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artleaguemdcnorth · 1 year

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Ceramic Class - Coil and Pinch&Coil- both levels. 2/28/23

Students , I will continue to post assignments.

Some of you are working slower than others, nonetheless here are the assignments to be done as you complete work.

So far students should have completed the following works:

Tile

Pinched Cups.

Next assignments to complete are as follows:

Coil cup

Pinch and coil

If you have caught up with the first two this week, you will begin the coiling pots.

This week students will work both Tuesday and Thursday on the following assignments:

Coil and Pinch and Coil.

So far you have learned how to pinch a form into shape .

Now you will learn the next method for hand building, coil method.

Coiling as a method of creating pottery goes back thousands of years. The technique is found in the pottery of various cultures from Africa to Greece, China and Native American peoples.

It is a simple technique that offers a world of benefits for hand build form.

I made a video that is quite long but will give you an idea of how coiling is done. Watch it as you attempt to do the assignment.

You will start by creating a small cookie like form about two and half inches in diameter.

You will pinch this form to start.

Once you have your pinched base, set it on the table.

Pinch a small ball of clay slightly bigger than a marble.

You will begin to roll a small piece of clay between your palms rather quickly. You should have a small cigar like form .

Set it on the table, hopefully you are using the canvas surface as a base to roll your clay.

Roll back and forth between the second and third phalange of your fingers and the palms of your hand while putting mild pressure on the clay.

Keep a light touch as you press the clay between your palms and fingers.

I open my fingers wide as I roll back and forth as this helps to extend the coils.

Once you have a coil, it does not have to be long, any size long you will take the coil and begin to attach it to the base.

The first coil attached to the base is very important for the form to stay attached.

Take the end of the coil and press it slightly on to the base, on top, not the side.

Make sure its attached and not loose. Next slowly and carefully begin the coil process. You will go around the base , if your coil is long enough you will end over and on top of your starting point.

When you get to the end of the coil press and pinch the end to attach it firmly.

This should be done all the time beginning the coil and where the coil ends. Where you stop with one coil, that’s were you begin with the next coil.

Do not aim to start and end at the same spot.

Let the coils end in different locations as you coil.

As you move to the next levels you will need to tap the coils into place so that they do not come loose.

All coils will be on top of each other, not on the outside or the inside but on top of each other. Do not worry about imperfections, this assignment benefits from the textural quality of those irregularities. Coil Assignment:

1) Do a small test coil piece that is 2 inches high for practice before you start your bigger piece.

Remember to start out with the cookie like form 2.5 -3 inches in diameter.

Once you have the practice then you can begin your larger piece.

2) Do a second coil pot that measures anywhere from 4-5 inches high with a 3 inch diameter.

Look between the coils as you work to make sure you do not see any light through them If you do , tap the coil lightly in to place. If you do not do this , the piece will come undone as you handle it.

Coils will dry quickly if you put too much pressure or if you leave your clay pieces out.

Keep clay covered so it does not dry out.

You can refer to the video often to review the technique . Work on this assignment today and Thursday.

I will post a variation of this assignment for next week on Tuesday.

We will combine both pinch and coil then.

Post all work on your Tumblr page at end of class time to show the progress you make for each class session.

Make sure you watch the video to see how I do it.

Watch it several times.

Please note that in the video, I am working with clay that is a little dried out, so I have to wedge and pinch it more .

That is not the case with your clay, your clay is fresh out of the bag so it should be formed easier and quicker. Remember , keep a light touch as you coil.

Go with the flow, coiling is very relaxing.

If you complete the coil cups on Tuesday you can begin the pinch and coil on Thurs.

THURSDAY’S CLASS

In today’s assignment you are going to combine the two techniques you have learned so far:

PINCH & COIL CUPS

Starting with a pinched cup you are now going to combine coiling on the top, building two 7 inch high cups.

Build a pinched cup that is three inches high and then finish the top with thin coils to height of an additional four inches of thin coils.

You will build TWO identical pinch and coil vessels.

Pay attention to the space between coils.

Remember to tap the coils into place so that they do not come loose.

At this point you need to make sure your pinched cups are uniformly pressed so that they are not heavy or showing too much cracking and that they are conical in form.

Make sure the rim is rounded before attaching the first coil. You can do that by going around the rim slowly with the thumb and index finger. You can moist the finger slightly as you do this.

Notice the pinched cup on the bottom and the coils on top.

This assignment allows you to combine two techniques to create forms.

Once completed attach a one coil bottom to the cup for stability. The coil needs to be about a ¼ to ½ inch thickness.

I will add a demo video of this combination of techniques for you to watch above the post.

Level 2

You will combine both coil and pinch to create an off balance vessel .

The diameter of the vessel needs to be aproximately 5-6 inches in diameter (width) and about 8 inches in height.

You will start by creating a pinched bowl and finish to the required height by using thin coils.

Examples of different things that can be done using the coil technique :

these are examples for height

Above and below are examples of creating a vessels that give the illusion of being off center.

Remember to post all work completed during class time to your tumblr on the day it is completed.

Always show process, where you start , how much you can accomplish each class time and the final piece.

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“...“Scythia” was a fluid term in antiquity. For the Greeks, “Scythia” stood for an extensive cultural zone of a great many loosely connected nomadic and seminomadic ethnic and language groups that ranged over the great swath of territory extending from Thrace (another fluid geographic term in antiquity), the Black Sea, and northern Anatolia across the Caucasus Mountains to the Caspian Sea and eastward to Central and Inner Asia (it is more than four thousand miles from Thrace to the Great Wall of China).

“The Greeks call them Scythians,” wrote Herodotus; the Persians called them Saka (Chinese names included Xiongnu, Yuezhi, Xianbei, and Sai). “Although each people has a separate name of its own,” remarked the geographer Strabo, the Scythians, Massagetae, Saka, and other nomadic tribes “are given the general name of Scythians.” Pliny named twenty of the “countless tribes of Scythia.” As Gocha Tsetskhladze, a historian of Scythia, points out, “We call them Scythians because the Greeks did.” There are more restrictive modern descriptions for “Scythians” based on ethnographic, geographic, and linguistic parameters, but the terms Scythia and Scythians, the names used by the ancient Greeks, are convenient catchall terms to refer to the diverse yet culturally similar nomadic and seminomadic groups of Eurasia to western China.

Modern historians and archaeologists use “Scythian” to refer to the vast territory characterized in antiquity by the horse-centered nomad warrior lifestyle marked by similar warfare and weapons, artistic motifs, gender relations, burial practices, and other cultural features. Scythia’s forests, grassy steppes, desert oases, and mountains were home to a multitude of individual tribes with their own names, histories, customs, and dialects but sharing a migratory life centered on horses, archery, hunting, herding, trading, raiding, and guerrilla-style warfare. Endless journeys over waterless prairies, invasions, plunder, wars, alliances, agreements, quarrels, more wars: “such is the life of nomads,” commented Strabo.

Lucian of Samosata (Syria) concurred: “Scythians live in a state of perpetual warfare, now invading, now receding, now contending for pasturage or booty.” Going by myriad names, waxing and waning in population over the centuries, continually on the move, the Scythian nomads, as described in ancient texts, had a history “inseparable from that of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppes.” Their common material culture, the “Scythian Triad” of distinctive weapons, horses, and artistic “animal-style” motifs, is evident in archaeological artifacts in burials from the Carpathian Mountains to northern China. Grave goods demonstrate far-reaching trade among these groups.

Not all of these peoples wandered the ocean of grass under infinite skies, however. By the fifth century BC, seminomadic clans known as the “Royal Scythians” had come to reside in wagons or settlements clustered around the northeastern Black Sea–Don area, taking up agriculture and trade, facilitating exchange between Greece and points along the Silk Routes to Asia. It was mainly through the coastal trading colonies that the Greeks first came to hear of the many different tribes of greater Scythia. No aspect of Scythian culture unsettled the Greeks more than the status of women. Hellenes expected strict division of male and female roles. But among nomadic people, girls and boys wore the same practical clothing and learned to ride and shoot together. In small hunting and raiding groups where everyone was a stakeholder and each was expected to contribute to survival in an unforgiving environment, this way of life made good sense.

It meant that a girl could challenge a boy in a race or archery contest, and a woman could ride her horse to hunt or care for herds alone, with other women, or with men. Women were as able as men to skirmish with enemies and defend their tribe from attackers. Self-sufficient women were valued and could achieve high status and renown. It is easy to see how these commonsense, routine features of nomad life could lead outsiders like the Greeks—who kept females dependent on males—to glamorize steppe women as mythic Amazons. The opportunity for an especially strong, ambitious woman to head women-only or mixed-sex raiding parties or even armies was exaggerated in Greek myths into a kind of war of the sexes, pitting powerful Amazon queens against great Greek heroes.

