#indigenous appalachian

[justseveralowls]

A message from your friendly neighborhood Appalachian Latina:

Okay so today being the day that it is and me being the person I am I heave decided to talk about Appalachian heritage and culture vs what a bunch crappy people have tried to make it. This is all my experience not universal also some will be funny and totally fine to laugh at.

Im starting on the more serious note here because I feel these things really need to be addresed and as a Appalachian woman of color I often have felt that people dont think that both parts of this identity are compatible.

Things that are not Appalachian:

- Being racist

-being xneophobic

-Being homophobic or transphobic

-Flying a confederate flag (most of Appalachia was border states if not fighting for the Union side)

-Drinking shitty beer

- Licking the boots of cops and corporations

- being against higher education

- being an anti vaxxer

- glorifying the coal industry and the lives it has cost and is still costing

- hatred towards indeginous people

-Supporting a toxic or abusive family dynamic

-denying woman human rights

- shaming poor people

-Intentionally making your truck stupidly loud

-Union busting, and being against care and support for the disabled and elderly

-Poaching (Appalachian people value our resources and nature) WE hunt to eat not just to kill or destroy

Moving onto some lighter stuff, now these are some of things I love about being Appalachian and part of this culture and community.

Things that are actually Appalachian:

-Running from cops (seriously its like a whole ass thing)

-Fighting for Unions and Workers rights (The actual origin of Redneck, that term is not for racist fuck heads, it originated from red bandanas worn for Pro-union rights

-Being completely and terrifyingly unphased by coyotes

-Making your liquor

-Ignoring the screaming in the woods because that aint your problem

-Folk magic and traditions and superstitions rooted in Paganism and some indigenous magic

-Being part of the underground railroad (The appalachians made a ton of safe houses and protections pre and post civil war for people fleeing the south)

-Hunting to control Deer population and for food

-Knowledge of homesteading, useful herbs, and homeopathic remedies

-Strong sense of community and family

-Ignoring whatever is moving in the corn feild because you arent a white guy in a horror movie

-Women forming safe houses from abusive husbands or from other types of danger

-Valuing and appreciating the land and the connection we have with it

-Fist fighting God in a coal mine

-Weird ass folk tales and cryptids (see MothMan)

-Not letting your commuity go hungry

-caring for the old sick and vulnerable not out of pity but out of compassion and respect

-Fighting for your rights and the rights of others

-Resilience and strength in times of adversity

-Knowing at least on person who’s grandmother was some kind of witch with psychic abilities

-Knowing when the woods is silent something is wrong

-Screaming back at screech owls to assert dominance

-verbal history

-vibrant stories and music

These are my experiences as an Appalachian woman of color who loves both parts of her heritage and desperate wants to discourage the narrative that Appalachian people are rude prejudiced and uneducted. We are a resilient and loving people, we are full of stories traditions and a melting together of the new and old worlds. We are people with a murky history, yes, but we are full of acceptance love and strength.

To all my fellow Appalachians who hear these mixed narratives, know that we are the authors of our story. TO all my fellow people of color know that this mountainous region is not built exclusively on hate. Know that you belong, that your cultures are valid and that progress is not about rejecting your culture but about adaption to embrace new perspectives and beginning new stories

#appalachia #appalachain mountains #appalachian #appalachian witch #appalacian poc #liberal appalachian #appalachian history #mine #latina and proud #latina appalachian #indeginouslivesmatter #indigenous appalachian #progress #reclaiming the narrative

[endcant]

an appalachian environmental magazine i follow is calling for writing submissions from specifically indigenous people in southern appalachia and the broader southeast. the theme is indigineity, but the magazine covers ecology and climate change. there is no fee for submission. i am not indigenous, but i frequently see indigenous people sharing interesting perspectives regarding environmental science here on tumblr, so I thought i would share the link here.

#not mine #indigenous writers #appalachian writers #environmentalism #1k

[thecoffeelorian]

I read up on skogsrå in the morning, listened to ghost stories about dead coal miners and mama bears in the afternoon, and watched Deer Lady avenge her friend in the evening.

It's a lore sort of weekend.

#year walk #old gods of appalachia #reservation dogs #skogsrå #barlo kentucky #deer lady #swedish folklore #appalachian gothic #appalachian folklore #indigenous folklore

[okay-letsdothisonelasttime]

Okay okay.... but like has anyone made a one-shot or short novela of kitniss & Appalachian mythology on ao3?

Cause like dirstic 12 is out in Appalachia, and she spends so much time out in the woods...

Surely someone has done an ao3 fic of her hearing the 'hey' that's so common in the mythological tales of that region.

Or the mimicry thats so prevalent in the areas mythology? Or her dad telling her to 'see the tree, but not look between them.'

