#reconnecting with culture

[mamaangiwine]

MNIDO GIIZIS or "SPIRIT MOON" –

The first moon of the thirteen moons is The Spirit Moon. During this time I acknowledge the silence of winter. The stillness of all things, try to hear the Great Mystery in it, and contemplate my own place within that movement.

[dolce-tenebra-toscana]

Guess who's doing research about her heritage/ origins and feeling fucking happy about it?

Meeeeeee!!!

It was about time i actually tried connecting with my south american roots and what i'm finding out is so amazing and interesting!

Still a long way to go but meeting this wonderful group of people from Brazil here in siena ( new besties yay ) is really helping me understand where i come from and what i was missing

I feel like i am finally giving answers to the lil girl who was raised european but didn't feel european at all.

I am embracing my skin color, my curls, my curves, my face ( i stopped hating my eyes and nose yay ) and so much more

It's the beginning of a journey i wanted for so long, maybe one day i'll actually go to Brazil for the first time in 27 years..

[lavampira]

d'alia + her turali outfits

[longconra]

1,300 or so years of social isolation, cultural death, and vampirism must have really knocked Remmick off the rails because one thing we know about both pre and post Christian Ireland is that people *loved* baths and washing/combing their hair, whenever possible. The braiding of hair after a bath was of especial importance. Various bodies of water and springs often had their own patron goddesses. Sweat baths (followed by a cold plunge in a nearby river) were used to improve the complexion and treat various medical ailments.

Remmick, meanwhile …

[vulcajes]

"I hc James as Indian!!" Oh yeah? Name literally anything he does to take part in his culture. Name how his culture affects his outlook and actions. Stop using identities to make these characters seem cooler and actually engage with these characters in a deeper way.

[loumandforyou]

Armand s3 wishlist outfits and house

[bucephaly]

Hi! quick question: if i have confirmed Cherokee ancestry (which I'm working on currently and likely do) even if it's a small amount, is it okay/not appropriation to identify as "two-spirit" (though i don't think that's super accurate in terms of Cherokee-specific traditions, but i think i have heard that cherokee gender roles tended to be more flexible- correct me if i'm wrong.) I'm definitely white + don't know much about Cherokee culture/what is acceptable in terms of being a part of the community.

Ok a big disclaimer that I'm also white and disconnected and this is a very complex topic. But I have looked into this some so I'll try to share what I've learned and ofc check the replies for if anyone has chimed in with corrections or added anything etc

'Two spirit' is a pan-native term used as an umbrella for the many distinct cultural 3rd [or 4th 5th +] genders that many native cultures have or had. I think the consensus I've seen is that it's distinct from just being native and LGBT. And you Have to be native to be 2spirit, there have definitely been nonnative appropriating it

I would say to be 2 spirit you would have to be involved enough in your culture and community to take on community roles according to the cultural 3rd etc gender. Like.. I'm trans and gay, but I'm culturally disconnected. I dont consider myself two spirit, because I'm not in those community roles because I'm disconnected. 2spirit means something specific and it means more than just being trans and native.

As for what the actual cherokee systems were, I'm not sure if I should share what little I know about that on a tumblr post, but I'll say not much of anything has survived to the present. And be careful if you do research it, as an author claiming falsely to be cherokee has written about cherokee 2spirit stuff before but they're a weirdo pretendian. So don't trust anything from a Qwo-li Driscoll.

But yea basically 2spirit isn't just 'LGBT native' and ive seen lots of reconnecting people go 'oh I'm native? I can use this cool native-only term now!' As if it's just a fun thing for natives only just to look cooler or smth, it has more meaning than that and most of it is specific to the culture.

