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#letters about india
enbysiriusblack · 1 year
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cuban hope lupin and italian lyall lupin who travelled the world together before they had remus, learning languages and cultures and meeting people from everywhere.
and remus lupin who's never gone further than newport, half an hour away, constantly reading of the rest of the world. imagining being able to go there, to explore the world.
#if the war didn't happen and no one died then 100% all four marauders went around the world together for a year#james keeping in touch with his partners through letters and meeting them at some places they went (france and india)#im kinda planning where they'd go in my head. like so far im thinking:#iceland. quick stop in canada. right down america stopping at like las vegas maybe. then to cuba for remus to meet his mum's family.#probably staying there for like 2/3 weeks maybe.#then to nigeria. maybe spend a little time in egypt. then up to greece. then romania. then to india where they stay#for about 3 weeks. and lily and regulus meet them there to visit james' family#they go to thailand. malaysia. and down to australia. then back up to japan then south korea.#then to russia. sweden. through germany to italy. they stay in italy for about 2 weeks for remus' grandparents.#marlene and dorcas would meet them in italy since marlene has a italian heritage and hasn't gone to italy since she was a kid so misses it#then over to france where lily and regulus and mary meet them all. mary marlene and dorcas leave after a day or so#to go to the isle of wight to spend a few weeks with mary's sister and her girlfriend#the others stay in france for about a week. regulus and sirius being very obnoxious and showing off ofc.#lily and regulus go home and the marauders go to ibiza for about a week before finishing and going back to britian (boo! britian sucks!)#anyway. rambling about this hc.#marauders era#marauders#remus lupin#hope lupin#lyall lupin#lyall&remus april fest#l&r april fest
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idk how beloved bestie did this organizing things for her bday gift is so insanity inducing
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eunoia-writes · 2 months
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Confessions • Felix Catton x Reader
Summery - after a night of drinking bottle after bottle of wine Felix makes a confession which spirals his and y/n’s life into a whirlwind of romance only to be momentarily put on hold due to his jealousy.
Warnings - Drinking, jealous!Felix, Felix being a bit of a dick, secret romance
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There was a soft humm of laughter from the other room while y/n walked into the dimly lit kitchen in search for the other wine bottles. She opened the fridge grabbing a bottle of Red and a bottle of white before she walked back into the living room where everyone was sat reminiscing on old summers stories. She placed the bottles down before sitting back down next to her friend, Farleigh.
“Y/n… do you remember that guy that put the love note your dorm letter box?” Indi said laughed as Felix groaned while y/n just nodded. Felix grabbed the bottle of red and topped up her glass before Turing to face his friend Indi.
“Can we not talk about this for the 100th time?” Felix asked
“Oh but why it was so adorable the way he fumbled over his words and laughed at everything y/n said.” Indi added
“Y/n doesn’t need someone who laughs at everything she says or can’t form a coherent sentence. Hell she’s smarter than all of us.”
y/n couldn’t help but blush slightly. Yes it was wrong and juvenile of her to he crushing on her friend who protects her no matter what cost.
“That’s real sweet of you, Fi.” Oh how he adored that nickname she gave him
“Anything for you.” He said looking at her for what could have been slightly too long
“We should really head off.” India said sharing a look with Felix y/n couldn’t quit read.
“We’ll see you guy tomorrow?” Felix said his arm wrapping around y/n’s waist. The pair had always been close and the physical touch of their relationship had never bothered either of them.
“Definitely we be here around 2.” Farleigh Said before the three of them made there way out of Felix’s flat
“Are you sure you don’t mind me staying?” y/n asked as she helped Him clear away a few things. Felix smiled
“you’re always welcome to stay here you know that.” Felix said pouring the last of the wine down the drain as y/n leaned against the counter
“What was that look Indi gave you about earlier?” y/n more asked him, he immediately stopped what he was doing and turned to her
“What do you mean?” He asked confused
“Fi, don’t do that you know exactly what I’m talking about.” She said as he moved closer to her
“Fine fine, she has been telling me how I should tell you that it wasn’t Daniel who wrote you that letter, it was me.” Felix said
“Fi that’s not funny.” She said looking up at him “come on tell me what it was.”
“Im being serious y/n, I had the biggest crush on you when we first came to Oxford.”
“oh come on that’s not true.” She said she didn’t realise how close they now were neither did he
“I still do.” he whispered
“Felix.”
“I always thought you were the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” He whispered just inches away from her
“Stop it.”
“Y/n.”
“Felix.”
“That’s not funny.” Instead of saying another word Felix just leans in kissing her softly which she immediately reciprocates a surge of electricity coursed through them, igniting a passionate exchange that transcended words. Time seemed to halt as Felix pulled her impossibly close wanting nothing more than her close to him.
“Believe me now?”
The pair had been seeing each other for a while now they decided to keep it a secret knowing the complications of their loved ones finding out. They wanted it to be there’s and there’s only.
Felix, with a playful smile masking the excitement in his eyes, told Farleigh he was going for a run. This wasn’t anything new for him every so often Felix took himself off on a run to clear his head if Farleigh wasn’t so caught up in himself he’d of probably noticed the escalations in the amount of times his friend seemed to be disappearing. This worked in their favour though.
Felix jogged down familiar paths, exchanging pleasantries with others on campus as he made his way to the back road that was far less traveled by to the one place he craved to be.
"Hey there," Felix greeted, panting slightly from his faux jog. Y/n grinned, as he walked into her flat and straight over to her "Thought I could use some company for my workout ." They chuckled, finding solace in their secret rendezvous.
Things were going well for a while the two sharing nothing but pure unadulterated admiration of each other Beneath the facade of friendship, stolen glances and secret smiles told a tale of something deeper. Their perfect secret relationship thrived in the subtleties – a brush of hands, lingering gazes, and whispered confessions hidden amidst the mundane. The world remained oblivious to the symphony of emotions playing out beneath the surface, allowing Felix and y/n to savor the intimacy of their unspoken connection for themselves. Y/n adorned nothing more than the late nights in his arms talking about anything they could think of but what she hated most was waking up to an empty bed.
It had been almost three months of sneaking around before anything of great significance had its effect on them. All until the party at Farleighs new flings flat.
As they mingled at the party, Felix couldn't shake the knot of jealousy tightening in his chest. Y/n , unaware of Felix internal struggle, engaged in casual conversation with a charming boy named Jake. Felix gritted his teeth, feigning a smile while attempting to mask the possessiveness bubbling within. In a strained attempt at nonchalance when y/n returned to his side later that night, Felix remarked, "Jake seems pretty interested in you tonight."
Y/n, oblivious to the brewing tension, responded with a casual shrug, "Oh, he's just friendly."
Unable to contain his frustration any longer, Felix snapped, "Friendly? Or maybe you're enjoying the attention a bit too much, y/n." The words hung heavy in the air, and y/n's eyes widened with surprise and hurt.
"What's your problem?" Y/n shot back, her own defenses rising. Felix fuelled by the fear of losing y/n to the allure of someone else, retorted,
"My problem is that everyone thinks you're fair game. Maybe it's time they know the truth – that we're more than just friends."
Y/n now fully grasping the depth of Felix's jealousy, countered, "Are you threatening to expose us? You know we can't do that, Felix. Fuck me you were the one who wanted it to be a secret so bad." The argument escalated, echoing the clash between the passion they shared in secret and the turmoil of emotions exposed in the harsh light of reality.
“Oh fuck me y/n, maybe I wouldn’t have to say anything If you weren’t such an attention whore!”
“Excuse me!” She said through gritted teeth trying not to cause a scene
“Don’t play dumb, god forbid my attention is on something other than you for a moment you start acting like a brat.” Felix said and y/n couldn’t believe what she was hearing, how dare he talk to her this way. She wasn’t one of his little flings that only lived to please him. She had more respect for herself and wouldn’t bat an eyelid at leaving if he didn’t treat her the way she wanted.
“I don’t know where you get off speaking to me like that but you better cut that shit out.” She said tempers growing for the both of them
“God I could have anyone I wanted but I choose to be with you and do nothing if you -“ Felix began at this point it was soon to turn nasty between then
“No one asked you to do nothing.” She snapped
“Fuck off.” He mumbled under his breath pinching the bridge of his nose as she turned to look at him arms folded across her chest while they stood on the balcony
“I will fuck off, I told you do what you want Felix.” she was staring daggers at him while he let out a frustrated sigh there friends all a few feet away watching the whole ordeal go down not a single of of them having a clue what was happening.
“Like you wouldn’t go off at me if I even looked at anyone else!” He said usually if someone as tall as Felix was getting pissed off at you while towering over you it would be enough to intimate anyone, but not y/n. She wasn’t one to back down from an argument.
“Well I didn’t ask you not to, do what you fucking want. Talk to a few girls shag them for all I care I’ll just fucking laugh at ya.” She spat clearly pissed off at not only him but the thought of him touching anyone else made her skin crawl.
“Maybe I will!”
“You know what Felix, go fuck yourself.” Y/n almost yelled as she stormed out of the flat knowing he wouldn’t dare follow her.
The argument with Felix lingered in her mind like a relentless echo, leaving her overwhelmed with a torrent of conflicting emotions. As she stormed out into the night, the crisp air did little to cool the heat of frustration burning within her. The music and laughter from the party slowly faded, replaced by an unsettling silence that mirrored the void growing in her chest, each step marked by the weight of unspoken words and unresolved tension. Tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill over, but she fought to maintain composure, not wanting to reveal her vulnerability to the indifferent darkness. The dimly lit streets witnessed the internal storm playing out on y/n’s face, the glow of streetlights casting shadows that mirrored the turmoil within. With each step, she found herself grappling with the realisation that the argument had not only fractured her connection with Felix but also exposed the fragility of the carefully constructed façade they had maintained.
Alone in the dark, y/n finally allowed herself to cry, the frustration and heartache escaping in silent sobs that mingled with the night's hushed symphony. The journey home became a painful pilgrimage through the shadows of her own unresolved emotions, the echoes of the argument haunting her every step.
Days passed in a heavy silence between Felix and y/n after their heated argument. Felix grappling with a mixture of regret and longing, found the absence of y/n more challenging than expected. Each passing moment without her presence heightened the ache in his heart. Felix had never felt this way before. No one had every evoked the same emotions from him that y/n does and the lack of communication became increasingly unbearable. Felix scrolled through old messages, the weight of the unsent apologies pressing down. Pride clashed with the undeniable truth – Felix missed y/n more than words could express. Swallowing the pride, He finally sent a hesitant message, "Can we talk?" The pause that followed felt like an eternity.
Y/n - Come over?
Felix shot up from his bed wasting no time rushing over to her flat rehearsing exactly what he wanted to say to her , everything from how sorry he was for the way he treat her and that he should have never spoke to her that way because he let his idiotic jealousy take the wheel to how stupid he feels for making her keep what they have a secret and how he wants nothing more than to shout it from the rough tops. However upon letting himself in with the key she’d given him not too long ago that all faded when He walked into the flat to find her curled up on the couch in his jumper and her beloved blanket she’s had for as long as he’s known her.
“Y/n.” He whispered as she stirred from her sleep while he sat down on the edge of the couch a few feet away from her
“Hi.” She said as she sat up rubbing her eyes slightly bringing her knees to her chest as she looked over at him
“I’m so sorry baby.” He began but before he could go on his tangent of how sorry he was and how much he adores her she whispered almost inaudibly
“Do you not trust me?” Felix felt his heart sink he hated that he’d upset her
“I do trust you baby, i was just being jealous I should have never taken it out on you.” He said cautiously moving closer to her not wanting to make her uncomfortable “I hate the idea of someone else looking at you the way I do, the idea of you making someone feel the same way you make me feel.”
“I’d never do that intentionally.” She said looking at him with her big do eyes that made him melt the same why they did when he first saw her
“I know… I’m so sorry for speaking to you like that and I’m so sorry for making you keep us a secret.” He told her as she shuffled closer to him letting him pull her into his lap
“What?” She asked confused
“You’re my girl, and I want no I need everyone to know that.” He told her and she couldn’t help but smile. Felix had never outright claimed anyone so y/n couldn’t help but feel special that she was the first
“But Fi, I don’t want you to feel like you have too… baby come on it’s about time I tell my parents and everyone else you’re my girlfriend.” Felix watched the way her eyes lit up as he said that word
“Girlfriend?” she whispered while Felix just nodded leaning in to kiss her softly “I like that.” She mumbled into the kiss
“Missed you.” He whispered as he pulled away
“I missed you too, I’ve hardly slept not having you here next to me.” Felix let out a sigh of relief knowing that she missed him just as much as he missed her.