I would just love a young katniss horror story that had absolutely nothing to do with the games, and everything to do with her father's/native teachings.

Just a thought, and please correct me if this is appropriative or problematic in any way.

#katniss #kaniss is native #hunger games #thg #the capitol #the capitol can suck a dick #district 12 #appalachia #appalachain gothic #appalachain mountains #appalachian mythology #mythology #monsters #indiginous #mountians #folklore #local customs #local cryptid #cryptid #indigenous #ao3 #fanfic #fanfiction #fic prompt #fic idea #ao3 fanfic #archieve of our own

[radiantgardenprince]

I love when I see posts about people denouncing spooky shit like “that never happens here/I’ve never heard of that superstition” and I have to physically stop myself from commenting “because the superstition and/or being isn’t from your culture”

Because 9/10 it’s an indigenous source that’s been overtaken by a very white community they’re mocking.

#don’t whistle at night isn’t an Appalachian thing #it’s an indigenous thing #big foot has roots before some white guy #and so on and so forth #giants and little fae type creatures were everywhere like #idk #I was raised with all of this so maybe I’m the weird one #but it annoys meeee

[lupismaris]

Adding music to your werewolf lore/world building as in music is a deep facet to pack culture and social events is a truly joyful experience from a writing perspective I highly HIGHLY recommend it to all

#pack pub night sing alongs/hunts end with a ho-down party with singing till they're hoarse/singing folk songs about wolves #that are actually about old werewolves/shanties about their old packs and ships/songs used on hunts in place or alongside howls #the wolves having particularly good voices with a rough and raw edge to them unlike sirens who are unnaturally perfect singers #they lean into Appalachian and folk and stomp n'hollar song styles tho it'll vary based on where they live of course #and indigenous packs have a whole culture musical history added into it #im currently listening to stan rogers and picturing Arthur my alpha singing to the kids in the pack after a long day #and i am emotional and so fuckin in love with it

[localhollerhaint]

"Ancestral Altar"

When I brush my hair I am reminded of the women who lent their blood, trauma, and wombs to create generations of strength. Strength wrapped up and hidden away in a nice neat braid because when its loose it is too wild for those who claim to be able to rule my body the way they try to rule the world, too untamed for the insecure man.

3 strands as heavy as the history that combines them. My hair is copper like the handful of pennies my ancestors sold their souls to mountain coal mines for. I get it from my grandmother whos accent bounced around her mouth like a butterfly bounces between buttercups, it sounded like home to me but she hid it away because someone once told her it sounded more like how a rubber ball crashes through a china shop. Bouncy like my curls. My hair is curly like muscadine vines swallowing forgotten trellises. I get those from my great grandmother whos skin was made of melanin but held scars so thick they continue to ache in the bellies of her granddaughters even decades after our melanin faded. Melanin given away to the shame and the scars left by grandfathers who threw more blows than they blew kisses. Scars Thick like my hair. My hair is thick. Thick like the fog that hangs sleepily over mountain shoulders, the fog that we call smoke as if thats the only way to make it pretty, because the women in my family are only pretty when were burning. I get it from my great great grandmother whos voice was loud and never tried to speak english correctly, allowing her tongue to proudly stumble around a language that felt as foreign on her lips as her husbands hands felt on her waist as his fathers feet felt on this land but she spoke to tree stumps and mushrooms and bumblebees flawlessly enough to carry ancient stories of these forests youll never find in a book to grandchildren she will only speak to at her grave. My hair is an acestral altar, a family bible, a lifeline. My hair is sacred.

#melungeon #indigenous #redhead #natural hair #writing #appalachian #poetry #prose #hair #curls #womens rights #ancestors #mixed race #american #history

[headspace-hotel]

There was this post a while ago where somebody was saying that Cheetahs aren't well suited to Africa and would do well in Midwestern North America, and it reminded me of Paul S. Martin, the guy I'm always pissed off about.

He had some good ideas, but he is most importantly responsible for the overkill hypothesis (idea that humans caused the end-Pleistocene extinctions and that climate was minimally a factor) which led to the idea of Pleistocene rewilding.

...Basically this guy thought we should introduce lions, cheetahs, camels, and other animals to North America to "rewild" the landscape to what it was like pre-human habitation, and was a major advocate for re-creating mammoths.

Why am I pissed off about him? Well he denied that there were humans in North America prior to the Clovis culture, which it's pretty well established now that there were pre-Clovis inhabitants, and in general promoted the idea that the earliest inhabitants of North America exterminated the ecosystem through destructive and greedy practices...

...which has become "common knowledge" and used as evidence for anyone who wants to argue that Native Americans are "Not So Innocent, Actually" and the mass slaughter and ecosystem devastation caused by colonialism was just what humans naturally do when encountering a new environment, instead of a genocidal campaign to destroy pre-existing ways of life and brutally exploit the resources of the land.

