#history and geography wise

[cursingtoji]

“haven’t you seen the news about that?”

me who works 11 hours a day anxious 24/7 about not being able to afford a place to live deciding to read and write little fiction stories to get a tiny dopamine instead of keeping up with everything wrong in the world

[ceoofcrimes]

today i told my friend how intelligent he is and how amazing it is that he has this knowledge of really complicated sci fi strategy games (which is something outside of my taste). and he tells me, "Yeah, but you know the entire history of Slipknot. I could never understand that" LMAO

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Sorry if my question was uncomfortable, but I'm a foreigner and would like to understand more about the "feud" between Greece and North Macedonia. I've seen (heated) discussions between Greeks and Macedonians about culture, but I don't know much about the context. Again, sorry if the question is uncomfortable or insensitive.

I think this Geography Now! video does a good job of explaining the controversy. Basically, the Greek position is that since Slavs came a thousand years after Alexander in the area, and the culture and language of North Macedonians are largely Slavic it's illogical for them to name their country after a Hellenistic kingdom and claim many Greek figures, and also Alexander the Great, as people from their culture.

For clarification, Alexander the Great was certainly Greek and he spoke the Macedonian dialect of Greek which was Doric (for reference the Spartans also spoke the Doric dialect). When North Macedonians say "he was Macedonian" they mean he was from their culture and he spoke their language, and he wasn't Greek.

North Macedonian history tends to confuse the administrative regions with culture and ethnicity because it's convenient to them. It doesn't matter if Kyrillos and Methodios were two Greek brothers from Thessaloniki. To N. Macedonians, because these two brothers were in a region that was occasionally the administrative region of Macedonia, they were "Macedonians", hence "from North Macedonia". To them it doesn't matter that Alexander's birthplace and all important cities of the Hellenistic Macedonian Kingdom are in Greece.

What is crucial to understand about this controversy is that Macedonia for a long, long time, was basically "a geographical region of many mountains". The Greek word Μακεδονία literally means "Mountainous Region", and because it's kind of a distinct region it was a district on its own many times. That's an approximation of the limits of "Macedonia" as a geographical region with distinct characteristics.

Below is the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia. However, the people who are now residents of N. Macedonia won't be here for another thousand years!

The guy in the video says the Macedonian kingdom expanded, but then he doesn't say that it was separated into more kingdoms for better governance, and one of those kingdoms was this controversial region (in Green) which is now part of Greece and North Macedonia. (Slavs were still not in the area)

When Romans conquered these kingdoms they also separated the area into administrative regions. The province of Macedonia within the Roman Empire, circa 125 (Slavs were still not in the area):

Later administrative departments of Roman empire (Slavs were still not in the area). In fact, "Provincia Macedoniae" changed almost at the time the Slavs arrived, in the 7th century.

Within the Eastern Roman Empire there was later separation into Themata, but now the department of Macedonia was moved to the West, occasionally including parts of the region where N. Macedonia is today. (Slavs in the area after 7th c. ACE)

Theeeen came the Turks, and separated the regions differently. Now everyone, Turks, Greeks, Slavs, Hebrews and whoever else lived in that region, are all part of the same "millet", the Rum Millet. "Macedonia" wasn't an administrative area then.

In the 19th century, Turks and Slavs were the majority in the region of Macedonia, with Greeks coming third population-wise, and Hebrews also having very large communities.

(Greeks might not like this fact, or they may ignore it completely, but if you open actual historical books and maps, you'll see the demographics. We have censuses from that era. I learned the old Slavic and Turkic names that villages and places in my region had. There's also a reason Kemal Ataturk's mother wrote to him "They took our Salonik" when Greeks reclaimed the city after 600 years. We can still love our country and appreciate our history, without erasing parts of it.)

In 1912, the largest part of the region of Macedonia was claimed by Greeks. In time more Greeks came to it as immigrants from Anatolia and other Greek regions, shifting the population in such a way that Greeks were now the majority. (North Macedonia still doesn't exist as a country)

In 1991, when the country of North Macedonia was created, Greece already had an administrative region of Macedonia which covered most of the Macedonian geographical area, also the ancient Greek cities of the kingdom, and the emblem of Greek Macedonia was the ancient Greek Macedonian star. The Vergina Star, and the ancient Greek city of Vergina is also in Greek ground today. (Our Emblem and Flag)

So you can imagine it came as a shock to Greeks when a newly founded country used not only their symbols, but also distinctly Greek symbols. People who are now residents of N. Macedonia lived in the geographical region that a few centuries ago was also "Macedonia" in the administrative sense, so I get where they're coming from. However, when culture gets appropriated, when the culture of important ethnically Greek figures is erased, when Greek words are claimed to be "Macedonian" all of a sudden since 1991, things get tense.

It's a political matter, as the video says. People from the two countries usually have normal interactions if the matter doesn't come up. And I don't think there's hate between the simple people.

[iaus]

okay after seeing the student count of aguefort courtesy of idonthaveanyurlideas... this was originally going to be me talking about the classes, but i got fixated on the schedule LMAO.

anyway.

i will be using california school standards simply because that is what i am familiar with. and using the (erroneous) assumption that aguefort has any sort of state/education board requirements...

listen. i love applying stupid, horribly mundane realism to ridiculous fantasy.

Now. In California you have some credit/class requirements for graduation. I'm not bothering with the specific classes (like Algebra and the types of history) because we are going to be making some fantasy requirements up.

But okay bare bones, to graduate high school in California you need:

3 years of English

2 years of mathematics

3 years of social science

2 years of science

2 years of physical education (wish someone had given me this fucking memo)

1 year of foreign language OR visual and performing arts

So. Let's get started on what your 4 years at Aguefort could look like.

Let's preface this with the fact that probably every Class teacher probably has to have at least one or two periods of a core subject (and they probably grumble the whole time about it).

Now let's do some "equating" of those core subjects to fantasy core subjects.

English Language Arts = Common Language Arts

Mathematics = Same. You need math no matter what. Suck it up.

Social Science = Split up into history, government, and geography.

Physical Education = The idea of wizard/sorcerer PE is making me lose my shit so yea let's add this in here.

Foreign Language/Arts = Largely the same. I'm assuming these would be your languages, tools, weapons, armor proficiency.

Okay we got our equivalencies.

Now I'm going to once again do some speculating on high school schedules based on my time teaching in middle school (very similar structure) and the high schools around me. Please don't doxx me with this information.

TYPICALLY in my experience you will have 6-7 classes each will be about 50 minutes each with a 40 minute lunch. We’re gonna use 6 classes for this because when you do 7 classes things start getting really fucked.

Now schedule-wise, some schools will do a "full" day where you go to all your classes and then switch to block (attend your odd classes/attend your even classes).

Some schools do certain days as block schedules while still having a M/F "full" day so students can go to all their classes. I'm gonna operate on the assumption that Aguefort does a fucking mind splitting version of this but we won’t get into that in this post.

So, let's make a sample schedule for... let's say a freshman because freshmen always get the short end of the stick because they hardly ever get to actually have electives because of all their core classes they have to knock out.

Period 1: CLA: Common 9

Period 2: Math: Introductory Adventuring Math

Period 3: Physical Education: Non-Martial Option

Period 4: Science: Introductory to the Bestiary

Lunch

Period 5: CLASS SPECIFIC

Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC

Now, the thought here is to ONLY have a class specific class after lunch so that way the last 2 hours of the day, no matter the scheduling day, are dedicated to working on honing your class skills. So, if you do a standard go to all class you are still spending kind of a "home room" with your class which might switch off.

Like, for example if you're a fighter your class specific period 5 might be an extra physical education with Coach Daybreak (yikes) and a bunch of other general martial students, but your period 6 is then lecture/basics/fundamentals with Corsica. This also would align with MCAT kids because period 5 might be with your "primary" class and then period 6 is with what you've multi-classed into.

HOWEVER, this class schedule is missing some of the required classes.

So, this student, for example, does not have at a glance a language/art elective or social science. This is generally pretty common for freshman. You get jack shit because you gotta do your prelims before the fun stuff.

I'm imagining that language and arts would probably be more a junior/senior year thing. Sophomore if you're lucky.

Class specific classes also might double into that.

Ambitious students also might ask for a zero period, a lunch class, or a period 7 class (with parent/admin/teacher approval).

Now, using this same student let's make a sophomore year schedule.

For the record, to meet their grad requirements they need:

2 more years of CLA, 1 more year of math, 3 more years of social science, 1 more year of science, 1 year of phys ed, and 1 year of language/art.

This is also assuming that the student "passed" every class with at least a D and earned their credits. (Popular chant of my high school history teacher who I hated: D is for diploma.)

Now, I have a lot of moving parts so I'm not gonna move periods around but let's say we have:

Period 1: CLA: Common 10

Period 2: Math: Basics of Adventuring Mathematics

Period 3: Social Science: Geography of Spyre (Semester 1)/History of Spyre (Semester 2)

Period 4: Science: Advanced Bestiary Sciences

Lunch

Period 5: Phys Ed: Non-Martial Option

Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC

Now, I'm imagining as a sophomore you might have a bit more “leniency” to take more non-class classes since you've presumably mastered the "basics" of your class. So sophomore year is when you start getting into more rigorous academic work and you sacrifice one of your class specific classes so you can start getting your social science credit out of the way.