“Then let’s get you to bed, yeah?” Felix scooped her up carrying her into her bedroom just as he had done so many nights before. In one swift motion he laid her down before crawling beside her and letting her get comfortable as she found her place on his chest.
“Y/n.” He whispered his hand running through her hair. It took her a few seconds to hum in response but he didn’t mind “I love you.” He said the words lingering in the soft glow of the bedside lamp. Y/n absorbed the sweet declaration like a lullaby. The words wrapped around her like a comforting embrace, and a tender smile played on her lips as sleep gently claimed her. In that moment, the room held the echo of those three precious words, affirming what they both already knew before they both drifted into the night.
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doberbutts · 1 month
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I’m wondering if you have thoughts on James Baldwin’s “open letter to the born again”? I’m struggling a bit with what his point is in that piece; it feels kinda dismissive on Jewish zionists agency in creation of Israel? But I may be missing parts or not getting things
The text in question.
And the segment I think anon is struggling with:
I know what I am talking about: my grandfather never got the promised “forty acres, and a mule,” the Indians who survived that holocaust are either on reservations or dying in the streets, and not a single treaty between the United States and the Indian was ever honored. That is quite a record.
Jews and Palestinians know of broken promises. From the time of the Balfour Declaration (during World War I) Palestine was under five British mandates, and England promised the land back and forth to the Arabs or the Jews, depending on which horse seemed to be in the lead. The Zionists—as distinguished from the people known as Jews—using, as someone put it, the “available political machinery,’’ i.e., colonialism, e.g., the British Empire—promised the British that, if the territory were given to them, the British Empire would be safe forever.
But absolutely no one cared about the Jews, and it is worth observing that non-Jewish Zionists are very frequently anti-Semitic. The white Americans responsible for sending black slaves to Liberia (where they are still slaving for the Firestone Rubber Plantation) did not do this to set them free. They despised them, and they wanted to get rid of them. Lincoln’s intention was not to “free” the slaves but to “destabilize” the Confederate Government by giving their slaves reason to “defect.” The Emancipation Proclamation freed, precisely, those slaves who were not under the authority of the President of what could not yet be insured as a Union.
It has always astounded me that no one appears to be able to make the connection between Franco’s Spain, for example, and the Spanish Inquisition; the role of the Christian church or—to be brutally precise, the Catholic Church—in the history of Europe, and the fate of the Jews; and the role of the Jews in Christendom and the discovery of America. For the discovery of America coincided with the Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Does no one see the connection between The Merchant of Venice and The Pawnbroker? In both of these works, as though no time had passed, the Jew is portrayed as doing the Christian’s usurious dirty work. The first white man I ever saw was the Jewish manager who arrived to collect the rent, and he collected the rent because he did not own the building. I never, in fact, saw any of the people who owned any of the buildings in which we scrubbed and suffered for so long, until I was a grown man and famous. None of them were Jews.
And I was not stupid: the grocer and the druggist were Jews, for example, and they were very very nice to me, and to us. The cops were white. The city was white. The threat was white, and God was white, Not for even a single split second in my life did the despicable, utterly cowardly accusation that “the Jews killed Christ’’ reverberate. I knew a murderer when I saw one, and the people who were trying to kilI me were not Jews.
But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say that it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.
Finally: there is absolutely—repeat: absolutely—no hope of establishing peace in what Europe so arrogantly calls the Middle East (how in the world would Europe know? having so dismally failed to find a passage to India) without dealing with the Palestinians. The collapse of the Shah of Iran not only revealed the depth of the pious Carter’s concern for “human rights,” it also revealed who supplied oil to Israel, and to whom Israel supplied arms. It happened to be, to spell it out, white South Africa.
Well. The Jew, in America, is a white man. He has to be, since I am a black man, and, as he supposes, his only protection against the fate which drove him to America. But he is still doing the Christian’s dirty work, and black men know it.
My friend, Mr. Andrew Young, out of tremendous love and courage, and with a silent, irreproachable, indescribable nobility, has attempted to ward off a holocaust, and I proclaim him a hero, betrayed by cowards.
For context: Andrew Young, considered the right hand of MLK Jr, had a longstanding and occasionally fraught relationship with the Jewish community. He stepped down from Congress shortly after being forced to choose between voicing support for Palestine and continuing to work towards black-jewish interests by his constituents and fellow politicians, as he felt very strongly about supporting both. This was a fairly unpopular move. While I don't believe he ever called himself Jewish by the strictest sense, he was actively involved in Jewish communities and the known "white" ancestry within him is a Polish Jew in his great grandparents.
To be honest, I don't really see much a problem with this as I think it fairly closely matches up not only with my understanding of the history of this problem but also my own country's part in it as well as my personal feelings on it decades later. It pretty blatantly says that Zionism is utilizing a machination of white supremist colonism due to the extensive history of antisemitism and having had the ancestral land dangled in front of them like bait on a hook from the British Empire, which owned Palestine at the time. It also goes on to say that many Zionists aren't even Jewish and are antisemitic in nature, but are Christians happy to get rid of as many Jews as possible and how that tracks due to the Christian church's millennia-deep history of antisemitism.
I don't think it lets anyone off the hook. I think it pretty much flat out says this is a problem caused first and foremost by white Christians who hate Jews and Arabs alike and have a vested interest in getting the two populations to fight because it'll be easier to kill off just the one group instead of both of them, if one ends up eradicating the other. It even talks about the friction between the black community and the Jewish community, what caused it, what drives it, how that friction in itself is a tool of white supremacy to hurt us both.
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jumpstart-if · 10 months
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Jumpstart is a character-driven slice of life, containing drama and romance. It's mainly inspired by the show 90210 and the movie Mean Girls.
You had multiple sticky notes on your bedroom ceiling, bathroom mirror, and any other surface you were able to get it on.
How to be rich by 21:
1. Survive high school Survive the final year of high school 2. Move out and get a pet (finally!) 3. Become rich and famous (should be easy enough...)
This list has followed you ever since your eleventh birthday when you were suddenly bombarded with the dreaded question:
‘What is your dream job?’
Quite frankly, you didn’t dream of labour. At least not the regular kind. Call it psychic, but you knew you were destined for the easy life, filled with copious amounts of wealth, relaxation, and travels. You were are special.
Seriously, you had everything set out for your 'rags to riches' story:
You weren’t the most popular, but you also weren’t eating lunch alone in the school bathroom. ✔️
You made sure to work a part-time job, starting from the age of thirteen, so it would be easier for future fans to relate to you. ✔️
You were on your way to being crowned ‘Most likely to be famous’, which would have made for the perfect moment on ‘The Late-Night Phil Show’.✔️
Everything was going to plan… until it wasn’t.
Not only did your mother decide to marry some wealthy businessman, but she also packed up all your stuff and moved you hundreds of miles away from your home that screamed ‘humble beginnings’ and into a five bedroom (minimum) mega mansion.
Oh, and public school? Forget about that. From tomorrow on, you’ll be one of those rich private school kids. Goodbye 'rags to riches' background, and hello nepotism allegations.
Though, that’s a problem for future you...
Right now, you’ll have to adapt to school life the way the people at the top of the food chain do it. 
Get ready to ‘survive the final year of high school’ filled with gossip, betrayal, romance, angst, and social drama you could’ve sworn only happened in movies and TV shows.
Jumpstart is rated 18+ as there will be mentions of sexual themes, drugs, alcohol and violence.
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Choose your MC's name and gender.
Decide your MC's personality, clothing style, and much more.
Get involved with 1 out of 4 romanceable characters.
Climb to the top of the hierarchy at Maplewood Private School.
Jumpstart your way into the life of stardom and wealth.
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Isaiah/India (m/f) 'the high school worldwide heartthrob':
You could’ve sworn you saw them gracing the red carpet in some of the hundreds of magazines stashed in one of your moving boxes. Child of the famous celebrity make-up artist, Naomi Lawton and basketball star, Sean Lawton. Wanted by many, yet only successfully claimed by A. Though, judging by how many people I can be regularly spotted with, it begs the question: Does I care?
Appearance: Sepia skin tone. M! has short coily black hair, mostly styled in cornrows and decorated with some silver hair jewellery. F! has long bleached coily hair, currently styled in waist-length blonde braids.
Alison/Anderson (m/f) 'the school's number one':
Not quite like the ones in movies… they’re somewhat nice? At first, they can be straight-up vicious, ripping apart any and every little detail they can get their hands on, but once you earn their trust, you’ll learn that behaviour is much more of a façade than a true reflection of them.
Appearance: Olive complexion with sprinkles of freckles on their nose and cheeks. M! has short curly ginger hair that loosely hangs over his forehead. F! has shoulder-length ginger curls and bangs.
Tegan (m/f) 'the estranged childhood best friend'
You were eight years old, when their family decided to move someplace else, ripping your, what you thought to be inseparable, bond into two. At the start you tried to keep up, exchanging letters almost every day… then weeks… then months if anything, until complete silence. You’re not sure who stopped sending them first or when even, but one thing’s for certain: you were no longer friends. No, after ten years, you definitely weren’t.
Appearance: Brown skin tone. M! has black buzzed hair. F! has straight, waist-length black hair.
Levi/Leighton (m/f) 'wherever they go, trouble follows aka the school's bad boy/girl':
For someone with a big reputation, there’s next to nothing that can be found on them. And all your pestering questions are met with nothing but warnings, yet you can’t help but grow more curious about them with each passing encounter.
Appearance: Tawny skin tone, though you can’t help but notice the faded scar tainting their otherwise clear left cheek. They have wavy brown hair, reaching down to their shoulders.
Reblogs are more than welcome and thanks for reading!
DEMO TBA
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focsle · 6 months
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have you written anything about tattoos? is that relevant? don't know how your niche lines up with generic "sailor" tradition, but wikipedia simply says on knuckle tats that deckhands may get "HOLD / FAST" as a charm to support their grip on rigging, and i thought that was kind of cute.
I haven't written anything myself, mostly cos if you throw a stick out in the internet you'll find any number of articles about the symbolism of sailor tattoos, like hold fast and pigs and roosters and swallows and all that!
In my narrow window (the middle decades of the 19th century), I don't see tattoos mentioned all too often, compared to late 19th and throughout the 20th century where they became more common. For instance, this register of seaman's protection certificates (which are admittedly limited in the scope of things, since they're only from a few specific ports) from 1796-1871 rarely list tattoos as distinguishing marks, beyond the odd mention of being marked with an inked anchor, eagle, or letters here or there. Here's a neat jstor article (if you have any more of your 100 free monthly articles to read with a google account) that goes into late 18th-early 19th c tattoos that has some tables and visuals. The research was also done using seaman's protection certificates, with the following stat:
"The SPC-A records start in 1796 and include tattooed men born as early as 1746. There were 979 tattooed men out of a total of 9,772 men whose records survive from 1796 through 1818.26 These men were marked with a total of about 2,354 separate designs."
So, not a large number, but also 10% isn't insignificant. The protection certificates while a reliable source, also only describe the man in one specific moment. I'm sure a few of those men who just have their moles and scars and crooked fingers listed eventually picked up a tattoo or two in their time. Most journal keepers perhaps didn't think it important to mention who had tattoos or what of, though the typical motifs of anchors, nautical stars, girls, religious & patriotic imagery, etc. were certainly a part of the visual language at this point. Whaler William Abbe who sailed in the 1850s, devoted considerable attention to describing the physical appearance of some of his shipmates. In one instance, he wrote about the tattoos of one 'Johnny Come Lately' or 'Jack Marlinspike' (Real name, John Hewes of Buffalo NY)
'from beneath this cap his face looms out - while beneath supporting his comical head is a bare neck and breast — hairy + brown —the upper timbers to a stout hull of a boat that boast a pair of arms all covered with India ink tattooings — the figure of American Liberty — Christ on the cross — an American Tar holding a star spangled banner in one hand + a coil of rope in the other — a fancy girl — + anchors, rings, crosses, knots, stars all over his wrists + hands — the memorials of different ports he has visited — for Jack has been in all kinds of vessels from a man of war to a blubber hunter — + has consequently been to many ports.'