It basically gives the impression that the exploitative and destructive relationship to land is "human nature" and normal, which erases every culture that defies this characterization, and also erases the way indigenous people are important to ecosystems, and promotes the idea of "empty" human-less ecosystems as the natural "wild" state.

And also Martin viewed the Americas' fauna as essentially impoverished, broken and incomplete, compared with Africa which has much more species of large mammals, which is glossing over the uniqueness of North American ecosystems and the uniqueness of each species, such as how important keystone species like bison and wolves are.

It's also ignoring the taxa and biomes that ARE extraordinarily diverse in North America, for example the Appalachian Mountains are one of the most biodiverse temperate forests on Earth, the Southeastern United States has the Earth's most biodiverse freshwater ecosystems, and both of these areas are also a major global hotspot for amphibian biodiversity and lichen biodiversity. Large mammals aren't automatically the most important. With South America, well...the Amazon Rainforest, the Brazilian Cerrado and the Pantanal wetlands are basically THE biodiversity hotspot of EVERYTHING excepting large mammals.

It's not HIM I have a problem with per se. It's the way his ideas have become so widely distributed in pop culture and given people a muddled and warped idea of ecology.

If people think North America was essentially a broken ecosystem missing tons of key animals 500 years ago, they won't recognize how harmful colonization was to the ecosystem or the importance of fixing the harm. Who cares if bison are a keystone species, North America won't be "fixed" until we bring back camels and cheetahs...right?

And by the way, there never were "cheetahs" in North America, Miracinonyx was a different genus and was more similar to cougars than cheetahs, and didn't have the hunting strategy of cheetahs, so putting African cheetahs in North America wouldn't "rewild" anything.

Also people think its a good idea to bring back mammoths, which is...no. First of all, it wouldn't be "bringing back mammoths," it would be genetically engineering extant elephants to express some mammoth genes that code for key traits, and second of all, the ecosystem that contained them doesn't exist anymore, and ultimately it would be really cruel to do this with an intelligent, social animal. The technology that would be used for this is much better used to "bring back" genetic diversity that has been lost from extant critically endangered species.

I think mustangs should get to stay in North America, they're already here and they are very culturally important to indigenous groups. And I think it's pretty rad that Scimitar-horned Oryx were brought back in their native habitat only because there was a population of them in Texas. But we desperately, DESPERATELY need to re-wild bison, wolves, elk, and cougars across most of their former range before we can think about introducing camels.

#ecology #environment

[psychotrenny]

Self-Indigenisation is something that I brought up on an earlier post and I think it’s something more people should be aware of. It describes the way that Settler populations will claim Indigenous identities for themselves in order to justify their presence on the land and mistreatment of actually Indigenous populations. This can include using tenuous or even outright fabricated Lineal connections to indigenous peoples in order to claim membership to a group they have no social or cultural ties to. The most well-known example in North America are USAmericans who claim that their grandmother was a “Cherokee Princess” or something of the like in an attempt to buttress their identity as being in some way more impressive or “authentic”. Another example I’ve read about is White Quebecois (who at most might have a very distant indigenous ancestor, and sometimes not even then) with no connection to Indigenous communities claiming indigenous identity in order to launch lawsuits over land rights, sometimes even to the direct detriment of actually indigenous communities. Self-Indigenisation can also include claims that a particular settler population itself has some deep enough connection to the land that it can be considered indigenous. In South East Australia in the 1930s you had locally born Settlers explicitly assert themselves as the original inhabitants of the land and the actual indigenous peoples as nothing more than peripheral transients. The idea of US Appalachian settler populations being some sort of indigenous people has become a recurring one in scholarship and activism in the region and serves as way to assert the rightfulness of their ownership of the land even in a progressive and supposedly anti-colonial context. I haven’t personally read it myself but apparently the book Distorted Descent by Darryl Leroux does a pretty good job of exploring Self-Indigenisation in contemporary Canada.

While most of the literature on the subject I could find focused on North America*, this process if far from unique to that region. Indeed, Self-Indigenisation is one of the major rhetorical strategies used to justify the continued existence of Israel especially in more “progressive” spaces. Like hell even just being active on tumblr recently is going to expose you to numerous Zionist claiming that the Israelis are the true natives of Palestine and that the Palestinian Arabs are merely “squatters”. “Zionism means Landback” and other such nonsense. To be clear there is very much an indigenous Jewish population in Palestine, the “Old Yishuv” Shepardim, but the Settlers who established the state of Israel are very not much it not it no matter how much they try and construct such an identity (such as by suppressing traditionally spoken Jewish languages like Yiddish and replacing them with a reconstructed for of Hebrew) or repute the identity of indigenous Arabs. Essentially self-indigenisation is an especially heinous tool that Settler populations use to evict indigenous peoples on a spiritual level in order to maintain their physical displacement. Such rhetoric must be resisted and discredited as much as possible lest it’s able to have its intended effect

*I suppose it makes sense given that I was only looking at English-language literature and that region is home to the most populous of Anglo settler states

#stella speaks

[rederiswrites]

If you live on the US east coast, specifically somewhere along the Appalachians, September/October is time to start cruising farmers’ markets and watching out for North America’s largest fruit, the paw paw.