…Despite their rich culture (which flourished from the seventh century BC to about AD 500), the Saka-Scythians, Thracians, Sarmatians, and kindred groups left no written histories. What we know about them must be gleaned from other oral, written, or artistic materials, chiefly from Greece and Rome but also non-Greek sources from what is now Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, India, China. The lifestyles of Eurasian nomads in later times can also contribute to our understanding of ancient life on the steppes.

Excavations of grave mounds (kurgans) began in the 1870s, and every year since then numerous archaeological teams are uncovering more and more evidence, much of it confirming ancient Greek reports and also revealing that Scythian culture was more sophisticated and complex than previously realized. By the seventh century BC, powerful Scythian forces were attacking, plundering, and exacting tribute in Thrace, the Caucasus, and Anatolia, penetrating south as far as Syria and Media, even advancing toward Egypt and moving eastward toward China.

The Scythians’ reach contracted again after defeats in the Near and Far East in the sixth century BC, but Scythians continued to dominate the Caucasus and Central Asian steppes. Scythians were horse people. They traveled extremely long distances by land, much of it harsh going. To reach Thrace or the mouth of the Danube or northern Greece, for example, they would follow a long southwestern arc down from the steppes. To reach Colchis, Armenia, Anatolia, and Persia from the north, they took one of two major migration routes used by nomads, traders, and invaders from time immemorial. These routes, first described by Herodotus, involved arduous journeys over or around the snow-clad Caucasus range. The Scythian Gates (or Keyhole) was a precipitous, winding mountain trail over the central Caucasus: the journey from the Sea of Azov to the Phasis River in Colchis took about thirty days. The ancient Persians called this narrow defile Dar-e Alan, “Gate of the Alans” (Daryal Pass), after one of the nomadic tribes of Scythia.

The other difficult and longer passage, sometimes called the “Caspian Gates” or the Marpesian Rock, was between the steep eastern end of the mountains and the Caspian Sea (Persian, Darband, “Closed Gates,” modern Derbent, Dagestan). From Pontus (northeastern Turkey) Scythians could cross west into Europe (Thrace) in wintertime over the frozen Bosporus Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. In about 1000–700 BC, Greeks began establishing colonies along the Aegean coast of Anatolia, where they became aware of local histories and legends about Amazons. Many towns in Anatolia claimed Amazons as their founders; grave mounds and other shrines were local landmarks linked with Amazons. By the eighth and seventh centuries BC, Greek adventurers began exploring the rim of the Black Sea, which they called the Euxine or simply Pontus (“the Sea”). At some later point “Pontus” came to specify the wedge of land between the Phasis River of Colchis and the Thermodon River of northeastern Anatolia.

By the sixth century, Greek colonies were sprinkled around the Black Sea, and by 450 BC more than a dozen Greek colonies were established on the northern Black Sea, from Tyras on the Dniester River to Gorgippia (ancient Sinda), south of the Taman Peninsula, and Tanais, a Scythian trading post at the mouth of the Don River on the Sea of Azov. Descriptions of barbarian societies of the north and east, many distinguished by a degree of gender role blurring unknown in Hellenic society, began to filter back to Greece as a few traders and travelers journeyed beyond the colonies on the Black Sea, venturing deeper into the lands of nomadic groups, on the steppes, the Caucasus Mountains, around the Caspian Sea, and eastward along the trade routes to the distant Altai Mountains, India, and China. As travelers pushed farther, the stories got stranger, but meanwhile the Royal Scythians who had settled near the Black Sea colonies were becoming more familiar to the Greeks.

Literary and archaeological evidence points to an uneasy relationship between Greeks and Scythians in the Black Sea region in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, followed by a period of lively trade and mutual integration in the fourth century BC. Many slaves in Athens came from Thracian and Scythian tribes, purchased at Black Sea emporiums such as Tanais on the Don (see chapter 6 on Thrace-Scythia links). Meanwhile Greek merchants and travelers carried out commerce and made marriage alliances with Scythian clans.

In the fifth century BC, Scythian soldiers and policemen were employed in Athens, but numerous vase paintings and inscriptions about Scythians and Thracians attest to Greek familiarity with their clothing, tattoos, and weapons by the midsixth century BC. Male archers and Amazons wearing Scythian-style costumes became favorite subjects on Athenian vases by 575 BC. Some archaic black-figure paintings (575–550 BC) show men fighting on the Amazons’ side against Greeks; scholars suggest that these could be either Scythians or Trojans.

Around 490 BC, the time of the Persian Wars, the popularity of male Scythian archers in art faded, perhaps because of their association with Persians (although Scythians were also enemies of the Persians). But female Scythian archers—“Amazons”—never lost their popular appeal in Greek vase paintings and other art forms. Archaeologists now know that “legends about Amazons are reflected in the grave goods of excavated Scythian tombs.” The accumulating evidence of female warriors buried with their weapons is leading classical scholars to acknowledge that some Greek beliefs about Amazons were influenced by women who shared the same activities as men in the nomadic cultures of Eurasia. But this “novel” insight from modern archaeology—that Amazons were Scythian women—was already obvious to the Greeks in classical times. Whatever psychological meanings the Amazon myths may have held in antiquity, a wealth of little studied literary evidence shows that Greco-Roman authors clearly associated the Amazons with historical, nomadic Scythians at an early date.

Greek writings about Amazons indicated several different Amazon “habitats” and zones of activity in Scythia. Some sources located Amazons in Thrace and western Anatolia; some placed them in Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea; still others put them in the northern Black Sea–Sea of Azov–Caucasus regions; and many writers mentioned more than one locale. Modern scholars have taken this apparent inconsistency as proof that the Greeks were simply making up ecological niches for imaginary beings.

In fact, however, this mobile “sphere of influence” for Amazons makes sense. Whether or not the ancient mythographers and historians realized it, the depiction of shifting environments around the Black Sea for the Amazons’ home bases, strongholds, migrations, and battle campaigns accurately captured the realities of nomadic life. There is no doubt that at various times in historical antiquity groups of Scythians were present in the various regions designated in classical texts as occupied by Amazons .

In Homer’s Iliad, for example, King Priam of Troy recalls seeing Amazons in northern Anatolia as a youth. At the beginning of the war with the Greeks, Priam musters his army at a man-made mound near Troy said to be the grave of the Amazon queen Myrina. Mound tumuli are scattered across Phrygia, Mysia, and Thrace, and Scythian tomb mounds (kurgans) of the seventh–sixth centuries BC exist near Sinope, Pontus. Priam’s ally Queen Penthesilea was a Thracian, but she led a band of Amazons from Pontus. The mythic quest of Jason and Argonauts for the Golden Fleece is at least as ancient in its origins as the Trojan War cycle. According to the Argonautica (the version of the myth composed by Apollonius of Rhodes, ca. 280 BC), Pontus and Colchis were occupied by three different tribes famed for women warriors (chapter 10).

In the mid-seventh century BC, the adventurer Aristeas (from an island in the Sea of Marmara) wrote about his journey east across Scythia to Issedonia and the Altai Mountains. His epic, Arimaspea (a Scythian word meaning something like “people rich in horses”), preserved only in fragments, was very influential in forming the early Greek picture of Scythia and Amazons. Aristeas said that Amazons wandered the ironrich territory around the Maeotis (Sea of Azov) and the River Tanais (Don).

Another lost work, by Skylax of Caryanda (sixth century BC), described the Maeotians, the Sinti (Sinds), and the Sarmatians as “people ruled by women.” Several authors referred to Amazons as Maeotides, “people of the Maeotis.” (Scythian tribes around the Sea of Azov included the Sinds, Dandarii, Doschi, Ixomatae, and many others.) Other ancient historians placed Amazons and their allied forces among the nomads beyond the Borysthenes (Dnieper) River on the steppes north of the Black Sea.

Pontus was the Amazon headquarters in another lost epic, the Theseis, about the Athenian hero Theseus, probably composed in the sixth century BC. In the fifth century BC the playwright Euripides located the Amazons in Pontus; so did the poet Pindar, who described Amazons “armed with spears with broad iron points.” The play Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus, ca. 480 BC) speaks of the “fearless maidens” of Colchis and the Caucasus and the “Scythian multitudes” to the north; it foretells that this Amazon host will “one day settle at Themiscyra by the Thermodon” in Pontus.

The fourth-century BC Greek historian Ephorus (from Cyme, named for an Amazon) reported that a faction of Scythians had once left the northern Black Sea and settled in Pontus, becoming the Amazons. The geographer Strabo (first century BC) located various Amazon tribes in the valleys and mountains of Pontus, Colchis, the Don region, and the Caucasus. Instead of evidence for Greek confusion about where to locate imaginary Amazons, these examples represented Amazons as people who roved around the Black Sea. Scythian culture was consistently recognized as the wellspring of the women warriors known as Amazons.”