From the logbook of another whaler who sailed in the early 1840s, James Moore Ritchie, he had a page of his drawings with prices included. This potentially may have been a tattoo flash sheet for his shipmates:
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American whalers also noted the tattoos of indigenous people who had signed on to whaling vessels, particularly in the South Pacific. William B. Whitecar, whaling in the 1850s wrote: "Several New Zealanders in the respective crews of these vessels attracted my attention from the tattooing on their bodies" making mention of "figures on their face and breast".
I'm too sleepy to have a conclusion lol. Tattoos! They existed! Though perhaps not as ubiquitously as the pop culture sailor designs would imply, at least prior to the late 19th c.
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oldshrewsburyian · 1 month
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I don't know if the viking age is your area of expertise, but I saw certain comments in this post about vikings: https://wwwdottumblrdotcom/cracked/160025927549/why-everything-you-know-about-vikings-is-a-lie?source=share
that I would like to ask you about.
The post comes from the comedy website Cracked and states "relative to their era, medieval scandinavians were big-time democrats, feminists and neat-freaks. Vikings were some of the cleanest people in world-history."
In the comment section some people are sceptical of these claims which is kinda understandable.
For example, some question the claim about being the cleanest people in the world because of testimony from the Arab visitor ibn Fadlan: "as a historian, i gotta say, it's highly relative and heavily depends on a point of view. I read a transcript of a info letter from an arab ambassador currently residing in scandinavia. He was disgusted and pretty much said that the northern folk were filthy pigs. Which in terms if hygiene brits < scandinavians <<<<<<<<<<<< arabs"
and
"speaking as someone with an MA in medieval history I feel that he is spinning this a little heavy. I mean have any of you read the primary accounts of Ahmad ibn Fadlan meeting the Vikings?"
and as for feminism, a comment from someone with "historian" in their bio states: "They weren't even that feminist to their own people, its theorised that part of the reason they started raiding was because they'd skewed their own gender ratio badly through gender selective infanticide, so there were more men than women. Women held power in that society because viking men wanted their bodies and had too few to go around.
So men went raiding either in intense competition to get gifts and treasures for a woman, or else to try and take women slaves. The vikings were so not feminist that they unleashed a wave of terror on much of the European coast in a quest to get laid. It doesn't get much less feminist than that."
I want to ask for your takeaway on these statements; is the account by Ibn Fadlan prove anything about hygiene in early medieval scandinavia in general, and would it be possible to conclusively judge whether the "vikings" were "feminist" or not?
Hello! It's been a while! I see that you come to me with... the "historians" of the comedy website Cracked. The short answers to your questions are "no" and "no, but also the Vikings were not feminist, give me strength."
Also, whoever is writing "as a historian" is writing as a history major at best, I'm guessing; they're repeating inaccurate clichés about hygiene and also misidentifying Ibn Fadlan's Rihla as an "info letter."
To address your points sequentially:
"big-time democrats" Hahahaha no. First of all, local governance was the norm in the global Middle Ages, everywhere from China to India to England. (This is why the "I thought we were an autonomous collective" joke in Monty Python is so funny.) At the top of the social hierarchy, some kind of cooperation between ruler and advisory body was also the norm. But because the Vikings had assemblies without crowned rulers, some racists looking for The Origins of Democracy™ have said "Aha! A Proto-Democracy™!" ...no.
"feminists" ...this is based on a lot of hypothesizing. Moreover, it's based on an old-fashioned way of doing history that looks more narrowly at a narrower source base than is the norm today. It's also based on the not-always-correct assumption that raiding parties must have been exclusively male. Anyway, the "feminists" argument rests on the assumption that because women were trusted to manage the economy and everything while the Vikings were off viking (the verb is for raiding, originally), and because they had certain legal privileges, they must have had better cultural status than their peers in other European societies. But again: women being fully involved in the economy is the norm in premodern Europe in ways it is not after Europe invents The Private/Domestic/Feminine Sphere™ in, oh, about 1750. The Private Sphere For Delicate Women, of course, is only for the middle classes. Then there's the whole Viking thing about men being shamed for doing "womanly" magic-use in saga literature.
"neat-freaks" Sigh. I think this comes from one (1) chronicle reference, which I've been failing to track down this morning, in which the male author is bemoaning the fact that the Vikings' comely appearance, braids, and perfumes enable them to entice local women. Taking this claim at face value requires a lot of willful ignorance about how alternate models of masculinity are rhetorically used in premodern sources, to say nothing about willful ignorance about the realities of sexual violence. This is also to say nothing about poor Ibn Fadlan's horrified account of men spitting and blowing their noses into a communal washing bowl.
...There are many affordable, accessible books on the European Middle Ages; series of public-facing online articles; and yet people cook things like this up on Cracked.com. I don't get paid enough.
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papenathys · 7 days
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What are your favourite books of the year?
[ this ask was sent in 2023, I'm just depressed and also a bit lazy. I ended up listing 14 books instead of the top 5. because I love books and because I would rather die than shortlist these. ]
❤ = author liked my online review
🦋 = HIGHLY recommend reading CWs
JAN-JUNE
The Wicked and The Willing by Lianyu Tan 🦋❤
GENRE: LGBTQ, adult, historical, gothic romance
A young woman in 1920s colonial Singapore is hired as maidservant to a mysterious European heiress in a coastal manor: only to realise something evil is afoot. This was interesting–quite a graphic, disturbing and violent take on the classic vampire motif; kind of like if Carmilla and The Handmaiden had a demon child. Has two different love interests + endings to choose from (hydrogen bomb hot butch vs coughing baby racist white woman). 4⭐
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Genre: LGBTQ, adult, contemporary
A young Black PhD scholar deals with academic burnout, mental health and familial pressures while navigating a new marriage with a radio host from Brooklyn. Look this may be a bit cheesy and some of the writing gives Tumblr poetry but I don't care because I did cry and it did help me during a difficult time of my life. If you like stories about queer women, self-discovery and big city loneliness, you'll enjoy this. 5⭐
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Genre: adult, historical fiction
Sprawling intergenerational historical novel about a family of Korean immigrants in Japan through the last two centuries. Explores Korean diasporic identity and what it means to belong to a motherland, through marriage, family, food, culture, education and propaganda during times of war. Always will recommend this as one of the best and most well-written historical novels ever. I respect and love the author very much. 4.5 ⭐
Severance by Ling Ma
Genre: adult, dystopia, speculative fiction
A woman living a lacklustre, lonely life and working at a dead-end job in an NYC publishing house continues going to office during a global lockdown in hopes of her severance paycheck. I love horror books about capitalism and labour exploitation, and the anxiety that this one gave me... Sometimes, minimum wage corporate work is scarier than a zombie apocalypse. 4⭐
Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See ❤
Genre: adult, historical fiction (LGBTQ??)
In 19th century China, two girls from different villages become intimate friends after a foot-binding ceremony. I know See has her issues but I refuse to take any criticism for this book. In fact, I'm not speaking about this book without going to therapy immediately afterwards. Girl best friends will literally become tragic doomed narrative foils rather than have sex. If there ever was a story that EXEMPLIFIED Two Slow Dancers by Mitski btw. 5⭐
When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy 🦋❤
Genre: adult, literary fiction, social commentary
An unnamed woman reflects on her abusive marriage with a leftist individual in South India. This book was so sickening, so rage-filled and a must-read for feminists all over the world. It's such a nauseatingly realistic story of surviving abuse, of looking back on lost girlhood with anger and grief. Also, a classic breakdown of Indian upper class male intellectualism: the comrade dadas who are content to spout Marxist theory while abusing and silencing women. This one's a favourite. 5⭐
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Genre: LGBTQ, young adult, historical, romance
In 1950s, McCarthy-era San Francisco, a young Chinese schoolgirl secretly explores underground lesbian bars with her classmate. What a sweet story, what an excellent historical portrait of the Chinese American community, what a romantic, tender love letter to 50s butch femme love and lesbian bar culture during the Lavender Scare. Probably one of my top five lesbian fiction ever. 5⭐
JULY-DEC
Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi ❤
Genre: LGBTQ, memoir, speculative fiction, essays
Collection of essays, composed in the form of fragmented letters to the author's friends, family and lovers, sharing glimpses into their Igbo spirituality, childhood in Nigeria, gender affirmative healthcare, facing racism in USA and then catapulting to overnight fame with their debut novel. This is a love letter to trans queer artists of color in the 21st century. I am happy to be alive at the same time as Emezi. Highly recommend this book for aspiring authors. 4.5⭐
A Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson ❤
Genre: LGBTQ, adult, horror, gothic romance
A retelling of Dracula's brides, as narrated by his first wife, Constanta. Absolutely sinfully and shamelessly devoted to decadence, eroticism and the shenanigans of toxic evil bisexual vampire polycule. Some books work simply because of a skilful combination of deranged bisexuals, aesthetics and stunning prose: this one is a masterclass in both. Also the author is a fan of The Secret History, Saltburn and Deathless, like lol.... sounds about right. 5⭐
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White 🦋
Genre: LGBTQ, young adult, horror, historical gothic fiction
In Victorian London, where the veil between the living and death has thinned, and secret societies keep silent vigil over spirits, a young transgender boy is forcefully sent to a girls' sanatorium to cure his feminine "sickness", but instead gets embroiled in a terrifying mystery. True story: I was up till dawn, with my lights on, listening to positive affirmation ASMR to recover from this book. Genuinely terrifying historical gothic/medical medical thriller. Central t4t romance. 5⭐
Chlorine by Jade Song 🦋❤
Genre: LGBTQ, young adult (?), contemporary, speculative fiction
A teenage Chinese-American girl muses on competitive swimming, diasporic identity, puberty, queer crushes, and mermaids. This was an incredible debut novel- a bloody, gory little masterpiece of scales, teeth and fucked up teen girls. I don't usually enjoy "girlhood is grief, woe is me" type teenage horror stories, but the way Asian American identity, queerness and 1990s nostalgia is woven into a weird speculative horror modern fairytale feels insanely creative. If you like the films of Julia Ducournau, read this. 5⭐
Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens ❤
Genre: LGBTQ, adult, historical, Western, thriller
In 1880s Kansas, a young former ranch girl forced to work at a brothel ends up falling hard and fast for the dashing, daredevil female bounty hunter who rides into town from the prairie. Let me just say one thing- Western toxic yuri revenge thriller ft the most damningly hot older butch lesbian character ever (AWOOGA)!!!!!! When I say toxic yuri this is what I want. Need a live-action film so bad you don't even know. Good God. 4.5⭐
Breaking Character by Lee Winter
Genre: LGBTQ, adult, contemporary, romance
An icy, British former theatre legend and her much younger, sunshiny LA co-star are forced to fake a relationship for the tabloids, to increase views on their long-running tv medical drama and to also get the movie deal of their lives. Great portrayal of toxic celebrity shipping culture, entertainment industry pressures, workplace misogyny and fan worship. See, when tropes are actually executed well, the romantic chemistry between the leads is off the charts. Chemistry, sexual tension, Hollywood drama and deliciously slow burn sexy times. Tbh a pure comfort read. 5⭐
Wherever Is Your Heart by Anita Kelly ❤
Genre: LGBTQ, adult, contemporary, romance
Two middle-aged butches– a bartender and a truck driver– pine for each other at a queer karaoke bar downtown, during Pride Month. I know Anita Kelly is a sweetheart and I recommend all of their other works, but this one got me so emotional!!!! It was so tender and intimate, and portrayed older butch lesbians in their 40s-50s; wistful, romantic and gently realistic. Also, canon demisexual lesbian rep!! 5⭐
[ for more detailed reviews, check out my bookstagram ]
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milknhonies · 2 months
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Sir Sherlock Holmes & The Indian Princess
शर्लक बाबू और भारतीय राजकुमारी
Chapter 1 || Masterlist || Chapter 2
Chapter Summary: In England, Sherlock Holmes receives an alarm letter from his dear friend Doctor John Watson. In Delhi, You don't mind being a teacher, but with new building plans, you reflect on your circumstances and opportunities.