Paw Paws used to be a tremendously important fruit, both to Indigenous people and white settlers. They’re a major source of fresh calories in late fall, because they fruit in October and are large and sweet. You never hear of them these days for the simple reason that they’re nearly impossible to mass market. They’re very soft and spoil very quickly. So, you can’t ship them for shit.

Nonetheless, in my area, they’ve continued on in the background, gaining strength as one of the few things that remains truly seasonal, making gains as a specialty crop. Most excitingly, several breeders in the West Virginia and Maryland area have been making enormous strides breeding for flavor, size, and ratio of flesh to seed. I’m not totally clear on why I’m so blessed, but I think literally all the major breeders and growers of paw paws are within a two hour radius of my house.

Not everyone I’ve had try paw paws has immediately liked them. I think it’s just because they’re really like nothing you’ve had. Usually, when you’re trying a totally new thing, you have to try it at least three times. First try is for “wow that was....sure a thing.” Second is for “but it’s kinda interesting!” Third is for “Why do I keep thinking about this thing? I...kinda want more?” Paw Paws, to me, are dessert that comes off a tree prepared. They’ve got an indescribably sweet tropical flavor and the texture of custard. They’re amazing.

So if you live in the Midatlantic US, I really encourage you to get a few to try. They’re a part of our history, and they could be an incredibly valuable sustainable crop in a more decentralized, more seasonal version of agriculture.

#farming #fruit #food #paw paws

[rs-hawk]

Gender irrelevant, an enthused archaeologist encounters a creature which would change the known history of the entire area, and sets out to track it to its lair for further (actual) research.

Instead, what awaits them is an education in why this thing was worshipped, and why they should start worshipping it too.

This just broke me out of my slump/writer’s block 😍 TW: the Raven Mocker. Light horror smut

You have been studying the development of civilization and population growth in the Appalachian Mountains. It was always your “special interest” as a kid, and now in your early 30s, you’re finally able to devote yourself to it properly. After years of studying everything in books, charts, even occasionally going to Indigenous Cultural Centers to discuss what they knew about their ancestors who lived there, you finally get to get into the field. Yet, there’s one creature that keeps popping up that you can’t get out of your head for some reason is the Raven Mocker. It makes you hesitant, but you push through.

Of course, even as a child your mother told you about them. You always sort of brushed it off because you always thought that it was just stories that your mom picked up from her mom. It’s not like you really grew up in the culture anyway. However, in the mountains, setting up your camp as night falls around you, a shiver creeps down your spine. There’s something watching you. You know it. The primal part of your brain is on sending out high alert signals to every part of your body.

You tell yourself you’re being silly. At worst there’s some predators, but you have a gun, and a fire going. You just want to make your way to a spot where your colleague said he saw some fragmented pottery and what he thought might be evidence of a small band who used to worship something they thought lived in these woods. From what he could gather from the shards, it seemed to be some kind of deity of death. This thrilled you. Against hope, you hoped that you might be able to discover a small, lost village or band that had vanished with time.

With that hope warming your heart and pushing away the anxiety creeping up your spine, you crawled into your tent, finally able to get some sleep. Although it was against the regulations of the park you where in, you left the fire going to ward off animals. You just set an alarm for every 90 minutes to check in and tend to it. That night, you are lucky. Nothing happened. But your recklessness has caught the eye of the very creature who lives in the back of your head.

Every branch you stumble over. Every time a twig scratches your face. Every time you cross a stream or go off trail because of something blocking your path. It’s there. Watching you with a curiosity that it hasn’t felt since it had its own body. How long ago has it been now? It looks down at its rotting limbs, twisting them this way and that. Flexing its wings. Centuries. It’s been scavenging for new body parts for centuries.

The sound of your voice filling the air as you curse a rock you had stubbed your toe on brings its attention back to you. The creature decides to scavenge new parts before approaching you. Just in case you can see it, it doesn’t want to look a mess.

You make your way to another spot you think is safe to camp. That might, you decide not to leave the fire going. You feel safer. More secure. And you’re worried about what might happen if you sleep through an alarm. The thought of being why a giant forest fire sweeps through the mountains makes your mouth run dry. No. It’s not worth it. You shouldn’t have even risked it last night.

