: Sebastian Zwingli

Personally I see his name "Basch" as a nickname for Sebastian. It's also easy to adapt to his official languages: Sebastian/Sébastién/Sebastiano. The Romansh variant would be Bistgaun, but the archaic version seems to be Bastgaun, which is more similar to Basch. I headcanon that he goes by the name "Basch" in all languages to make it more cohesive.

Northern Europe

Denmark: Mathias Rasmussen

I'm from Scandinavia myself and I don't know if it's widespread, but I've heard people say "all Danish people are named Rasmus" more than once, so I like to incorporate that into his surname.

Estonia: Eduard Kaasik

Around 50% of Estonia is covered in forest, and one of the most common tree types is birch. Kaasik is a common surname and means "birch forest".

Finland: Timo Väinämöinen

Iceland: Eiríkur Steinsson

Steinsson means "son of Stein (given name meaning stone)",. Also Emil isn't traditionally Icelandic, but it's widely used. Personally though, I prefer the name Eiríkur.

Latvia: Raivis Bērziņš

The surname Galante corresponds with the modern Latvian opera singer Inese Galante, but I couldn't find anything to suggest it's commonly used or that it's Latvian at all. Bērziņš is one of the most used Latvian surnames and means "birch tree", like Estonia's surname. Personally, I don't see the Baltics as siblings, but I think this would be a cute reference.

Also, based on what I read, surnames became common in Latvia around the 19th century, with Bērziņš being one of them. Latvia could have picked up whatever the people around him (Estonia) was using and made it his own.

Lithuania: Tolys Laurinaitis

Norway: Sigurd Bondevik

Sweden: Berwald Oxenstierna

Eastern Europe

Belarus: Natalya Arlovskaya

Bulgaria: Mihail Petrov Isporov

Isporov is the family name and is derived from an alternative name of Asparukh, the first king of the First Bulgarian Empire.

Czech: Tereza Novakova

Hungary: Erzsébet Héderváry

Moldova: Marcel Popescu

Poland: Feliks Łukasiewicz

Romania: Vladislav Popescu

Slovakia: Jozef Novak

Ukraine: Iryna Chernenko

Southern Europe

Greece: Herakles Karpusi

Portugal: João Silva Ferreira

Spain: Antonio Fernandez Carriedo

Western Asia

Cyprus: Stasinos Karpusi

Stasinos was one of the first European poets who wrote the epic poem Cypria.

Turkey: Sadiq Adnan

TRNC: Tarkan Adnan

South Asia

India: Rajesh Thakur

East Asia

Hong Kong: Leon Wang / Wong Kulung

Macau: Chen Wang

South Korea: Im Yong-soo

Taiwan: Mei Lin

Southeast Asia

Thailand: Prasert Chakri

Vietnam: Lien Nguyen

Africa

Cameroon: Emmanuel Mawdo Ahidjo

Many of the most commonly used forenames in Cameroon are of French or English origins, such as Emmanuel.

Mawdo means ‘elder’ in Fulfulde.

Ahidjo refers to the first president of Cameroon.

Egypt: Gupta Muhammad Hassan

Seychelles: Michelle Mancham

Americas

Cuba: Carlos Machado Rodríguez

Oceania

Australia: Daniel Kirkland

New Zealand: Zachary Kirkland

Micronations

Hutt River: Christopher Kirkland

Kugelmugel: Leopold Edelstein

Ladonia: Erland Oxenstierna

Molossia: Jacob Jones

"JJ" :)

Sealand: Peter Kirkland

Seborga: Romeo Vergano

Okay listen. I have no explaination, I just really like this name. Also, if the names of the trio is Peter, Wendy, and Romeo, they're all named after characters from literature. I think that's fun.

Wy: Wendy Kirkland

Former Nations

Ancient Egypt: Neferure

References the only biological child of Hatshepsut.

Ancient Greece: Helene

Ancient Rome: Marcus Valerius Maximus

Marcus is the praenomina (given name) and refers to how Romulus and Remus were said to have been twins of Mars, the god.

Valerius is the nomen gentilicium (hereditary name) and means “to be strong”.

Maximus is the cognomen and means “the greatest”.

Germania: Alaric

Holy Roman Empire: Otto Beilschmidt

Personally I like the idea that HRE and Germany aren't the same person, but share the same body.

[lakshana-ke-lakshan]

More rrr stuff cuz I'm obsessed

So I hope rrr2 like- exists in future yk cuz this thing has so much potential i cant-

So yes

The movie begins with ram teaching bheem how to write and read and bheem on the teaching ram the ways of the forest

Many cute moments for us shippers, idk about Jenny and seetha, y'all seen me liking rambheem post so why even try?

Here, we explore more of Healer bheem and a ram who's actually really soft (we know he is okay?)

And maybe...both get like angsty and cry about the past torture and how they felt etc etc

And then, coming back to the main point, Britishers come again, but this time to cease the land of the tribal people, not particularly the Gond community, but any other also works because listen guy's

I've studied 10th cbse history and ultimately, who was the real Alluri Sitarama Raju?

It was a man who waged gorilla wars against Britishers who wanted to capture tribal land.

And when I first saw the name, I was kinda like- man this name has so much potential to actually increase the plot yk

And this is one of his statues in India

Looks very similar to the makeover bheem gave ram right?

So I think this makeover and his name were originally given just to pave the way for the sequel

So ya, the gorilla wars happen, they win

Yay

And ram and bheem marry

uwu

[kulturegroupie]

October 16, 1972: Page, Plant and the Indian jam lost to history

It was a slow Monday in October 1972, and the Slip Disc nightclub in Mumbai could hardly be described as “jumping”.

Around 10 people were in the venue, which was the hangout for the city’s nascent rock scene. Slip Disc measured just 30 by 18 feet, with a third of its floor-space taken up by a stage and DJ booth.

That night, three strangers walked in. They were long-haired Westerners who’d just been refused entry into Blow Up, a far more staid nightclub underneath the grand waterfront Taj Mahal Hotel where they were staying.

Madhukar Dhas, aka Madoo, the singer in Indian psychedelic rock band Atomic Forest, was in Slip Disc that evening. “We didn’t recognise them as they walked in,” Dhas, now 72, tells me. “I thought, ‘Who are these guys?’”. But a second glance changed all that. “I thought, ‘Oh shoot. It’s Led Zeppelin.’”

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were the singer and guitarist in arguably the world’s biggest band. The Zeppelin members were en route home from a tour of Japan, which itself was part of a vast global tour to promote Led Zeppelin IV, their career-high album.