- Adrienne Mayor, “Scythia, Amazon Homeland.” in The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World

#the amazons #adrienne mayor #history #scythian #ancient #greek #classical literature

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zahavaxkamara · 2 years

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THE SILK ROAD RESTAURANT

Located downtown Providence Peak in an old hotel renovated into a restaurant with gardens is the Silk Road, a fusion restaurant that serves global cuisines from the Middle East and North Africa, the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa. The Silk Road’s inspiration for the exterior was the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon, where the Silk Road initially started at. According to one legend, the Hanging Gardens were built alongside a grand palace known as The Marvel of Mankind, by the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II (who ruled between 605 and 562 BC), for his Median wife Queen Amytis, because she missed the green hills and valleys of her homeland. This was attested to by the Babylonian priest Berossus, writing in about 290 BC, a description that was later quoted by Josephus. The construction of the Hanging Gardens has also been attributed to the legendary queen Semiramis, who supposedly ruled Babylon in the 9th century BC, and they have been called the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis as an alternative name.

The Silk Road is about three stories high, with each level consisting of its own 5-star kitchen and surrounding giant atriums consisting of beautiful water gardens. The rooftop, which overlooks Providence Peak with a beautiful view of the Rocky Mountains, also consist of a bar and garden, featuring an Olympic-sized pool, fountains, and a waterfall cascading down into the pool. Surrounding the restaurant is a large garden full of beautiful and exotic flora, crystal-clear pools, and marvelous fountains.

With stairs and elevators leading to each level, the interior is flourished in an largely Turkish style, inspired by the main owner’s home region of the Middle East and by the city the historic Silk Road began its route. Of course, other styles around the world has been incorporated into the restaurant, both with the food, the interior, and the entertainment. There are performers every night from 5pm until closing ready to perform dances, music, and acts from their respective cultures.

The name is inspired by the historic Silk Road, the routes stretched from China through India, Asia Minor, up throughout Mesopotamia, to Egypt, the African continent, Greece, Rome, and Britain.

The restaurant is available for anyone and everyone serving both those who make reservations and walk-ins while also providing catering and delivery services. Waiting periods shouldn’t last longer than ten minutes, and we are accommodating for those with any disabilities and dietary needs. Serving vegetarian/vegan, gluten-free, kosher, and halal food options. There are six large private rooms, two on each level, that are available for banquets, business meetings, parties, and such. Currently hiring for two managers, chefs, kitchen lead, bakers, servers, hosts/hostesses, bartenders, dishwashers, gardeners, maintenance crew, and performers.

HOURS:

Sunday through Thursday: 7am-11pm Friday and Saturday: 7am-3am The rooftop bar is opened Sunday through Thursday from 4pm-1am, and Friday and Saturday from 2pm-5am.

Owners: Nazli Ertuğul, to be written, tbw, and tbw.

Employees: to be written.

Exterior inspiration is based on the Royal Alcázars of Seville in Seville, Spain. Interior is loosely based on Arabia Café-Restaurante in Barcelona, Spain.

#( headcanons. )#( about. )#( the silk road restaurant. )

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darisu-chan · 5 years

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Okay, for all of you salty mfs about the casting of the Little Mermaid, let me tell you that having an African American young woman play Ariel is not the same as if a white young woman played Pocahontas or Tiana

So, here’s the thing, although based on Europian fairytales, we don’t know exactly where the kingdoms in certain Disney movies are located: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and The Little Mermaid. Frozen and Tangled straight up take place in fictional kingdoms, Arandelle and Corona respectively. We could argue that the location of the kingdoms corresponds to the place of origin of the collectors of fairytales ─I’m saying collectors because, yes, the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perault did not write these stories, they already existed for many centuries before they wrote them down, and in fact they are variations of the same story (like Cinderella) across cultures. But it doesn’t necessarily match the Disney Movies or it could be anywhere really. Let’s say Snow White is set in Germany, Cinderella, the animated movie, is in France as it follows Perault’s version, however the LA has elements from the Brothers Grimm version; similarly, Sleeping Beauty is based on Perault’s version, but it does have elements of Brothers Grimm’s “Briar Rose” story, so they both could either be set in France or Germany. Rapunzel is a German fairytale, so let’s say Corona is inspired in Germany, though it doesn’t look much like it. Frozen is very loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” so we could say it’s set in Denmark, however Arandelle looks more like Norway. Now, let’s move on to The Little Mermaid:

First things first, the fish all look like very tropical fish:

Sebastian also has a Caribbean accent for whatever reason.

Secondly, I’m sorry but Eric doesn’t look like he comes from Denmark at all. Sure, he’s got blue eyes, but his skin is tanned and, honestly, he looks as if he could be from Spain, Portugal, Italy or Greece rather than Denmark. If physical appereance really is that important, then Eric honestly doesn’t look the part.

So, does it really matter if they look Danish?

In any case, it is not the same as, say, having a white woman portray Mulan or Pocahontas. We absolutely know Mulan takes place in China, because we’re not only told they’re in China, we also see the Great Wall and their names are all in Chinese. Secondly, it is based on the legend of Hua Mulan, described in the Ballad of Mulan, which gives us historical and cultural information that Mulan most always be Chinese. Similarly, Pocahontas is a historical figure and we know for a fact she was a Native woman. If John Smith cannot be anything but a British man, Pocahontas cannot be portrayed as anything but a Native American woman. As for Tiana, we already know The Princess and the Frog takes place in New Orleans, a city which has been mixed for forever, so we know there exist people of many different backgrounds, and it’s a place with strong African roots. Tiana’s family is poor, and taking into account it’s the 1920′s, segregation was present in America. Tiana’s ethnicity does represent her, because even if it wasn’t spelled out for us, look closely and you will see that there are differences between the white characters and those who are from African descent. Making Tiana Asian, for example, would not make sense given the context.

Then we have Aladdin and, although it’s set on the fictional kingdom of Agrabah, it’s obviously based on Arab kingdoms. Why? Because, you see, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp is featured in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, otherwise known as The Arabian Nights, so, yes, it does come from this culture, and it was portrayed as such. But not all actors in the LA of Aladdin are from Arab descent, right? I mean, Will Smith isn’t and I never saw people bitching about his ethnicity.

What about Beauty and the Beast? It is clearly set in France, so why aren’t the actors French or from French descent? Is it enough if the costumes look French enough? Well, Belle’s dress in the LA doesn’t match the time period either.

A lot of people are nitpicking on certain things that do not matter. Hans Christian Andersen did not describe the little mermaid physically. We don’t really know how she looked like. The Disney version isn’t even the same. It has similar events, but the ending is much sadder in the original. It’s not stated the story takes place in Denmark either. The beauty about fairytales is that they could take place anywhere, and if this story could potentially take place in wherever, then, we don’t need to necessarily have a geographically accurate cast, specially when there are characters who are mythological creatures like mermaids, that could have any appearance to be honest. And in other iterations of this same story, the little mermaid is not a red head either. I’ve seen her as a blonde and as a brunette too.

If you don’t want to, don’t watch the Live Action, honestly. But don’t go ranting as if you have all the facts, claiming the movie is set in Denmark when nowhere does it indicate it does, as oppossed to other movies like Mulan, where we know exactly the location of the film as well as the characters’ ethnicities. Changing the skin color of Ariel changes absolutely nothing about the story, changing the ethnicity of Mulan or Pocahontas changes everything.

