#it's fine my catholic upbringing is doing so incredibly fine are you kidding. everything is fine

[villainesses]

me every single episode of the chosen: they are my BESTIES

[rein-ette]

Are you still working on your Commonwealth study? Do you have any thoughts on Arthur's relationships with his colonies apart from Canzuk + US?

Not properly, unfortunately with exams and then work I haven’t had mental/emotional capacity to do real research (and probably won’t for a while 😔). But I have continued to think about and develop certain relationships, and I think I also have old hcs I’ve never shared, so I’ll put those down!

Born into the Empire

Australia

@oumaheroes has already done such great hcs on him idk what I can add, but basically he was a little bit of a rowdy child, always breaking windows and shattering fancy pots, never able to sit still. I think rainbow once mentioned that Ken (short for Kenneth, my name for Aus) was a lot like England as a child in his curiosity and energy, and I wholeheartedly agree. But I think Arthur’s intensity was more inwardly directed, pushing him to pursue and master new talents and learn whatever he could, while Australia is a little more carefree in his love for the outdoors, exploring, jumping around and off things, little wild animals. Unfortunately for him, he was born in a period of the empire when Arthur was very serious about his kids education, and therefore often praised those who studied hard and learned fast, which really just wasn’t Australia’s cup of tea. Australia took this kinda hard and thought he was the “dumb” one in the family that Arthur was always scolding, but in reality Arthur knew and appreciated that Australias interests lay elsewhere — he was just a frustrated, tired, parent who really wanted to give his kids the best while also holding his empire together, two goals that were never going to fit well in the end and would completely exhaust him.

As Australia’s grown older he’s realized a bit of this (not entirely, though) and also that 1) he really did break a lot expensive things and cause general mayhem 2) scolding us Arthur’s way of showing he cares, if he didn’t he wouldn’t have payed attention to him at all 3) despite being a penal colony, he was still one of Arthur’s more “legitimate” children (being white and a boy) and was therefore still incredibly privileged — never having to question, for example, why it was that Arthur was his dad, if it should be this way, or if he had a seat at the family table at all (more on this later).

New Zealand

Zee, from birth, was a clear favourite. Obedient, calm, quietly intelligent, he would also later develop a blistering sense of humour which combined with his appearance made it overwhelmingly clear who’s child he was. If Ken questioned his place in the family because of his poor academic record and others did because of their appearance/race/other complications, Kaelan never had such problems; his siblings called him the “prince.” Zee, however, also had a charm that, like Matthew, endeared him to his siblings and mostly protected him from jealousy, though he certainly still had issues with being called a try hard, daddy’s boy, bossy, arrogant. Certainly as a child Zee was a little prideful and, under that unperturbed demeanour, willful, but he grew out of it by the 20th century and became one of those most trusted by Arthur, second only to Matthew. He’s also always been inseparable from his brother Australia despite their differences, and today they both have one of the healthiest and most amicable relationships with Arthur of any nation, let alone former colonies (family road trips, every summer).

Bermuda

I absolute fell in love with this girl after reading about here, once, in this fic by @shachaai, and after that my mind just ran away with me. For me, her human name given to her by Arthur just has to be Ariel — for the little mermaid reference, yes, symbolizing her connection to the sea and stunning good looks, but also because:

1. Ariel is a biblical name, meaning lion of God. This makes sense to me, because Bermuda began as a Portuguese trade post, so Arthur definitely consulted our resident bad catholic Port before naming her.

2. Ariel used to be boys name. This also makes sense, because I hc Bermuda was and still is a tomboy. Bitch is fierce, takes no prisoners, and has zero filter. Her letters to Arthur, which all the colonies sent so Arthur could keep an eye on things, were full of shit like “I swear to god if the Spanish don’t get out of my waters I might eat one of them,” and “father, I asked you for destroyers two months ago, and yet you sent them to Hong Kong — could you explain this most unusual occurrence, surely it’s not that you forgot”, and “thank you for the harpoon on my birthday, I caught a small shark a couple days ago and have sent you some of its teeth for your collection.” Arthur tolerates this attitude because he’s weak when it comes to girls; he absolutely spoils his daughters (and flushes like a 16 year old when a woman so much as bats her eyelashes at him). Yes, p*ssywhipped Arthur is a hill I will die on.