That year, the band had already played to hundreds of thousands of delirious fans from Tucson to Tokyo, and here were Page and Plant – along with tour manager Richard Cole – in a broom-cupboard dive-bar in downtown Mumbai. Not only that, but Atomic Forest and a handful of other Indian rock bands had made a career out of playing covers of Zeppelin, Stones and Jethro Tull tracks. These men were living legends. And they were now in their midst.

What happened next must rank as one of the more extraordinary “I was there” moments in rock history. It also yielded one of music’s most tantalising lost bootlegs. The evening had a broader cultural significance too. In the retelling and the myth-making that accompanied that night, the events at Slip Disc played a role in establishing Western rock ’n’ roll music in India.

As soon as Page, Plant and Cole arrived at the venue and sat down, it was clear to everyone who they were. Slip Disc’s owner, a man called Ramzan, sent over bottles of local beer: it had no head and glistened with what Dhas said looked like soap bubbles. The trio drank. “They were getting tipsy,” Dhas remembers, “but there was no entertainment. A band was there but it wasn’t their time to play. So this guy Ramzan comes to me and says, ‘Come on, sing!’”

Then just 22 years old, Dhas froze with nerves, telling the owner that his band wasn’t contracted to sing at Slip Disc. “I said, ‘It’s Robert Plant, I can’t sing in front of him.’ [Ramzan] dug his nails into my ribs and said, ‘Go sing, you bastard.’ He was desperate. So I thought, ‘What the hell.’”

Dhas took to the stage with a band comprising a musician called Willie on guitar and a drummer called Jamal (possibly from the band Velvett Fogg). Some reports suggest that the bassist with local band Human Bondage, a man called Xerxes Gobhai, also played. They’d never rehearsed together. After a brief conflab, the group launched into Honky Tonk Woman by the Stones, Dhas doing his best to channel Mick Jagger’s manic energy as one of the world’s greatest rock vocalists sat within spitting distance.

“Plant was about six feet away,” he says. “Jimmy Page was probably 10 feet away. They were enjoying themselves.” He dared to catch Plant’s eye. “Robert Plant gave me the thumbs-up. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ It was the highlight of my musical career.”

As Madooo sang, word seeped onto the street about the VIPs in Slip Disc. The venue started to fill up. By the time the Stones cover was over, the crowd had swollen to around 50 people – or full capacity. The audience turned their attention to the Zeppelin men swigging beer. A chant of “Jam, jam, jam!” slowly filled the venue.

To everyone’s surprise, Page and Plant stood and walked to the stage. A frantic few minutes followed, as Cole tried to get the best possible sound from the amps and Page found that one of the guitars had been strung with piano strings. “You could only get what was available,” Dhas says. Ironically, Page and Plant had an aircraft full of the most expensive and cutting-edge musical equipment at the airport, but customs officials were refusing to release it. They tuned up and played.

Precise recollections of the impromptu set-list vary. It was recorded by Slip Disc’s resident DJ, Arul Harris, but the whereabouts of the only tape remain unknown. According to Dhas, Page and Plant started with a bluesy ad-lib about turning up at Blow Up, the club under the Taj, and not being allowed in. They had apparently gone to the club in traditional dress – kurta tops and Kolhapuri chappal shoes – and the doorman had dismissed them as hippies. By the time they arrived at Slip Disc, they had changed into Western clothes.

Plant sang in his distinctive high voice, with his trademark vocal stammer: ‘I was walking down / And the man wouldn’t let me in / The m-m-mmmmaaan…’ Meanwhile, Dhas remembers, the “dumbfounded” rhythm section tried their best to join in. After about ten minutes of the Blow Up jam, the band segued into Whole Lotta Love from 1969’s Led Zeppelin II. The crowd went predictably wild, although Dhas found himself with a job to do.

The microphone that Plant was using was called an Ahuja mic. It was the only type available in India at the time, and it was screwed onto its stand, unlike the handheld ones that Plant was used to yanking away. As the singer tried to untwist the microphone, its connection with the cable loosened, and his voice cut in and out. Dhas dashed forward to hold the cable close to the mic so it made a connection. He recalls: “I was literally six inches from [Plant’s] face when he was screaming ‘Loooooove’. I was deaf for about two hours after that. That high-pitched voice right into my right ear – oh boy.”

Others who were present have recalled the band starting with Rock and Roll and ending with Black Dog, with the Blow Up jam happening in the middle. Either way, Page and Plant played for just under half an hour. As the cheers faded, Plant promised the pair would return the following evening. “We listen to you, you listen to us, we’re all one in this music,” he is reported to have said.

They returned the next day as promised, only to find the world and his wife at Slip Disc, many with cameras. Page and Plant hated it, staying for around 10 minutes only. Dhas says it was a “fiasco”: “When the crowd turned up they became these rock stars again.”

Plant has acknowledged the role that the night played in spawning rock in India:

“Jimmy and I played in a club in Bombay in 1972,” the singer said in 2012. “Somehow or other we ended up in there with loads and loads of illicit substances. Some guy is writing a book about rock in India – and apparently it was born in this club, with Page and I wired out of our faces.” (He also recalled playing the drums, something other accounts don’t mention.)

In 1981, Plant appeared as a guest on New York’s WNEW 102.7FM rock radio station. Dhas was having a martini with his wife when they heard the show, and he decided to ring in. “I kept calling, and my wife said, ‘Forget about it, you’re not going to get through.’ I said, ‘No. Where there’s a will there’s a way’, and I kept on trying.” He eventually got through, telling the receptionist: “I’d like to say a word to Robert Plant. I am a guy from India, and we jammed.’”

The disbelieving receptionist hung up. But Dhas rang back on a different number and suggested they run his story by Plant. They did, and eventually the Led Zeppelin singer came on the line. “He remembered the night with fondness,” Dhas says.

The sheer joy of the Slip Disc jam is still present in Dhas’s retelling. Plant’s voice may have stopped ringing in his ear – but the memory of that Monday night in October on the Mumbai waterfront lives on.

[itz-stus]

Greetings your one of the few Indian writers I have seen on Tumblr so can you please write like a proper kings au with like the Reader is from India who is like a princess here abd like falls in love with a prince who came to visit India for trade with the king.

Hello! Thank you so much for this request it was really fun to write this. So the setting here is of like India before British colonization. So we are going to take this hypothetically since there were no marriages of queens and a foreign king (If we're not taking Mughals as foreigners) But yeah there is a case like the one of princess suriratna, also known as heo hwang-ok, but the facts about them are still unclear about them. And P.s I tried to write like a Scenario and then headcanonns.

Masterlist

Bewitching Princess

How you two met:

Long ago far from this land, there was a great emperor of Japan. The Gojo Empire was widespread in Japan. The people were happy and prosperous under the youngest king's rule. It was a beautiful place from people to their hearts.