This means that you are spending less time doing class specific things, but you are expanding your horizons as a student. This also means that this student gets to knock out the following requirements for graduation: Math, Science, and Physical Education.

So, this means they now have 3 extra classes to devote to either their MCAT, their primary class, and/or other graduation requirements. Let's do a check on what they need now that they've cleared 3 grad requirements:

1 more year of CLA, 2 more years of social science, and 1 year of Language/Art. Plus whatever other class specific graduation/party requirements might be set in place at Aguefort.

Let's do their junior schedule:

Period 1: CLA: Common 11

Period 2: Social Science: History of Solace

Period 3: Language/Art: Forgery 1 (for non-rogues)

Period 4: ELECTIVE

Lunch

Period 5: CLASS SPECIFIC

Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC

Now juniors will have more elective options AND the option to go back to having two periods of class specific classes or a second elective. This student is on track for graduation as long as they are passing with Ds.

So, now all they actually need is 1 more year of social science. I remember my high school did this very deliberately. They wanted us to take government and economics in our senior year and that was literally the ONLY requirement for graduation (plus the high school exit exam). But if you were trying for college, you would probably take another year of language arts, another year of science, another year of something so it looks better. Now, let’s do senior year schedule:

Period 1: ELECTIVE/Free Period

Period 2: Social Science: Economics of Spyre and Neighboring Countries (Semester 1)/Government of Spyre (Semester 2)

Period 3: ELECTIVE/Free Period

Period 4: INTER PARTY DYNAMICS COURSE

Lunch

Period 5: CLASS SPECIFIC

Period 6: CLASS SPECIFIC

Now, again, just doing some vague assumptions here but I think your senior year at Aguefort would be about that final fine tuning of going from student to adventurer. You’d probably have some party dynamic classes you have to take that would be an equivalent of the high school exit exam. Senior year, typically, is a breeze from the seniors I’ve talked to. I don’t think Aguefort would do it, but I know I’ve substituted for senior English which was mostly them practicing composition needed for college.

But. Anyway. I was going to make a post more on what I think class sizes look like, but this came out.

I have no real ending thought here except for the fact that I find the idea of Aguefort Academy having to at least pretend to function like a real high school, so the state doesn’t swoop in and shut it down infinitely funny.

I don’t really want a senior year but if there is, please, AAA losing their accreditation or revealing that their degrees actually mean nothing would be SO FUNNY PLEASE.

[psalm22-6]

The Illustrated Review was a paper published in London in the 1870s, and in 1873 published a series called "Retrospective Glances at Foreign Literature." I'm not super familiar with the reception of Les Mis in England, but keep in mind that this is written a little over a decade after Les Mis came out. Here's some highlights:

Ten years have elapsed since Victor Hugo, after a long period of silence, broken only by a few melodious volumes of verse, astonished the land of his birth by a book which was more a challenge hurled at those who had exiled him than a novel. When "Les Misérables" appeared the glove was eagerly taken up, and a turmoil of conflicting passions was aroused. [. . .] It is not on the first perusal of "Les Misérables" that an opinion of its merits and demerits can be formed with justice or impartiality, for an ardent longing to get to the end is the only feeling experienced, the burning pages carry you along breathless and amazed, and, as before some pyrotechnic display, you remain dazzled by the sudden alternations of brilliant light and utter darkness. Victor Hugo started on a wrong theory. Embittered by his exile, blinded by his political passions, he attempted to prove that society in general and legislation in particular were responsible for the evil doings of the world, he openly took the part of the criminal against his judges, of the convict against his jailers, of the spoiler against the despoiled, and attempted to prove that crime is a far minor degradation to man than its repression by law. This dangerous sophism is developed with the power of his magic talent.

Myriel is said to be irrelevant to the plot, and particularly the episode with G is offensive:

After a lengthy and useless exposition, we come to the episode of the Conventionnel: it appears to have been inserted only to allow of a panegyric of 1793; it brings into violent and unartistic contrast the characters of the saintly Bishop Myriel and of the untamed democrat. It is neither wise nor useful to uphold with brutal energy ideas which common sense, self respect, and even history have taught us to judge and condemn, and to degrade at pleasure what in itself is venerable by unseemly comparisons such as are drawn between monarchs and ruffians.

A lot of reviews of Les Mis will include summaries of the book which I assume I don't need to share but this misrepresentation of the plot is noteworthy:

Jean Valjean, the hero of "Les Misérables," is taken up by the police for a petty theft, sent to Toulon for assaulting his warders, and condemned to a long detention for repeated attempts to escape.

From this the author concludes:

Jean Valjean is not condemned to the "Galéres" because he stole a loaf, but for contempt of the law in the person of its ministers, and if the principles so imprudently advocated by the author received their full application, they would involve the suppression of penal laws [. . .] Anarchy would at once prevail, persons and property remain unprotected; but like too many would-be reformers, M. Hugo finds it easier to pick out the flaws of a system than to suggest the remedy to a necessary evil.

So Jean Valjean's problem was apparently that he didn't respect authority? Okay.... The author also believes that Fantine would not have been dismissed for having a child out of wedlock

Life in manufacturing districts gives us, alas! too many examples of actual sin to leave us credulous about the virtuous indignation and stern morality of a factory master. Victor Hugo overshot the mark, and in taking pains to paint society as a ruthless Nemesis, he made her out a prude.

He also finds fault with Hugo's depiction of the battle of Waterloo, such as his geography of the battlefield and his poetic language:

The fastidious critic whose ideal is the purity of the classical author may well have been alarmed by the liberty of expression used by M. Hugo with such careless ease, but we are inclined to believe that his unusual but telling phraseology, his incisive, coloured, weird, fantastic, uncommon style is a new vein discovered in the rich mine of the French language, a vein which others, taught by his example, may follow, gathering the harvests, and avoiding the pitfalls which they would have had neither the genius to discover nor the courage to encounter.

However the author has to admit that he enjoyed some passages, such as those dealing with Sister Simplice or the young Cosette.

Some of the pages of “Les Misérables" emerge so white and pure from the sombre background, that we almost fancy that while he wrote them some angel's wing was fanning the author’s fevered brow. Was it the memory of a lost and adored daughter, or was it the breath of years gone by laden with their tender emotions and young illusions?

For better or for worse (worse if you are of the opinion that Les Miserables is an evil book), this book contains a little bit of everything:

You see, as in a kaleidoscope, the darkness of the convict’s cell and the sunshine of Cosette’s garden, the dictionary of ‘‘argot” and the poet’s rhapsody; Thénardier, the incarnation of vice, Cosette, the emblem of innocence; Waterloo and the barricades, Claquesous and Bishop Myriel, Eponine and Marius; while, by a prodigious metamorphosis, Jean Valjean, the low, mean, heartless thief, the man without dignity and without courage, is transformed into Jean Valjean, the hero and the martyr. Thus we progress from volume to volume to the close of the story, the latter part of which is worthy of sincere admiration, as we are initiated to the mutual love of Cosette and Marius, and witness the slow torture of Jean Valjean, the agony that wrings his paternal heart and converts his love for the child of his adoption into a crown of thorns pressing deep into his flesh, while he makes no sign—cruel and fatal position, in which the tormentor is no less innocent than the victim, and where the blow that kills is dealt by the hand that meant only to caress.

The author believes that if Victor Hugo had renounced his ideology and given up his exile, there might have been something redeeming in Les Miserables, but that instead, he has begun a "downward course."

“Les Travailleurs de la Mer,” while containing fewer beauties, magnified the errors of ‘‘ Les Misérables,” and were followed by “L'homme qui Rit,” the most deplorable mistake which a man of genius could have committed, a mistake so enormous that even should it be in his power to retrieve it, it must remain as a blot on M. Hugo’s reputation as a man of letters.

[worldsunlikemyown]

KOTLC AND TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM: READERSHIP OVERLAP

I've been feeling curious about how much overlap there is between the readership of these works, because I've seen several KOTLC people posting legendarium-related things recently (and I myself suspect that some elements of KOTLC were inspired by it, and thus find these elements interesting). So, if you could humour me and answer the question below:

Read the options CAREFULLY and vote whichever option FITS YOU BEST (I think I've covered most if not all). If you're confused about the options, the relevant information is below the poll. Also, I'd love it if you could tell me what you voted in the tags!

So without further ado:

REMINDER: If you have NOT read KOTLC (Keeper of the Lost Cities), then PLEASE do not vote.

Please REBLOG for larger sample size! Because I really am quite curious :)

If you are confused about any of these options, please read the explanations below:

If you've watched AND read some of these, please don't select the watch-only option :)

The definition of READ here (for everything but HoME where a dedicated skim or half the book counts) is if you've read the text IN ITS ENTIRETY or closely enough that it may as well be so (leaving this one up to your judgement but as a rule, let's say about 80% to 90% and with skipping only non-essential bits (LOTR prologue and appendices, geography chapter etc -- again, these may seem essential to you, but these are the ones most people seem to skip/skim)).