As always, native folks feel free to chime in in the comments

[writingwithcolor]

Characters reconnecting with their ancestral cultures in an interplanetary setting

@pixiedustandpetrichor asked:

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

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

Drawing inspiration from groups that have experienced colonization

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

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

Which aspects of culture you're portraying

Where these aspects come from

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In summary: think it through

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

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

which elements of contemporary Tuareg culture are pertinent to include

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

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

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

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

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

- Niki

Pulling from diaspora and TRA narratives of cultural reconnection

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

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

More reading: Japanese-coded girl from future

-Marika

Reconnecting with German heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–S

What do you mean by Germanic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Mod Sci

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame

high fantasy novella

a woman who killed a dragon at 13, and was taken to the imperial capital to train, and is now a famous masked dragon hunter

she’s sent to a southern kingdom, near the homeland she’s never returned to, to search for a dragon they’re supposedly harbouring

she is welcomed into the palace, and as she grows closer to the reclusive kingdom’s ailing girl-king, she questions her role and purpose

[tigwalen]

I really really wish there was a conversation in native spaces about at large and disconnected members and how many times (not always, but MANY times, particularly for Cherokee Nation) they have privileges that many members do not and how just being disconnected does not eliminate that and that there is probably a connection there even with that.

like. I don't think it's that difficult to connect the dots of gaining White privilege by repeatedly marrying into white families and abandoning your culture. you have the right as a descendant to connect to your tribe if that tribe allows for it, but you cannot pretend to be completely disenfranchised just by the fact of being a disconnected and at large member when a good chunk of the time this happens because these families are chasing white privilege. you have to acknowledge what your family has tried to do and how that is affected you today and how you should go about things moving forward.

that doesn't mean you The descendant are chasing white privilege but we have people within our own culture groups that get huffy and pissy because they do not live within territory. we get questions from White disconnected people asking if they can have an elder / first language speaker flown out to their home to live with them and talk Cherokee with their children full time. we get white disconnected members getting pissy because only certain information is allowed in in person circles and we're not going to transmit over the Internet so it can be stolen like everything else.

I understand being light and disconnected and at large as a native American tribal member can be difficult, but it seems like these difficulties are treated as if they completely eclipse all the privileges y'all have

[faytears]

thinking about lebanese percy again and how unbeknownst to a lot of westerners lebanon is full of greco-roman ruins (baalbek, tyre, sidon, etc.). like it makes me sooooo crazy to imagine percy finally getting the chance to visit lebanon with his mom to explore his human ancestry, but then he somehow finds himself standing in the ruins of berytus, the very city poseidon was the chief god of, and realizing that no matter what he does or where he goes there's no escaping his divine blood.

[cultivatingmyculture]

I find it both absolutely depressing and infuriating that the first several posts I see when I search the term "native american" are all porn. All I want is to reconnect with the heritage I never had a chance to learn about, and instead I'm being bombarded with photos that make it seem like the culture I'm trying to reconnect with is being fetishized, which it sadly probably is.

[flushwithdarlings]

Argentei is Fantasy Chinese and there is this saying in Mandarin that I think fits their character as well as their relationship with Lucanis and Spite very well. It is:

ài wū jí wū 爱屋及乌

'love the house and the crows on its roof'

It is essentially the Mandarin version of 'love me, love my dog' - if you are going to love somebody, you accept everything about them, flaws, quirks, interests and all. In Argentei's case, it means accepting that there is no Lucanis without Spite, no Spite without Lucanis, working with them to overcome their fear of Spite, and coming to love them both.

[kindaorangey]

ROLIN!!!!! EXPLORE ARMAND'S RELATIONSHIP TO ISLAM IN THE SHOW AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!

[bone-deep-witch]

Lavender-dyed cow skull with red-lit eye sockets, destined for the shrine to The Morrigan which I'm planning for my sacred space. I really like the effect of the lights!

[reacquaintedwith-air]

i keep thinking about the lines from Vince Gilligan's Drive script, the antisemitic conspiracy theorist with the pressurized head demands to know if Mulder is Jewish and if Mulder is a Jewish name, and Mulder says, "Yes, I am, and no it's not," plus there's the fact that he was buried unembalmed, which made his resurrection possible in DeadAlive, plus DD's statement that he'd decided Mulder was Jewish and to play him that way unless told to do otherwise, so despite the messy parts of the Kaddish script and other culturally 'Christian Athist' Mulder moments in the writing (most likely because of how little cultural awareness there is about the difference in Christian vs Jewish theism that it bleeds through everywhere), I do think there was a conscious positioning of the Mulder character as Jewish Adjacent via his mother + complicated by his WASPy father's domination of the family...