3. It also suits her because? Ariel? Shakespeare? The Tempest? Bermuda Triangle? Shipwrecks? Daughter-like figure of powerful and vengeful sorcerer? Yeah. And this girl is a fire spirit — she is so lively, snarky, clever. As she’s grown older she’s mellowed out a little, but still: a no shit taken, no fucks given type of gal.

4. Speaking of growing up, she’s also become quite the beauty. Shacha, if I’m remembering correctly, described her as dark skinned, wavy-haired, and green eyed and that image has been burned onto the back of my eyelids ever since. Those Iberian genetics really be pulling through for her, that’s for sure. Engport love child if I’ve ever seen one. Definitely one of the prettiest in her family.

Singapore

I’ve already mentioned this to needcake, but I’m not too big a fan of canon Singapore, so this is my oc version. Singapore is fascinating to me because it had only a very small local population before it became a colony (The original settlement had actually been destroyed by the Portuguese about two centuries before the British started building a port there.) So nation-tans like Singapore and Bermuda really are Arthur’s children in the most direct sense of the word. And yet, Singapore is mostly ethnically Chinese, with Malays being the second largest group. Growing up Asian in a white, Victorian era family surely cannot have been easy and more than once Singapore probably wondered if there hadn’t been some mistake. To make up for the constant fear that he wasn’t “really” British, Singapore studied ferociously and had a truly terrifying work ethic. I’m not sure if this is common knowledge outside Asian circles, so I’ll mention that this hc comes from the fact Singapore is well known for having truly exceptional students and some of the most prestigious schools. Singaporeans score highly in literally everything and they have an advantage with good English learning environments, a highly desirable trait in Asia, but these results come from brutally long hours — and its really saying something that they’re known for working hard, considering the studying ethic of students in Korea, Japan, and China aint nothing to sneeze at, either. To me this actually fits really well with Singapore’s upbringing in Arthur’s household, because Arthur himself prizes intelligence and hard work above all else, being a workaholic himself.

As for their relationship, it was probably the best when Singapore was young and peaked in the 1930s with the massive naval base the British built at Singapore, at the time the largest dry dock in the world. Singapore was a well-behaved child, not necessarily introverted but not rowdy either, and all the way into his teenage years he truly admired Arthur and was proud to be a part of the British Empire, despite his lingering unease and insecurities. The British defeat in World War II, however, was a massive turning point. He had worked his ass off to be a good son, a good brother, to contribute to the only family and system he had ever known, and he had thought by the 30s he was finally on his way to becoming a fine adult. And suddenly, the British surrender brings his entire world crashing down. He had followed the rules faithfully thinking it was his destiny, but suddenly it was clear that all rules were made up. Of course, his insecurities exploded. If the empire was a ruse, what the hell was he? A part of the illusion? He couldn’t have a truly Asian identity, because many of the old East Asian nations shunned him for his Western upbringing, and he could not entirely understand their values either. So he was a kid who kinda had to figure out late and very very suddenly who the fuck he was and wanted to be.

And, well, he’s done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he. After having a total crisis and questioning everything, I think Singapore slowly started to realize that just because the British Empire as a political entity didn��t last forever, that didn’t mean that his entire childhood and identity weren’t real. The love he gave to his siblings and the love he got back, the hard work he put in, his bond with Arthur and the safe, happy childhood he had — those memories and feelings didnt have to be diminished by what came after. Essentially, he learned the lesson all nations have to learn, which is that one needs to be able to discern between duties as a nation and feelings as a human being, and to some extent keep them separate to protect both.

Whoooooo ok I’ll stop there because this turned into a dissertation, sorry. Let me know if there are any specifics u want me to elaborate on or anything I missed, but I’ll leave this here for today :)

[gaiatheorist]

“Morality.”

“Should children as young as 5 be taught about sexual practices between consenting adults?” No, obviously, children are not adults, and have a disturbing habit of copying things they’ve heard or observed. I’m more concerned about A+E attendances to have foreign bodies removed than I am about children ‘learning’ to be anything other than heterosexual, though. 