Also, although I doubt this will actually be a cause of debate, audiobooks count. They always count.

(rest of the explanation under cut if needed)

You do not have to have read all the Great Tales either; having read only one or a few counts.

The osmosis/pop culture option is for things like 'I mean I've watched 'They're taking the hobbits to Isengard' and/or 'I have an irl friend or beloved mutual or person I follow who's read the books/watched the movies and talks about them a lot'.

For ONLY WATCHED, fan-films and fan-adaptations (such as the many Silm-related rock operas) count.

Silm refers to The Silmarillion (1977), as in the published text only.

The Great Tales refers to The Children of Húrin (2007), Beren and Lúthien (2017) and The Fall of Gondolin (2018). For the purposes of this poll it also includes The Fall of Númenor (2022)

HoME refers to The Histories of Middle-earth (1983-1996). For the purposes of this poll, it also includes Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (1980) and The Nature of Middle-earth (2021) and (though this one's iffy) The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981); if you've read Letters but not any of Silm/Great Tales/other HoME, just vote for the LOTR and/or Hobbit option.

[ansbobcar]

will ppl kill me if i say i wrote another oc to write a fic with orter??? and it could be in the same universe as my loser=lover fic???

I swear it's because I'm addicted to those "hey let's get married out of convenience" plots and the thought of Orter getting beaten at a drinking game is funny.

HERE'S MY NEWEST MASHLE OC Y'ALL

_ _ _

GENERAL INFO:

Name: Rinka Ontarin

Other names: Rinka Onoji, Looney Vision, The Blood Cane, Bloody Sicko, The Devil's Child

Sex: Female

Age: 25

Birthday: December 5th

Blood Type: O

Height: 170cm

Weight: 68kg

Occupation: Vice head of the Magical Power Administration, Divine Visionary

House: Adler

Affiliation: Bureau of Magic (current), Easton Magic Academy (former/drop out), the Onoji Family (former)

Dominant Hand: Left

Foot size: 25cm

Good Subjects: Magic Geography, Broom Classes

Bad Subjects: Magic History, Magic Zoology

Hobbies: Drinking, Doodling

Favourite Food: Baked Sweet Potatoes

Favourite Word: “Irrational Judgement”

Favourite type of the opposite sex: “Ew.”

Dislikes: People turning back on their promises, Irrational decision making, Drunk people

Frequently visited spots: Casino, Bars

Appearance: 

She has her blonde hair up in a half ponytail with frosted lavender tips and yellow eyes. She wears black gloves and wears a grey dress shirt paired with grey pants with a muddied orange trench coat with her DV emblem (don't know what the design is pls help). Line wise, it's a singular line on her left cheek which bends like a J.

Skills/Abilities: 

Personal Magic:

Contracts - In a similar fashion to Stars and Stripes, she’s able to force laws/deals onto anything she chooses, the only restriction being the amount of magical energy she pours into one increases the potency, permenancr and serious effect of the laws/deals. Her personal magic is barely utilised because it’s absolutely demonised in her family because she caused the death of her father which was ruled to be suicide. Why would someone’s personal magic be so legally binding? It’s so backhanded but as a result of this, she’s an invaluable member of the Bureau of Magic having managed to force everyone into a vow of secrecy if they know about her magic.

Sangs - The rest of the world believes her personal magic to be blood manipulation, she is capable of manipulating her own blood internally, externally and those within a nearby vicinity.

Sangs Bindings - Blood chains

Summon:

Eris (Goddess of Discord) - If she had a summons it would be Eris. Her wand transforms into an ambiguously defined golden staffed mallet. Eris does not appear behind her in the slightest.

Equipment: 

Basic Wand - Like everyone else, she wields a basic wand, however unlike most. She doesn’t utilise a wand for her ‘personal’ magic. She finds wands stupid though and only utilises it for show half the time.

Paring Knife - She draws blood quite a lot.

Family History:

Her father was a member of the Onoji, which was well known for being a part of the Bureau of Magic and producing natural 2 liner magicians.

However, when she was 4, she practically killed one of her many aunts right infront of the others by playing Old Maid as a natural 1 liner. And thus her personal magic was demonised and personally restricted to be unused, making up a new personal magic to hide the true nature of her magic.

She wasn’t completely mistreated, but by rejecting her personal magic, she felt emotionally neglected and as a result has an irrational fear of other people knowing her personal magic. Due to her mistreatment, her mother divorced while she was attending Easton Magic Academy.

WEAKNESSES:

Bloodloss/Anaemia - The moment she stops circulating her blood by solidifying it is the moment she loses a shit tonne of blood circulating in her system. Sure she may never run out of blood but it doesn’t circulate. So she’s prone to fainting through bloodloss of just lack of circulation.

Overreliance on Magic Enhancement - If she’s up against someone who can cancel her magic, she’s fucked because it’s what makes her invincible to majority of opponents.

Often forgets to keep a defensive stance- This is mostly because she has been training to be physically fit/strength being able to maintain speed under increased gravitation force.

Extra Info:

She’s a drop out from Easton Magic Academy due to lacking the funds to attend the school and her mother encouraging her to just live her life like she wants to instead of following the footsteps of what her father and the others want her aka being Divine Visionary. However, she drops out of Easton magic Academy to focus on being Divine Visionary full time.

She’s closer to Ryoh and Kaldo because they were the most welcoming of her at the time she and because as a barely 20 year old, she was placed with the Magical Power Administration of all things and the two of them helped her out. She was also the youngest Divine Visionary at the time before Rayne Ames took that record.

Ryoh and Kaldo know her true personal magic and are sworn into secrecy through it. Ryoh acts as a better father figure towards her, that’s why she’s close to him but he’s busy with his wife and kid so she feels bad to keep him away. Kaldo’s more like a brother figure for her, they’ve got the typical sibling banter.

She’s a heavy drinker and takes at least 6 hours of continuous drinking of the strongest things to get tipsy. 

PLOT IDEAS:

Orter Madl's parents want him to be engaged before he turns 24 otherwise they'll set him up with someone against his will. But obviously, this guy isn't interested in anyone even tho he's gone on like 5 dates just to get them off his radar and work.

Rinka, his trusty vice head/former head of Magical Power Admin, suggests and offers him to try dating her to solve his problem. He ends up accepting her offer after he realises his parents will literally set him up with a high schooler.

They both suck at dating though having literally gone to the bar to get drunk for the past 3 weeks and he feels miserable because she's a better drinker.

Ryoh becomes the idea man and suggests they do a picnic date but ahah... these are the heads of the magical power administration and end up having to settle a dispute between Giants and Orter is reminded of why she was called The Blood Cane as she bursts the Giant into pieces before it could attack her.

"Don't worry, now you don't have to worry about losing game."

They make stupid bets to pass the time but Orter quickly discovers her secret when her father/other aunts greet her and she ignores them without knowing what's going on.

"Do you... know them?"

"Don't even recognise their faces."

I wanna make her slowly open up to him and vice versa BUT THEN BIG PLOT TWISTS OCCUR TOWARDS THE END OF THE MASHLE CANON STORY—

_ _ _

Ye that's all.

[jadeyharls]

Holy Crap, That is a Lot of Words: A "Brief" History of Jade E. Harley and the Alterra Timeline

April 13, Year 0 ATG (After the Game): Sburb is officially beaten and the new universe is created. This is where this timeline splits from the Alpha Timeline. Before opening the door, Karkat ends up speaking to Calliope and stops John from opening it. If she had been brought back from the dead, was it possible to bring back the other trolls? After some deliberation, the living players decided that it might be wise to do some preparation before entering the new universe. They didn’t know what to expect, and this was a second chance they were not ready to screw up.

Over the course of the next few months the players alongside representatives of the carapacians and consorts start laying out plans for the new universe. This includes how they would go about kickstarting the new civilization, starting with the foundation of a single settlement and a governing body. The Mayor is eventually elected the head of this governing body, with several of the “gods” playing active roles in society by serving or consulting on a variety of committees. All of the former players serve on a council put in place to safeguard the timeline, however, it is decided early on that no players would be permitted to hold elected roles that would influence governing policies. (Read as: Gods are not allowed to become president.)

After experimenting with several combinations of powers, the players finally figure out how to bring a ghost back without the use of a life ring… sort of. (This process became a bit more refined after Feferi was revived.) The hunt begins for the unaccounted for ghosts that are not currently a part of a sprite. During this time the players are guilt tripped convinced to bring the Beforian trolls with them as well. However, bringing back old friends does come with some cost. Davepeta for example had already vanished before the game ended. Nepeta’s ghost was eventually recovered (with her actually being the last to be revived), but there was no sign of what might be left of Davesprite. Hal is lost when bringing Equius out of the sprite, and Nanasprite and Jasprose both go missing during this time period.

Jade secretly stashes away a GREEN SUN spark somewhere during this time. To this day, no one knows but her. It’s hidden in a locket she keeps well buried in the back of her closet. She has methods in place to keep it from being detected. This is also why she still has a small degree of her first guardian powers. No one questions it (Rose and a few others probably do tbh) because “really, who completely understands how first guardians work anyway?” 