Tonight, you curl up in your sleeping bag again, dozing off quickly despite your skittishness about your surroundings. However, you’re woken up by the sound of what at first you thought was a wild hog. Your blood runs cold as you sit frozen, knowing that you’ll be killed. You have no way to properly protect yourself from one, but you were in an area not known for them. After a few minutes of listening, you see a shadow cast onto your tent walls by the moonlight. It’s a bear.

You’re not sure what happens next, but before you know it, you’re laying on the shredded floor of your tent as the bear wanders away after not being able to find the food you’d tied high above the ground. The attack leaves you weak, but you manage to call 9-1-1 and tell them in a gurgled voice where you are. They promise to send park rangers as soon as possible. The woman asks you to keep talking, but your reception is spotty at best. After mere moments, the connection is lost. All you can do now is hope that they get here in time.

The Raven Mocker finds you easily. Even more so than it would have thanks to the delicious scent of your death. It flies over to you, inhaling the sweet scent of your life force. Through blurred vision, and a trembling voice, you ask it for help.

“Please. Just, make it quick,” you ask, knowing what it is as its wings fold behind its back. Those beady eyes peering down at you. “It’s not like they’re going to find me in time.”

It looks at you curiously. Do you really want to die? It can’t decide. Instead, it walks around you before straddling your weak body. It leans close to you, slowly drinking in your life and it leaves your body. You wince, but it doesn’t hurt. Not really. In fact, how gentle its being, the way its holding you as it slowly steals your life, is almost kind. Maybe its the blood loss. Maybe its because you’ve always been scared, and its not that scary. Not really. But you lean up to meet its deformed lips.

The Raven Mocker is caught off guard, even pausing its drinking of you. However, it soon returns the kiss. Its foul tasting tongue invades your mouth, making you let out a tiny sound of approval. The creature hasn’t felt like this in a long time. So long. It had been a long time even when it was a human. Its hands wander, exploring your slowly dying body, but you respond to every touch. Your cunt starts to get wet as it slips a hand between the two of you, palming and teasing it over what little cloth still covers it.

It tears the rest of it off with ease, quickly sinking two of its decaying fingers inside of you. A soft moan escapes your lips as it pumps in and out of you, spreading its fingers to stretch you out. You’re arching as much as you can in this weak state. You’re starting to feel cold, but this distraction is helping.

Before you know it, the creature pulls out its fingers and replaces it with something so large that you can’t help but cry out as it’s crammed inside of you. You can’t even look to see if the cock now jackhammering inside of your wet cunt is human or not. Not that you suppose it really matters. The creature’s wings shield you from the drops of rain that have started to trickle down onto the two of you. It was making you even colder until it shields you.

Its withered hands hold your upper body closer to it as it hunches over you, slamming its cock in and out of you. It bullies your poor cervix and stretches you more than you ever have been stretched. You can feel your life starting to slip more and more away as its talons scratch down your back, though not unkindly.

Precum coats your womb as it crams itself inside of you. To your surprise, you feel something else pushing into you. You try to shift slightly, the pleasure now becoming more of a pain, but it doesn’t let you. Instead, it pushes you to the ground and uses its full weight to pin you there. Before you realize what’s happening, there’s a popping noise, and you’re fuller than you’ve ever been. You grimace and try to move, but the decaying creature on top of you holds you still, decaying and cracked lips finding every soft spot of exposed skin as its wings shield you from the now onslaught of rain.

The cum feels hot. Too hot. Inside of you as it pumps rope after rope into you. All you can do is lay there, slowly slipping into unconscious as your blood pools under you. Just as it pulls out, you hear park rangers. The creature caws as it straights and bursts into a run before taking flight. From a distance, it really does just look like a raven.

The rangers manage to save your life, and the Raven Mocker leaves you alone. Even when you try to call it back, worshipping it for its power. All you can do now is wait for Death.

#writers on tumblr #writing #fantasy romance #author #monster lover #monster romance #monster fucker #monster fuqqer #fantasy smut #smut #monster husband #monster kink #monster smut #monster boyfriend #monsterfucking nsft #monster fudger #monsterfucking cw #tw monsterfucking #horror smut #fantasy nsft #nsft asks #monster nsft #send dirty asks #asks open #send asks #anon asks #answered asks #send anons #anon ask #writers and poets

[ask-nyc-boroughs]

Early Appalachian frontiersman Alfred in buckskin circa 1790- 1810s. I’m trying to figure out how to paint like NC Wyeth digitally (so lol the background is Wyeth’s).