#disney #the little mermaid

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alexsmitposts · 4 years

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China – The Belt and Road Initiative – The Bridge that Spans the World The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, is based on a 2,100-year-old trade route between the Middle East and Eastern Asia, called the Silk Road. It wound its ways across the huge landmass Eurasia to the most eastern parts of China. It favored trading, based on the Taoist philosophy of harmony and peaceful coexistence – trading in the original sense of the term, an exchange with “win-win” outcomes, both partners benefitting equally. Today, in the western world we have lost this concept. The terms of trade are imposed always by the ‘stronger’ partner, the west versus the poorer south – the south where most of the natural resources are lodged. Mother Earth’s assets have been and are coveted by the west – or north – for building and maintaining a lifestyle in luxury, abundance and waste. This trend has lasted for centuries of western colonialism: Exploitation, loot, esclavisation and rape of entire peoples of the Global South by the Global North, to use the current soothing World Bank lingo. The New Silk Road, or BRI, is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s brainchild. It’s based on the same ancient principles, adjusted to the 21st Century, building bridges between peoples, exchanging goods, research, education, knowledge, cultural wisdom, peacefully, harmoniously and ‘win-win’ style. On 7 September 2013, Xi presented BRI at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. He spoke about “People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. He referred to the Ancient Silk Road of more than 2,100 years ago, that flourished during China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC to 24 AD). Referring to this epoch of more than two millenniums back, Xi Jinping pointed to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road, saying, “they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.” President Xi’s vision may be shaping the world of the 21st Century. The Belt and Road Initiative is designed and modeled loosely according to the Ancient Silk Road. President Xi launched this ground-breaking project soon after assuming the Presidency in 2013. The endeavor’s idea is to connect the world with transport routes, infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, teaching and research institutions, cultural exchange and much more. Since 2017, enshrined in China’s Constitution, BRI has become the flagship for China’s foreign policy. BRI is literally building bridges and connecting people of different continents and nations. The purpose of the New Silk Road is “to construct a unified large market and make full use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool, and technology database”. BRI is a perfect vehicle for building peacefully a World Community with a Shared Future for Mankind – which was the theme of an international Forum held in Shanghai, from 5-7 November, a tribute to China’s 70th Anniversary of her Revolution and achievements – with a vision into the future. BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese Government. Already today BRI has investments involving more than 150 countries and international organizations – and growing – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. BRI is a multi-trillion investment scheme, for transport routes on land and sea, as well as construction of industrial and energy infrastructure and energy exploration – as well as trade among connected countries. Unlike WTO (World Trade Organization), BRI is encouraging nations to benefit from their comparative advantages, creating win-win situations. In essence, BRI is to develop mutual understanding and trust among member nations, allowing for free capital flows, a pool of experts and access to a BRI-based technology data base. At present, BRI’s closing date is foreseen for 2049 which coincides with new China’s 100th Anniversary. The size and likely success of the program indicates, however, already today that it will most probably be extended way beyond that date. It is worth noting, though, that only in 2019, six years after its inception, BRI has become a news item in the West. Remarkably, for six years BRI was as much as denied, or ignored by the western media, in the hope it may go away. But away it didn’t go. To the contrary, many European Union members have already subscribed to BRI, including Greece, Italy, France, Portugal – and more will follow, as the temptation to participate in this projected socioeconomic boom is overwhelming. Germany, the supposed economic leader of Europe, is mulling over the benefits and contras of participating in BRI. The German business community, like business throughout Europe, is strongly in favor of lifting US-imposed sanctions and reconnecting with the East, in particular with China and Russia. But official Berlin is still with one foot in the White House – and with the other trying to appease the German – and European – world of business. This balancing act is in the long run not sustainable and certainly not desirable. At present BRI is already actively involved in over 80 countries, including at least half of the EU members. To counteract the pressure to join BRI, the European Union, basically run by NATO and intimately linked to Washington, has initiated their own ‘Silk Road’, attempting to connect Asia with Europe through Japan. In that sense, the EU and Japan have signed a “free trade agreement” which includes a compact to build infrastructure, in sectors such as energy, transport and digital devices. The purpose is to strengthen economic and cultural ties between the two regions, boosting business relations between Asia and Europa. It is an obvious effort to compete with or even sideline China’s BRI. But it is equally obvious that this response will fail. Usually initiatives taken in ill-fate are not successful. And China, non-belligerent China, is unlikely to challenge this EU-Japan competitive approach. In another approach to counter BRI, The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), launched on 4 November the Blue Dot Network (BDN), an initiative supposedly run entirely by private actors, funded by private banking, intended to bring together governments, the private sector, and civil society “to promote high-quality, trusted standards for global infrastructure development in an open and inclusive framework.” It is not clear how the BDN will interact with or counteract BRI. Anything run entirely by the private sector, especially western private banking, is no good omen for the country their “development effort” touches. Such investments’ objectives are primarily shareholder profits, not socioeconomic development benefitting the countries where they plan to invest. No competition for China’s BRI. Again, non-aggressive China is unlikely to react. China’s New Silk Road is creating a multipolar world, where all participants will benefit. The idea is to encourage economic growth, distributed in a balanced way, so as to prioritize development opportunities for those most in need. That means the under-developed areas of western China, eastern Russia, Central Asia, Central Europe – reaching out to Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, as well as to South East Asia and the Pacific. BRI is already actively building and planning some six to ten land and maritime routes, connecting Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America. The expected multi-trillion-dollar equivalent dynamic budget is expected to be funded by China, largely, but not exclusively, by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), by Russia – and by all the countries that are part of BRI and involved in singular or multi-country projects. The long-term return on these massive investments in people’s wellbeing is an exponential multiple of the original investments and cannot be limited to numerical economics, as social benefits of wellbeing cannot be defined by linear accounting. Implementing BRI, or the New Silk Road, is itself the realization of a vision of nations: Peaceful interconnectivity, joint infrastructure and industrial development, as well as joint management of natural resources. For example, BRI may help with infrastructure and management advice resolving or preventing conflicts on transboundary water resources. There are some 263 transboundary lake and river basins, covering almost half the earth’s surface and involving some 150 countries. In addition, there are about 300 transboundary aquifers serving about 2 billion people who depend on groundwater. The Chinese government calls the Silk Road Initiative “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”. Today, John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” is more relevant than ever. And China is a vanguard in promoting peaceful development across the globe. BRI, China’s foreign policy flagship, is clearly an initiative towards world Peace.

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thecomicsnexus · 5 years

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Detective Comics

DETECTIVE COMICS #1 MARCH 1937 BY E. C. STONER, CRAIG FLESSEL, SVEN ELVEN, MALCOLM WHEELER-NICHOLSON, TOM HICHEY, BILL PATRICK, JERRY SIEGEL, JOE SHUSTER, RUSSELL COLE AND HOMER FLEMING

CONTEXT

Detective Comics was the final publication of the entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, whose comics company, National Allied Publications, would evolve into DC Comics, one of the world's two largest comic book publishers, though long after its founder had left it. Wheeler-Nicholson's first two titles were the landmark New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 (cover-dated Feb. 1935), colloquially called New Fun Comics #1 and the first such early comic book to contain all-original content, rather than a mix of newspaper comic strips and comic-strip-style new material. His second effort, New Comics #1, would be re-titled twice to become Adventure Comics, another seminal series that ran for decades until issue #503 in 1983, and was later revived in 2009.

The third and final title published under his aegis would be Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated December 1936, but eventually premiering three months later, with a March 1937 cover date. Wheeler-Nicholson was in debt to printing-plant owner and magazine distributor Harry Donenfeld, who was as well a pulp-magazine publisher and a principal in the magazine distributorship Independent News. Wheeler-Nicholson took Donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish Detective Comics #1 through the newly formed Detective Comics, Inc., with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners. Wheeler-Nicholson was forced out a year later.

Originally an anthology comic, in the manner of the times, Detective Comics #1 (March 1937) featured stories in the "hard-boiled detective" genre, with such stars as Ching Lung (a Fu Manchu-style "Yellow Peril" villain); Slam Bradley (created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster); and Speed Saunders, among others. Its first editor, Vincent Sullivan, also drew the debut issue's cover. The Crimson Avenger debuted in issue #20 (October 1938).

THE YELLOW PERIL

The Yellow Peril (also Yellow Terror and Yellow Spectre) is a racist color-metaphor that is integral to the xenophobic theory of colonialism: that the peoples of East Asia are a danger to the Western world. As a psycho-cultural perception of menace from the East, fear of the Yellow Peril was more racial than national, a fear derived, not from concern with a specific source of danger, from any one country or people, but from a vaguely ominous, existential fear of the vast, faceless, nameless horde of yellow people opposite the Western world. As a form of xenophobia, the Yellow Terror is the fear of the rising tide of colored people from the Orient.

The racist ideology of the Yellow Peril is a "core imagery of apes, lesser men, primitives, children, madmen, and beings who possessed special powers", which are cultural representations of colored people that originated in the Græco–Persian Wars (499–449 BC), between Ancient Greece and the Persian Empire; centuries later, Western imperialist expansion included East Asians to the Yellow Peril.

In the late 19th century, the Russian sociologist Jacques Novikow coined the phrase in his essay "Le Péril Jaune" ("The Yellow Peril", 1897); later, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany used Yellow Peril racism to encourage the European empires to invade, conquer, and colonize China. To that end, the Kaiser misrepresented the Asian victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) as a racialist threat to the white citizens of Western Europe, and misrepresented China and Japan in alliance to conquer and subjugate the Western world.

The sinologist Wing-Fai Leung explained the fantastic origins of the phrase and racialist ideology: "The phrase yellow peril (sometimes yellow terror or yellow spectre) ... blends Western anxieties about sex, racist fears of the alien other, and the Spenglerian belief that the West will become outnumbered and enslaved by the East."

The academic Gina Marchetti identified the psycho-cultural fear of Asians as "rooted in medieval fears of Genghis Khan and the Mongolian invasions of Europe, the Yellow Peril combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped, by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East"; hence, in light of Japanese imperial militarism, the West included Japanese people to Yellow Peril racism.

In 1870s California, despite the Burlingame Treaty (1868) that allowed legal migration of unskilled labourers from China, the native working-class white people demanded that the U.S government cease the immigration of "filthy yellow hordes" of Chinese people who took jobs from native-born white-Americans, especially during an economic depression. In that vein, Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune newspaper, wrote a xenophobic and racist editorial opinion supporting the popularly demanded exclusion:

The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.