We’ve been here before, with Section 28 prohibiting the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools. Imposed morality, ‘this’ is the right way to be, and nothing else exists. From 1988 to 2000, the only ‘acceptable’ family structure was a Mummy and a Daddy who loved each other very much, and sometimes had a special cuddle. In bed. With the lights off. Bonus points if the Mummy and the Daddy were married. To each other. Anything else was a ‘pretended’ family structure. Apart from the “It’s OK to say no.” booklets in primary school, I don’t remember any ‘sex and relationships’ education at all, the booklets came too late for me, and loaded on the guilt that someone had been doing things they shouldn’t have, and I hadn’t said no. Everything else was biology, insert-tab-A-into-slot-B, to quote the Manic Street Preachers “My idea of where life comes from, a childhood glimpse of pornography.” it really was the age of finding a ‘mucky book’ under a hedge back then. (Or a video tape with no label, and the tabs popped out, before satellite TV.) 

As much as some of our Mums and Dads fucked us up, so did our schooling. The government’s decision that heterosexuality was the norm, and anything else deviant left some of us with ‘nowhere to go’, burying feelings, ostracised by the bullying of the ‘normal’ kids. Homosexuality isn’t illegal, discrimination technically is, and this ‘morality’ debate is a constructed nonsense that will impede the acceptance that love is love, in its many and varied forms. (Sticking with the ‘love’ angle, rather than the ‘sex’ one, the primary school lessons wouldn’t touch on the many ways to couple-or-multiple.) It’s tired but true, that children are malleable and accepting before they are exposed to prejudice. “Why does uncle Bob go everywhere with uncle Jim?” “They’re in love, like Mummy and Daddy.” “Oh, can I have a biscuit?” It really is that simple.

It doesn’t really matter which ‘moral majority’  has the pitchforks out, where there is a majority, there will be a minority, and that imbalance leads to oppression. Letting the kids know, at 5, that there isn’t only ‘one way’ will reduce some of the homophobic bullying at 7, some of the confusion at 13, and some of the self-loathing and suicide at 15. Some of it, not all, because the children don’t only exist in their classrooms and playgrounds. The refusal to acknowledge the ‘other’ choices is a backward step, and it will lead to harm, when some of those children realise that they are ‘other’, deviant, abnormal. 

As much as we’re seeing some celebrities and ‘influencers’ openly-out, not only as homosexual, but a plethora of things we don’t even have tick-boxes for yet, we’ve also seen a return to death-by-stoning in Brunei. Good old family values, there, it applies to adultery as well as homosexual activity. “Oh, but that’s ‘The Muslims’ doing Sharia law, that’s not us!” Death by stoning. Lapidation is a word I never thought I’d need to learn in 2019, Pearl-clutching Christians take note, isn’t the one about not-killing quite near the top of the list of commandments? (I can’t even wrap my head around the ‘observed by’ angle to it, inflicting trauma on a whole group of people, as a means of keeping them in line. It’s barbaric, which is, I suppose, me making a moral judgement.) 

My ‘morality’ is of the ‘harm none’ flavour, my sexual orientation is fluid. That’s not as difficult to reconcile as it might appear, because I don’t wish harm against the Sultan of Brunei, or the parents protesting in Birmingham. I pity them. I think they’re wrong, but still I pity them. By choosing to live by religion-imposed rules, they narrow their world-view, by imposing those views on others, they isolate and ostracise themselves. In the current fragile-fractured society in the UK, it wouldn’t take much for the UKIP contingent to correlate the Sharia stance in Brunei with ‘all Muslims’, if only it didn’t run the risk of them ‘catching gayness’. 

‘Exposed to’ was one of the phrases used. I’m not infectious. My son is ‘pansexual’, whatever that is because he just IS, he had a hetero-normative upbringing, one ‘Mummy’ and one ‘Daddy’ with a marriage certificate signed and sealed long before he was conceived. (He called us ‘Mum’ and ‘My Mum’ for ages, amusing, but it didn’t stop him observing his Dad’s ‘Wahey, look at the tits on that!’ mentality, or his Granddad’s insistence that women were weak-and-feeble little things, that needed to be looked after. Hardly surprising that he never had a girlfriend at school, we must have seemed confusing creatures to him.) His Dad, for all his faults, wasn’t maliciously homophobic, he did have some gay and lesbian acquaintances, but he also engaged in the derogatory banter that’s ‘expected’ in the circles he moved in. Porn-lesbians were titillating, real-lesbians less-so for him, he had defended his gay friends growing up, but still used ‘bummer’ and such as insults. 