Gonna ramble a bit about my nor’easter au and Alfred below the cut

Following the American Revolution, Alfred is immediately sent out to squash any rebellions (like whiskey rebellion) and to partake in wars against Indigenous nations like the Cherokee. I’ll save a discussion about the Cherokee wars for another time because that’ll take a long time to explain + I’m still working on my Cherokee oc and I need to understand Cherokee history and perspective more before I go forward with talking about this topic.

Now the many of the east coast states are older than Alfred, and they mostly supported him during the revolution because they thought he’d be easy to control given at the time of the revolution he wasn’t tied down as any colony or city. However, he was a New Englander and very obviously so

He was once Plymouth colony and he grew up alongside his cousin Henry/Massachusetts, but by the time the revolution occurred, his status was unclear and he was simply living with his cousin (who’s his earliest and most fierce supporter) .

These states operated like countries and part of why the had the revolution was to continue to self-govern and maintain their regional cultures. It’s also part of why the federal government initially was rather weak. Given Alfred’s closeness to his cousin, and his very staunch New England identity, I think the states would be hesitant over a strong New England national control. And so I think they especially Jennie/NY & Rich/Virginia encouraged Alfred to leave his cousin for a while, and partake in military campaigns (+ he was good at battle).

Also Alfred was like 14, and I don’t think he’s ever been the type to sit down and do paperwork. Honestly he was always a bad student, who was far more interested in the outdoors, horses, sailing and hunting. While he won the war, and he was fine with being head of state, he still didn’t 1) have confidence in himself to make non-military related decisions 2) he just wasn’t mentally ready to take on the responsibilities and was fine deferring it to his states like Jennie, Rich, or Henry to figure out matters that weren’t military related. He was irresponsible and it would come back to bite him in the ass during the Civil War.

Alfred on a personal level it was probably good for him to get away from his overly critical cousin who can be overbearing, but also so he would get more experience to deeply get to know his states.

Also Alfred, growing up in New England, he was a little ball of rage as a kid and he has a difficult time managing his emotions. He wasn’t exactly the personable seemingly fun loving Alfred of the present. Not that he couldn’t crack a joke, but ok I’m not from New England, but in the northeast I find we’re rather cynical, un-filtered and sarcastic and tbh kind of asssholes in the way we have fun and in our humor. That’s how he was, which is like fine unless you’re trying to appeal to the rest of the nation lol which he would have to

I think his time spent in Appalachia and the south did help him learn more about his other states especially Maisie/ North Carolina. But also helped him learn more how to let go some of this intense New England rage, and how to better control his emotions. But also let loose in a way that isn’t so dark and cynical. Also I think this helped him slowly learn how to speak with less of a New England specific accent

He was also able to observe states like Rich and Carl/ South Carolina and gain an understanding of how being able to control your emotions, can help control your image and how others perceive you. So these are the origins of how he slowly began to shape and become at least in public this overly friendly happy go lucky Alfred.

I’ll save a discussion about his interactions with the Appalachian states more explicitly another time I’m just tired😴 fr rn

#hetalia #aph #hws #historical hetalia #aph america #hetalia america #hws america #aph usa #hws usa #hetalia usa #alfred f jones #hetalia headcanons #hetalia au #statetalia #aph headcanons #aph au #hws headcanons #hws au #hetalia fanart #hetalia art #hetalia hcs #hetalia world stars #alfred jones #hetalia fandom #aph fanart #hws fanart #I’m not great with historical fashion lol #nor’easter verse

[ghouljams]

Okay okay I saw your post about wanting the witch to do some really crazy magic that proves she’s tough and I raise you an additional idea. European magic and myths with fae and cryptids is more positive and nice, especially with modern retelling of fairy tails (I know this isn’t necessarily true there are some really dark aspects of European folk). I myself am from the Appalachian Mountains, and that region is very very old. I don’t know what you know about the region but the mountains themselves are older than the rings of Saturn, and bones. With how old they are the region has a lot of folk lore and cryptids and dark legends surrounding it, most of which coming from the indigenous communities that were there before us. Haints, wendigo/skin walker, and a slew of rules everyone follows. You don’t whistle at night, keep a broom above every door, cover the mirrors and open the windows when someone dies, if you hear screaming or someone calling for you in the dark or woods- NO YOU DIDNT!!! Dark shit like that is a big deal where I’m from. Now my actual thought was what if witch is from a old magic type of place, and when someone (another fae not price) comes to challenge her or test her saying she ain’t powerful or she doesn’t know real magic and fae, she shows them where she’s from (I was thinking with her cool door) they step thru into the middle of the woods of her ancestral/family home and they immediately are terrified. Like the fae!141 are old and ancient fae but the region is older than even then and it scares the fuck outta them, like they immediately forfeit! Maybe they saw something in the woods or just the overall feeling of the place is overwhelming. This would also match up with the witch being so scared of the mimic, cause wendigos/skin walkers are fucking terrifying in a place like Appalachia so her moving and thinking that’s what she’s being terrorized by is horrifying!!! I know this is really long and probably makes no sense and whatever you write is and will be amazing but I just had this thought today cause your writing lives rent free in my mind 24/7!!! Whatever witch x price you make will make me feral no matter what!!!!