Pairing: Sherlock Homes x Desi!reader
Chapter Warnings: 18+ Dead Dove Do Not Eat, Slow burn, generational trauma, colonisation, implied murder, death of a parent, classism & caste.
Word Count: 6k
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Author Notes:
★ Everything written in bold is being said in Hindustani
★The Reader character goes by the last name Newalkar and is the daughter of Damodar Rao Newalkar → the adopted son of Rani Laxmibai. I must advise this story is pure fiction but based in the occupation of the British Raj that invaded and Colonised India.
★I am a White European/Australian woman, I apologise for any cultural or historical inaccuracies. I am receiving help from online sources and desi Tumblr mutual @livesinfantasyland and I heavily encourage other Indian/South Asian/Desi readers to share their thoughts, constructive criticism and help as I write this story.
Inspiring Song: "Paint it Black" by Ciara
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11:35pm Thursday 26th June 1890, 221B Baker Street, Marylebone, Westminster, London, England.
This story begins and ends with the sound of rain.
Tink!
The roof had begun a leak. And when this leak came to play it had a habit of landing directly on the head of a disgruntled and lonely fellow.  The greatest detective in London who could not find a friend. Granted I must inform you, Mr Sherlock Holmes did in fact have some friends, but by misfortunes, none were presently in the country.
Tink!
He angrily sighed. Another drop of rain hit his head.
He launched from his arm chair and grumbling moved an empty teapot to sit on the cushion he previously sat. The drops thus made a small tinkling as they landed inside the empty pot.
Plonk!
He rubbed his eyes and checked the time on the mantle piece clock. He had lost weeks of his life. Hours squeezed down to into unknown days or months, he could not tell. It did not help how he consistently drew the curtains closed to design total darkness other than the fireplace and his candles to light up his home.
A light shiver ran up his spine. The weather was dangerously cold today. His fingertips upon inspection grew from pale white to a dark pink.
Plonk!
He wandered if perhaps it was time to have a holiday in sunny Spain.
A knock on his door broke his imagined vacation like a hammer to glass.
His pesky landlady Mrs Hudson intruded on his stuffy dust filled space. She grumbled nonsense about the filth of her apartment she’s rented out to the famous Detective before handing him a thick envelope.
Plonk!
And the moment he could see and recognised the handwriting he snatched the Letter from her wrinkly fingers and banished her with a bellowing shout. The woman fluttered out and muttered her further disgusts of his treatment.
Plonk!
But Sherlock did not care for her opinion or rather anyone’s for that matter, Sherlock only cares about the stamp he tore opened the parchment he eagerly unfolded.
John Watson. Doctor, soldier and dear friend. He was Sherlock’s greatest companion to note. He had never felt such brotherly love until he met the very man seeking a roommate here in baker street.
Doctor and detective used to comb London for clues to solve crimes and very noticeably took an interest at the sports of pleasure. The luxurious brothels of London welcomed him and his friend with open arms and spread legs. Doctor Watson was the easy victim of sex while Sherlock was one to enjoy his opium pipe and watch his friend succumb to the mouths of half-pound harlots.
And among these adventures of interesting women did the doctor find himself in a savage tussle with another jealous male patron...
Sherlock recalled the evening with mirth. His dear friend, brother in arms had been pummelled to a pulp and drunk as a daisy. So when Sherlock escorted him to a hospital, the imbecile had declared that he was doctor of the ward and did not need any stitches. It is a grand thing perhaps Doctor Watson could not fathom the memory of yelling too proudly that his medicine could be only found in the elixir of a woman’s warm cunny.
His nurse, a dirty bird at heart had giggled at this...that nurses name was Mary Mortenson. And she became the very enamoured Mrs Mary Watson.
Sherlock was not fond of his friend becoming so besotted with his bride. He tolerated the woman’s presences at best. Unspokenly, the detective saw competition to gain the doctors attention and it was becoming far too obvious that Mrs Watson would win. Every. Single. Time.
After a month of young love the married pair had decided their honey-moon should be experienced back in John’s birth land...Delhi, a city in India. Mary was to meet the senior Mr and Mrs Watson. Coincidently, the English rose was not averse to the foreign lands…she so happened to have been born in Agra. Happy and married, they boarded and sailed across the sea.
Sherlock had high hopes their ship would run scarce of supplies so they might return quickly. He missed his dear friend and even his annoying wife.
The letter in between if thumbs and fingers were the first words from them he had gotten in nearly three months. The letter read as followed...
“Dear Sherlock,
Mary and I have come to my home I grew up in as a boy. I was blessed with my parents merry welcome. However, unfortunate circumstances have designed two coffins. For merely a week into our visit my beloved parents have passed. I have yet to decide whether to bury them in the English tradition or burn them in the Hindi ritual. My predicted return back to Baker Street may appear futile and non-existent. Please. Come visit us as soon as it is convenient.
13, 25, 27, 16, 1, 18, 5, 14, 20, 19, 27, 8, 23, 5, 27, 2, 5, 5, 14, 27, 13, 21, 18, 4, 5, 18, 5, 4.
Your sincere faithful friend, Doctor John H. Watson.”
Plonk!
Sherlock’s eyes raced over the page, and cupped his mouth staring at the plethora of numbers. They were not any numbers. John was a simple man, he wasn’t the smartest being but Sherlock appreciated his humble attitudes, he liked the doctor admitting he wasn’t a world genius, just a man who knew his medicines.
So when an enigmatic set of numbers was written at random Sherlock thought of the most simplistic cypher.
For every number was a letter. 1 being A and 26 being Z, leaving 27 to be a space between a word.
His brows lifted. The message was clear and alarming.
Plonk!
“My Parents Have Been Murdered.”
He determined his dear doctor had written this cryptic message under the desire of secrecy. His eyes lit up. It meant John needed Sherlock’s help. A case. Something was amiss. John did not know the killers name. If he did, he would’ve written it or not bothered to write asking Sherlock to visit at all.
He couldn’t have run faster to his rooms to start backing as soon as possible.
Plonk!
Sherlock Holmes had know idea what he was going to find in a land he had only heard stories from Watson’s childhood. He was eager to see his friend, to help him and to finally have an adventure.
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01:35pm Friday 11th July 1890, Anglo Arabic Secondary School, Desh Bandhu Gupta Rd, Ajmeri Gate, Delhi.
You dragged the piece of white chalk across a black board and sketched a simple phrase in the English language. You smiled to the young faces that filled the room, sitting in long benches and desks. Their eyes wide and curious, eager to learn.
You waved your hands, “Now, clean your chalk slates students, you are going to learn how to spell good afternoon in English.”
They wipe them down with their small damp clothes and tucked them away in the groove at the top of their slanted desk. You waited patiently until they all sat with their hands resting flat on the wooden desks, mouths shut, eyes seeking knowledge.
You underlined each letter of the first word, “Gee, ouw, ouw, dee, this spells ‘Good’ and now ‘Afternoon’ is Aya, eff, tee, Ee, Ara, eynnn, ouw, ouw, eynn.”
The young boys sounded it out with you. Their sweet pubescent voices unionised. You smiled. They were so advanced at such a young age, most of the boys had come from average and wealthy families that could afford them to come to such a fine school. Many were Muslim, others Hindu, it was a good sign of peace. The youth coming together despite their differences. And on odd days you would teach the white children, boys and girls of British and French families who wanted their children to learn Hindi, Arabic and Urdu.
You didn’t mind teaching white children, some of the boys could be very disrespectful but you gathered it was behaviour picked up from their arrogant fathers. It wasn’t the young boys who had pillaged these lands, it was their fathers and grandfathers.
“The gee,” you circled the G, “Remember in English is also pronounced like Guh and,” you tapped the double o’s, “Ouw ouw in english together when two is said ‘oooowa’. Followed by dee being said as Dah. So, let’s say it together?”
You dragged a white line under the word and sounded it out with your students.
“Guh-oooow-dah.”
You smiled.
You repeated, “Good.”
“Now let’s look at the word ‘afternoon’,” you announced.
You cleaned the board and looked back at your students. One of the little boys who sat in the front was rubbing his eyes. You smiled softly. He was only six years old. His older brother, a young man now would most likely be the one to collect his brother from school and carry him sleeping back home. You looked at the bell tower just outside the window. It was nearly time for your students to go home and you to return back to your lodgings.
“Aye and eff is said as AAaff, then tee is a quick Tuh! And what is Ee and Arrra sound together children?”
“Errr,” they all purred.
You sounded out half of the word with them, “Aafftuherrr.”
You rubbed your chalk dust covered fingers together and further explained as you pointed to each important letter, “eynnn makes a Na, sound. And we just practiced double ouw, so sound it out.”
Like a symphony of speech, you all said together, “Guh-oooow-dah Aafftuherrr, Na-ooow-na. Good Afternoon.”
The deep bowing clang of the bells outside rang through the yard and open window shutters. The children looked eager to leave. Their hands were readily holding their slates, ready to put them inside the empty wooden box in the corner of the classroom where they kept all their slates and dusters and the bucket for where they kept their chalk.
“Good afternoon students,” You bided.
“Good afternoon Teacher Madam,” They called back.
“You may go back home now. Practise your English alphabet song.”
The boys were fast as rabbits, leaping from their desks and fleeing the classroom out the hall and down the stairs. But some at least saluted you as they left. It was a habit they’d picked up from the white boys who saluted their male teachers. You smiled to yourself as you waved them out. Each left with beaming smiles and playful chatter among themselves.
As you went about sweeping the floor after wiping the chalk from the board, you wondered if you should go to the temple and pray for your students successful education or if you should consider washing your clothing today. It had been very dry today, any moment and you knew the wet season and humid rain would arrive to flood the streets clean of dust and fill the forests with life of green goodness.
As you put away the English education books on the small shelves by the door, a familiar face came rushing in, flushed and excited
If it wasn’t her jingling anklet and bangle that announced her To your classroom, it was her shrill cry of your name that did.  
“Y/N! Quick!” Miss Anjuli Paraiyars exclaimed, “You need to come with me.”
Her dark ink hair was peaking out from her sun patterned veil. The wispy curls stuck to her sweaty forehead and framed her dazzling walnut eyes. They were flooded with mischief that matched her biting lip. Her brows wriggled lightly.
Placing the last book onto the shelf you turned to acknowledge your dear friend.
“Anjuli,” you happily sighed, “Whatever is the matter?”
She waved her hands about, hoping to quicken you along and out the door, “It is the Watson son, Doctor Watson, he wants to speak with you with important news.”
Your eyes widened. ‘What on earth does that poor soul wish to say to me? After the death of the good Mr and Mrs Watson, I would assume he was still in mourning, why would he call upon me?’
Following your friend outside into the scorching sun, you lifted your saree over your head. She had her family Ox and cart waiting outside the school gates.
“What important news Anjuli?” You said a little standoffishly.
“He’s offering you a job,” She said giddily. She climbed up into the cart and leant down offering her hand to you.  Once in the cart side by side she sighed, “That’s all he would tell me,” She grabbed the reigns and cane and tapped the Ox to start moving out onto the dirt road, “But we all know how very generous he can be like his dear parents.”
Anjuli was right. The late Victoria and Hamish Watson’s were angelic to the local community. Victoria had been the very soul to teach your late mother English and she was the one to encourage you to attain education enough to become one of the very few first female Indian teachers. She was a well known philanthropist, often aiding the sick and homeless and funding the Indian hospitals. Hamish was a local accountant, financial advisor and lawyer. He was known to be good to the children particularly. He would often hand out sweets as he walked down the street with his briefcase bag. He often aided the locals find new homes when the British planned to evict them and replace white families in their place. The English couple had lived in the country for many decades, long before you were even born. They spoke fluently enough and mimicked the culture so well that you could’ve believed they were born here themselves.
You sat back and nodded, “May their souls attain moksha.”
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02:45pm Friday 11th July 1890, Willingdon Crescent, Central Ridge Forest, Delhi, India.
The sun baked down on the streets of Dehli. The Ox cart rolled along, it’s tail flicking the flies circling it’s flank every so often.