There was a saying that he was the most beautiful of them all. His eyes were said to be the gateway to heaven. He had everything you could ever dream for a great heart to every lavish thing in his palace. But unaware of the most priceless thing was thousands of miles away from him. Crossing the seas, situated the most valuable delicacy...The Princess of L/n Empire.

In the thick forest, a beautiful young woman was sitting on a branch getting her arrow out and aiming at the small dear in front of her. Her looks were so enchanting that even the sea waves would crash. She was such a beauty that people would even say that the moon was even ashamed of her. 

She had her hair tied in a half ponytail while her beautiful locks graced her face. Her eyes do sharp that they could cut through a rock. 

As soon as the arrow launched the dear ran away from the sheer wind. Making the women jump down as she chased it. 

She spotted the animal near the pond as she carefully launched her arrow hitting it right in the chest.

But soon she heard another voice making her stand on her guard as she looked around placing her arrow on her bow as she stretched the bowstring she shot the Dhanush from where the noise was heard.

Walking towards it she found something rather surprising there was a man well a beautiful young man with white hair and such enchanting eyes. He didn't look from here rather looked like an angle from above. 

The arrow wounded his shoulder digging deep into his flesh as blood tricked down on his western white henley shirt.

He was astonished as he walked forward with a katana in his hand. 

"It appears that your arrow struck its target," He said to her as she moved her hand forward to take it out only to be slapped in rejection by him making her yelp in surprise.

The woman forcefully grabbed his collar pulling the arrow as it twisted and loosened up the albino gave her a helping hand pulling out the arrow he grunted as he soon started to feel dizzy and passed out on her shoulder.

He was brought to the infirmary where the Royal doctors cured him. Then few sounds of people were heard as the women went out looking for it outside the cave.

"Pratap. Aap sab yaha par is samay bat kya hai??" She spoke in her native language Hindi.

"Rajkumari sa, aaj hi mahal mein mehman aye the Japan ke Maharaj Satoru Gojo. Ate hi shikar par nikal gaye phir wapas mahal nahi laute. Maharaj ne unko dhund ne ka adesh diya hai." He informed as the princess nodded her head and replied 

"Maharaj se kahna voh surakshit hai brahmado ke mahal mein vishram kar rahe hai." She said as the minister bowed his head in order and left taking all of his companions with him. 

On the other hand, the princess heard him wake up with a jolt as she walked towards him, stroking his forehead soothingly as she laid him back down as looked her in the eyes. 

He never imagined something so beautiful, so enchanting and welcoming. In Satoru's interpretation, she was an angel wearing no jewels but looking so radiant as he fell into darkness.

His eyes opened with the sound of chimes as he got up and looked around to see you in beautiful Indian wear.

This one:

The princess was muttering her prayers(Pooja) in front of the huge statue of lord Vishnu. ringing her bell as she finished and looked behind looking at the woken King.

She stood up and smiled warmly and made her way towards him picking up the prashad in between.

"Are you here to say sorry?" He said turning his head towards her as he sighed watching the princess bestow fresh flowers on the other small statues of gods around the palace.

"What a wonderful hunter you are you even wounded a hunter rather than a dear. First with an arrow and now with attitude." He said sarcastically getting up from the bed as the princess just smirked at him continuing her work.

"I get it was an accident but some accidents are so beautiful like your L/n empire. Wherever you go you get enchanted. Well, I'm talking for quite some time now but neither I know anything about you nor do you know anything about me." He said looking at her as she stopped in front of him and spoke 

"The youngest king of the Gojo empire, Satoru Gojo."

"How did you know?"

"You're our guest." She said as he sighed and smirked jokingly.

"Well, that was some very warm hospitality I got."

"Why did you visit here leaving your empire?" She asked as she walked ahead and placed the bowl of Prashad and coconut water next to him.

"To buy some jewels"

"You can not buy them only fate gives them to you." 

"Like you met me? Tell me something about you. Like who are you?"

"Every soul knows my name here ask them." She said as she picked up the cup of coconut water and placed her hand softly on his jaw tilting t a bit upwards. She then poured the water in as the king drank it. 

Her beauty mesmerized Satoru and her charisma she enchanted him. 

"Here have some. Bring your hands together." She said and placed the prashad in his hands.

Walking out she finally looked at him and muttered "Y/n L/n" she smiled and walked ahead leaving the great king with a feeling he has never felt before

Headcannons:

So After your first meeting, I highly think that Satoru and you for a while will go on hunting together where he will learn more about you.

And as a menace to society, he is I think he would constantly flirt with you.

If you got the target before him be ready to face the whining of this manchild.

He will teach you how to use a sword while you teach him how to use a Dhanush.

Like there will be moments between you and him where you two just talk about philosophy.

I am a firm believer that you two will dress up as normal people and roam freely in your empire as you show him around.

Honestly, be shocked by how wise you are and how good your battle IQ is.

When he gets the jewels and it will be time to say well then he will 100% ask you on the last day like:

"Will come with me to Japan as My Queen?" Like so nonchalantly leaving you shocked.

And hence you became the Queen of the Gojo Empire. But you never left your heritage and always wore your traditional clothing which your king always adored.

[nicebonescomrades]

I played Kaveh's Hangout and I'm being haunted by him now 💀

Anyways I want to write Kirara but I already know I'll focus on her being a nekomata more than anything else xd

Also Comrade um.

I'm not being rude I hope but could you please tell me what some of the things in Sumeru are based off? I really want to know more :D

Kaveh's hangout was SO good one of the few hangouts that didn't bore me and it was better than even some of the story quests <3

You aren't being rude at all! There are so many things I don't know where to start lmao but the biggest thing I can think of is that Sumeru being a nation full of scholars is a reference to the islamic golden age where scholars would come to baghdad to seek knowledge.

Oh the topic of Kaveh, he is inspired by Kaveh the Blacksmith who is a famous persian (and kurdish) mythological character and is a symbol of resistance and unity against despotic foreign rulers in Iran. All of Kaveh's architecture designs (especially palace of alcazarzaray) have strong elements of persian architecture, and it's the same for the designs on his attacks! His constellations are also named after historical monuments is iran :3

Faruzan (whose name is inspired by the femine Foruzan and the masculine Farzan), there's also the term Firouzeh which is this beautiful turquoise that is seen in her character design color.

Her idle animations are a reference to the Persian Polymath Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, also known as the father of algebra. In her idle animation, when she's thinking if you decrypt it, this is what you'll get! All of it is a reference to "kitab al jabr and muqabla" written by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi himself.

And the dress she's wearing is a reference to persian architecture such as these, and the last picture is from a place called Shah Cheghrah, while her skirt style and shoes are from the Qajar period.