Witch's magic is actually loosely based around American folk magic, specifically Hoodoo and some Appalachian folk magic. And all I can say is: Don't bring those names into my ask box they are so very scary and I'm scared(joking)(I actually am terrified of .... I don't even like typing their name). Although I don't think Witch is from the US, she is definitely very, very, old magic. I have various thoughts on where her magic comes from, but it's old. (I think Konig stops to look at her because her magic is familiar to him, an ancient understanding ingrained in him of what she is)

Anyway I have a few little pieces about Witch interacting with other witches, what's one more challenge to her abilities?

It's always interesting when fae visit you. When they come to you as customers, you mean. No you're fairly used to visitors at this point. It's the ones that come to you for a service that you don't get often. You smile at the fae across from you as you shuffle your cards. They came in through the front, you know they want something. Annoying that they've managed to stay silent as you ushered them in.

18, 19, you switch between the cards to try and get a feel for what will work best for your silent customer. The man, you suppose, laying the card down on the table. Not for their appearance, but for the role they seem intent on playing. Domineering, or trying to be. You lay cards around it, humming to yourself. Snake, birds, mice, the coffin, the clouds, the home. You know all this. They're sitting right in front of me practically salivating, you try to silently tell your deck.

"So," You squint your eyes to really try and sell your smile as friendly, you feel like you're doing little more than bearing your teeth, "What are you looking for today?"

"Just wanted to see what all the fuss was about," They tell you calmly. You snap down three cards for yourself in quick succession, though you hardly need to read them to get the message.

"Boot this rude motherfucker" the cards tell you. You scoop up your draws with your fingers and shuffle them back into the deck.

"I see," You try to keep your voice bright. They scoff, their expression amused. You don't see what's so funny.

"Hardly, I expected a seer at least, you're-" They wave their hand at you, "-just feeling it out, right?" You raise your brows, continue your shuffle. "I expected Price to be chasing someone a little more," They sigh, you don't expect them to finish the sentence, you're sure it's insulting. Rules dictate politeness, they sure are skirting that line.

"You know Price," You don't ask, but the question hangs between you. How? and Does he even like you? You can't imagine he does.

"Mm, we're on the court together," The fae rests their elbow on the arm of your couch, sets their chin against their palm, fingers curling against their cheek. "Strange he'd be so protective of such a novice, but I suppose you're pretty. He likes pretty."

You let your head tip side to side as you think. Novice. That's one you're not used to hearing. You wonder why they'd think that. Can't they feel your magic? A card jumps out of your shuffling. The home. Ah. You feel your smile grow more genuine as you press the card back into the middle of your deck.

Of course they can't feel you. This whole place is you. It would be like looking at an ocean and deciding it's harmless because you can't pick out a single drop of water. That doesn't stop the waves from dragging you out to drown any more than it stops your magic from surrounding this fae. You wonder if they can feel it, the way your magic hones in on them, eyes watching their every move with silent focus.

"Why don't I show you out?" You set your deck on the table and stand without waiting for an answer, leading them to your back door. You're sure they'll find your garden more than impressive now that you've rescinded their welcome.

"Why not," They follow, "I should be going anyway, you're hardly worth the trouble the others are sending after you."

It's crossing the threshold a second time that hurts, that spins and swims in the fae's vision. The heat of a familiar season ripping through them like an oven. Summer bound by heavy chains and iron spikes. You smile at them peacefully, spidering ties arcing off of you towards the sun itself. You burn. Your magic lashes against the confines of the garden, the walls and wards worked into the land, into summer itself.

The fae looks back into your home, the consumptive darkness of a doorway once broken and twice repaired, of a space that shouldn't be a space. A house that's wrong. They look back to you, to the soft tilt of your head, the faux patience as you wait for them to remember what they're here for.

The ground beneath their feet is unfamiliar, and pitches their stomach. They stumble a little, the pressure of the magic keeping a whole season in place settling on their shoulders. It takes everything in them not to buckle under the weight.

"This is fun," You smile at them, raising a hagstone to your eye, "I was wondering why my wards were acting up."

They do their best to collect enough air to respond. Everything feels thick and humid, the heat only raising as they stay close to you. They blink against the blinding sun, their vision swinging violently as they try to keep their focus on moving. Are they moving? You aren't. You're the only fixed point as the world pitches on its axis and spins.