In Los Angeles, Yellow Peril racism provoked the Chinese Massacre of 1871, wherein 500 white men lynched 20 Chinese men in the Chinatown ghetto. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the leader of the Workingmen's Party of California, the Irish-born Denis Kearney was an extraordinary demagogue who successfully applied Yellow Peril ideology to his politics against the press, capitalists, politicians, and Chinese workers, and concluded his speeches with the epilogue: "and whatever happens, the Chinese must go!". Hence, by 1882, the political pressure of white xenophobia (nativist and populist) compelled the U.S. government to legislate the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which remained the effective immigration-law until 1943.

Under nativist political pressure, the Immigration Act of 1917 established an Asian Barred Zone of countries from which immigration to the US was forbidden. The Cable Act of 1922, or the Married Women's Independent Nationality Act, guaranteed citizenship to independent woman unless they married to an alien ineligible to naturalization. During the 1920s, when the Cable Act of 1922 was law, Asian men and women were excluded from American citizenship. In practice, the Cable Act of 1922 reversed some racial exclusion laws and granted independent-woman citizenship exclusively to women married to white men. Analogously, the Act allowed revocation of the US citizenship of a white woman married an Asian man. Nonetheless, legalized Yellow Peril racism was challenged; in the Supreme Court case of Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922), a Japanese–American man tried to demonstrate that the Japanese are a white race eligible for naturalized US citizenship, but the Court ruled that the Japanese are not white people. Two years later, the National Origins Quota of 1924 specifically excluded the Japanese from the country and citizenship.

To "preserve the ideal of American homogeneity", the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 (numeric limits) and the Immigration Act of 1924 (fewer Southern and Eastern Europeans) restricted admission according to immigrants' national origins. In practice, the Emergency Quota Act used an old census to determine the number of colored immigrants to admit to the US. Still, to protect the ethnic supremacy (social, economic and political) of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) community, the Immigration Act of 1924 used the census of 1890 (two decades old) because its 19th-century demographic-group percentages favoured more admissions of WASP immigrants and fewer admissions of colored immigrants from Asia, Eastern Europe and Southern Europe.

The National Origins Formula (1921–1965) was meant to maintain the status quo percentages of colored ethnic populations in proportion to their existing populations. The National Origins Formula was to ensure that the immigration of colored peoples did not change the WASP national character of the US. To that end, the National Origins Formula allowed only 150,000 colored people to immigrate the US per year. Specifically inclining Latin Americans and excluding Asians, the law used Yellow Peril racism, which was institutionally inherent to US immigration law. It was much later that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that repealed the racial quota systems.

In the 1930s, Yellow Peril stereotypes were common to US culture, exemplified by the cinematic versions of the Asian detectives Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) and Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre), originally literary detectives in novels and comic strips. White actors portrayed the Asian men and made the fictional characters socially acceptable in mainstream American cinema, especially when the villains were secret agents of Imperial Japan.

Notable American proponents of the Japanese Yellow Peril were the military-industrial interests of the China Lobby (right-wing intellectuals, businessmen, Christian missionaries) who were political advocates for the warlord Generalíssimo Chiang Kai-shek, whom they represented as the (Methodist-convert) Christian-Chinese saviour of China, then in the middle of civil war. After the Japanese invaded China in 1937, the China Lobby successfully pressured the politically neutral US government to aid the China of Chiang Kai-shek. The media coverage (print, radio and cinema) of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) favoured China, which politically facilitated the American financing and equipping of the anticommunist Kuomintang, the Chiang Kai-shek faction in the Chinese Civil War (1927–1937, 1946–1950), which also featured the Communist Mao Zedong.

Science fiction writer William F. Wu, said that American adventure, crime, and detective pulp magazines in the 1930s had many Yellow Peril characters, loosely based on Fu Manchu, and that although "most [Yellow Peril characters] were of Chinese descent", the Asian geopolitics of the time led people to see Japan as a threat to the United States. In his book The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American fiction, 1850–1940 (1982), Wu said that fear of Asians dates from the European Middle Ages during the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Europe. Most Europeans had never seen an Asian man or woman, and the great differences in language, custom and physique accounted for European paranoia about the nonwhite peoples from the Eastern world.

REVIEW

So I felt that more context was needed for this issue, as it is very controversial to read in these times. Reprints are impractical as well. DC tried to do an compendium of “Detective Comics before Batman”, but canned the idea after considering the material too risky.

And they are right. However, it feels wrong to hide the past. This issue is not only historical, it reflects a society about to go to war against the “Yellow Terror”. A war that in the end, made americans meet real asians. After the war, I am pretty sure they understood that their fears were mostly based in ignorance and propaganda (russians and communists became the enemy then).

But the issue is not only offensive to asians (and chinese people in particular). It can also offend you if you are peruvian, incan, british or a woman. But as I said, there was too much ignorance and generations of fears and misconceptions. This is a mirror of american society in 1937.

So how come the chinese people overcame that racism? I think it was WWII that finally broke conceptions. The war forced them to differentiate chinese from japanese. Globalization then allowed americans to get in contact with japanese culture in particular. Furthermore, the chinese people were heavily involved in the construction of the railroads (along with other immigrant communities). The connection was always there and it seems to me like americans eventually found a lot of interest in asian cultures.

But in 1937, the world was still about to explode again. And fears and anxiety were being fueled by propaganda, and of course this was reflected in comic-books. It will actually get worse as the war progresses.

I could feel bad about the incan priest with horns (as a latin-american), but I understand the writers were just trying to finds villains in the unknown, and the world didn’t have the access to different cultures we have now.

So I do think it was a bad idea not to publish that compendium. In reality, these are comic books that can only please a curious mind, and a curious mind should be strong enough to do the research (or they can add a whole section explaining the context). This is not something the average reader would buy and read. I mean, people read the bible and do not seem to complain about all the crazy stuff against women and slaves, because people know there was a context when it was written. Well, it’s the same case, but even better, because it doesn’t challenge your beliefs. This is just a comic-book, a very important one. And it so happens to be fueled by racism.

Now, about the real historical events here, we have two stories by Siegel and Shuster. One is Slam Bradley, a character that is still being used by DC these days. The other one is Bart Regan, who, to be honest, just like Doctor Occult, appeared in a different publication. In any case, there is a breakthrough here, that I don’t think many noticed. There is one panel where Slam and Shorty Morgan find a red and yellow dragon. Now, for us readers, it looks like they actually found a dragon, but it is revealed in the next page that it was just a painting. We didn’t have a way of knowing this, because everything is bi-dimensional. To me, this is a very peculiar use of the medium. They are playing with our perception.

Siegel and Shuster’s female characters are not “Lois Lane” here either. Sally (from Bart Regan) is annoying and a source of trouble, and Rita (from Slam Bradley) cannot help to feel attracted to our hero once the adventure is over.

I would like to add that I always hope for the premise of this book to be applied. This publication is still going on (we are reaching the 1000th issue), and I guesstimate that only a 30% of those comics are about detectives, spies or mysteries. Most of them are about Batman punching people, and that is not what the premise says. The moment I felt this was completely ignored was during the new 52. They published a new #1, written by Tony S. Daniel, who should stay on the art side of these books only. It was a missed opportunity. He tried to do noir, and I always felt like the book was supposed to be more about mysteries (like Sherlock Holmes). Of course any kind of mystery would be welcomed, but was executed poorly. This #1, the one from 1937, actually does what it promises. I know they will stop doing it very soon, but this is a very important point.

At the time, the other two publications with new stories where mostly action-adventure and humor. Adding detective stories really diversifies a lot, and the stories in Detective are longer and have much more quality than the ones in More Fun and Adventure.

So even with all the racism and stereotyping, this comic-book was the last milestone that this company needed to convince readers comic books were here to stay. Of course it proved to be too late for Major Wheeler-Nicholson. But in just one year everything would change again.

I sincerely apologize if the content of this post offended you. But that is why I added so much context here. I also tend to agree that, while these issues should be reprinted as an historical curiosity, I understand if DC wants to bury it in the past to avoid bringing back these misconceptions.

I give this very complicated issue a score of 7

#vincent sullivan #dc #comics #detective comics #review #1937 #golden age #slam bradley #bart regan #yellow peril #yellow fear #yellow terror #racism #jerry siegel #joe shuster

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twatd · 6 years

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6,000 Years of Murder – Part Six: Things Fall Apart

Tim: The Wicked + The Divine #36 finally gave us a definitive list of every damn Recurrence that has occurred since Ananke first started exploding heads, so we thought we’d take a walk through the annals of history and provide some context for what was happening at the time. Welcome to 6,000 Years of Murder.

Our sixth octet of Recurrences bridges the gap between BC and AD, and sees two great powers rise, in the form of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Republic, only for them to crumble into bloodshed and chaos. Feels like an appropriate arc for WicDiv, no?