You pinches your saree scarf and covered your face before a bug could fly into your mouth.
Anjuli had to hold the reigns and cane, she leant closer to you and giggled as she nodded to the khaki covered soldiers. Walking by in many small groups.
Anjuli had a terrible habit, she fell in love too easily. For some ungodly reason Anjuli admired the foreigners that had come so long ago and invaded your beautiful country. Maybe she liked how different they looked. The flaxen hair and ice blue gazes in the faces of pale freaks were so opposite to the raven manes and hairy russet warmth of Indian men. It was erotic for her. You just didn't understand how she could so easily find infatuation with the people you considered an enemy, and so should she.
“Oh look at them,” she giggled girlishly.
You rolled your eyes, “I’m looking.” There was a timid strain in your voice. You had no real interest to entertain Anjuli’s fascination.
When Anjuli noticed how you in fact we’re not looking but rather looking ahead on the road path she playfully smacked your arm.
“Look!” She sucked her teeth and teasingly scolded, “Do you not know delight at the sight of men?” She reached forward and abruptly touched the front of your blouse, squeezing around for the softness of your breasts, “Are you sure you’re a full grown woman?” she smiled wickedly and prodded her finger in between your legs covered by your top petticoat.
You squeaked loudly and batted her hand. She howled with laughter and kept giggling even as you scowled at her beneath your veil.
You turned your head away from her and scoffed, “I am not as easily swayed by British soldiers. They look so sickly as pale as they are,” your nose wrinkled, “How could I righteously take a husband in front of beloved Lakshmi and her Vishnu when they look like they tempt Yama too take them at any moment?”
Your friend rolled her eyes, “Oh nonsense,” she tapped your hand and waved her fingers into a crowd of soldiers, “See there that one, his hair the colour of wheat, he is a handsome man. He would make a fine husband.”
And as the cart rolled passed, you couldn’t help gag at the smell of the same man Anjuli proclaimed would make a fine husband.
‘A fine swine perhaps. Many sow in heat could come trotting to him from miles with such a putrid scent.’
Your head wobbled and your flat palm waved at her, “A husbands good qualities are not to stand on his appearance alone. One day he will grow old, fat, bald and ugly.”
A long dragging sigh came out from the woman beside you. She managed to move both reigns into one hand and playfully tugged your saree away from your face
“You’re no fun, come on,” she jerked her chin out to the same street as the ox was about to pass another group, “Tell me you don’t find any of them a little attractive?”
You stared at the oncoming group and now sucked your teeth. You crudely stated, “They’d be far more attractive if they left. Went back to their lands, leave our villages and the people of Bharat in peace.”
Anjuli stared blankly at you. Before she could pinch and prod you again you relented and noticed one of the men in the crowd so different from the others.
He was tall, his hair a dark chestnut that matched the shade of his suit. His face was bare and clean in comparison to the soldiers who all adorned moustaches and muttonchop beards on their faces. He was carrying a rather large brief case and walking stick.
“Fine...that one,” you nodded, “In the brown English clothes.”
“The one wearing a suit?” Anjuli snickered, “He’s not a soldier though?”
You giggled,“And it is for such a reason I find he is most handsome among them.”
You both gazed at him as the ox fully passed by. Anjuli smiled at you.
“He is rather tall. Strong. What do you think he does?” She asked, “Maybe he is a farmer, or a bricklayer?”
You shook your head. ‘No. He couldn’t be.’
“He dresses too finely. It is not their Christian Sunday Sabbath today. He probably is a rich businessman, with a wife and children.”
You looked back to the path as the dusty road became thicker in trees and travel further away from the street. You thought about that strangers wife, what she might look like, probably some English rose with a house full of servants at her command, surrounded by maids and wet nurses for her children. She would live in a grand house and hold soiree’s, welcoming guests from all around to celebrate life. She would have a massive library and a place of worship. It was the life you should’ve had, the life you were owed and denied merely by the changing events of history and the extinguish of your father’s birthright.
Your soft smile faded; you felt a twinge of repulsion mixed with a hint of anger. You’d think after all these years you would’ve chosen to forget this, ignore this, let go and accept your circumstances in this life.... You didn’t live with your father anymore who would remind you practically daily why not to trust the English or any white man, as if you didn’t witness their subjecting abuse and consistent disrespect.
Your eyes fluttered shut, you reached to your side and touched Anjuli’s wrist. She was your truest friend despite her differences and low status. Anjuli came from a Shudra family, and you? You were the daughter, the descendant of Brahims and Kshatriyas...now lowered to the Shudra caste class…You never knew the lavish life of the Jhansi palace, nor tasted the rich foods served on golden plates and surrounded by pretty creatures of the palace menagerie. You would never know the joys of running through the gardens with other children in the royal family.
Everyone was gone, everything was gone. All that was left was your father who scarcely remembered that life but shared all he remembered so his memories would live on through you and bring you hope that one day it would be yours. It was a cruel false hope…
Eighteen years ago, you had been born inside of a nice house in Indore to the daughter of a prestige painter Vasudeoraobhau Bhatavdekar. As far as you knew, your father loved your mother very much for the incredibly brief time that they were married. A rare jewel in beauty is how he described her often. A marriage of love and choice. Your father said she was softly spoken and obedient, but it was her unconditional love for him and his dreams that held his heart in appreciation.
It was by unfortunate command that she would fall ill to childbed fevers after you were born. After you…a girl...not a son. You were nothing in the eyes of the British raj and had no chance of being installed as an heir for any restoration…you were the last hope and failed before your first breath. And that was something you’d never forget.
For a small time, you were raised in that home and then it was decided by your father that you would learn English. His tutors were not available, so he cut your hair short and shipped you off to Delhi with your young uncle Save to the Anglo Arabic Secondary School…It did not take the teachers and headmaster long to discover you were a girl. Before you were to receive the beating of a lifetime it was Mr Hamish Watson who so happened to be accounting the school costs to save you. He took you to his wife who taught you English and then set you to live with his maid servants, Anjuli’s mother.
Your friend spoke after some time of silence, “Oh, I’m meant to tell you- My cousin Vijay sent word this morning, he’s seeking a wife. My mother wants me to ask if you’d like to meet him, a prospective match.”
Your lips curled into a sneer, “Isn’t he the one that use to tie our braids together in a knot during Diwali and chase us around the street making animal noises?”
You recalled a young teenage boy about five years your senior with a tooth gap and ruffled hair. He was so annoying, calling you names and bullying you by calling you fat and ugly. He was spoilt and rude. He mocked you when you told him you were a princess. He said you were a princess of pimple pox and nothing more. Oh how you remembered the way your blood boiled.
“We were children, he was playing, only a boy,” she smiled, “He’s a man now, studying to be a barrister in Bombay but he will be visiting in a few weeks to help us move.”
Ah yes, the dilemma you needed to find a solution too soon. It was a month ago that a letter had been nailed to the house door, it was an eviction commandment made by the British military and government. The Paraiyars family and you had to leave the home in Raisina hill, why? Because the British do what they like…building concrete monstrosities over beautiful land and demolishing the history of your people like it was worthless dust. Rumours spread about a grand governors palace was to be built there, but they couldn’t burn the village to ash with people living inside...well....at least not on their "morally good Christian conscious."
“Vijay I believe owns a cottage near the seaside. You could be his bride and live with him instead of moving back to Indore to your father.”
Moving back was not possible...not after his most recent letter.
“Father has…felt it improper for me to move back to Indore. He believes that my existence would cause me more harm than good under his jailers’ eyes…His pension he shares I give mostly to your mother for board. I have saved my wages, I am considering…moving to a boarding workhouse in Jhansi or Agra, but tell your mother I would like to greet Vijay when he arrives…”
You smirked looking down at your fingernails, “Lakshmi forbid I run out of money and need to resort to the ‘charity’ of Christians or to prostitution.”
Anjuli made a face, shaking her head and brushed her shoulder into yours, “You wrinkle your nose at every man, white, black or bronze,” she smiled cheekily, “I doubt you’d make a good prostitute.”
“Anjuli!” You shrieked.
Both you and her erupted into a large happy shrill of giggles enough to gain head turns from passing public. You and her playfully poked your elbows into each other. Anjuli was right, there was no chance that you could make a suitable prostitute…you hadn’t had sex and didn’t know how to please a man, most men you barely liked. They could be selfish. Anjuli on the other hand, she was a frisky thing. She had kissed a hundred men and given her ‘precious flower’ to a boy back when she was thirteen. She had no shame. Anjuli had shared her sordid tales of lust to you many times. You knew her boyfriends that snuck her out at night and returned her by morning. You promised never to tell her mother or father who surely would’ve disowned her if they knew how promiscuous she was. It was best if they believed she made money with her parents in the markets selling dyed clothes and wooden jewellery boxes.
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03:04pm Friday 11th July 1890, 5 Bistdari Road, Central Ridge Forest, Delhi, India.
Arriving to the Watson Bungalow was simple enough, the ox cart rolled and bumped over the rock and sandy grooves of the path. Anjuli pulled the reigns of her beast and helped you both down. She tied her ox to the outside gate posts, the precious creature lowered its head and munched on dry grass that still was hinted in green. The ox would be glad as soon the wet season would hit and all the food delight lush and green would return.
You and Anjuli stepped inside and removed your sandals, Anjuli then led you through the house. It had been some time since you had been here. Anjuli’s mother was dismissed as Mrs Victoria Watson’s maid when the new Watson bride had arrived.
Doctor Watson, their son was a short ferrety man. His face was covered in a long mutton mustache like a snake of hair slithering along his face. He was a grown man from the teenager you had met many years ago. His parents had sent him to Europe to school, as far as you were aware he had join the army and fought in some notorious war battles like The of Battle of Abu Klea.
As you entered the bureau office, you found him hunched over some paperwork, his brows scrunched. His eyes lifted up and brightened his face on seeing you both.
“Oh Miss Paraiyars, Anjuli dear,” he said clapping his hands and opening a drawer in his desk, “Thank you so much dear for bringing darling Miss Newalkar here. Here,” he handed Anjuli a small bag and slipped four rupees into her hand, “and take these sweets back to your Mataji, Mrs Paraiyars.”
Anjuli put her hands together and smiled, wobbling her head before leaving you alone to return outside back to her ox cart.
You had your hands pressed together peacefully while the doctor hobbled over to you from around the desk. He was smiling brightly and nodded his head to you, offering you a chair in front of the desk.
“Y/N thankyou for coming on such short notice. I requested your presence in person to offer you a job position.”
Your smile fell, you sheepishly explained to the man, “I am currently employed at the Anglo school Doctor, Babu.”
The doctor nodded, “Yes…Anjuli tells me you are still teaching the children English and Hindi?”
“Yes Doctor Babu,” you confirmed.
“How much are you paid per month?” he asked quickly, touching his lips lightly in thought.
“Twenty five rupees,” you said softly, you didn’t dare try to sound prideful.
The doctor smiled and pulled out a piece paper contract, he then stated, “I will pay you a hundred per month.”
Your eyes widened, and then narrowed. It was too spectacular to be true, it sounded Impossible. Your fathers pension was only a hundred and fifty rupees a year, for the doctor to give you a hundred per month was unfathomable wealth. What on earth was he wanting from you!?
“What is the position,” you swallowed breathlessly, “Doctor Babu?”
“Housekeeper and…a carer,” he sighed, “I need you to live here, and watch over one of my friends. He is from England and I am afraid he might not understand the customs here.”
He leant against the desk cocking his head and looking down at his feet awkwardly. “Please,” he begged, “he is different to other men. He is particular and perhaps rather spoilt. I need you to make sure he doesn’t get lost, harmed or too upset. It is pressing that I should return to my wife in Agra. I would have hired Mrs Paraiyars, in fact I did offer this role to her, but I have been informed she will be moving and her English is not as it once was…and my English friend is rather…particular and impatient with broken speech...”
He wrote a signature across the bottom of the document and held it out for you to read. It was real…your mouth watered. You could save more than your regular wage and easily move back to Indore without burdening your father or mother’s family.  