September, Year 0 ATG: The door to the new universe is opened. The players and those who joined them start looking for a place to settle, as well where the meteor lab might have crashed. However, it for some reason can not be found.

Sometime before the end of Year 0 AGT: Aranea, Gamzee, and Jack are put in trial for their various actions during the game. (Vriska and Eridan would later be addressed as well, but those were the big 3.) Since there really wasn’t much of a justice system in place yet, there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done. (They are still working on it. It’s not a super big priority though since most of the timeline’s residents are really chill.) The two trolls are basically given a second chance under extremely close supervision. Jack however is placed under “house arrest”, with Ms. Paint acting as his supervisor of sorts.

July 15th, Year 1 AGT: Cantown is officially founded and named. Located near a river about 100 miles off the east coast of what used to be the United States. I never officially decided where, but I think my original idea was that it might have been somewhere in where South Carolina used to be. Note though, that Earth’s geography has changed significantly.

Sometime during Year 1 AGT: Jade’s first post game death due to a construction accident. Not just or heroic.

Year 2 AGT: Jade and Jake (now 18) move out from their shared residence with John and Jane into the tower they built much closer to the coast. 

Sometime in Year 4 AGT: Dirk and Jade have a falling out after he and Jake get back together for the 3rd god dang time. Up until this point they actually had been decently good friends and often worked together since they both serve on the Science and Tech committee. 

Jade discovers a natural pool in what used to be Central America, and starts conducting research on wildlife that lives there, including the rapid evolution of sburb generated fauna (Hummingbirds and frogs).

Mid-December Year 5 AGT: Jade (now 21) accidentally discovers access to what she calls the multi-net through a website called Hivetale. She tells Jake about this fairly early on since he lives with her. Lots of weird stuff happens.

January Year 6 AGT: Jade meets her first moirail (Eridan). He is the first visitor from outside her timeline. These visits are mostly one sided though, as she has no way to leave her timeline at this point.

Aradia finds out about this and puts in place the secrecy rule. As long as the multiverse shenanigans stay under wraps, she is fine. If the secret gets out or the timeline is in anyway threatened, they will be going into total lockdown permanently.

Jade becomes close with another timeline’s Alpha Dave (David) and Hal around this point.

Spring Year 6 AGT: Hal gets severely injured. She convinces Aradia to help her break out of the timeline to go and help him. They end up needing another time player to make this work, and Damara is recruited after Aradia strikes a deal with her. Jade… wasn’t entirely sure what that deal was and was kind of afraid to ask. 

Turns out Hal’s version Dirk is the only one that knows how to fix him so enter this jerk. Seriously, she could not stand him at first because of how he treated Hal. Over time the two Striders ended up making up, and Jade befriended Dirk as well. (Aka, Grumpybutt.)

The ex moirail ends up moving in with her for a short time after his home gets destroyed by magical girls. Yes that is actually what happened, and no she did not tell Aradia about this.

Her timeline’s Rose and Kanaya get married.

Her timeline’s Dave and Karkat start dating.

John moves out from Jane’s house, and gets a place with Roxy and Calliope.

Summer Year 6 AGT: Hivetale says goodbye, Tumblr says hello. 

Jade meets Jack within like the first month. He keeps trying to fight her and she is NOT having it. Frankly, she doesn’t trust him. It’s freaking JACK NOIR, and still in full Bec mode at that. If being in contact with anyone is going to be a danger to her timeline, it’s going to be him right? 

“Wait who is this small dog child, and why/how the heck is she showing up at my house asking me to date her dad?” Jade meets Lily Noir, and the rest of the original 6 pups slowly make their way into her life. (Alpha, Bones, Timber, Demise, Lily, and Kami. The other 7 kids have not been born yet.) Jade reluctantly at first becomes friends with Jack. It… took awhile to get Lily to quit trying to get her to date Jack. 

Jake eventually ends up finding out about the Noir kids and proceeds to be like wtf. To be fair, Kami was painting occult rituals on their wall. 

Jade finds out Jake is planning to move in with Dirk. This ends up putting her in a really bad place mentally because she is terrified of the idea of living alone again after doing so for most her life. They come to a compromise, and this is when Dirk moves in with them much to her chagrin. 

Jade gets pale married?? Yeah, so… funny thing. She had no idea that is what happened, or that was even a thing. She was basically given a ring thought she was just getting a 6 month anniversary present. She didn’t know it was a marriage thing until months later. Luckily, she was okay with it, just really surprised. 

December, Year 6 AGT: Jade gets Poppy (her eevee) as a birthday present. Hiding her from Dirk is a massive pain, but she manages. Again, Jade didn’t tell Aradia. She found out of course eventually, but this was months later so by then Jade was able to convince her that she could keep the little terror hidden.

Year 7 AGT: Okay, so my memory gets a little foggy for the next few years, but I’m going to do my best. First off though, Jade finally gets a inter-dimensional portal device. 

Jade also gets Olena (her then Vulpix, now Ninetails) around late November. Dinah, her dog, was given to her by Jack that December.

Jade’s second death by plant spore induced strangulation. The purple stranglers are discovered and appropriately named. 

That one time she was magic anon-ed and given butterfly wings and antenna instead of her dog ears for like a week. That sucked. 

Also briefly turned into a griffin of all things by an anon. She hated that.

The dislocated knee incident.

Year 8-9 AGT: Okay, I might be off here, but I am about 80% sure this is when Flarping 2.0 happened. 

Olena evolves.

Hal and Grumpybutt Dirk vanished around Summer Year 8 a few months before she joined Flarping.

If I’m right then this is when she met Equius, Kris, EE, Vinny, and a few others. She was still on Tumblr some, but mostly on Flarping.

I want to say she met Nova as well? Which also means she got Gilligan (Her robotic humming bird assistant), though I do think that was post Flarping. 

Mer-May anon stikes. She basically gets stuck in a bathtub for a week.

I believe this is when Paradox Space was a thing for a little as well.

Built the cabin near the pool mentioned earlier, mostly to give her a place to let her pets wander freely and host visitors from outside the timeline where Dirk wouldn’t be an issue. But it also serves as a place to do her research. The ex moirail lived here for a few months at one point.

Year 10 AGT: Back to Tumblr.

Jade has to put Herbert the frog in solitary confinement away from other frogs. 

Roxy and John get engaged. No, they still aren’t married.

The ex moirail goes MIA. 

Jade and Equius start getting together. Not like “together” together though. Nooooo never.

3rd Death by late onset of the family peanut allergy. 

The tiny metal baby (Orion Pax the Aron) is hatched by an egg left at Jade’s cabin by Ivory Noir. 

Year 11 AGT: Not a whole lot happens unless I am forgetting something. Jade slowly starts to resent the now ex-moirail as he kind of just vanished without telling her, and she starts to realize some other things about the relationship as well. She finally decides to move on.

Equius gives her Oleander (Turtwig).

Gilligan starts acting… odd. 

Year 12 AGT: PRESENT DAY Jade turns 29 this year.

Gilligan starts acting more odd.

Not a whole lot of anything too crazy. 

Kris and Jade become moirails.

Year 13 AGT and forward: Gilligan is [Spoilers]. You’ll see it eventually. It’s about time I got that plot point moving. Anyway, from here on out, there is some discrepancy when it comes to the future of the timeline. Basically, Jade and the other immortals continue on their lives as civilization grows around them. Eventually though, there is a timeline split that leads to one of two potential far-off futures. Like hundreds of years off. One is the “good end”. Jade ends up raising a family of family of 4 adopted kids, and maaaaybe gets together with someone. (Big maybe) It’s just a happy, well-adjusted life where nothing bad will happen. No haha, not at all. The other is the “bad end”, which… basically involves Jade starting to take the goddess thing a bit too seriously after she gets ditched by most of the people in her life, and becomes the ruler of a new planet dubbed New Prospit. She does have an adopted son in this timeline who is killed during an attempted assassination, and whoops this starts a war. 

[sastrugie]

Hello and Seasons Greetings from your Secret Santa! I’m sorry it took me until now to send an ask. I hope you’ve been well!

I saw on your pinned post that you enjoy the Arctic, polar exploration, etc.. That’s really cool! I’ve always been fascinated by the Arctic and everything with it.

What’s your favorite not-well-known face about polar exploration, or explorer from history?

heyyy sorry for the latre reply :( i couldnt be online because of medical reasons but i feel better :)

I´ve been quite good ! just feel guilty because i´m behind with alot of things but im trying not to be too hard on myself fghjk

YES i LOVE polar exploration! I´m a nerd about it (esp antarctica) since 2016 and it is actually the reason I decided to study physical geography and geology :') I want to get more into the arctic because it´s so cool and ive been mostly focused on the antarctic so ... if you wanna share something pls do! :)

hmmmm thats such a nice question! so polar exploration fact per se i just love the packing regulations for the expeditioners like its the same as the "if you could take three things on an island" type of thing. and i´m interested in what they brought! like Lawrence Oates on the scott expedition in 1910 brought a fucking napoleon portrait?! (and remember they were only allowed to take so much weight per person) Frank Debenham from the same expedition brought a collection of cheap bad novels that ended up being devoured by everyone ahhah. idk who it was but on said expedition they also brought a PIANOLA and A BICYCLE. (like why would you need one in antarctica?!) and the ship was far below her max. weight line as she sailed!

this just amuses me :)

favourite polar explorer?? this is so difficult! I think science wise and like someone that could be actually considered a polar explorer is Frank Debenham (geologist solidaity! plus hes a sweetheart and SO PRETTY), otherwise I lovveeee Meares (eventhough i´m sure he would hate being considered as a polar explorer thats why I´m not doing it). I havent really got outside of the terra nova expedition sadly BUT im obsessed with the belgica and endurance (slowly but surely) so yeah :') still antarctica based I guess? BUT AGAIN PLS TELL ME ARCTIC FUNFACTS!

how are you <3?