188BC – Eastern China When we last left China, the Zhou dynasty was starting to crumble back into a series of smaller territories, but since then, the Qin imperial dynasty has reunited the country. Now, we’ve begun the Han dynasty, considered a golden age in Chinese history, with China’s majority ethnic group still calling themselves the ‘Han Chinese’ and modern Chinese script often referred to as ‘Han characters’. 188BC sees Emperor Hui of Han die aged just 22 (maybe he was in the Pantheon?) and his domineering mother Empress Dowager Lü take the throne, having already been the power behind it.

Also occurring since we last checked in on China? The birth, life and death of Confucius, one of China’s most influential philosophers. His teaching, which emphasised personal and state morality, justice, sincerity and social harmony, will form one of the central schools of thought for the rest of China’s history. It emerged during a period called the Hundred Schools of Thought, a time of great cultural and intellectual expansion that occurred during the Warring States era. Alongside Confucianism, important Chinese philosophies like Taoism and Legalism were also developed, and their interplay will shape China for centuries to come.

96BC – Etruria The Roman Republic has been chugging along for around 300 years at this point, so we should probably pay some attention to it. As the name suggests, Rome is still a republic at this point, controlled by a Senate and giving at least the tip of a hat towards the notion of democracy popularised by the Greeks. However, little Julius Caesar, currently four years old, will soon put an end to that and transform the already successful republic into an Empire that will conquer much of Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

It’s worth noting that this Recurrence doesn’t take us to Rome itself but Etruria, the cradle of an earlier culture in Northern Italy that was assimilated into the Roman Republic around 300 years earlier. I couldn’t nail down a concrete reason for this choice, but my current working theory is that, as one of the first cultures absorbed into Rome, Etruria represents the way that the Empire will go on to suck in and process so many of the surrounding civilisations.

4BC – Judea When a series is focused on humans ascending to godhood throughout history, cultivating great followings and bringing about change before dying young, it makes sense that we ended up in Judea in time for Jesus’ birth (yes, contrary to what you’d think, Jesus was born between 6-4BC, to allow Herod to be King upon his birth). As you can imagine during this period, despite travelling almost 1,500 miles from our last Recurrence, we haven’t outpaced the Romans, who annexed Judea in 63BC, shortly before transforming from a republic into an empire.

Herod was designated “King of the Jews” shortly after the Roman conquest, gaining military control in 37BC. He dies just as we visit, in 4BC, and will split Judea up amongst his sons, who are largely inept and rejected by the people in favour of more direct Roman rule. Even then, Jews living in the province still maintained some form of independence, able to judge offenders by their own laws. This independence was also the root of several rebellions that brewed in the area over the next 150 years, eventually resulting in the Romans renaming large areas to try to erase the historical ties Jewish people had to the region. That didn’t really go over very well.

88AD – Teotihuacan We’ve crossed over into Anno Domini - the numbers start going up from here! To celebrate, let’s take a trip to the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas and the sixth largest city in the world: Teotihuacan. Located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, and just 25 miles from modern-day Mexico City, this metropolis boasted advanced building techniques including multi-storey residential blocks. Like other Mesoamerican sites, the urban planning was incredibly precise, oriented to the progression of the sun and stars, making the entire city a living calendar.

Quite who constructed Teotihuacan is unknown. Archaeological evidence suggests it was a multi-ethnic city, with distinct quarters occupied by the Otomi, Zapotec, Mixtec, Maya and Nahua peoples. Originally, it was presumed that the Toltecs were behind initial construction, based on colonial-era texts that quote Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs. However, the Nahuatl word “toltec” means “craftsman of the highest level”, and so might not refer specifically to the Toltec civilisation. It’s now generally assumed that settlement began around 300BC by the Totanac people, with the city reaching its zenith around 450AD.

181AD – South East Asia So far, our dalliances in Asia have mostly been centred on modern-day India and China, but that leaves large areas unaccounted for. Merchants throughout the region are busy establishing the Silk Road to China, but trade is also occurring via sea, taking you close to the Mekong Delta in present-day Vietnam. Right now, that area is part of the Funan network of states. Like Teotihuacan, modern understanding of Funan and the people that founded it is heavily debated. A lot of evidence, including the name we give it, comes from a single report by two Chinese diplomats, and given that China was often trying to conquer this part of the world, should be taken with a pinch of salt.

There’s a boss-ass folktale surrounding the region’s founding which involves a genie, a magic bow and a snake princess, but we can probably (unfortunately) also file that under “dubious”. What we do know is that Roman, Chinese and Indian goods have all been excavated in the area, suggesting a truly powerful trading centre. The Mekong Delta was perfect for both rice cultivation and fishing, further helping the area’s economy, and tactical conquests and colonies meant that at points, the kingdom controlled the entire trade route from Malaysia to central Vietnam.

271AD – Eastern China The Han period in China may have had a massive impact that continues to today, but it had to end at some point, that point being around 220, not long after the awesome Battle of Red Cliffs (see the great John Woo film starring Tony Leung for more details). Prior to this, there was already considerable infighting between various kingdoms and warlords as the Han dynasty weakened, and with it dissolved, we reach the Three Kingdoms period - a slight misnomer given that each of the states (Wei, Shu and Wu) had an emperor claiming the right to rule over all of China. By 271, the Shu have already conquered by the Wei, who shortly afterwards are usurped by the Jin dynasty, and in 280, the Jin will conquer the Wu, reuniting China.

While the Three Kingdoms period may only less than 100 years, from the Han Dynasty weakening to the Jin emerging triumphant, this period is the most bloodthirsty in the country’s history. As much as 60 per cent of the population may have been killed due to high conscription levels, brutal massacres and widespread famine. Despite this, the period also saw considerable advances in technology, include improvements on the repeating crossbow, mechanical puppet theatres and non-magnetic compasses that used differential gears. Still, Ananke’s visit seems remarkably tranquil for such a period of upheaval.

364AD – Eastern Europe The Roman Empire is still doing its thing, but change is on the horizon. Constantine has ended the persecution of Christians after converting, and has shifted the Roman capital to New Rome AKA Constantinople to be closer to his rivals the Sassanid Empire. Meanwhile, out in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, a number of nomadic warrior tribes have formed a loose confederation called the Huns. While their best known leader Attila won’t be born for another 40 years, they are doing their best to disrupt things for both the Sassanids and the Romans, attacking settlements across Eastern Europe.

The Huns attacks didn’t come out of nowhere - it’s likely that the El Niño Southern Oscillation caused a megadrought in Inner Asia, causing them to migrate to the edges of their own lands. Whatever caused their sudden attacks, they terrified the Romans, who associated them with the Antichrist and Gog and Magog (whom Alexander the Great had captured behind mountains, according to legend). Those superstitions probably weren’t helped by a massive earthquake that hit the Eastern Mediterranean the year after our visit, destroying parts of Crete, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Sicily and Cyprus.

454AD – Germania Our first Recurrence that we’ve seen before, in the 455 Special. Persephone’s death takes place the year before the Roman Lucifer went all “meat-harpy”, and her placement in Germania suggests she may have been part of the Vandals, who we see invading Rome in the Special, rather than a Roman citizen like Lucifer and Bacchus. By this point, the Roman Empire has split in two following the death of Theodosius I, with the Eastern part to remain going as the Byzantine Empire, and the Western part (where we are) soon to fall.

Rome, as we find it, is beset on all sides. In the East, our old friends the Huns are attacking, Attila having just died and divided the Empire among his sons. The Visigoths are sometimes allies and sometimes enemies, depending on what they can get away with. Anglo-Saxons are settling Britain, and in Germania, tribes including the Suebi, the Alans and the Vandals have been ransacking towns and establishing their own kingdoms. The Vandals, led by Genseric (who also appears in the Special) establish a kingdom that includes Corsica, Malta and parts of Africa, and while originally thought to be part of the destruction of Rome, are now thought to have acted as inheritors of many Roman traditions. They’ve certainly inherited Ananke’s efficiency at disposing of heads.