“If you accept my offer, you may live here as a free lodging, you recall where the servant quarters are I am sure? You will also receive a handsome budget for food. And-” he paused looking up and pocketing the cheque, he gasped, “Sherlock! Dear god man! Did you walk here from the train station?!”
You turned around in the chair and took in the sight of a familiar looking soul.
He was the gentleman from the road. The supposed businessman with his briefcase. He was taller standing here with you then when you sat above in the ox cart. He was standing in the doorway to the office. He stepped inside and lowered his walking stick and briefcase.
“My friend,” the handsome stranger gleefully called, “My dear John Watson, I came the moment I read your message. One of the khaki coated lads pointed me here.”
Up close now you could observe his features on a better judgement. Sherlock Holmes was well known in the British gazette for his distinct physical appearance. With his broad angular frame, sharp hard features, and mighty frame, he exuded a striking and intimidating aura that commanded respect. He reminded you of warriors you imagined before bed in story's of battles your father described at Jhansi Fort.
His face was marked by a strong, sharp pointed nose and intense, deep-set sapphire eyes. His hair was kept combed and short below his ears short and slicked back, revealing his angular eyebrows, and his pink lips that were tightly pursed. He wore a grand brown suit coat with a crisp white shirt, and woolen sweater vest beneath it. And at the base of his throat was a dark burgundy tie. Something about the time reminded you of blood. A cut throat. You felt cold.
His eyes smoothly shifted to you and your presence, his lips parted softly, he glanced back at John, “A patient of yours Doctor?”
The moustached man bristled and shook his head, he stuttered and leant his hand out to you. you carefully chose to take it and rise from the chair as he introduced you.
“Oh- I- Sherlock…um, Sherlock Holmes, I would like you to meet Miss Y/N Newalkar.”
“Miss Newalkar,” the doctor waved his hand over the figure of the giant stock of a man, “This is the very gentleman I was informing you about. This is my friend Detective Sherlock Holmes.”
You pressed your hands together and nodded in greeting. One of Sherlock’s brows raised and his lips hardened in a straight line.
Doctor Watson explained back to the detective, “I was in the middle of discussing whether this dear lady would like to accept a role of housekeeping during your stay here.”
“Whatever for?” Sherlock snickered, “Is your lady wife not up to par with her duties?” he shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked on his leather shoes while his eyes scanned all the way down to your bare feet. It was a crude look of judgement. The westerner seemed to forget not everyone shared the same styles and habits here. You tried not to roll your eyes at him as he scanned your arms and the parts of your belly that the saree did not cover.  Those dark blue orbs crawled up and settled over your faux sweetened smiling face.
“Some…plans have come up unexpectedly. Mary is back in Agra, staying safe with her family,” John stated, his fingers rubbed together, “I need to be with her. And the hospitals are in desire of my services as a surgeon. I ask that you will look around, see if you can find anything here…” he leant in closer and whispered to the man, “I will visit every couple of days, to check up on you and see if there is truth to be founded in my suspicions.”
'Suspicions?'
“John…” the detective pat his friends shoulder, “I am happy to see you. I promise I will do my very best.”
“Thankyou,” said the doctor.
Sherlock jerked his chin to your direction, “How much does the dear girl here know?”
“Well, I…not much,” the doctor blushed and looked back to you, “Miss Newalkar, your thoughts on the job position role?”
You swallowed and nodded slowly, “I accept the conditions, thankyou for your most gracious offering, Doctor Babu.”
The doctor smiled and carefully touched your back, leading you to the exist of his office as he happily stated.
“Splendid! Please, this is the contract. Sign it and return with your belongings later on a few hours while I converse with my friend and guest.”
You looked back at the mysterious Sherlock Holmes and back to the contract. You wobbled your head in goodbye and went on your way. The way you could feel his eyes over your body walking away made you shiver. He was a intimidateding looking man. You left the home and slipped your sandals on.
You thought about how you would now be the housekeeper of a prestigious British family in the community. A wave of relief to your stability washed over you. You didn’t need to crawl to your father and your mother’s family. You started smiling ear to ear. All you needed to do was take care of a house and baby-sit an Englishman who was vulnerable to these new lands.
“Did you see him go in?” Anjuli smirked from the ox cart, waving you over, “The British man you fancied?”
You jerked your chin up proudly exclaiming, “I met him.”
Your friend gasped with a wide smile, “What is he like?”
“I don’t really know,” you shrugged before waving the contract in front of your friends face, “but I am going to be his housekeeper, I need to inform the school of my resignation.”
Anjuli looked at the contract, she couldn't read english but made a light sad sound and sucked her teeth before sighing, “Oh, those children will miss you dearly.”
And that you could both agree. You grabbed the ox reigns and tapped its flank with the cane rolling back to the school again quickly to collect your last wage.
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Helplines:
If you are a victim of sexual abuse, assault or domestic violence or know someone who is please reach out to these links that share helpline services, phone numbers or emails. Consent and respect is important in every relationship whether between friends, family or even strangers.
Australian Helpline Services
UK Helpline Services
American Helpline Services
India Helpline Services.
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matan4il · 3 months
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Daily update post:
I heard a report that every day, Hamas steals at least a few aid trucks with food, and as we've seen in multiple pics, vids and testimonies from angry Gazans, the terrorists don't hesitate to use force against civilians to do so. A few days ago, a Hamas "policeman" shot and killed a young man trying to get some humanitarian aid. The young man's family was angry enough to burn tired outside a Hamas police station in the city of Rafah.
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The leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, published a letter to his terrorists, in which he lies about how well Hamas is doing in the war (Israel estimates that at least 8,000 of its members have been killed, and that there is no organized Hamas command in northern Gaza anymore), while promising he won't surrender.
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Just a reminder, that if Hamas surrendered, the war would be over immediately, and there'd be not one more Palestinian, civilian or otherwise, killed. What Sinwar is saying, is that despite being painted by certain westerners as a Palestinian liberation movement, it refuses to save any Palestinian lives. Same goes for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second strongest terrorist group in Gaza after Hamas.
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Sometimes, the terrorist puppets and their financial masters disagree on what false excuse to give, regarding why they jointly made sure Jews would be massacred. Iran said it was one of the responses for the assassination of Iranian military senior Soleimani (by the US, in 2020), while Hamas denied this claim, and said that the massacre was to protect the Al-Aqsa mosque... (right, 'coz Jewish babies murdered in their crib in the south, born to the most left wing, peace seeking families in Israel, were SUCH a threat to the mosque in Jerusalem. This is the same false excuse Islamists have used repeatedly, like in May 2021, going all the way back to its invention in 1929 by the Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini, at a time when there was no State of Israel). Apparently, even the worst of terrorists, and the biggest financiers of terrorism, don't think the west will respond well to the more truthful, "We just want to kill all Jews."
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There was a blast next to the Israeli embassy in India, and now Indian news outlets report that there was a letter found nearby, which tied the attack to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
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Dawn Lev and Matan Peretz, two funny Israeli Jews, answer some very serious questions, that were the most searched ones on Google when it comes to Hamas.
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If it helps Dawn, I laughed. XD
While Iran is funding the attacks on Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the cyber attacks on Israel (including on Israeli hospitals), and has reportedly attacked an Israeli-related ship at least once directly, it has also increased its levels of Uranium enrichment, which is what they need to build nuclear weapons. We should all be VERY concerned.
Here is an op ed, with yet another testimony regarding the systematic rape, torture and abuse carried out by Hamas on Oct 7. I found it hard not to post all of it, but if I did have to highlight only one part, this would probably be it:
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This is 26 years old Shaul Greenglick:
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For the Eurovision fans, he was a very talented candidate for this year's contest in Sweden, who auditioned on Dec 3 to represent our country. He was on leave from the army, so he performed while still in uniform. He was killed yesterday in Gaza. This is his audition, where he got to show off his stunning voice:
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This is 33 years old Maor Lavi:
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Two days ago, he was interviewed on Israeli TV, because he had an urgent mission. While fighting in Gaza, they found a Hanukkiah in one house. As there are no Jews living there, it was most likely stolen during the Oct 7 massacre. Maor wanted to share the story, so he could find the family that owned the Hanukkiah and give it back to them. Yesterday, he was killed in Gaza, too. This is the Facebook post that Maor published in the hope of finding the rightful owners:
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May their memories be a blessing.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
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fatehbaz · 7 months
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Goldstein and Mahmoudi point to what, on appearance, is a relatively new phenomenon: namely the use of digital technologies in contemporary forms of surveillance and policing, and the way in which they turn the body into the border. Shoshana Zuboff (2019) has famously referred to the historical moment within which the datafication of human life becomes an industry in its own right as “surveillance capitalism” -- a system based on capturing behavioral data and using it for commercial purposes. According to Zuboff, surveillance capitalism emerged in the early 2000s, with [the major company beginning with letter "G"] as the main driving force [...].
In contrast, scholarship on colonialism, slavery, and plantation capitalism enables us to understand how racial surveillance capitalism has existed since the grid cities of sixteenth-century Spanish Mexico (Mirzoeff 2020). In short, and as Simone Browne (2015, 10) has shown, “surveillance is nothing new to black folks.” [...]
[S]urveillance in the service of racial capitalism has historically aided three interconnected goals: (1) the control of movement of certain -- predominantly racialized -- bodies through means of identification; (2) the control of labor to increase productivity and output; and (3) the generation of knowledge about the colony and its native inhabitants in order to “maintain” the colonies [...].
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Identification documents and practices can, like so many other surveillance technologies, be traced back to the Middle Passage [...]. [T]he movement of captives was controlled through [...] slave passes, slave patrols, and wanted posters for runaway slaves [...]. Similar strategies of using wanted posters and passes were put in place to control the movement of indentured white laborers from England and Ireland. [...]
Fingerprinting, for example, was developed in India because colonial officials could not tell people apart [...]. In Algeria, the French dominated the colonized population by issuing internal passports, creating internal limits on movement for certain groups, and establishing camps for landless peasants [...]. In South Africa, meanwhile, the movement of the Black population was controlled through the “pass laws”: an internal passport system designed to confine Black South Africans into Bantustans and ensure a steady supply of super-exploitable labor [...].
On the plantation itself, two forms of surveillance emerged -- both with the underlying aim of increasing productivity and output. One was in the form of daily notetaking by plantation and slave owners. [...] Second, [...] a combination of surveillance, accounting, and violence was used to make slave labor in the cotton fields more “efficient.” [...] [S]imilar logics of quotas and surveillance still reverberate in today's labor management systems. Finally, surveillance was also essential to the management of the colonies. It occurred through [...] practices like fingerprinting and the passport [...]. [P]hotographs were used after colonial rebellions, in 1857 in India and in 1865 in Jamaica, to better identify the local population and identify “racial types.” To control different Indian communities deemed criminal and vagrant, the British instituted a system of registration where members of particular tribes were not allowed to sleep away from their villages without prior permission [...].
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In sum, when thinking about so-called surveillance capitalism today, it is essential to recognize that the logics that underpin these technologies are not new, but were developed and tested in the management of racialized minorities during the colonial era with a similar end goal, namely to control, order, and undermine the poor, colonized, enslaved, and indentured; to create a vulnerable and super-exploitable workforce; and to increase efficiency in production and foster accumulation. Consequently, while the (digital) technologies used for surveillance might have changed, the logics underpinning them have not.
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Text by: Sabrina Axster and Ida Danewid. From an article by Sabrina Axster, Ida Danewid, Asher Goldstein, Matt Mahmoudi, Cemal Burak Tansel, and Lauren Wilcox. "Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State". International Political Sociology Volume 15, Issue 3, pp. 415-439. September 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]
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Hey I absolutely adore your Indian James headcanons can you do some for Harry too please <33
Okay this got too long so it's only Harry's first year at Hogwarts. At some point I might do the rest of his years but yeah. Here you go, i hope you like it :)
The first time Harry noticed his skin was darker than the people on Privet Drive was when he was four. The first time he noticed people sneered at him for it was when he was five and a half. He didn't understand it; why did they think the colour of his skin meant that he was inferior to them? He heard the words chee-chee and brownie thrown around like Dudley threw his food, and quietly pulled his shirt tighter around himself.