After her we have the man himself, Al-Haitham! He is inspired by the great iraqi mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Hasan ibn Al-Haytham from the Golden Age of Islam, and is also widely known as the father of optics!

Remember in the Archon quest when Alhaitham had to fake insanity? It's actually similar to something that happened to Hasan ibn Al-Haytham! He was invited by the cruel ruler Al-Hakim (later known as the Mad Caliph, I believe) to Egypt with a scheme to control the waters of the Nile, which is an impossible feat to do.

Although he failed to do what al-Hakim asked him to, he was still rewarded with an official government post. The more al-Hakim became more erratic, Ibn al-Haytham believed that his life would be in danger so he feigned madness to be relieved of his post!

Now on to al-Haitham's design. He has a few eye shaped deigns across his clothes which are again a reference to Ibn al-Haytham's study on optics. And his burst animation is showing light refelcting from mirrors, a reference to ibn Al-Haytham's research in light. His shoes are called babouche and worn by both men and women! Also, his name Alhaitham means "hawk", an animal that is seen as powerful figures in arabian cultures since they represents vitality and heroism, and the hawk is seen in his constellation!

Chinvat Ravine is persian and references Zoroastrianism, Ashavan Realm is sanskrit and means something along the lines of "forest with life", Ghanda Vil is a reference to hinduism and is inspired by Gandhamardan Hills located in India and is known for medicinal plants.

Mt. Damavand is a real mountain and it's considered the highest peak in Iran and Western Asia, and it's also important in folklore and mythology because it was the mythical place that was a prison to the three headed, three jawed and six eyed dragon Azhi Dahak.

A place inside the robot in the newest desert region is called Madinat-Al-Nuhas which is a reference to the Arabian the folktale city of brass!

Gate of Zulqarnain means gate of the two horned in arabic, and it's a reference to Dhu al-Qarnain who was a righteous king that travels to east and west and sets up a barrier between a certain people and Yajuj and Majuj (remember Wadi-al Majuj on the map? 😉).

House of Daena is a reference to the Grand Library of Baghdad, and Port Ormos refers to Port Hormuz that is set up on the Persian Gulf!

There are way too many are names but all of them are reference to religions/and languages!

Areas aside, the Dance of Sebzorous is based on the Iranian(and kurdish etc) New Year celebration called Newroz which celebrates the incoming of spring/life. And the dance that Nilou does is a Persian Court Dance! And her being thwarted by the Akademiya, thus "arts" being considered illegal and then her dancing in front of the Akademiya paint a picture of the current Iran where women dance in the streets in retaliation to the government. Nilou's ovarall character represents the struggles and oppression iranian women face from a government that seeks to discourage women pursuing arts and their passions.

Also remember Farris, the man who gave Yalda candies to children? He is inspired Amou Newroz (uncle Newroz) who gives candies to children. Yalda is also a term taken from the "night of Yalda" tradition which celebrated the longest night in winter (My family says 21/12 is Yalda night lol).

Moving on to the Khaverna of Good and Evil, Khvarena is a concept in Zoroastrianism and broadly emboies "glory" and "splendor". Pari is a term that quite literally means fairy in my language lolol. Anyways, Pari are originally creatures from Zoroastrianism. Originally, pari were considered as "witch" and "sorceress" but their role in mythology shifted completely in later times, and they were then considered was beautiful, feminine entities that are fundamentally good in nature.

Sorush (called so in New Persian) is a being of Yazata (divine being/creature) in Zoroastrianism and is one of the three guardians of Chinvat Ravine (bridge of judgement) along with Rashnu and Mihir. In Shahnameh, which is a collection of epic poems of Iranian mythology by the Persian poet Ferdowsi and retells man stories from Zoroastrian scripture, Sorush appears as a Pari (now benevolent creatures) to warn the Iranian king Siyamak about a calamity.

In the game, Sorush calls the Traveller Yasnapati. Yasna can be translated somewhat to "ritual", "sacrifice", and "worship". So Yasnapati in the Avestan language is "lord of ritual" which is a reference to the orginal scripture in which Sorush himself is callled "ritual lord". There are so many other things about the other Pari like Rashnu and Mihir and Zurvan but I think this has gotten pretty long enough 💀

But for funsies, Jar Jar is merely a reference to JarJar Binks from Star Wars lol.

Anyways, I hope this all helps! There are so many other things worth talking about, but I think this is enough for now lol

[wounds-seen-and-unseen]

Vagdhandaja-Prologue

The actual fic scenes will be under the cut. This is world building of a sorts before the cut.

Arjun’s character here is very, very removed from canon (obviously, seeing that canon is an epic that is more than a 1000 years old) so I am only going to explain whatever is relevant to this story.

The milieu I am going for is an alternate universe of Delhi (India’s capital, in case anyone does not know) where the Kauraveya family are quite influential politicians for the most part. Arjun is the cherished youngest son of the family, very close to his mother, having lost his father as a child. He is a decorated war hero, known for both his battle prowess and his gallantry. He is an old school gentleman, so to speak. He values all human life, he prefers to avoid loss of life as much as possible. He married his wife, Subhadra, for love. Her brother, Krishn is his best friend. At the beginning of this story, he is escaping from a place he barely remembers.

Satyaka, the PoV for the prologue, is distantly related to Krishn, and by extension, Arjun’s mother Pritha, (Krishn is canonically Arjun’s first cousin, in this story, their blood relationship may be a little more removed). His son, Yuyudhana, not mentioned in this chapter by name, is Subhadra and Krishn’s friend here. I think that’s all the background needed for this story for now, but if something is unclear, please feel free to DM or ask me!

Trigger warnings: Panic attacks, discussion of intravenous drug use, disoriented character, brief emeto mention, distressed character.

Tagging @blue-lotus333 and @whither-wander-whump

Please ask or message if you want to be added to or removed from the tag list!

There are a few Sanskrit terms used here, meanings given below:

1. Pitr-shraadh: Shraadh is a Hindu ritual, in which one honours the dead. Pitr-shraadh specifically, as far as I know, is a ritual in which one honours their ancestors.

2. Pooja: Prayer ritual

3. Mata: Mother (respectful)

Prologue

Satyaka Varshney, on the way to the capital

I click the ignition off, glancing cursorily by my side at my son, fast asleep. I suppose a small break wouldn’t hurt.

Cracking my aching knuckles, I open the car door, sliding out and stretching. The wind is rustling through crowded forest greenery, fresh and clean. An unfamiliar thump directs my gaze to my son once more, still peacefully sleeping in the car. Keeping him in the line of my sight, I edge forward.

That doesn’t turn out to be a very wise thing to do in the pitch black of the depth of night, as I knock into something. Blindly reaching out, my hand hits solid flesh.