But they wrote that without any specific research or much accommodation for the implications of keeping him tied up with alien conspiracy plots and eugenics plot. Yet! Mulder was always on the 'fighting it' side, and the power hoarding conspiracists were all signalled to be rich WASPy conservative men, all but one of whom were White.

Also early the 90s independent internet fringe conspiracy theorists, i.e. the Lone Gunmen, Max and others shown to be allied with Mulder, weren't the radical right wing fasch of the last 10-15 years, and in the context of the show don't carry the same strange implication of 'an ethnically Jewish person surrounding himself with conspiracy theorists' would in the present day. I do get the sense that they were radical left instead -- that doesn't necessarily leave out the antisemitism part, of course so it's not un-complicated, of course. (And though I suppose i should feel grateful that CC made Mulder's son a fish mutant and not a lizard mutant that's also not a particularly reassuring implication... but then again the Revival is a pretty different animal with different, less collaborative creative direction.)

Yes parts of this subtext do bother me a lot. The fact that they got 3/4rs of the way there in the writing but never once had Jewish Adjacent Mulder talk about the mental toll of sorting the wheat from the chaff, finding genuine abduction survivor and alien leads in amongst the mountains of antisemetic conspiracy bullshit on message boards or how he doesn't really ever know which contacts are going to meet him and decide he's the enemy because he 'looks Jewish'... it's both a missed opportunity and speaks to a lot of ignorance. It makes me pretty crazy. There are a lot of half gestures towards Mulder's Jewish background and then a lot of ugly coincidences and unfortunate implications because no one really thought about what that would mean in the context of The X-File's genre content and recurring themes. But also some of that uncomfortable feeling comes from the fact that there have been a lot of cultural shifts since the original run was on the air.

Like, i don't think he's culturally exactly anything, caught in the middle and mostly without. It's a story familiar to me and my mother because my grandmother was also a young Jewish woman who made a hasty love match (i.e. she got pregnant) with a WASPy goy from a rich industrialist family, and said family held the purse strings, so keeping his mother happy was everything -- which was true even after my grandparents divorced, because of complicated inheritance reasons. She assimilated and let my mother and her siblings be raised as Christmas and Passover celebrating 'nothing in particular' kids, who went to shul when visiting her parents and went to shabbos dinner regularly with the neighbors, but still broadly surrounded in cultural Christianity and outside the community, because it was the 50s and 60s and she was a divorced mother in an upper middle class white area who had to be careful to keep social doors open to all of them. I figure Teena and Mulder had a pretty similar situation in the 60s and 70s, with the added complication of accidentally marrying into an actual WASPy conspiracy hub who could have you 'disposed of' for speaking out of turn.

I just... Jewish Mulder is deeply important to me as a character, it's the on screen execution in practice that I find extremely frustrating. it's the half way there implications (mostly through experienced bigotry), partly intentional, partly accidental because it's apparent that no one educated themselves on the history some of the bigger themes beyond the surface familiar Scifi-Horror tropes. Actually getting there all the way and digging into it, or trying even 25% more to avoid the pitfalls around Mulder and Teena would have added a lot to the show. And would maybe even have insulated CC against (some of) the plot bungles in the Revival. Very frustrating all around. But at the same time, it is a scifi show, and the aliens and rich White conspirators are very literal in fact on the screen.

And what's more, Mulder's particular blend of faith and hope and contention and interrogation, his willingness to Keep Doing The Work no matter what, because it's worth it and it needs to be done in the hope for a better world... that is very Jewish to me at more than a surface level. For me that makes all the awkward implications worth it.