You and your terrible smile, staring down at their suffering. They're on the court for fucks sake, some little human pet shouldn't stand half a chance against them. They make to swing for you, try to grab you with their claws. There's only air, their depth perception wavering between distances. You crouch, following them as the weight of magic forces them to their knees.

"Now I will admit," You hum, reaching to pluck a few stray hairs from their head, "I don't particularly care for killing, so I'll leave you for Price to take care of."

You snap your fingers and the fae straightens and stands from their misery. They walk themselves to the gate and open it. They look back at you, and you wiggle your fingers in goodbye as the hairs in your grip spark with the same fire that engulfs them as they step out into Winter.

#oc: Witch #ghoul speaks #Price finding the charred barely alive fae: lmao get wrekt #he wishes he could've seen Witch committing acts of violence #just the thought turns him on a little #oc fic #oc talk #Idk what to tag this as tbh #original work #original fiction #Price does kill the poor sod #Witch does some improvised poppet magic and also just wrecks a bitch

[intheholler]

what exactly is a holler?

i have gotten this question/seen it wondered about more than a few times and i've only ever given a short, simplified answer so i thought i'd briefly touch on some specifics about what it is and what it's like to live up a holler

a holler is simply a mountain hollow. it is a narrow area between two mountains, similar to a valley but smaller. much smaller. not all mountain hollows everywhere are rural, but the hollers in the appalachian mountains almost exclusively are.

so in terms of the appalachian holler specifically:

"holler" is the just the pronunciation of the word "hollow" according to the appalachian english dialect.

a holler has a few other defining physical features: a creek, a "mouth" where the creek meets a bigger body of water, and a "head."

the head is pretty much as far back as you can travel up a holler before you run out of places to go. roads ("road" singular is more accurate most times) go up one way; whereas you could, for visualization's sake, imagine a valley as somethin of a set of parallel lines with an entry and exit point on either side, there is essentially only one way up a holler.

as you can imagine, a tiny little one-way holler with no exit sign is pretty secluded. usually hollers were settled by families generations ago and they kept that land in the family.

historically, people up a holler kept to themselves, and they relied heavily on each other, which is where a lot of the "self-sufficient mountain folk" thing comes from. tight knit communities with an "us vs. them" sorta mentality to varying degrees. very impoverished areas.

of course, the hollers remain stolen land belonging the indigenous peoples who lived here before we forced them out. a lot of these modern generations of those settler families are disappearing from them now too due to having to sell land for various reasons over the years. so not every single holler is exclusively occupied by generations of the same community, but living up a holler does still mean you're gonna be a lot more secluded from the rest of the ridge.

hope that clears things up a little for y'all what don't come from here <3

#appalachia #hollers #appalachian history #appalachian culture #appalachian dialect #txt

[sahonithereadwolf]

🐺📚Osiyo! I'm Sahoni 🍓🌕

I'm a Queer, Indigenous (ᏣᎳᎩᏱ ᏕᏣᏓᏂᎸᎩ), and disabled writer (a lot of smaller publications that have since crumbled into internet aether), game designer (previously; Evil Hat, Blaseball, my own stuff), and radio personality (against my will).

Consider me your friendly neighborhood Appalachian monster librarian. Or just a red wolf to keep things simple. Unless you want the full lecture on indigenous folklore. Outside of the aforementioned (mostly analog) game design, writing, and radio; I also enjoy the act of collecting folklore and ways from around the world. I'm into cooking, general outdoorsy stuff, horror, storytelling as an artform, and pop culture ephemera so expect to see a little bit of all of those down here among other thing.

Also been trying to get back into biology.

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#osiyo #siyo #introductory post #furry #wolf #red wolf #game dev #indie ttrpg #indie games #indigenous

[froody]

literally no one but americans ever say "im irish" or "im italian" unless they were born there. like, that's a very american thing to say. it's a bit weird. like deep down not even you want to actually be americans so you try to convince yourselves you're from other countries as well.

We aren’t ethnically Americans. Most of us aren’t indigenous to this land. We came here from another place.

If you want a real answer to why you see Americans doing this, there was a great deal of xenophobia towards immigrants in the 19th and 20th which caused those immigrants to remain insular and hold onto the culture of their homeland. This is why you will see 3rd generation Italian or Irish Americans say they’re Italian or Irish. This is why there are Irish neighborhood, Italian neighborhoods, Russian neighborhood, German neighborhoods, Czech neighborhoods etc. Often they still hold onto the traditions, culinary basics and some of the culture their ancestors left. Sometimes the language. That’s why those traditions are different than the modern ones in the place they claim to be from. That’s why Italian Americans pronounce Italian words differently than Italians from Italy. That’s why people in Appalachian still keen at funerals. It’s a time capsule of when our great grandfathers left.

#ask