I can feel the flinch beneath my fingers, hear the faintly clicking, chattering teeth.

‘S-so-sorry. Plea-please don’t-don’t-they-I’- I blink. In front of me is a young man, hardly visible in the dark.

Whatever little I can see of him, he is obviously scared, shaking, streaks of mud on his torn shirt, what once used to probably be military camouflage. ‘I’m sorry, s-sir.’ He says, cringing away from me. ‘Hey there, young man,’ I whisper, the boy putting in my mind a spooked horse. ‘It’s alright. I’m not going to turn you in. You on the run from those outlaws down there?’ ‘Out-outlaws? Sir?’ The frank confusion in his voice has me backtrack. What the hell has happened to this young man?

‘Never mind that. Where are you coming from? Do you have anywhere to go to?’

He blinks. Looks pensive for a moment, then, face tight and eyes on the floor, he whispers, voice hoarse, ‘I…I am not sure, sir. I don’t-I don’t know what this place is. Where are we?’ I sigh. ‘Are you alright?’ The boy seems disoriented enough to warrant that insipid question. He looks down at himself, then musters a smile as he looks back up, still not meeting my eyes. ‘I think so, sir? I will be.’

‘You sure don’t look it,’ I mutter, shucking off my coat, looking critically at him, the ceaseless shivering, the remnants of bloodstains on his face. I hand the coat over to him. ‘Here. You look like you need it. And this place isn’t safe. Would you like to come with me?’ His gaze skitters away from me. ‘I-thank you sir, but I’m dirty. I wouldn’t want to be a burden.’ He’s clearly making effort to pronounce his words right. ‘And you aren’t. I have a son your age. I’d want him to be safe, just like I’m sure your family wants you safe and sound.’ I wrap the coat around his shaking shoulders. ‘There.’ He flinches away from my touch. ‘Easy. It’s alright. Can you walk?’ He nods. ‘Yes. I will. Where’- ‘I’ll tell you. Follow me.’ He does that obediently enough, although he looks over his shoulder for every step he takes. From what I can understand of his situation, I don’t blame him for the same.

Once we are leaning against the hood of my car, I probe gently. ‘Look, kid, I want to help you. Honestly. But I can’t do that if you don’t tell me anything.’ Frustration echoes in his voice as he replies ‘I am grateful, sir, but I really don’t-I remember, I had been on duty. I had asked leave from my senior so that I could do the pitr shraadh. I finished the pooja. I drank some water that was in my canteen, and then…then my head spun. Some people were trying to-to drag me off. I don’t know why, I’d never seen them before. I fought as best as I could. But I lost. That’s all I know. Then I woke up shaking on some unknown floor. I escaped as soon as I could. Honestly, sir, I’m not-I don’t lie. I don’t. You’ve done so much…I wouldn’t.’ His shivering increases as he finishes his speech, and he stumbles. ‘Whoa!’ ‘I…sorry, sir. I’m dizzy.’ ‘I can see that, kid. How long has it been since you ate?’ I ask, keeping a firm hold of his hand. He shakes his head. ‘Okay. Okay. I think these outlaws did you in. We’re at the edge of their outpost. You seem to be real lucky that they haven’t caught you yet. Tell me where you want to go, ‘kay? I’ll see if I can help you there.’ ‘To the capital. The Kauraveya Mansion.’ ‘You’re one of ‘em, huh? Some distant coz of mine married into that family. The younger son, the legitimate one, that is. I remember attending her wedding, barely married myself, too besotted by my own wife, with eyes for nought but the food. I hear the lady is mighty beautiful, though.’ He smiles, I can see the flash of teeth in the dark, feel the tense pull of his shoulder relax slightly under my hand.

‘The most beautiful in the world,’ he says, softly. ‘She is my mother. I’ll tell her that I heard the food in her wedding was really nice.’ I laugh. ‘You’re one of the Vrishni clan, then, sir? Krishn said that his clan is huge.’ ‘Aye. So you’re one of us, too, in a way.’ He shrugs. ‘I suppose so?’ ‘Of course you are. However distant, ain’t a matter. Once a connection is established, it’s there forever. You know Krishn?’ I shake my head. ‘Course you do. Never mind that, come in,’ I open the door of my car. ‘Get a bit warm, have somethin’ to drink. Wouldn’t want you to collapse like that again. Should coz find out her kiddo fainted on my watch, I’m sure she’d have my head.’ He laughs, soft and sincere. ‘Her name is Pritha. I’m Arjun. And you’re probably right, mata is very…protective.’ ‘As she very well should be, a handsome young lad like you.’ He looks down. ‘Is that a blush? I see you aren’t used to teasing yet.’

He peeks into the car. ‘Careful there. My young bison is snoring in here.’ ‘Dad. ‘M not a bison of any sort! And who’s this?’ ‘Cousin o’ yours. Arjun Kauraveya, I take it?’ He nods. My son starts upright. ‘Krishn’s brother-in-law? His best friend? Whoa. I met their family a few days ago. Both the ladies were…pretty distraught.’

The boy at my side closes his eyes, obviously affected. ‘My fault,’ he whispers. I cuff my idiot of a kid. ‘Motor mouth, can’t you think of what you speak?’ I hiss at him, jerking my chin at the distraught younger man.

‘And you.’ I turn to Arjun. ‘None of that, kid. You didn’t ask to be captured like that.’ ‘No, but’- ‘Hey, you’re gonna go home, alright? They’re yours to take care of.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,’ my son murmurs. Arjun shakes his head. ‘It’s alright…you were honest, thank you for that.’ My son shakes his head in return. ‘No. It’s not like you ran off on your own. You were on duty, right?’ Neither I nor Arjun correct him, leaving him to his ignorance. ‘You’re doing your best, that’s all you can do.’ The other man doesn’t look very convinced but nods his head.

I hand him a bottle of water. ‘There you go. Drink up.’ His hand shakes as he takes the bottle. I drank the water in my canteen, I remember him saying. And then my head spun. Small wonder he is scared. I take it back, drinking a gulp myself. ‘There. It’s safe, son.’ His gaze flies to mine, finding the floor again in a flash. ‘I’m’- I cut him off. ‘Nothin’ to say sorry for. Given what you’re comin’ from, it’s perfectly understandable.’

Once he’s had the water, I gesture to a sandwich. ‘Get some food inside ya, ‘kay? I can drive you to the capital, sure, we gotta go there, too. Not your house, of course not, but Lutyen’s street should work? He’s wide-eyed, staring at me as if afraid to believe. ‘Sir..I can’t ask that’- ‘Nah, you ain’t askin’. Don’t worry about it. Go on, eat the thing.’