[rhythmantics]

So first of all, I did not know you had a tumblr??? Second It Will Not Obey You SLAPS. And third my question: How in god's name did you do so much research for your fic??? What is your secret. How do you go about organizing or even knowing where to start for that matter. I struggle with research cause I never know where to start or stop and often I'm really uncertain if the info I'm gathering is even needed or if it's extraneous. I am both stupid and a perfectionist HELP ME

Hi Anon, thank you so much! I always appreciate viewer support and I hope you're enjoying all the art on this blog that isn't in the fic. In any case, I don't know if this method will work for you, or if it's how other authors do research, but here's my process. It's pretty long, so I'll put it under a cut for you:

First, I start with a story. When I say story, I don't really mean a beginning-middle-end, this happens and then that happens; it's a little more vague than that. For me, a story is more like a feeling, some truth or impulse, and all the writing or plot structure or everything else is built around it. I don't generally bother with things like plot structures (which I think should be descriptive and not prescriptive anyway), and I do make outlines, but you'd be surprised by how barren they are. Here's the original from 2016, with some spoilers blacked out:

And as you can see, I threw about half of it away during the writing process, haha. A surprising amount remains, though!

Something that comes about from approaching the story as a single entity is that oftentimes, things just fall into place. A big fight taking place in the congo where most of the cryptids from the Kur flash-forwards get called up, or the gang getting shot down over the Amazon like in the first two episodes of the show - little coincidences like this happen all the time. I think it's because, while writing, my brain starts making connections that I'm not consciously aware of - I often go by what "feels correct," and I've rewritten whole chapters multiple times before to chase that feeling of "correct."

How that ties into research is twofold: first, I'm a naturally curious person, and I'm constantly reading about stuff like mythology or ancient history or science etc. on my own. I like to have an approximate knowledge of many things - that way, there's more for my brain to make connections to. For example, I already knew about the chinese five-element system (wuxing), and remembered mystic hotspots from the show, and Excalibur, and video games, so when I decided on a plot device to keep Zak and Francis together during the main story, it was fairly easy to land on the idea of a quest to power up a special weapon only Francis can wield by hitting up mystical hotspots, each one themed after one of the wuxing.

The second part of the process is this: I have the general vibe or concept of the story in my head, and now I've settled on something concrete plot-wise - the magic weapon wuxing powerup quest. That makes it really easy to start researching specific details. I know I need a magic weapon, and I know this magic weapon has to be tied to Sumerian mythology, so I start digging around in Sumerian mythology for magic weapons, and find Sharur, the talking mace wielded by the Sumerian god Ninurta. Then I do some more research into the wuxing and see that each element is attached to a color, so those are the colors Sharur changes into. Now, a big part of the original show was its globetrotting nature, so obviously, I need to make each of these hotspots a different part of the globe. (And incidentally, "mythic hotspot" doesn't really roll off the tongue, so I rooted around myths for power spots etc. and found the Quechuan word "huaca," which has a meaning very similar to what I'm trying to make each huaca out to be).

So I scatter the huacas out so they're all roughly equidistant to each other, and none are too similar in geography or concept, and we go back to existing connections: I want to have one in China, because 1) I'm Chinese, 2) there's plot reasons (Sharur uses the wuxing because it was enchanted by a Chinese guy), 3) China has a long history comparable to India, the latter of which already featured extensively in the show. So I root around for the "secret science" parts of Chinese history and stumble across this semi-mythical Xia dynasty with its emperor who may or may not exist. That feels very Secret Saturdays to me, so Yu the Great and his tomb are now the second huaca. Now, we know so little about Yu the Great that there's not too much to draw from for how his tomb looks, but I already know about the tomb of Qin Shi Huang - his tomb's excavation was put on pause because ancient records spoke of him having a scale mercury replica of China complete with flowing mercury rivers, and while these claims were initially considered massive exaggerations if not outright lies, they DID find a TON of mercury in the tomb, making them go "unless..."

Mercury obviously fits right in with this huaca being "metal"-themed, so it's a perfect reference. The idea of a scale replica of China was blown up into the idea of a magically-powered VR simulation of ancient China. Now I need a cryptid for this arc, and hey, howdy, turns out Yu the Great has a serpent-slaying myth, Xiangliu! And what's this? Xiangliu's blood was so virulently poisonous that after it was slain, when the floodwaters came, the land became barren! There is such a strong pro-environement and pro-taking care of animals even when they seem monstrous vibe in TSS that if this story is seen through the lens of TSS, it looks a lot like a cautionary tale for why you don't just murder rampaging animals - they're natural parts of their natural environments, and there are repercussions for messing too much with the food chain.

And hey, doesn't that sound like a lesson Francis should learn? The last huaca, we got as far as Francis going from "I don't want to be here" to "I guess I'm stuck here." This huaca, we need to highlight how different he and Zak are, and how shortsighted - and human - Francis's ideals are, where he repeats Yu the Great's mistake, and humanity's mistakes as a whole.

Again, a lot of these connections aren't necessarily being made consciously. In the moment, they just sort of "feel right," which I know is unhelpful, but I can't really explain it any other way.

For an arc that had more secondary research than already knowing things ahead of time, the arc in the Congo took the longest to write (there was a two-year hiatus between it and the previous arc), in large part because I had so little to go off of. Myths from the Congo area are fairly sparse on the ground (for many reasons), and the ones I did find didn't really feel very TSS or IWNOY. I knew that this was the arc where everything went to shit - that we'd been building to that for a while - but I didn't have in my notes exactly how things went to shit, or even what the huaca was going to be. I knew it would be wood-themed, but this being the Congo Rainforest, pretty much anything I did would count. I knew I wanted to do something with the origin of humanity and/or the lemurians, because Africa was where humans first evolved.

So, actually, I wound up doing research into pretty much everything - all the cryptids from the area, all the myths from the area I could find. Previously, in my research on lemurians when working out what their Deal would be, I found out that a lot of writings on lemurians came from occultists in the 1900s, who also had many (racist and misogynistic) writings about where THEY think the first humans come from, about mystical ancient societies that were hyper advanced, etc. etc., which fit with the way that the lemurians seemed to have a veritable magical paradise in Shangri-La before the nagas massacred them. I could at least use the names from these hippies, because I couldn't find comparable mythology from the actual area, but I stripped out the... less savory parts.

I wanted to use the eloko/biloko when I found them, because their myths give them magic bells that compel people who hear it to do what they want - much like how the lemurian's charisma was set up (this being one of those interesting little coincidences that happen when the story "feels right.") Doubly so when I found out that eloko/biloko sleep in trees, which - wood-themed huaca. But I still wasn't really... piecing anything together.

So I switched tracks and started looking into Gilgamesh, the man, the myth, the legend, at the center of this all. Read the Epic of Gilgamesh (or, re-read, rather), and found the myth regarding Utnapishtim and Gilgamesh's quest for eternal life. An old man gifted by immortality from the gods? Given that I already had in my notes that the lemurians struck a deal with the devil with Kur and became what they are, and the eloko/biloko were a failure as a result of the lemurians going "wait, not like this" halfway through, Utnapishtim sounded like he could fit in as a lemurian from this original hullabaloo. And in the original Gilgamesh myth, the plant Utnapishtim points Gilgamesh to, which would grant him all his youth and vitality back, gets stolen from him by a serpent. Hey, nagas!

Okay, so now I had the origin of the lemurians, Utnapishtim's character being involved, even a hook for the nagas, and thus Argost, but it still wasn't coming together. SO...

... I gave up and started looking at biblical stuff. I'm a sellout hack. BUT, at least you can argue that biblical stuff is always potentially relevant, because the Saturday line has biblical names (Zakariya/Zechariah, Solomon, Elijah, Samuel) and Zak is set up with a minor Jesus reference (sacrifices himself for the good of mankind, is dead for 3 (minutes) and is resurrected). Specifically, I started looking into the "secret science" part of biblical stuff - apocrypha, or non-canonical texts. There's tons of interesting stuff in there, but it turned out to be mostly useless, aside from the chapter titles, but it did help to form this idea of making deals and regretting them - and I'm realizing now as I'm writing this that this was another one of those unconscious connections - ch12 is literally named after the part in Goethe's Faust where Faust makes his deal with Mephistopheles ("Die Wette biet ich" - "the bet I offer").