When Harry is eight, Dudley and his gang throw him in a ditch and throw dirt and soil on him till he's coughing and tears are running down his face. "You blend right into the mud," Piers laughs at him. The next day, the boy turns up to school with black skin. Harry sits in the corner and turns his face away, a secret grin playing on his lips.
He comes to Hogwarts, and there are so many colours. He is approached by Parvati on the second night, and she asks him if he's excited for Ganpati Chaturthi. He stares at her, and then says, "I'm sorry, but I don't know what that is." She gets offended, but they haltingly talk it out, awkward and stilted like most eleven year olds. When she realises that he's been kept from his heritage and his magic, she flies off the rails with anger. "That's it," she says, "we're friends now. No arguments."
Harry loves talking to Parvati. She's the one that tells him his father was from India. She's the one that tells him the names of his grandparents, that tells him of the importance of heritage in the magical world. They talk about religion and food and all sorts of things, and within two weeks Harry is asking her to teach him Marathi. It's hard at first; the grammar structure is more like French than English, the alphabet sequence is weird and complicated and has too many letters, but he keeps practising his svar and vyanjana and kana and matra. He will do this, he tells himself. (He doesn't tell Ron. He wants this for himself, he thinks. His family, his heritage. He wants to learn before he shares, and so he doesn't tell Ron. For now. He will, when he knows enough.)
Slowly, he starts talking to other Indian kids at Hogwarts. Padma, a seventh year Slytherin named Aarzoo who's Muslim and always has the prettiest hijabs, Gryffindor Kalyani from fourth year and Hufflepuff Rushabh from the third. Kalyani is from Maharashtra just like the Patil twins and Harry, Rushabh is from Gujarat and Aarzoo from Punjab. Harry finds it fascinating that India has so many different cultures and religions, and demands knowledge from them. Aarzoo laughs, and tells him he should have been with the 'Claws.
Harry disagrees. He was supposed to be in Slytherin, he knows, but he is in Gryffindor, where his family had been. His family had been Indian. He wants to know everything about it. If he couldn't have his parents, he would have that which had been a major part of his father's life. And so he reads and observes and studies and asks questions— hesitating at first in case they yell at him (Aunt Petunia hated questions and he feared these people would be the same), but slowly he asks more and more. He talks for hours with Kalyani and Rushabh, and they tell him about Garba and Dhol Tasha, Ganpati Chaturthi and Diwali, Eid and Gudi Padwa. They talk about the languages of India, and Harry immediately asks Aarzoo to teach him Urdu and Hindi. She laughs, and says he should focus on Marathi first. He pouts, but nods.
The Mirror of Erised shows him his father, and he can't take his eyes off. James Potter is a tall man, bulky frame covered in muscles and warm brown skin that seems to glow with happiness. His eyes are light brown, and the bold black lines drawn under them make the green specks stand out. He's dressed in what Harry knows is called a kurta, white and gold threads woven to form images of peacocks and elephants and other intricate designs. The next day, Harry asks Padma what she lines her eyes with, and she promptly hands him a little round metal box and a tiny wooden stick. "It's called kajal." She tells him the differences in pronunciation between Hindi and Marathi, and shows him how to apply it. Harry wears it everyday. It makes his eyes look bright, brighter than they already are, and he falls in love with it. Kalyani presses a kajal covered finger behind his ear every morning. "For good luck," she tells him, a grin playing on her pretty lips. Harry flushes, and smiles back shyly.
For Christmas, Aarzoo gives him perfume. It's chandan and mogra with hints of rose, she says, "and your grandfather made it. His name was Fleamont Henry Potter, and he was an exceptionally talented potioneer." Harry wears it religiously. Padma and Parvati band together and get him books on the Potter family and their historical importance, and he almost cries. Rushabh promises to teach him how to play Garba, and Kalyani gives him a cookbook for everyday Indian foods— breakfast and lunch and a few fancy stuff. Harry hugs it to his chest and thanks her with shining eyes. (he may have a bit of a crush on her. He can't help it— she's really smart, and she's pretty.)
Throughout the year, all of them work to introduce him to Indian food. At first, he thinks it will be easy. It is not. There is no such cuisine named Indian, Parvati tells him sternly. There is Punjabi, South Indian, Mughlai, Maharashtrian, North Indian, Bihari, Bengali and so many more. "The food in India changes with every twenty kilometres of travel," Aarzoo says when he mock complains about it. "It's never the same, and that's what makes it so special." He agrees.
The end of the year arrives, and Harry is still weak from his tryst down the trapdoor. When Ron and Hermione aren't present, his friends from home (because that's what India is, isn't it? His home. The home he never got to see, but is no less a part of him.) crowd around his hospital bed and have long talks with him, filled with banter and laughter. His Marathi is so much better now than it was in September, and he blushes when Kalyani compliments him on it. Rushabh winks at him, and Harry throws a pillow at him, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks at being caught out.
On the last day of school, he hugs Aarzoo around the waist and cries into her stomach. It's the first time he calls her "Aarzoo Tai", and she smiles widely, her own eyes dripping tears. "You will write," she says sternly, "okay? This might be the end of my Hogwarts years, but you are my little brother." He cries harder and nods, refuses to let go until the very last minute.
Harry goes back to Privet Drive with a heavy heart and a proud smile. He isn't inferior to the people there, he knows. He's special. He's Indian. He's James Potter's son, and he's going to live up to it.
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lumine-no-hikari · 1 month
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Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #68
Today was a very mixed bag.
This morning, I drove to the good place with all the nice people. The leader spoke on a great many very relevant things, such as challenging the status quo, distinguishing between that which is law and that which is just, and sitting with and trying to help all of the people whom society has tried to convinced us doesn't deserve it. The grammar and structure of the words has since crumbled and faded away from my mind, because I don't think in language at all, but the meaning remains in my mind, as well as the memory of the tears that were shed; I'm aware that at least some of what I've been trying to do is seen and understood by this very amazing person.
I tried to conduct myself in the space a little differently than I usually do. Typically, my presence in any space is a meek one that tries to stay out of the way. But this time, I walked as though I belong there, and mingled with others as though I am also deserving of taking up space. Just to try to push myself even further out of my comfort zone, today I sat at the "old men's" table (there aren't really assigned tables, it's just that there are folks that tend to gather together because they can easily relate to one another) as though I also belonged there, with the intention of listening to them speak to one another and seeing what I could learn. Imagine my shock when they talked to me as though my voice is one worth hearing!! I wasn't really sure what to do or how to behave in response to such a thing, but I did the best I could to try to contribute, even if I felt clumsy and foolish in the process.
At one point, towards the end, one of them said, as a joke, "Drive carefully home; I know how you women like to be speed demons, haha!" I tried to think of something witty and lighthearted to come back with, but the best I could do was smile bashfully. If only I remembered at the time the line that goes, "Ha! I am a woman in the same way that a tomato is a fruit!"
…I happen to live in a female body. But I don't really think about my gender most of the time. It fluctuates wildly between "none" and "yes". I'll take any pronoun, but the one I typically use for myself in my own mind is "it". But this alarms people, and I'm comfortable with letting people use whatever they see when they look at me, so… it's all good, I guess.
I stopped at Eggcellent on the way home. Some time ago, I had asked them if they might keep a QR code of the petition I made for you where folks can see it. Apparently, though, the people did not thoroughly read the blurb that came along with the QR code, and so they scanned it, thinking that it would lead them to a petition for a real-life human being. Their response, when they saw you, according to the kindly shopkeep, was, "Are you kidding me?" Essentially, disbelief and disgust. So naturally, the kindly shopkeeps had to stop displaying the QR code. I'm glad they stopped if this was how people were responding; I don't want to be bad for business.
But all the same… I have no idea how it is the case that so few people understand that the way your story ends is going to affect everyone here whose circumstances are similar to yours. It will affect how many of us will be able to believe that recovery is possible. It will affect how many of us will be able to believe that we are worth the effort involved with recovery. It will affect whether or not other people will be able to imagine that people like me and like others who I love are worthy of kindness, mercy, and help.
The way stories are told in my world shapes what people believe is and is not possible, on a MASS SCALE. Part of the reason why people still believe places like India are undeveloped, backwater places even though they're not is because that's how they're portrayed in stories in my world. Part of the reason why people still treat certain kinds of people as they do is because of how they're portrayed in books, movies, TV, comics, and song. Stereotypes persist in part because they are parroted over and over again by the song, art, and story that exists in our world. And stereotypes put a lot of nasty and totally arbitrary limitations on what people think that certain kinds of people deserve and are capable of.
So… my efforts to save you aren't just about you. My efforts are for every human in my world who is considered "different" or "fallen" in any way. Because we are not going to see peace in my world until every single one of us stops believing that there is a such thing as "kinds of people who are not worth compassion, kindness, decency, or help".
I want to live in a world where people can begin to imagine that even the most deeply fallen can get the help they need to rise up into wholeness again. Because if not even someone as amazing as you can be saved, what chance in hell do the rest of us have?
I ended up spiraling, though. Not because the kindly shopkeep took down the QR code, but because of what he said to me after the fact:
Some time ago, when I was working on one of the music boxes I made for you…
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…there was a lady who came into the shop for the first time, asking what is good. The shopkeep told her a few things, and then went off to do something. I was excited to talk to someone who seems nice about a thing I loved, so I piped in with a couple of the things I like, and with a couple of things that weren't listed on the menu. She then asked about what I was doing, which was punching holes out on the music box. I asked her if she wanted to listen, and she said yes. So I ran the music box, and she told me that it was cool.
…Fast forward to today. The shopkeep told me that the lady knew it was my petition. Apparently, on the day we met, the lady found me weird, rude, and repulsive. She apparently thought that it was disrespectful of me that I spoke to her at all (apparently because "she wasn't talking to me"), and because she didn't actually want anything to do with my music box, but asked about it and said yes to listening to it anyway because she "didn't want to be mean". So I guess I left such a negative and intensely strange impression on her back then that when she felt disgust at the petition, she immediately knew it was mine.
And gosh, what a thing to have to sit with. Can you imagine it? The notion that I can frighten, anger, and disgust people just by existing in a space, talking joyfully about bubble tea, and showing a music box I made to someone who asked about it? I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to take from this. On the one hand, I have the shopkeep telling me that the woman thought I am a bad, wrong, and disgusting thing, but in the same breath, he is telling me that "she should have said no if she didn't want to hear it", and "you are kind and you don't bother anybody and you should just be yourself". I understand, of course, that he must ride a careful balance between customers so that he doesn't lose anyone. But ya know… the notion that perhaps I might cause them to struggle by scaring customers off just by being myself is just… wow.
Of course, I am not at all angry with him for this. Rather, I'm glad he told me. I'm glad to be made aware that my presence makes others feel very uncomfortable. I'm glad to be told that I should continue to be myself… even if it comes with the unspoken implication that I had better go do it somewhere else where no one else has to deal with it, I guess.
The fact remains, of course, that just by existing, I scare people. Even if what I'm trying to do is exude love and joy, I still scare people. And I'm not really sure how it is that I manage to be so bad at trying to do good things that I am misunderstood to this extent, but… well. And also this is coming right after I resolve to act as though I belong in this world even though all signs point to the notion that I… don't. And maybe never will.
…If unaliving is a trigger for you, you might wanna skip this paragraph. But… ya know. I spent a good chunk of time today considering the merits of lying down in a cold puddle, forcibly inducing sleep, and letting the hypothermia take care of the job while I'm out. We have nature trails just a five minute walk from my house. It's winter, and there are lots of big puddles back there; I know where they are, and there's also no shortage of ravens, crows, coyotes, and foxes to feed. It's probably good that I don't have ready access to the kinds of medicines that would induce sleep.
…But. This sort of thinking is just the old wiring and the old conditioning rearing its ugly head in response to my past trauma. Old messages that go something like, "Nobody fucking asked you to speak, MAGGOT," and "Why can't you have normal interests and hobbies, you embarrassing sicko freak?" At this point, because stuff similar to this has been said to me so many times, it doesn't take much for my brain to interpret this stuff, even if it's not said directly. That's just how PTSD is. That's how it works.