He tries. A bite later, he stops. ‘I don’t think I can,’ he says, sounding guilty. ‘What’s the matter, kiddo?’ ‘I might be si’- he’s cut off as he gags, shoving his head out of the window. ‘Whoa. Okay. Want me to stop the car?’ He shakes his head jerkily. ‘N-no. It’s ‘kay.’

‘Wait.’ My son’s voice is cool. ‘Yeah?’ Arjun asks. ‘Those marks on your arm…did you do that? Are you an IV user? Is that why you’re confused?’ ‘W-what?’ ‘Hey!’ I interject, the kid clearly struggling to understand the pointed question. ‘He was kidnapped, bud, he didn’t’- ‘No!’ It’s the loudest I’ve heard his voice. ‘No, I wouldn’t. Mata hates that kinda stuff, I don’t even drink.’ He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t do this, please believe me.’

I glare at my son. ‘Apologize. Seriously, is this the kind of question you ask?’ Arjun blanches. ‘I-I didn’t, but…they held me down, I’m-I’m remembering.’ His voice is blank. His eyes are flaring wide as they turn to me. ‘Could they have drugged…’ he trails off. ‘They might have,’ he answers himself. ‘Maybe that’s why I feel sick. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I fought, I did, I did, I’-

‘Hey.’ My son intercedes as the younger man’s breathing quickens. ‘I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t know. If what you say is true, and I believe it is, you are not to blame. Take a breath, okay?’ He does. ‘Good. Now, just get it out, what you remember. Maybe we can help you piece it together.’ ‘Yeah…’ he murmurs, shaky. ‘Okay. I…oh. Oh, no. No, no, no. No…’ His voice falters and breaks as he repeats a frantic denial. ‘What happened?’ I ask, trying to break him out. ‘I-I broke my vow, I broke it!’ He’s vitriolic, sheer loathing in his voice. ‘God, I broke it…How could I have done it?’ ‘You did what you had to survive, kid, it’s-you can make it better, okay?’ ‘No,’ he says, his voice a knell of grief. ‘What I did…it’s unforgivable.’

[iishmael]

Global Reading Challenge: 126/200

A personal reading project, where I endeavour to read a book from each of the 193 United Nations member states plus 7 extra* ones. My main goal is to have fun and to learn, but I do have rules for myself:

The book should be fiction, and preferably a novel. I allow plays and poetry, but non-fiction only as the very last resort

The author should have the nationality of their country. If they have lived a good portion of their life there and genuinely represent the local culture, then it's ok if they've been born somewhere else

I want to read books that represent the local literary tradition. Preferably a "classic", a book that illustrates the local culture, or a book that is famous within the country. I avoid popular and contemporary fiction, and books that play outside of the country.

*Extra states have been determined based on UNESCO membership and personal interest where I want to read more books from. This is not a political statement.

The List

Afghanistan: Atiq Rahimi - Earth and Ashes

Albania:

Algeria: Albert Camus - The Stranger (FR)

Andorra: Teresa Colom - Mlle Keaton et autres creatures (FR)

Angola: José Eduardo Agualusa - The Book of Chameleons

Antigua and Barbuda

Argentina: JL Borges - Fictions

Armenia: Raffi - The Fool

Australia: Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara - Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence

Austria: Elfriede Jelinek - Die Klavierspielerin

Azerbaijan

Bahamas: Telcine Turner - Woman Take Two

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Barbados

Belarus: Uladzimir Karatkievich - King Stakh's Wild Hunt

Belgium

Belize: Zee Edgell - Beka Lamb

Benin

Bhutan: Karma Ura - The Hero with a Thousand Eyes

Bolivia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Botswana: Bessie Head - Maru

Brazil: Paulo Coehlo - The Alchimist

Brunei Darussalam: K.H. Lim - Written in Black

Bulgaria: Elias Canetti - Komödie der Eitelkeit (GER)

Burkina Faso: Norbert Zongo - Le parachutage (FR)

Burundi: Samoya Kirura - La femme au regard triste (FR)

Cabo Verde: Germano Almeida - The Last Will & Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo

Cambodia

Cameroon: Francis Bebey - King Albert

Canada: S. Alice Callahan - Wynema: A Child of the Forest

Central African Republic: Étienne Goyémidé - Le dernier Survivant de la caravane

Chad: Told by Starlight in Chad - Joseph Brahmin Seid

Chile

China

Colombia

Comoros: Ali Zamir - A Girl Called Eel

Congo

Cook Islands*: Kauraka Kauraka- Oral tradition in Manihiki

Costa Rica: Carlos Luis Fallas - Mamita Yunai (Die Grüne Hölle, GER)

Côte D’Ivoire

Croatia

Cuba

Cyprus: Kyriakos Charalambides - Selected Poems

Czech Republic: Jan Neruda - Prague Tales

DPRK (North Korea): Bandi - The Accusation

DRC

Denmark

Djibouti

Dominica: Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

Egypt

El Salvador: Horacio Castellanos Moyà - Le bal des vipères (FR)

Equatorial Guinea: Trifonia Melibea Obono - La Bâtarde (FR)

Eritrea: Helen Berhane - Song of the Nightingale

Estonia: Jaan Kross - The Czar's Madman

Eswatini: Malla Nunn - A Beautiful Place to Die

Ethiopia

Fiji: Rajni Mala Khelawan - Kalyana

Finland

France: Pierre Louys - Aphrodite: Ancient Manners

Gabon: Daniel M Mengara - Mema

Gambia

Georgia

Germany: Thomas Mann - Buddenbrooks

Ghana: Ayi Kwei Armah - The beautiful ones are not yet born

Greece

Greenland*: Knud Rasmussen - Eskimo Folktales

Grenada: Merle Collins - The Colour of Forgetting

Guatemala: Miguel Angel Asturias - Strong Wind

Guinea: Camara Laye - The Radiance of the King

Guinea Bissau: Abdulai Sila - The ultimate tragedy

Guyana

Haiti: Jacques Roumain - Gouverneurs de La Rosée

Honduras: Froylan Turcios - El Vampiro (SPA)

Hungary: Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon

Iceland

India: Rabindranath Tangore - The Home and the World

Indonesia: Eka Kurniawan - Man Tiger

Iran: Sadegh Hedayat - The Blind Owl

Iraq: Andrew George - The epic of Gilgamesh

Ireland: James Joyce - Dubliners

Israel

Italy: Italo Calvino - If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

Jamaica: Andrew Salkey - Hurricane

Japan

Jordan: Amjad Nasser - L'ascension de l'amant (FR)