So now that I'd been freed to do biblical stuff (which, hey, also fits in with the wood theme, because Garden of Eden, get it?), I had access to the imagery of the snake tempting eve with fruit. And suddenly, everything started to come together. Themes of trying to defy what you are by nature, the nagas as betrayers, Kur and its entourage as demons, getting what you wished for but at what cost, a fall into darkness as the major players fail to defy their natures (and the consequences that result) - once I started, I couldn't stop.

So it's a bit hard to answer your question because it's all so intuitive, but I guess if I really had to say, the real answer to where to start and where to end is to just pick a topic you like so much that you wouldn't mind doing tons of research on it, even if most of it winds up being unusable. I LOVE ancient history and mythology, so even if nothing I read is useful, I don't mind reading. And not minding the reading means I have so much already floating around in my head for when I need to write something new. If you forced me to write, say, a crime drama or sci-fi story - two fields I have much less interest and much less knowledge on - I would also be pretty lost! At that point, I'd have two options - either I write something by the numbers just to get it done, or I do enough reading on the topic that I find something about it to love and care about, and then write based on that.

I think more is always better. Anything you don't immediately use becomes a potential connection for something else down the line. I'd say a good 30% of weird little factoids featured in IWNOY are things I knew before I did research for it, and now, for other projects I'm doing, the stuff I learned for IWNOY sometimes becomes relevant.

And I would always try not to worry too much about overstuffing or making your first draft bad. The secret is, most of the actually good writing happens in the editing. Your first draft exists for the purpose of existing. It's fine if it's riddled with holes, if the dialogue sucks, if there's way too much exposition and "essay-style writing" (what I like to call it when you randomly infodump all the research you've done - I've done this sooooo many times), or if it's so bad you have to delete the whole thing and start over (this is a regular part of my writing process!). The point of draft 1 is to throw the damn spaghetti against the damn wall. Edits and revisions are where you tastefully arrange it so that it's good and an art piece, haha.

[jeannereames]

Hi Dr Reames!

Would you say that Macedon shared the same "political culture" with its Thracian and Illyrian neighbours, like how most Greeks shared the polis structure and the concept of citizenship?

I don't really know anything about Macedonian history before Philip II's time, but you've often brought up how the Macedonians shared some elements of elite culture (e.g. mound burials) with their Thracian neighbours, as well religious beliefs and practices.

I've only ever heard these people generically described as "a collection of tribes (that confederated into a kingdom)", which also seems to be the common description for nearby "Greek" polities like Thessaly and Epiros. So did these societies have a lot in common, structurally speaking, with Macedon? Or were they just completely different types of polities altogether?

First, in the interest of some good bibliography on the Thracians:

Z. H. Archibald, The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace. Orpheus Unmasked. Oxford UP, 1998. (Too expensive outside libraries, but highly recommended if you can get it by interlibrary loan. Part of the exorbitant cost [almost $400, but used for less] owes to images, as it’s archaeology heavy. Archibald is also an expert on trade and economy in north Greece and the Black Sea region, and has edited several collections on the topic.

Alexander Fol, Valeria Fol. Thracians. Coronet Books, 2005. Also expensive, if not as bad, and meant for the general public. Fol’s 1977 Thrace and the Thracians, with Ivan Marazov, was a classic. Fol and Marazov are fathers of modern Thracian studies.

R. F. Hodinott, The Thracians. Thames and Hudson, 1981. Somewhat dated now but has pictures and can be found used for a decent price if you search around. But, yeah…dated.

For Illyria, John Wilkes’ The Illyrians, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, is a good place to start, but there’s even less about them in book form (or articles).

—————

Now, to the question.

BOTH the Thracians and Illyrians were made up of politically independent tribes bound by language and religion who, sometimes, also united behind a strong ruler (the Odrysians in Thrace for several generations, and Bardylis briefly in Illyria). One can probably make parallels to Germanic tribes, but it’s easier for me to point to American indigenous nations. The Odrysians might be compared to the Iroquois federation. The Illyrians to the Great Lakes people, united for a while behind Tecumseh, but not entirely, and disunified again after. These aren’t perfect, but you get the idea. For that matter, the Greeks themselves weren’t a nation, but a group of poleis bonded by language, culture, and religion. They fought as often as they cooperated. The Persian invasion forced cooperation, which then dissolved into the Peloponnesian War.

Beyond linguistic and religious parallels, sometimes we also have GEOGRAPHIC ones. So, let me divide the north into lowlands and highlands. It’s much more visible on the ground than from a map, but Epiros, Upper Macedonia, and Illyria are all more alike, landscape-wise, than Lower Macedonia and the Thracian valleys. South of all that, and different yet again, lay Thessaly, like a bridge between Southern Greece and these northern regions.

If language (and religion) are markers of shared culture, culture can also be shaped by ethnically distinct neighbors. Thracians and Macedonians weren’t ethnically related, yet certainly shared cultural features. Without falling into colonialist geographical/environmental determinism, geography does affect how early cultures develop because of what resources are available, difficulties of travel, weather, lay of the land itself, etc.

For instance, the Pindus Range, while not especially high, is rocky and made a formidable barrier to easy east-west travel. Until recently, sailing was always more efficient in Greece than travel by land (especially over mountain ranges).* Ergo, city-states/towns on the western coast tended to be western-facing for trade, and city-states/towns on the eastern side were, predictably, eastern-facing. This is why both Epiros and Ainai (Elimeia) did more trade with Corinth than Athens, and one reason Alexandros of Epiros went west to Italy while Alexander of Macedon looked east to Persia. It’s also why Corinth, Sparta, etc., in the Peloponnese colonized Sicily and S. Italy, while Athens, Euboia, etc., colonized the Asia Minor and Black Sea coasts. (It’s not an absolute, but one certainly sees trends.)

So, looking at their land, we can see why Macedonians and Thracians were both horse people with their wide valleys. They also practiced agriculture, had rich forests for logging, and significant metal (and mineral) deposits—including silver and gold—that made mining a source of wealth. They shared some burial customs but maintained acute differences. Both had lower status for women compared to Illyria/Epiros/Paionia. Yet that’s true only of some Thracian tribes, such as the Odrysians. Others had stronger roles for women. Thracians and Macedonians shared a few deities (The Rider/Zis, Dionysos/Zagreus, Bendis/Artemis/Earth Mother), although Macedonian religion maintained a Greek cast. We also shouldn’t underestimate the impact of Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast on inland Thrace, especially the Odrysians. Many an Athenian or Milesian (et al.) explorer/merchant/colonist married into the local Thracian elite.

Let’s look at burial customs, how they’re alike and different, for a concrete example of this shared regional culture.

First, while both Thracians and Macedonians had shrines, neither had temples on the Greek model until late, and then largely in Macedonia. Their money went into the ground with burials.

Temples represent a shit-ton of city/community money plowed into a building for public use/display. In southern Greece, they rise (pun intended) at the end of the Archaic Age as city-state sumptuary laws sought to eliminate personal display at funerals, weddings, etc. That never happened in Macedonia/much of the northern areas. So, temples were slow to creep up there until the Hellenistic period. Even then, gargantuan funerals and the Macedonian Tomb remained de rigueur for Macedonian elite. (The date of the arrival of the true Macedonian Tomb is debated, but I side with those who count it as a post-Alexander development.)

A “Macedonian Tomb” (above: Tomb of Judgement, photo mine) is a faux-shrine embedded in the ground. Elite families committed wealth to it in a huge potlatch to honor the dead. Earlier cyst tombs show the same proclivities, but without the accompanying shrine-like architecture. As early as 650 BCE at Archontiko (= ancient Pella), we find absurd amounts of wealth in burials (below: Archontiko burial goods, Pella Museum, photos mine). Same thing at Sindos, and Aigai, in roughly the same period. Also in a few places in Upper Macedonia, in the Archaic Age: Aiani, Achlada, Trebenište, etc.. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If Greece had more money for digs, I think we’d find additional sites.

Vivi Saripanidi has some great articles (conveniently in English) about these finds: “Constructing Necropoleis in the Archaic Period,” “Vases, Funerary Practices, and Political Power in the Macedonian Kingdom During the Classical Period Before the Rise of Philip II,” and “Constructing Continuities with a Heroic Past.” They’re long, but thorough. I recommend them.

What we observe here are “Princely Burials” across lingo-ethnic boundaries that reflect a larger, shared regional culture. But one big difference between elite tombs in Macedonia and Thrace is the presence of a BODY, and whether the tomb was new or repurposed.

In Thrace, at least royal tombs are repurposed shrines (above: diagram and model of repurposed shrine-tombs). Macedonian Tombs were new construction meant to look like a shrine (faux-fronts, etc.). Also, Thracian kings’ bodies weren’t buried in their "tombs." Following the Dionysic/ Orphaic cult, the bodies were cut up into seven pieces and buried in unmarked spots. Ergo, their tombs are cenotaphs (below: Kosmatka Tomb/Tomb of Seuthes III, photos mine).

What they shared was putting absurd amounts of wealth into the ground in the way of grave goods, including some common/shared items such as armor, golden crowns, jewelry for women, etc. All this in place of community-reflective temples, as seen in the South. (Below: grave goods from Seuthes’ Tomb; grave goods from Royal Tomb II at Vergina, for comparison).