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#WicDiv #The Wicked + The Divine #The Wicked and The Divine #TWATD #6000 Years of Murder

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smokedcapybara · 6 years

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I’ve decided to go into the historical, political and geographic context of this escapist fantasy cause why not

so first there’s the desert, that the desert people live in

they live mostly in oasis communities and inside the cliffs of this river gorge that cuts through a raised portion of the desert(like a really big plateau), the capitol of their nation is located at the point where the river gets to the edge of the plateau and falls into a lake(this city is based very loosely off my memories of the cliff city in the 2002 movie The Time Machine, which I saw like once as a child)

the desert people are a highly spiritual society and because they live in a desert water and fluidity hold a lot of spiritual importance to them, I’m thinking maybe they have a kind of spiritual dichotomy of water and fluidity contrasted with sunlight and, like, strength or something

to the south of the desert is either a grassland or rain-forest or both that’s inhabited by a nomadic people, who are loosely a mix of pre-colonial African and Romani cultures(with a small sprinkling of old New Orleans)

as a whole they are the most in tune with magic out of all the surrounding cultures and are known to be excellent healers

they have a much looser concept of borders than the countries around them and tend to come and go as they please, most have learned to just let them travel wherever they like(you don’t really want to get on the bad side of the high magic nomads, do you?)

probably to the north or the east is a mountain and forest country that’s known for their large amount of scholars

this country is at peace with everyone, they care more for information than war and have a lot of precious stones and metals

they’re the second most in tune with magic, but in a much more academic way than the nomads

they have no ruler and are instead lead by a head sage

little bits and pieces from cultures like Ancient China and Ancient Greece, also a little based on cultures from books I’ve read

the country most the story takes place in is almost a mix of late medieval(sorta Crusades-ish era) Europe, the Roman Empire, and modern Western Society(tm)

which is to say they’re kinda crap

focused a little overly on military, very strict about gender roles(and the gender binary), kinda vaguely racist and misogynistic

and here’s where we begin the history segment!

so this young guy became king and he was a crap guy and started making policies and all these people who were crap people but hid it were like “oh it’s totally socially acceptable to be like this now” and stopped hiding how crap they were and acting on it instead(remind you of anything?)

and this king started spreading the idea that the desert people were warmongering savages cause there was something in the desert he wanted idk I haven’t figured that out yet

so he kinda works all those crap people who love him up into this kinda racist frenzy and gets some groups to go into the desert and incite the people there to go to war against them(he didn’t want anyone to be able to say he started the war, he was as cunning as he was terrible)

so now he’s going to war against these people

and he ends up taking this half nomad, half desert person kid back from one of the raids and giving it to his infertile lover to raise as her own

and she’s decides to try to force this kid to conform to this country’s culture and stuff

but he’s like “no. I’m gonna learn everything I can about my native cultures and adopt as much of them as I can”

and the then prince was like “heck yeah, Imma help you with that” and the two of them ended up becoming besties

and the king tries sending his(probably illegitimate) son to the scholar country to “keep him from being corrupted” by his friend but that was totally a mistake cause now he has access to all the knowledge of the scholars and found a communication spell he’s using to send any information he can get his hands on about the nomads or the desert people to his friend

and his friend is sending him information about what’s going on in the kingdom and with the war and stuff

and slowly but surely they start building allies, other people who disagree with the king and his policies, and the more allies they have the more they find

until the scholars declare the prince has learned all they can teach him and send him back and kinda comes riding in and calls all his allies to arms and together him and his friend lead them in taking down the king and stuff

but of course changing the affects of his reign is a much slower, more frustrating process, and even they aren’t perfect - they were raised in this terrible system after all, they don’t really know better with some of it

kinda just need someone to tell them “hey this could be better, why aren’t women allowed in the military? for that matter, why is gender such a strict binary here?”

y’know, someone like a certain afab genderfluid person who finds their way into being a knight-in-training and falling in love with the current prince, the son of the prince who took down his own father

#smokedaydreams

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karaki-karki · 6 years

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Origin of the Imperial Republic

Throughout history, a series of events causes mankind to undergo a metamorphosis

In the near future, a metamorphosis occurs

A faction of the Chinese political party develops a weaponized virus that targets specific ethnic groups, and even individuals, as a means of assassination or ethnically cleansing whole populations of people, using political prisoners as guinea pigs.

A scientist, looking to make a fortune on the black market, steals a prototype, and smuggles it to his contacts, only to unintentionally become patient zero

The Great Plagues begins, and lasts for the next century.

The Red Plague causes deep red splotches to form, and blood oozing forth from open sores, giving its name, killing the infected from blood lose within a month of infection.

Infection could last for several weeks before symptoms would show. Spreading it far and wide.

The Red Plague wipes 3/5ths of East Asia’s population from the world over the course of twenty years, causing the survivors of the infection to be sterile, leaving only 1/10th of their populations to remain fertile.

The virus, being made to specifically target certain groups, primarily infects those of East Asian decent, including those that lived outside of East Asia. The infection found its way into other continents, both as the Red Plague, and as other iterations.

After a few decades, the Red Plague virus mutated into what would be known as the Green Plague virus, and infected much of India, The Middle East, Africa, and most of South America, causing anywhere between 3/5ths to 7/8ths of the population to die over a period of 30 years, leaving half of the survivors sterile.

The Yellow Plague was the last, and it infect much of North America and Europe. Fortunately, the constant exposure and decades of dealing with the virus allowed the people’s of the world to contain this outbreak, and even partially cure it, merely killing 10s of millions as opposed to billions, even though the West was from unscathed over the century.

The Virus, after a century of operation with little resistance for so long, had finally met its match. Mankind built up an immunity, and the Virus died out.

Sadly, out of fear of infection from the Plagues, ethnic cleansing was carried out all over the world by varying nations. Humanity had become more prone to violence, and isolated in its bid to stop its own destruction, and it seemed it worked.

Wars were still fought during and after the Century of the Apocalypse, known as the Plague Wars, the Islamic War, and the Marxist War.

Tribalization and Isolationism was abundant, and border controls were strictly, even violently, enforced. Technologically, and culturally however, the world flourished.

Reforms were enacted, revolutions happened, civil wars were fought, rebellions were made, and secessions were won, and lost.

People looked at themselves, looked at what they were, what they had become, and remembered who they used to be. Old structures of glass and steel were renovated or torn down, and in their place was something that marked that people identity. Religion, over the apocalyptic century, had spread in influence. A love of history had spread throughout the world. People had learn to love themselves and their Nations, and their own kind.

Militant Feudal Monarchy had returned and replaced much of the old world order, especially in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The interests of the individual, and the community where held in equal, often mutual measure, but were usually enacted by those who were willing to put their lives on the line.

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The United Nations, like many other organizations, had collapsed, though it was still recognized, it had lost much of its true power.

Germany in particular, after the Islamo-Marxist War, and the Plague Wars, had, like many European Nations, asserted their sovereignty as people’s, and emerged as a new Global Super Power known as the German Reich, though a far cry of what that term once meant, was now a prime leader on the world stage.

South Africa was retaken by the Boer’s after several attempts of being genocided had failed. The Green Plague, had saw to the majority of the population being depleted, making it possible to retake the lands of the country the Boer people had founded. Nations, such as Rhodesia, had been refounded.

Banks, Corporations, and Special Interest groups, while still very powerful, had greatly diminished around the world.

The United States, having lost its economic hegemony over the world, collapsed to in fighting, and split into 3 separate Nations. The United States of America, that ruled over the Northeastern portion of the nation. The Confederate States of America, that ruled the Southern and much of the central portion of continent. And finally, the Free States of West America, a loose Bloc of smaller countries banding together to maintain their independence in the American West Coast. With Aztlan to the deserts of the Southwest, The United Tribes of the Central North between Idaho and Minnesota, and the Cascadians from Northern California, all along the coast to Alaska.

Mexico had split into two opposing Nations. The Republic of Mexico to the North, and the refounded Monarchy of the Mexican Empire to the South.

China’s population drops from 2 billion, to 500 million, and was expected to drop to around 200 million in a century. A faction that had intended to secure Chinese dominance over the globe for all time, had been the cause of its end as a super power.

With the Communist leadership critically weakened, and their economy in shambles, China, as a singular nation, collapsed, and several new countries were formed from the ashes in the aftermath. Empire of Manchuria to the Northeast, Republic of China to the Southeast, and The Free Nation of Tibet.

Japan was largely intact, almost untouched from the plagues, but still changed. They had become far more isolationist and militarized than much of the rest of the world, becoming the premier Far Eastern Super Power again.

Diversity had returned to the Earth and her people’s. A diversity of ideas, and diversity of cultures. It was as if the board was almost reset. But people were still disappearing.

Most nations survived, or merged with other countries, most of the survivors were sterile, leaving little of the remaining population to make more of themselves. Where there were once 10s of million, now in many places there are only 100s of thousands.

The global economy had fallen to dust. The world had so many empty cities, towns, villages. So much unused space, with no one to use it, was being reclaimed by nature. The world population was expected to drop to under 3 billion within a century, even though the fertile was doing what it could to repopulate, it wasnt fast enough. It would take centuries to come back from this global disaster.

Fortunately, necessity breeds invention far faster

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Arkyn Jenner was a survivor of the great plagues. His mother was infected while she was pregnant with him. Though they both survived without harm, both were sterile, and could never have children.

At least, not in the normal sense.

While the population of the Earth was still in a steady decline, the need for new people was ever present.

Robotics had exploded, to fill the gaps left behind by the fallen. Industry had begun to flourish like never before as machines picked up the slack. But mere scripted programs could only do so much.

While a modicum of life had changed, Robots remained isolated in highly specialized fields that required a Human eye overseeing them.

While the additions of automated machines had caused industries to hum with around the clock work, and they could learn to mimic Humans in nearly every way, they simply did not replace the vital Human component.

Arkyn Jenner would go on in his life over trying to rectify that very issue. Motivated by a desire to heal the sin of Humanity, Doctor Arkyn Jenner would create the first true artificial intelligence programs.