Kazakhstan

Kenya

Kiribati: Teresia Teaiwa & Vilsoni Hereniko - Last Virgin in paradise

Kosovo*: Flora Brovina - Call me by my name

Kuwait

Kyrgyzstan: Chingiz Aitmatov - Jamila

Laos: Outhine Bounyavong - Mother's Beloved

Latvia

Lebanon

Lesotho

Liberia: Bai T. Moore - Murder in the Cassava Patch

Libya

Liechtenstein

Lithuania: Vingas Kreve - The Herdsman and the Linden Tree

Luxembourg: Norbert Jacques - Dr Mabuse der Spieler (GER)

Madagascar: Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo - Traduit de La nuit (FR)

Malawi: William Kamkwamba - The Boy who harnessed the Wind

Malaysia

Maldives: Abdullah Sadiq - Dhon Hiyala and Ali Fulhu

Mali

Malta: Oliver Friggieri - Koranta and other short stories

Marshall Islands: Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner - Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter

Mauritania: Moussa Ould Ebnou - L'Amour Impossible (FR)

Mauritius

Mexico: Mario Bellatín - Beauty Salon

Micronesia: Emelihter Klieng - My Urohs

Monaco: Louis Notari - La légende de Sainte Dévote (FR)

Mongolia: Galsan Tschinag - Die Karawane (GER)

Montenegro: Petar II Petrovic Njegos - The Mountain Wreath

Morocco: Abdellatif Laâbi - Le bâpteme chacaliste (FR)

Mozambique

Myanmar

Namibia

Nauru: Nancy Viviani - Nauru, phosphate and political progress

Nepal: Prajwal Parajuly - Land where I flee

Netherlands

New Zealand: Witi Ihimaera - The Whale Rider

Nicaragua: Rubén Dario - Azul… (SPA/ENG)

Niger: Abdoulaye Mamani - Sarraounia: Le drame de la reine magicienne (FR)

Nigeria: Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart

Niue*: John Puhiatau Pule - The Bond of Time: An Epic Love Poem

North Macedonia

Norway: Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House

Oman

Pakistan: Jamil Ahmad - The Wandering Falcon

Palau: Hermana Ramarui - The Palauan Perspective: a poetry book

Panama: Ricardo Miró - Las Noches de Babel (SPA)

Palestine*: Ibrahim Nasrallah - Prairies of Fever

Papua New Guinea: Vincent Eri - The Crocodile

Paraguay

Peru: Mario Vargas Llosa - In Praise of the Stepmother

Philippines

Poland: Isaac Singer - The Magician of Lublin

Portugal

Qatar

Republic of Korea

Republic of Moldova

Romania: Ioan Slavici - The lucky mill

Russian Federation: Leo Tolstoi - The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Rwanda

Saint Kitts and Nevis: Caryl Philips - Cambridge

Saint Lucia: Derek Walcott - Omeros

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Samoa: Albert Wendt - Leaves of the Banyan Tree

San Marino: J. Theodore Bent - A freak of Freedom: or, the Republic of San Marino

Sao Tome and Principe:

Saudi Arabia

Senegal

Serbia

Seychelles: Antoine Abel - Coco Sec (FR)

Sierra Leone

Singapore: Cyril Wong - Tilting our Plates to catch the Light

Slovakia: Milan Rúfus - Strenges Brot

Slovenia: France Prešeren - Poems

Solomon Islands: John Saunana - Cruising Through the Reverie

Somalia: Hadraawi - The Poet and the Man

South Africa: JM Coetzee - Disgrace

South Sudan: Nyuol Lueth Tong - There is a country

Spain: Miguel de Unamuno - Abel Sanchez and Other Stories

Sri Lanka

Sudan

Suriname

Sweden: August Strindberg - The Red Room

Switzerland: Gottfried Keller - Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe

Syrian Arab Republic: Ibn al-Nafis - Theologus Autodidactus

Taiwan*

Tajikistan: Shavkat Niyazi - At the Foot of Blue Mountains: Stories by Tajik Authors

Thailand

Timor-Leste: Xanana Gusmão - Mar Meu

Togo

Tonga: Epeli Hau'ofa - Tales of the Tikongs

Trinidad and Tobago: VS Naipaul - A House for Mr Biswas

Tunisia: Albert Memmi - The Pillar of Salt

Turkey

Turkmenistan: Magtymguly - Poems from Turkmenistan

Tuvalu: Neil Lifuka - Logs in the current of the sea

Uganda: Okot p'Bitek - Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol

Ukraine: Andrey Kurkov - Death and the Penguin

United Arab Emirates

UK: Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway

United Republic of Tanzania

USA: John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath

Uruguay

Uzbekistan: Abdullah Qoqiriy - Bygone Days

Vanuatu: Grace Molisa - Black Stone

Vatican City*: Andrew Graham-Dixon - Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel

Venezuela

Viet Nam

Yemen: Abdul-wali - They die strangers

Zambia

Zimbabwe

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 8.27

Holidays

Anti-Rent Insurrection Anniversary Day (Delaware)

The Duchess Who Wasn't Day

Film and Movies Day (Russia)

First Kiss Day

Good Sex Day

Harvest’s End (Elder Scrolls)

Hydrogen Balloon Flight Anniversary Day

International Boobs Day (Italy)

International Boxing Day

International Gamecock Day

International Lottery Day

Just Because Day

Karam Puja (Assam, India)

Kiss Me Day

Krakatoa Day

Ladder Day (French Republic)

Lyndon Baines Johnson Day (Texas)

Motorist Consideration Day

National Radio Day (Argentina)

Nativity of Isis (Egyptian Goddess of Fertility)

Oil & Gas Industry Appreciation Day

Petroleum Day

Pharmacy Day (Iran)

Russian Cinema Day

Senior Race Day (Isle of Man)

Tarzan Day

Three-Thousandth Thnork of the Year (Fairy)

World Rock Paper Scissors Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Crab Soup Day

National Banana Lovers Day

National Peach Day

National Pots de Creme Day

Salo Day (Ukraine)

Independence & Related Days

Declaration of the Rights of Man (Adopted by French Assembly; 1789)

Moldova (a.k.a. Ziua Republicii); from USSR, 1991)

Yungtaria (Declared; 2016) [unrecognized]

4th & Last Tuesday in August

Lammas Fair Day (Ballycastle, Ireland) [Last Tuesday]

Prophetic Prayer Day [4th Tuesday]

Taco Tuesday [Every Tuesday]

Target Tuesday [Every Tuesday]

Tater Tot Tuesday [Every Tuesday]

Tell the Truth Tuesday [4th Tuesday of Each Month]

Teriyaki Tuesday [Last Tuesday of Each Month]

Thai Tuesday [4th Tuesday of Each Month]

Touch-A-Heart Tuesday [Tuesday of Be Kind to Humankind Week]