So, if some things are shared, others (connected to beliefs about the afterlife) are distinct, such as the repurposed shrine vs. new construction built like a shine, and the presence or absence of a body (below: tomb ceiling décor depicting Thracian deity Zalmoxis).

Aside from graves, we also find differences between highlands and lowlands in the roles of at least elite women. The highlands were tough areas to live, where herding (and raiding) dominated, and what agriculture there was required “all hands on deck” for survival. While that isn’t necessary for women to enjoy higher status (just look at Minoan Crete, Etruria, and even Egypt), it may have contributed to it in these circumstances.

Illyrian women fought. And not just with bows on horseback as Scythian women did. If we can believe Polyaenus, Philip’s daughter Kyanne (daughter of his Illyrian wife Audata) opposed an Illyrian queen on foot with spears—and won. Philip’s mother Eurydike involved herself in politics to keep her sons alive, but perhaps also as a result of cultural assumption: her mother was royal Lynkestian but her father was (perhaps) Illyrian. Epirote Olympias came to Pella expecting a certain amount of political influence that she, apparently, wasn’t given until Philip died. Alexander later observed that his mother had wisely traded places with Kleopatra, his sister, to rule in Epiros, because the Macedonians would never accept rule by a woman (implying the Epirotes would).

I’ve noted before that the political structure in northern Greece was more of a continuum: Thessaly had an oligarchic tetrarchy of four main clans, expunged by Jason in favor of tyranny, then restored by Philip. Epiros was ruled by a council who chose the “king” from the Aiakid clan until Alexandros I, Olympias’s brother, established a real monarchy. Last, we have Macedon, a true monarchy (apparently) from the beginning, but also centered on a clan (Argeads), with agreement/support from the elite Hetairoi class of kingmakers. Upper Macedonian cantons (formerly kingdoms) had similar clan rule, especially Lynkestis, Elimeia, and Orestis. Alas, we don’t know enough to say how absolute their monarchies were before Philip II absorbed them as new Macedonian districts, demoting their basileis (kings/princes) to mere governors.

I think continued highland resistance to that absorption is too often overlooked/minimized in modern histories of Philip’s reign, excepting a few like Ed Anson’s. In Dancing with the Lion: Rise, I touch on the possibility of highland rebellion bubbling up late in Philip’s reign but can’t say more without spoilers for the novel.

In antiquity, Thessaly was always considered Greek, as was (mostly) Epiros. But Macedonia’s Greek bona-fides were not universally accepted, resulting in the tale of Alexandros I’s entry into the Olympics—almost surely a fiction with no historical basis, fed to Herodotos after the Persian Wars. The tale’s goal, however, was to establish the Greekness of the ruling family, not of the Macedonian people, who were still considered barbaroi into the late Classical period. Recent linguistic studies suggest they did, indeed, speak a form of northern Greek, but the fact they were regarded as barbaroi in the ancient world is, I think instructive, even if not necessarily accurate.

It tells us they were different enough to be counted “not Greek” by some southern Greek poleis and politicians such as Demosthenes. Much of that was certainly opportunistic. But not all. The bias suggests Macedonian culture had enough overflow from their northern neighbors to appear sufficiently alien. Few Greek writers suggested the Thessalians or Epirotes weren’t Greek, but nobody argued the Thracians, Paiones, or Illyrians were. Macedonia occupied a liminal status.

We need to stop seeing these areas with hard borders and, instead, recognize permeable boundaries with the expected cultural overflow: out and in. Contra a lot of messaging in the late 1800s and early/mid-1900s, lifted from ancient narratives (and still visible today in ultra-national Greek narratives), the ancient Greeks did not go out to “civilize” their Eastern “Oriental” (and northern barbaroi) neighbors, exporting True Culture and Philosophy. (For more on these views, see my earlier post on “Alexander suffering from Conqueror’s Disease.”)

In fact, Greeks of the Late Iron Age (LIA)/Archaic Age absorbed a great deal of culture and ideas from those very “Oriental barbarians,” such as Lydia and Assyria. In art history, the LIA/Early Archaic Era is referred to as the “Orientalizing Period,” but it’s not just art. Take Greek medicine. It’s essentially Mesopotamian medicine with their religion buffed off. Greek philosophy developed on the islands along the Asia Minor coast, where Greeks regularly interacted with Lydians, Phoenicians, and eventually Persians; and also in Sicily and Southern Italy, where they were talking to Carthaginians and native Italic peoples, including Etruscans. Egypt also had an influence.

Philosophy and other cultural advances didn’t develop in the Greek heartland. The Greek COLONIES were the happenin’ places in the LIA/Archaic Era. Here we find the all-important ebb and flow of ideas with non-Greek peoples.

Artistic styles, foodstuffs, technology, even ideas and myths…all were shared (intentionally or not) via TRADE—especially at important emporia. Among the most significant of these LIA emporia was Methone, a Greek foundation on the Macedonian coast off the Thermaic Gulf (see map below). It provided contact between Phoenician/Euboian-Greek traders and the inland peoples, including what would have been the early Macedonian kingdom. Perhaps it was those very trade contacts that helped the Argeads expand their rule in the lowlands at the expense of Bottiaians, Almopes, Paionians, et al., who they ran out in order to subsume their lands.

My main point is that the northern Greek mainland/southern Balkans were neither isolated nor culturally stunted. Not when you look at all that gold and other fine craftwork coming out of the ground in Archaic burials in the region. We’ve simply got to rethink prior notions of “primitive” peoples and cultures up there—notions based on southern Greek narratives that were both political and culturally hidebound, but that have, for too long, been taken as gospel truth.

Ancient Macedon did not “rise” with Philip II and Alexander the Great. If anything, the 40 years between the murder of Archelaos (399) and the start of Philip’s reign (359/8) represents a 2-3 generation eclipse. Alexandros I, Perdikkas II, and Archelaos were extremely capable kings. Philip represented a return to that savvy rule.

(If you can read German, let me highly recommend Sabine Müller’s, Perdikkas II and Die Argeaden; she also has one on Alexander, but those two talk about earlier periods, and especially her take on Perdikkas shows how clever he was. For those who can’t read German, the Lexicon of Argead Macedonia’s entry on Perdikkas is a boiled-down summary, by Sabine, of the main points in her book.)

Anyway…I got away a bit from Thracian-Macedonian cultural parallels, but I needed to mount my soapbox about the cultural vitality of pre-Philip Macedonia, some of which came from Greek cultural imports, but also from Thrace, Illyria, etc.

Ancient Macedonia was a crossroads. It would continue to be so into Roman imperial, Byzantine, and later periods with the arrival of subsequent populations (Gauls, Romans, Slavs, etc.) into the region.

That fruit salad with Cool Whip, or Jello and marshmallows, or chopped up veggies and mayo, that populate many a family reunion or church potluck spread? One name for it is a “Macedonian Salad”—but not because it’s from Macedonia. It’s called that because it’s made up of many [very different] things. Also, because French macedoine means cut-up vegetables, but the reference to Macedonia as a cultural mishmash is embedded in that.

---------------

* I’ve seen this personally between my first trip to Greece in 1997, and the new modern highway. Instead of winding around mountains, the A2 just blasts through them with tunnels. The A1 (from Thessaloniki to Athens) was there in ’97, and parts of the A2 east, but the new highway west through the Pindus makes a huge difference. It takes less than half the time now to drive from the area around Thessaloniki/Pella out to Ioannina (near ancient Dodona) in Epiros. Having seen the landscape, I can imagine the difficulties of such a trip in antiquity with unpaved roads (albeit perhaps at least graded). Taking carts over those hills would be daunting. See images below.

[shannyh25]

STUDENTS: [singing the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful] "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small. / All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all. / The Lord God made them all."

BROOKE: Welcome to a new year. I trust you girls are ready to drive into the first session with determination. You all know Miss McKay, mathematics and science; Miss Kerr, history and geography; and Miss Shirley will be your new teacher responsible for English and literature as well as all student boarders. Miss Shirley will be living in the school with us and will have direct supervisory authority. Let us get to work, then, with no nonsense. Please organize yourselves into forms. Form one, do you call that a straight line? Emmeline Harris, step forward. If intend to make a habit of this, I will have no choice but to detain you after class. Step back. [giving Anne a whistle] Learn to respond to signals on the electric bell, as well.

ANNE: I'd much prefer to invent titles for each group, like a sorority. What about Tutor, Kent, and Windsor?

BROOKE: I am not interested in fairytales. You must learn to use the modern conveniences of our system. At recess, I will employ the electric bell. [Miss McKay and Miss Kerr blow their whistles and leave following their forms] Your room is down the hall, first door. [Anne weakly blows her whistle] Perhaps you think you are above rules, Miss Shirley?

[Brooke leaves; girls laugh]

ANNE: A-hem. Off you go, girls.