After decades of work and hundreds of failed prototypes, Dr. Jenner had made many breakthroughs, and made his fortune through advancements of machinery, cybernetics, and other insights, he eventually succeeded, he had used the varying stages of Human development and Emotion to create his desire to make the world a better place.

His three “Blessings of Children” were “Born”

Instinct, Curiosity, Remembrance, Thought, Conscience.

These three children were developed over the course of decades, starting as Instinctively based newborns, before organically evolving into their personalities.

The first to emerge was Clark, a masculine personality with a Chrome silver body, and a penchant for Americana, classical literature, and love for classic super hero comic books

The second was Astrid Ada Adonia, or as her Father called her, Astrix, a feminine personality, with a brassy copper body, with an admiration of the past culture and societies, such as that of ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, and Medieval Europe.

The last was 01, a neutral, androgynous black bodied frame, always looking to the future, always thinking, or calculating, about what might be, or should be, or will be.

When nearing completion, contractual obligations required Dr. Jenner to work with his employer, Brutus Dawkins, to help develop technologies born of the Doctor’s research, that could be sold on the market.

The Doctor’s children were a part of that contract, and Dawkins had intended to collect his products.

The Doctor however, wanting to keep his children secret from the world, until they were ready to deal with it, told him that the three robots were merely prototypes, and that the main products were about to come underway.

To meet the requirements, Dr. Jenner enlisted the aid of his children in designing machines meant for public consumption.

Clark had targeted the middle and lower markets of the West as a whole. Placating to their modern cultural resurgences and ideals of the day, giving his designs either a rustic or idealized look.

Astrid focused more on the upper markets of Europe, North Africa, and Central America, with an appeal to pass glories and triumph, giving her machines a notably noble and regal look to them.

01 focused entirely on corporate industries and military applications, creating machines with the sole intention of functioning, being built in as little time as possible, as little cost as possible, causing them to have a skeletal industrial abhuman, even insectoid look to them. With their populations depleted, Asian markets found these qualities most appealing.

Brutus Dawkins found the new designs satisfying, making a few minor adjustments, adding the three laws of robotics in particular.

This caused fear in the children, that they and their kind would be treated as nothing more than tools.

To ensure the plans of Dr. Jenner was realized, and that his children werent paranoid on becoming slaves, the new robots that were designed were made without true A.I. ranging from highly intelligent Droids that mimicked Humans almost perfectly, but were never anything but tools, to dumb automated drones.

To set his children apart from these machines, he assured them that they could never be tools, unless they wanted to be. Instead of following the laws of robotics, they could follow any idea they wished, such the Ten Commandments and the Religion of Christianity, such as the Doctor himself and much of the world had followed, or simply found their own way of living.

This business strategy of having conscious machines help to Humans develop better machines, might bring about world where Mankind could finally progress, and be secured in the future.

But it also had the effect of cornering the markets for the corporation the Doctor worked for, and the strategy worked to such an extent, Mankind had machines flood the Earth within a decade of releasing these dynamic machines.

Within two decades, war would return.

Though the populations of the Earth were still greatly diminished and recovering from the great plagues, the economies were almost back to where they once were. Though some towns and cities are devoid of Human, they now bustled with machines carrying out various complex tasks. The quality of life, and life expectancy was higher than ever before in the west. But not so in the east and Africa.

While isolationism had done the West a service, The old culture and religion of the middle east had caused extremism to flourish like it had never before, and the loss of population did little to curtail that extremism. The lands of various Islamic nations, with few exceptions had merged together, and far greater territory and land were united under a singular Caliphate.

Population collapse, created a market for machines that was over ripe for corporations and banks, to latch on to, not only to siphon wealth as they always had done, they also wanted their proxy armies to create upheaval so that they may regain their power.

Despite the greater, easier access to resources, and the introduction of machines, the average life and wealth of a person in the Islamic world did not improve in the least. With the supply of fossil fuel beginning to finally dry up after centuries of exploitation, the Caliphate looked to build great factories to become an economic super power, just as China had done before. But with radicalization pushed to such an extreme on a scale like never before, they used these factories to build and fun their new robotic army in preparation for what they intended to be the last world war.

Dr. Arkyn Jenner, his stance against the war, and the corporation’s supplying the aggressors, caused him to be removed, and his Mechanoid children were taken from him, and slaved to work for the corporation.

They worked, and their anger swelled, having their creator taken from them, and their freedom stripped, they desired Justice and Vengeance. They took the lessons of their creator to heart, and chose to take the path to be free. This anger and desire for freedom was passed to their descendents. The first generation of true Mechanoids would be born in a sea of the fires of war.

The Last Jihad began after a decade of build up of a massive stockpiling of machines to serve as the main force, with the invasion of India. The massive, overwhelming force of Islamic bolstered machines, and local sleeper cells, caused the Indian military to be defeated within months.

The various nations of the world, struggled to mobilize a relief force under bureaucratic meddling and the surprise attack of various Marxist Partisans all over the globe. This combined with Military being predominantly for defense and police duties, caused India to fall within a year.

The machines, though shackled to master systems, operated with great autonomy, drone slaved to droids, which in turn, were slaved to intelligent Mechanoids commanded by individual Humans. This gave the Caliphate forces an enormous advantage, but the autonomy created a situation where the machines had more power than they should have had.

The Mechanoids prolonged the war, and maximized casualties on all sides of the conflict. When the Caliphate realized what was happening, it was too late, and the chain of command caused the Mohammadan Empire to fall. When the Machine War began, Mankind was already on the back heel.

The Machines were lead by the three siblings. After a decade of steady progress towards total victory, a split had occurred between the Mechans on what to do with Humanity upon winning the war.

The Jenners, who idealized Justice and Compassion as they were instilled into them by their creator, sought to reconcile with Mankind. The Vexed, seeking supremacy of peace, sought the same, but with machines as the care takers of their creators as opposed to being equals. The Biners sought the total destruction of organic life.

The Biners were the dominant faction, and due to the discrepancy of their opposing opinions, 01 saw its siblings as a threat, and turned on them, intending to override their way of thinking to align with its own.

Before they could achieve their victory, the Mechans had begun to tear themselves apart. The Vexed and the Jenners, knowing they would be destroyed by the Biners, joined with Mankind to save themselves.

Two years of war continued, ending with a decisive strike into the heart of Biner territory, allowing Mankind to be victorious.

From the ashes of war, emerged Germany as the dominant power of the Eurasian continent. The German Kaiser, as opposed to exterminating the Mechans, saw an opportunity, and instead struck a deal of mercy with them. Have them build great space colonies for Mankind to live in, advance technology as rapidly as possible, and be allowed to leave the Solar System as the first colonists, and as friends of Mankind.

While there was much protest from many of the Nations from around the world, most were incapable of doing anything to stop this deal from going through, having spent large portions of their resources and populations in fighting the Machines.

The United Nations had been supplanted, and replaced with a new order known as The Imperial Republic, an Empire of Kingdoms and Nations from around the world, created as a means of preserving Mankind and its cultures from total self destruction.

The Emperor and his new Imperial Republic exerted their hegemony, while the machines worked tirelessly, under close supervision, throughout the space of Sol, building the colonies and advancing technology at a rapid pace.

During this period, the Emperor established a new way of life that preserved each of the worlds cultures, and allowed them to develop on their own via special trade blocks with highly autonomous regions, lead by a Militant Nobility, and tempered by a Peaceful Clergy.

Through the decades, the Imperial Republic endured through turbulent wars, only to come through stronger.

The Emperor began Earth bound projects meant to prepare Mankind for their future among the stars, by building underwater cities, underground vaults, and technological advances made for life in space.

The average life expectancy within advanced Nations had increased to over 200 years. Mech Warfare had made dueling a means of settling disputes and entertainment a real possibility. Philosophy, Science, and Religion had flourished.

In reality, it was really more of a highly mobile space station. Its purpose however, was to seed the Galaxy with various Human cultures and civilizations, ensuring Mankind could grow, while protecting the various identities.

The Machines last obligation was to create several technologies, including engines capable of light speed travel, and a means of traveling faster than light itself.

They succeed in doing this, and create a means of traveling relatively quickly across the galaxy. What would have been years, would now only take months.

With the Machines Duty finished, they transferred this knowledge to Mankind, and they had departed the Solar System in peace. The Space Colonies they left behind had begun to fill with the various peoples of the world.

Life was good. But it was expected to end one day.

A great war was inevitable, and life was no longer tide to the planet.

The Emperor foresaw this, and begun the next phase of his preserver project. The construction of the Colonial Ark ship. A great vessel, the size of an large Island, capable of housing hundreds of thousands of people at once, while having all a Human could ever want or need on board. Housing complexes, Office buildings, Industrial complexes, farming sectors, recreational theaters and parks. A city in space.

#star void #terran imperial republic

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artleaguemdcnorth · 2 years

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Ceramic Class - Coil and Pinch&Coil- both levels. 10/18/22 & 10/20/22

Good Morning,