Transformation Tuesday [Last Tuesday of Each Month]

Trivia Tuesday [Every Tuesday]

Two For Tuesday [Every Tuesday]

Festivals Beginning August 27, 2024

Farm Progress Show (Boone, Iowa) [thru 8.29]

Free Earth Festival (Asprovalta, Greece) [thru 9.2]

Van Wert County Fair (Van Wert, Ohio) [thru 9.2]

Feast Days

Alexandra Nechita (Artology)

Baculus of Sorrento (Christian; Saint)

Caesarius of Arles (Christian; Saint)

Calasanetius (Christian; Saint)

Day Sacred to Consus (God of Graineries; Ancient Rome)

Decuman (Christian; Saint)

Devaki Day (Indian Mother-Goddess; Everyday Wicca)

Euthalia (Christian; Saint)

Feast Day of Pan (Ancient Greece)

Feast of Incandescent Rebellion

Funella Furchester (Muppetism)

Gebhard of Constance (Christian; Saint)

Harris Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Hugh if Lincoln (Christian; Saint)

Inspiration Day (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Jeanette Winterson (Writerism)

John of Pavia (Christian; Saint)

Joseph Calasanctius (Christian; Saint)

Juan Fernando Cobo (Artology)

Klebold Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Little St.Hugh of Lincoln (Christian; Saint)

Lycerius (a.k.a. Glycerius, Lizier; Christian; Saint)

Máel Ruba (a.k.a. Rufus, Malrubius) of Scotland (Christian; Saint)

Man Ray (Artology)

Marcellus and His Companions (Christian; Martyrs)

Margaret the Barefooted (Christian; Saint)

Monica of Hippo (mother of Augustine of Hippo; Christian; Saint) [Alcoholics]

Murray Matisse (Muppetism)

Narnus (Christian; Saint)

Phallogia (Pagan)

Phanourios of Rhodes (Christian; Saint)

Poëmen (a.k.a. Pastor; Christian; Saint)

Rufus and Carpophorus (Christian; Saints)

Stevin (Positivist; Saint)

Syagrius of Autun (Christian; Saint)

Theodore Dreiser (Writerism)

Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle (Episcopal Church)

The Threethousandth Thnork of the Year (Shamanism)

Tithi of Sri Sri Madhabdeva (Assam, India)

Udon Day (Pastafarian)

Usuki Stone Buddhas Fire Festival (Japan)

Volturnalia (Festival to the God of Waters & Fountains; Ancient Rome)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Prime Number Day: 239 [52 of 72]

Shakku (赤口 Japan) [Bad luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

The African Queen, by C.S. Forester (Novel; 1935)

A-Lad-In Bagdad (WB MM Cartoon; 1938)

Bill & Ted Face the Music (Film; 2020)

Camouflage (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1943)

A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (Novella; 1937)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Film; 1958)

The Centaur, by John Updike (Novel; 1963)

Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. (Novel; 1948)

Cherish, by The Association (Song; 1966)

Circus (Ub Iwerks MGM Cartoon; 1932)

The Dippy Diplomat (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1945)

Dizzy Newsreel (Phantasies Cartoon; 1943)

Dudley Do-Right (Film; 1999)

Egyptian Melodies (Silly Symphony Disney Cartoon; 1931)

El Salón México, by Aaron Copland (Symphonic Composition; 1937)

Fright to the Finish (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1954)

Games People Play, by Eric Berne (Psychology Book; 1963)

A Ham in a Role (WB LT Cartoon; 1949)

Hamlet 2 (Film; 2008)

Hollywood Graduation (Color Rhapsody Cartoon; 1938)

Hyde and Hare (WB LT Cartoon; 1955)

I’m Gonna Send Your Vote to College (America Rock Cartoon; Schoolhouse Rock; 2002)

In the Heat if the Night, by Pat Benatar (Album; 1979)

Martin (TV Series; 1992)

Mary Poppins (Film; 1964)

Niagara Fools (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1956)

No Code, by Pearl Jam (Album; 1996)

Old Blackout Joe (Phantasies Cartoon; 1942)

Pigmalion, by Jean-Philippe Rameau (Opera/Ballet; 1748)

Presidential Minute, a.k.a. The Campaign Trail (America Rock Cartoon; Schoolhouse Rock; 2002)

Prométhée, by Gabriel Fauré (Tragédie Lyrique (Grand Cantata); 1900)

Rabbit Redux, by John Updike (Novel: 1971) [Rabbit #2]

Roman Holiday (Film; 1953)

The Shepherds Crown, by Terry Pratchet (Novel; 2015) [Discworld #41]

The Simulacra, by Philip K. Dick (Novel; 1964)

South Pole Pals (Chilly Willy Cartoon; 1966)

Spinach vs. Hamburgers (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1948)

Swing Time (Film; 1936)

Tarzan of the Apes (Novel; 1912)

Ten, by Pearl Jam (Album; 1991)

Toomorrow (Film; 1970)

Vacation Friends (Film; 2021)

Wet Blanket Policy (Andy Panda Cartoon; 1948)

Wholly Smoke (WB LT Cartoon; 1938)

Today’s Name Days

Gebhard, Margareta, Monika, Vivian (Austria)

Anđelka, Bogoljub, Monika (Croatia)

Otakar (Czech Republic)

Gebhardus (Denmark)

Maime, Maimi, Maimo, Maimu (Estonia)

Rauli (Finland)

Monique (France)

Gebhard, Monika, Vivian (Germany)

Arcadia, Arcadios, Fanourios, Liberios, Osios (Greece)

Gáspár (Hungary)

Cesario, Monica, Rocco (Italy)

Jorens, Ragnars, Valdmiers, Žanis (Latvia)

Aušrinė, Cezarijus, Cezaris, Tolvydas (Lithuania)

Roald, Rolf (Norway)

Angel, Angelus, Cezary, Gebhard, Józef, Kalasanty, Małgorzata, Przybymir, Rufus, Teodor (Poland)

Silvia (Slovakia)

Mónica (Spain)

Raoul, Rolf (Sweden)

Caesar, Cesar, King, Kingsley, Lyndon, Sheri, Sherri, Sherry, Sheryl (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 240 of 2024; 126 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of Week 35 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Coll (Hazel) [Day 25 of 28]

Chinese: Month 7 (Ren-Shen), Day 24 (Guy-Hai)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 23 Av 5784

Islamic: 21 Safar 1446

J Cal: 30 Purple; Lastday [30 of 30]

Julian: 14 August 2024

Moon: 37%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 14 Gutenberg (9th Month) [Vaucanson]

Runic Half Month: Rad (Motion) [Day 5 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 69 of 94)

Week: 4th Full Week of August

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 6 of 32)