I got the movie quote from greengabls-2.tripod.com

Follow me for more inspiration! 💜💕

[urlocalnonbinarybastardwrites]

woah!!!!! if ur still doign the shippy thing... :33

okay erm looks wise im around 5'9-5'11 , I have shoulder length hair that used to be dyed pink (now had faded to some kind of peach color..).. erm my clothing style can be unpredictable, I fluctuate between like coquette or whatever and like full emo scene glam im pretty unpredictable. like I said... not very strong and might be slightly overweight

personality wise, im usually veeerry quiet. like not notice me when im there quiet. over time when I get to know you im loud, and obnoxious, and very annoying.. im very protective and loyal to my friends or of people im close with, I will beat someones ass if a friend told me to. I get overstimulated way to easy but I can get very understimulated quick as well.. suuuper clumsy don't let me around glass.. very neurodivergent as well. my music taste is all over the place, I listen to pretty much anything if I like it..

interests wise, im very into history and geography and things like that.. im really into lost media, especially lostwave music.. I love reading comic books/graphic novels and dramas.. very into "the arts" like music and any kind of art. I also reeally love old cartoons, especially from the late 90s to early 00s

thats most of what I wanna say .. :3 I hope its enough.

You didn’t specify which fandom you wanted to be shipped in so I’ll just give you a random character I think you’d would match

Your Fandom Ship: Ponyboy Curtis

Explanation: I think at first he would be kind of intimidated by you because you’re so much taller than him and you look really cool. He thinks you’re tough looking as hell he’d probably be a bit scared to come up to you at first  and would probably need a peptalk from the rest of the gang before he even had enough guts to come up to you and say hi. I think you would love your dyed hair, and I think he would be obsessed with the fact that you consistently change aesthetics (hey thats like me!) and part of what motivates him to get up in the morning is wondering what you’re gonna wear that day and he even makes some bets with Johnny. He would be extremely respecting of any boundaries you have especially regarding your neurodivergence and very quickly to pull you out of any loud spaces if that was something that triggered you or very quickly to say hey they don’t like that texture.  as for personality I think that he would love the fact that you’re more quiet as Johnny is his best friend and Johnny is extremely quiet so I think he’s used to being around people like that although I think he would love it when you finally break out of that stage of being quiet and finally are loud obnoxious around him. I think he would really appreciate that. You trust him enough to be that way around him. He loves your protectiveness and fierce loyalty to your friends and that’s a quality that he himself has and I think it’s some thing that he just really values in a person. as for your hobbies, I believe that pony boy is deep down in arts kid, as he is canon Lee, an artist in the sense that he both draws and wrights and thinks more creatively and thoughtfully than a lot of the other greasers. I also think that he would be super into history and I think you guys would have a blast in that class just going crazy with hypothetical scenarios and comparing and contrasting certain events. I Ship you guys a lot!!!!!

[jkmaeden]

꒰ 🥥 ꒱ؘ ࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ↪@jkmaeden, gtkm, rules n navigation .

about me˙ᵕ˙

brazilian | palestinian ᯓ curitiba n nablus .

port name! ame ➜ pali name! yara (call me either)

enfpˎˊ˗

17, 09.01.07ֶָ֢

Likes˙ᵕ˙

𖹭music ➤ bts, chase atlantic, d4vd, chris brown, bruno mars, ckay, sza, michael bublé, ariana, chet baker .

𖹭geography n history ➤ language major

𖹭anime n manga ➤ one piece, conan, jjk, fruits basket, fmalchemist, hxh, blood c, mashle, ancient magus' bride

𖹭characters n people ➤ ace n robin, bourbon, chise, jinhopekook, yeri, mingyu

do not interact˙ᵕ˙

.ᐟ.ᐟziosists.ᐟ.ᐟ ✘

anti religious ✘

anyone leaving bad comments, no negative vibes ✘

think caucasian means white ✘

approve of wh, eu, un actions ✘

my writing˙ᵕ˙

.ᐟ.ᐟno smut.ᐟ.ᐟ fluff n angst .

bts and bts only ᯓ ot⁷ writings .

drabbles ֶָ֢ series ֶָ֢ headcannons ֶָ֢ moodboards ֶָ֢ etc

⤷I love recs, do leave your opinions .

➜realll angsty . like might cry

warnings˙ᵕ˙

⁀➴ crime n murder, a lot of it . misogyny, abuse, mental health issues n physical health issues, spying, illegal activity, homicide, blooooddddd, cutting, knives, snipers n guns, basically a lot of weapons, ignorant society and police, as I said it's really angsty not just relationship wise angsty like generally angsty .ᐟ.ᐟ

safe in˙ᵕ˙

no alcohol, no drugs, no rxpe or smut ✓

devider from @chilumitos and banner pics from pinterest .

[7ndipity]

Heyy, idk if you're still doing the ship game so if you are not feel free to ignore this!

I am obsessed with music and anything creativity related, I've been making my own world inside my head since forever. I songwrite and hope to start music production soon

I like to learn languages and history/geography about different places. I am currently learning Chinese

I am 100% a dog person lmao. My friends describe me as a really big dog

They also say that I am like a sun disguised as a moon and I think that's kinda soft ngl

I have eight pets (6 dogs, a rabbit and a bird that it's not actually mine, just lives nearby and we see each other all the time)

I am enfp and the mother of my group of friends

Appearance wise I am 170, hair with a lot of volume, indigenous eyes, gengival smile, big thighs and thousands of different scars all over my body (most of them are from falling lmao)

I also really like to move my body throughout dance or sports (especially volleyball). I am obsessed with drinking tea and I love to draw

Hope I did it right lmao

I would ship you with Yoongi and Hobi!

Yoongi’s said before he wanted a partner who was a creative type like himself, and since he’s more of a moon personality, I could see you two balancing each other out well.

Hobi, on the flip side, is a fellow ball of sunshine and would love that your energy matches his. I’ve also said it before, but I think they both would kinda be into the ‘mom friend’ personalty.

Hope this was okay💜

[gloryride]

𝘄𝗼𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗼 〜 what’s their relationship like with their parent(s)/guardian(s)?

𝗷𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝗱 〜 has your oc ever made any choices they regret?

𝗺𝗮𝗶 𝘁𝗮𝗶 〜 how was your oc’s life growing up? did they do well in school if they attended? do they have any awkward teenage memories?

For the cocktail ask. OC is bartender's choice.

Thank you for these asks ! As it's bartender's choice, i try to diversify the babes ♥

[COCKTAIL OC ASKS]

𝘄𝗼𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗼 〜 what’s their relationship like with their parent(s)/guardian(s)?

VANESSA

She never knew her father, Luis Serrano, who died in a gunfight in Valentinos four days after she was born. Her father is just a name, a photo in the living room of the family apartment, and graffiti in Heywood. He's not her father

She chose her father: Sebastian Ibarra, aka Padre. Always there for the Vergara family, he watched Vanessa grow up and saw her potential. He guided her as best he could, and was always there for her.

Her mother, Ana-Maria Vergara, was everything to her. She raised three children while working several jobs, taking care of her mother, and participating in the community. She was a rock, a role model for Vanessa, but also the wise word. Her rules became mantras for Vanessa, which she still follows today. When Ana-Maria became ill, Vanessa did everything to save her, paying her medical bills, chasing death so as not to lose her. The two women were complicit, supporting each other, because they knew they couldn't count on thee others, Rita and Mauricio being neither good children nor good siblings

So when her mother died in her arms, it was heartbreaking for Vanessa - her world was falling apart.

Today, she wears a tattoo in memory of her mother, and has kept her photos and rosary. But above all, her love, deep in her heart, is her strength!

𝗷𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝗱 〜 has your oc ever made any choices they regret?

ROXANNE

If she could go back, she'd refuse the TV show, stay in the journalism world, and not feel like she'd sold her life and her image. It brought her a lot of good things, people she could never have met and certain privileges. But the price she has to pay is a huge amount of pressure on her shoulders, about her image and who she associates with. Wondering whether some of the people she meets are friends or not, whether they're there for her or out of opportunism…

But since she can't go back, she accepts the consequences, and turns to the positive she has too!

𝗺𝗮𝗶 𝘁𝗮𝗶 〜 how was your oc’s life growing up? did they do well in school if they attended? do they have any awkward teenage memories?

VIRGILE

Virgile had a complicated childhood, but he has many happy memories too. Livia Sarto knew that her days were counted, and she wanted to transmit as much as possible to her only child. They watched old movies together, read old novels, she told him about ancient Roman history… all the basics he still loves today. Nomads are educated, there are classes, but Virgil only attended part of them; his mother taught him everything. When she died when he was 8, he went to classes with the others, who were curious and hungry for knowledge, especially in history and geography, languages, astronomy and literature. He also spent some time with his father learning mechanics. Then, as a teenager, he developed a passion for computers and netrunning. And despite his mother's illness and death, Virgil had a wonderful childhood and adolescence!

Oh, an embarrassing anecdote btw ? He was 18, with his boyfriend under his tent. He often said he needed to rest, so no one came to disturb him for an hour or two, and it was also a chance to have a bit of privacy and bring someone in (but also to rest, eh!). No one came to disturb him… except his 7-year-old brother, who was determined to wake him up! Except he already was, had just enough time to pull back the blanket (you develop reflexes when your family has no sense of personal space), and yelled at Enzo who came out screaming "Virgile is with his lover!" laughing Embarrassing ...