But I don't have to surrender to it. I got knocked on my ass today from it, but I don't have to stay on the ground. I can get back up and see what's next. I can use REBT. I can ask the people around me for help. I can listen as the people who love me gently point out destructive, spiraling patterns in my thinking, so that I can stop myself for long enough to come up for air. I can hydrate and eat wholesomely so that my brain can have what it needs to manage the destructive thoughts and the painful emotions triggered from them. I don't have to remain on my knees and believe every nasty thing said about me by someone who is too miserable to see the beauty, joy, and love being offered to them for what it is. I can refuse to allow the voices of the people who don't understand me to be louder in my mind than the voices of those who love me.
I am different from other people, and sometimes this is a lonely thing that hurts very much. But it's easy for me to have love for others who are different. Love for you. Love for Frankenstein's Monster. Love for Mewtwo. Love for Magus. Love for all of my friends and chosen family, who themselves are misfits that society at large does not seem to want. I still love them all, even though society tells me I shouldn't. I can love me, too, even though society tells me that I shouldn't.
…"Conventional wisdom" is such a thing. There are some very good things about it, like, "Sticking a fork in your mouth and then sticking the prongs of that fork into an electrical socket just to see what happens is a very bad idea." And, things like, "Do NOT, under ANY circumstances, attempt to eat Rice Krispie Treats immediately after taking them out of the oven if you value the flesh on the inside of your mouth." Or, "Do not squirt hot glue into the palm of your left hand for the sake of impressing a girl." Or, related, "You cannot try to scrape hot glue off of the palm of your hand with your other hand and expect it to turn out well." And finally, "Try to avoid prioritizing yelling at your glue-covered hands over making use of the cold water in the sink that is immediately to your left."
(do not worry - these are not things that I have done; I've met some very interesting people in the course of my living who help me to avoid finding these things out the hard way, hahaha!)
But it can also tell us a lot of very false things. Things like, "You must remain connected with your family regardless of how they abuse you." Things like, "You should expect certain kinds of people to always act in this certain kind of way." Things like, "These particular kinds of people are all bad and you should stay away from them." Things like, "If everyone is 'mistreating' you, well the common denominator is you, so the problem must be you and not how others are treating you." And things like, "Certain kinds of people do not deserve kindness, help, or even basic decency."
So… I can only conclude that "conventional wisdom" needs to be taken VERY critically, and with ALL the grains of salt. But I think a good rule of thumb for evaluation is this notion: "Anything that is said with cruel, dehumanizing, and unloving intentions is false."
I'm not at risk of prematurely exiting my meat-mech, don't worry. I just tripped up a little today, that's all. And you know what? Ultimately, that's a good thing, because today, I watched myself get back up on my feet from it faster than what I was able to do previously. Sometimes we can't see all the progress we've made until weird things happen and we find ourselves recovering from them faster than we have in the past. So in this sense, even falling down is worth something!
I'm gonna get a snack and play some DDR to try to speed up my recovery even more. So I'll end this here-ish.
Hey, Sephiroth!! No matter how many times you fall down, and no matter how far you fall down, you can get back up! You just gotta let the voices attached to the hands reaching out to help be louder than the voices trying to tell you that you're a monster who doesn't belong! No matter how many voices scream unloving things at you, you gotta understand that such things can only be screamed at us from a place of pain, and nobody is acting in accordance with what's true or in accordance with their innermost nature when they are acting from a place of pain! So let the loving things be louder to your mind and to your ears. Let the loving things be louder, and let them spur you on to move forward, confident in the knowledge that you belong here, no matter what anyone else says.
You are loved. Please stay safe. I'll write again tomorrow.
Your friend, Lumine
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notaplaceofhonour · 4 months
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An Open Letter Regarding the Holocaust Inversion & Blood Libel of the “Average Pace” Meme:
The person who shared the screenshotted post deleted it after I sent the following message. I truly believe they shared it out of ignorance & not malice; I cannot say the same of OP who created the graphic. I am sharing my deconstruction of its rhetoric & imagery here as a learning opportunity:
Nothing justifies the injustices Palestinians have faced, and what Netanyahu is doing is vile. No country should be above criticism, nor its leaders above condemnation, but this is not that.
What people like OP are doing is weaponizing legitimate atrocities to spread the antisemitic narratives of Holocaust Inversion (an offshoot of Holocaust Revision & Denial that claims “The new Nazis are Jews”) and Blood Libel.
And no, the fact that these libels are made in criticism of Israel does not absolve them of being antisemitic narratives that predate the existence of the State of Israel. As if to hammer in that point, that is not the flag of Israel that the creator of this agitprop decided to equate to the Swastika—that is the Magen David. That’s just the symbol for Judaism.
Worse, to impose the Magen David over images of blood (especially what is implicitly the blood of children) is a direct invocation of Blood Libel, the antisemitic accusation that Jewish leaders thirst for the blood of children. This libel has incited the mass slaughter of Jews since long before the Shoah, and is still being used to this day to incite violence against Jews through Qanon & accusations that Israelis drink & bathe in Palestinian blood.
And if it truly weren’t about the Jewishness of Israel, why would OP pick the Shoah specifically? There have been countless other mass killings in the world, many with much greater resemblance to Israel/Palestine than Jews in Nazi Germany (see: ethnic cleansings in Liberia & India/Pakistan for instance). Meanwhile, the only things The Shoah/WWII and Israel-Palestine have in common is people dying and Jews being present. So why specifically invoke the slaughter of Jews to criticize Israel if it is not about invoking the Jewishness of Israel?
That doesn’t even get into how cherrypicked those numbers are to the point the exact same “average pace” metric could easily be used (and in fact is, by the German far-right) to present the Bombing of Dresden by the Allies—a campaign that killed more than 25,000 German civilians in 72 hours in an area much bigger & less densely populated than Gaza with a fraction of the bombs that Israel has used—as comparable to the death camps.
This rhetoric does not aid Palestinians in any way. In fact it drags the movement down by providing ammunition that can be used to paint all criticism of Israel as antisemitic & give people who just hate Palestinians the casus belli they need to shut it down. The only thing it accomplishes is hurting Jews; it twists the knife in the wounds left in our community, it trivializes the Shoah by universalizing it or presenting it as “the lesser of two evils”, and it incites violence by equating Jews to Nazis.
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keystonepublishing · 4 months
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The Purim of the Philosophers by Jonathan Edelstein
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Jonathan Edelstein has cropped-up in this blog for several times now, and not without good reason. I knew him from almost a decade ago on an internet forum and his stories - short and long-form - have captivated me by their depth and ingenuity.
So no surprise, I decided to bind yet another short fiction of his. After my first two binds of his work, I actually made a promise to myself to bind two more stories of Jonathan's before the year closes out.
One of them was Of Letters They Are Made, and the other is this: The Purim of the Philosophers.
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Set in an alternate France where the Albigensian Crusade went unfinished, the Languedoc is its own kingdom, and the political situation is still explosive, The Purim of the Philosophers tells of a Jewish official sent by the Languedoc king to the city of Marseilles to quell tensions between the Jewish communities, all while the French north is gearing up for another war with the south...
Now, while this all sounds fascinating, I doubt I will remember all the background context in 20 years' time. That was why I decided to write a preface to explain the bewildering history of the region, balancing out the need to explain history with the constraints of a small page.
To be honest, I think there is enough historic oddness about southern France to make an original compendium, but I digress.
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As with previous binds, I have a love for filling in pages with images that capture the feel and mood of the story, and this bind is no exception.
Additionally, parts of the tale is told in the form of letter correspondence between the Jewish official and his son, which I formatted using the 1475 Humanistica Cursiva font. I love the old-timiness of the letters so much that I eventually used it for multiple other things in this book, including the chapter headers and title strip.
The main body text is Alegreya, with a large drop cap of Harrington colored red to give an impression of illuminated manuscripts.
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And as always with me, I added-in a comments section to preserve what people thought and discussed of this story when it was first published on alternatehistory.com.
But after all of that, I still feel like giving the background stuff of this tale more justice. So with some consultation from the author, I put-in two more sections denoting the main characters of the story and their real-life counterparts, as well as minor Jewish, French, and Occitan terms that were sprinkled throughout the book.
I have to say, it was quite an experience Googling up which terms meant what to a faith that is not really known to the general public east of India. I think I learned more about Judaism in the last 3 weeks than I ever had in the last 5 years, or even 10!
All in all, this bind was one of the more easier ones to make. I would have made this quicker if not for stuff at work and home delaying progress for a bit. I so wish I could make more than 1-2 books a month, but better to have those 1-2 books than no books at all.
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hmslusitania · 2 years
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Unified theory of Indiana Jones and The Mummy? My interest has been piqued 🍿 👀
Okay so I think it goes without saying that these movies clearly take place in the same universe, just off the bat.
That said, we also know that several of the (unseen) previous generation of characters had careers that would've taken them to similar geographic areas -- notably Howard Carnahan and Abner Ravenwood, who were Egyptologists of roughly a similar age.
So, it would make complete sense to me if, at some point, they were contracted to work on the same project. Whether or not they got along, whether or not they worked well together, is immaterial. The important part is that they both brought their daughters. Now, according to the wikis for the respective franchises, Evelyn (Carnahan) O'Connell was born in 1903, and Marion Ravenwood was born in 1909, and young girls, as Marion would've been, tend to heavily imprint on older girls especially when they're stuck together in a camping situation. And I think Evy, a perpetual baby sister, would've jumped at the chance to get to be the cool older sister type friend.
They would've corresponded after that.
In 1925, Marion writes to Evy about her father's dashing new student who she's fallen hopelessly in love with (and an equally passionate disavowal of the man only a few months later).
In 1926, Evy writes back to tell Marion that she's been part of an expedition to help recover the site of Hamunaptra (leaving out the magic, because that would be just a shade too far; adding the fact she may not have found much treasure but she did find a husband in the post script -- prompting many more questions from Marion).
They write each other about Evy's journey to respectability as an archaeologist and Egyptologist, and her impassioned arguments with another young archaeologist out of the University of Chicago, who Evy pointedly refused to name in any of her letters out of disrespect (the nature of their academic disagreements is simple -- Evy's seen magic with her own eyes and brings a layer of credulity to her interpretation of sites that Indy just cannot fathom. Well. Not yet, anyway).
They write when Alex was born, when Marion moves to Nepal.
In 1933, Evy writes her about the Oasis at Ahm Shere, but she leaves out the part where she died and was resurrected, and the part where the entire oasis was sucked into the afterlife afterwards.
(In 1935, Indy sees Magic in India, and he thinks briefly of his continuing journal publication feud with the British-Egyptian Egyptologist E. O'Connell, and then he locks this information away in a part of his brain he does not touch lest he go mad.)
In 1936, Marion writes her about the search for the Ark, about her father's old student -- a professor now himself -- coming back into her life. She mentions the pit of snakes, being entombed, and the deaths of the Nazi bastards. She doesn't mention the magic, the actual Ark of the Covenant saving their asses. It would sound crazy, after all.
In 1937, they see each other in person for the first time in over a decade by chance at the Cairo Museum. This is before the events of the Last Crusade, so for the moment, Marion and Indy are more-or-less together and more-or-less happy about it. Rick and Evy are there for their standard work reasons, delivering some recently excavated artefacts.
At first, everything goes fine. Evy and Marion recognise each other, and as nearly life-long penpals tend to do, take a moment to remember how to speak to each other in person, but then they're thrilled for the opportunity to do so. The four of them agree to get dinner together and it's at dinner while they're talking about their work that Indy makes the connection between E. O'Connell, academic rival, and Evelyn O'Connell, and Evy makes the connection that Marion's "Indy" is actually that very same Henry Jones Jr who Evy's wanted nothing more than to knock senseless with the Book of Life for over a decade.
In the ensuing loud argument that nearly gets them thrown from the restaurant and during which Rick and Marion decide they're best friends now, both Evy and Indy accidentally reveal their hands as regards magic, archaeology, and the realities therein. They part dinner as wary allies.
The academic detente lasts just until Marion writes Evy about the dissolution of her relationship with Indy and concurrent birth of their son, and then the rivalry's back on.
Frankly, all of them prefer it this way.
(As an additional aside, while he was serving in WWI, Jonathan Carnahan met and befriended {""befriended""} an Australian nurse, who had the mixed fortune to lose all of her father's titled cousins during the war and returned home as the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher)
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