Children do need to be ‘exposed to’ the undisputed fact that not all relationships are heterosexual, and that needs to happen when they’re still at the “Oh, right, can I have a biscuit?” stage. To say otherwise is immoral, because it allows the discrimination and hostility to creep into the lives of those children, with nothing to counter it. It is absolutely fine, and fair for people to have an opinion on homosexuality, bisexuality, fixed-or-fluid gender, what is not fine or fair is for them to impose their opinion on others as a fact. Again, homosexuality is not a criminal offence in the UK, or a mental disorder, some people find it a distasteful notion, and therefore deem it ‘wrong.’ If it’s being practiced consensually, between adults, and ‘not frightening the horses’, it can’t really be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, it just is. ‘Moralising’ sexual preference (unless it’s for children or animals, or any other non-consensual practice, I’m not going to look them up, my search history is dubious enough as it is.) is harmful. There are gay Christians, lesbian Muslims, asexual people of ‘all faiths and none’, and myriad combinations of everything else. To refuse to acknowledge that is at best ignorant, and at worst incredibly damaging.

I don’t like baked beans. Some people do, some people are indifferent. I’ll eat them if I have to, but I’d prefer not to. What I won’t do is insist that other people don’t eat baked beans, because I think they’re ‘wrong’. (I actually think they’re goblin-shit, disgusting orange lumpy things, with a terrible habit of sticking to the back of the fork, and ending up in the washing-up bowl, but that’s just me.) Whether I eat baked beans or not doesn’t impact on anyone else. Neither does whatever I get up to in the privacy of my own bedroom. I’m not going to go about the place defacing baked beans cans in the supermarket, or hurling abuse at people I see eating baked beans. I’m not going to go to anyone’s house, and dump their beans-on-toast in the bin, I just don’t like beans. I’ve outed myself as bean-ist, bean-ophobic. I could claim that I have a ‘moral objection’ to baked beans, and start a campaign to ban them. How ridiculous would that be?

Nobody taught me to dislike baked beans, in the same way as nobody taught me to have something of an ambiguous attraction to males and females. I’m ‘greedy’, because I can find either/or equally appealing. Or neither, depending on circumstances. I’m not stealing your beans, or forcing you to eat beans, my sexual identity has absolutely no impact on anyone but the person I’m with. I’m no more a ‘predatory lesbian’ than I am a ‘cougar’, chasing down anything with a pulse in order to satiate my ‘dubious’ desires. (Anyone pearl-clutching about the fact that I worked in a school, and might have ‘exposed’ myself to children, it only ever came up once in 14 years. “Miss, I think I might be bi, what are you?” “I’m not really anything, apart from ‘me’, and that’s all you have to be.” ever so slightly duplicitous, but I didn’t want the girl to think it was compulsory to ‘pick a side’ at the age of 13.) 

There will be children in those classrooms in Birmingham, and across the UK who will end up being not-heterosexual. There will be children with two ‘mums’ or two ‘dads’, invisible-erased under the ‘moral’ proclamation of ‘normality’. Yes, it is the majority-norm, but it isn’t the only option, and insisting that it should-be, citing ‘morality’ is regressive, and harmful. It could, potentially, be the start of a slippery slope, if it’s ‘morally justified’ not to even mention homosexuality, what next? Whose morals carry the greater weight, and how should they be imposed on others? 

As others have pointed out, there would be outcry if it was another-other that had been cited as a moral objection. It is illegal to discriminate on grounds of religion, or ethnicity, or gender, disability OR sexual orientation. That a proportion of the population find homosexual practices distasteful does not mean that they are ‘immoral’, any more than a mixed-race marriage, or a couple where one partner was raised Jewish, and the other Catholic. The ‘question’ shouldn’t have needed to be asked. It isn’t a ‘question’ in any sense other than the rhetorical, no amount of hiding behind religious dogma framed as morality makes it a valid question. I respect the rights of others to have views that differ from mine, but the perceived victory of this ‘moral’ argument makes me uneasy. If a parent-protest about homosexuality can cause a school to (temporarily) cease part of the curriculum, what’s next? ‘History is written by the victors’ comes to mind, how many backward-steps before the whole SRE curriculum is deemed immoral, what with some groups objecting to sex before marriage, why should children be ‘taught’ about reproduction, healthy relationships, and bodily autonomy? They’ll find out when they’re married.