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eatmangoesnekkid · 5 months

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We live in a world where women still go to doctors to find out what is going on with their bodies. When I heard a woman who centers the unseen and spiritual and calls herself a “Priestess” say that she needed to go to the doctor to find out what's going with her body, I was in shock. Not to shame or judge her but I forget how the female collective thinks and perceives as it relates to their bodies, because as a female, as a woman, as a woman who is connected to her heart, womb, and pussy, as a woman who lives the Priestess path, as a mythical playful ancient spirit who lives in a highly pigmented melanated avatar, as a root posterior chain dancing expression, there is absolutely no way any doctor would know more about the inside or outside of my body more than me.

Please consider the depth of divine knowing you hold within your body when you no longer believe that you should go to the doctor to find out what is going on with YOUR body. To hold a high level awareness of the body your soul lives inside of is incredibly valuable and imbues you with precise clear sensation, not only for you, but for your loved ones and this world. You sense and feel what is going on with your body and if you decide to go to the doctor, you wonderfully go merely to receive a second opinion or confirmation. This is what being connected to the divine feminine becomes a real lived experience and not just a bunch of memes. Women have been taught to fear our bodies, to distrust them, and to give our power away to practitioners, doctors, lovers, and entities outside of ourselves. We have not be taught to learn our bodies and how to tend to our vessel so that we can optimize our health and vitality and capacity for more that allows us to create a body and life that we actually have a relationship with and adore.

Modern women spend so much time in their heads or just talking all the time and as a result have very little energy to expand their feeling-body capacities which means that they have no real craft. Learn to sit in stillness. Go into the dark and get quiet. Develop a listening practice with the instrumentation of music like harp sounds from the likes of Alice Coltrane, Dorothy Ashby, Valérie Milot, Andreas Vollenweider, Loreena McKennitt, etc. Become more aware of subtle details communicated from your body. Doing so will tell everything you need to know about what is living within you (and what is dead).

Once a day I spend some amount of quality time with myself. Hands on-and sometimes hands inside. Temple-tending I call it. It is not masturbation or sexual, as lovely as those experiences can be. If I do orgasm, it is NOT from force, effort, deliberate, intentional, or a concern. Orgasm is always present in our body and when conditions are harmonious, it will happen on its on. The only reason I understand my body and have radically shifted my quality of health is because I have spent quality time with it. That means that I can push out new work in a fast-paced way because my hands-on touch with myself, my taking time to be with my body, is also part of my work and living in my dharma.

But temple-tending, as I experience it, is an actual listening practice. It is how I listen to and connect with what my body is communicating *TO ME.* I don’t care how tired I feel, it is such a gift to myself for me to take time out to feel this body. It not only activates my vagus nerve, but floods my body with oxytocin. At minimum, I slow stretch, massage my breasts and consciously and deliberately say kind things to my skin. I truly believe that it is one of the reasons I haven’t had a cold, bellyache, cramps, virus, or been sick in any other way in decades.

Be willing to make your own self-touch part of your daily practice. It doesn't matter how long the practice is, but the more you ritualize your own self-touch, the more you build a real relationship with your body. Then your desire/need to touch your body becomes second nature and less odd, goal-oriented, or a kind of chore. You won't have ever have to "make time" or remind yourself to do it. It will be like brushing your teeth. —India Ame’ye

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moneeb0930 · 6 months

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The first statues of deities were melanated

India :

The first statues of the Indi-Kush pantheon were represented with melanated skin (Krishna, Kali etc,,) and before Buddha looked like a Chinese, he looked like us and was worshiped as such throughout Asia.

Mexico:

The Olmec civilization begins around 3400 before the birth of Lumumba, that is to say thousands of years before the Mayas and the Aztecs and the first divinities were represented with melanated skin, such as for example Ixtlilton (Little Black) comparable to Bes.

Egypt :

All early Neteru were also depicted with melanated skin, so the further back you go in the history of the Nile Delta the more Negroid the statues become.

Vietnam:

The first statues of the Vietnamese pantheon were also represented with melanated skin like for example Vishnu or Champa, and in this connection, the Chinese called the Empire Champa or the people of Cham, now known under the name of VietNam; the country of the Black Men.

Thailand:

The first statues of the Thai Pantheon were also represented with melanated skin and the old representation of Buddha had a very dark complexion and Africanid features.

Greece:

The first statues of the Greek pantheon were represented with melanated skin such as Afrodite, Heracles and many others.

Roma:

Many important deities were also represented with melanated skin such as Hermes or Isis.

China:

Even the first Chinese statues were represented in the same Africoid mold.

Russia:

The first representations of the Virgin and her Son were melanated , and they were revered as such throughout Europe until the idea of white supremacy arose. Russia and Poland still love the original images even if little by little the same bleaching phenomenon is gaining ground.

Cambodia:

Angkor Wat is a temple that was built in the 12th century by the Khmer king; Suryavarman and it is still considered the greatest religious monument in the world.

The Chinese have always portrayed the Khmer people as short.

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peachypizzicato · 1 year

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The Five Of Cups: An Open Letter to Dorian

Hey everyone! Welcome back to my soapbox (or, if you see this and by some divine happenstance don’t know me: Hi! I’m Felix! Or Anemone. I go by many names.)

As you can tell by my Big Boy Letters, I’m comin’ to talk about kind of a serious subject. At least, it’s serious to me anyway. I wanted to talk a bit about the game The Arcana. You know the one. The definitely not at all divisive one. That Arcana. (/s)

(Warning: I will be touching on depictions of racism, misogyny, anti indigenity, antisemitism, and just general mistreatment of marginalized people!)

TLDR; The Arcana is full of harmful portrayals of marginalized people and the fandom at large ignores it at best and encourages it at worst. The best thing we as the community can do is make it abundantly clear to the company that this is not okay and should not continue.

To be completely upfront here, I’m not going to be going in-depth on every single problem with the devs or the distributors or anything. We’re all busy people and there’s not nearly enough time in the day. But what I am going to do is touch on a few things I’ve witnessed firsthand that I think are worth sharing with the wider community.

One of the behaviors I’ve noticed most often is what I can only think to call… Strange treatment of the love interests. Not by everyone, mind you, but on a startlingly normal basis. Now, what do I mean by “strange”? Well, it really depends on the character honestly.

With Asra, much of the portrayals feel significantly more sexualized than that of their peers. Drawn and portrayed as if their body exists to be ogled by someone else rather than lived in by themself, y’know what I mean? That, combined with blatant orientalist imagery baked into much of their designs, makes for a feeling of feast or famine when seeking out content. And this isn’t even to comment on the intense focus on them as defined by their relationships to others– namely Julian– and all of the mischaracterization that comes with that.

It’s not much different in regard to Nadia, if you can believe it. The image of “step-on-me-queen dominatrix” cultivated by the original writers persists in the community, with overwhelming focus put on her body and her sexuality over anything else. Anyone who’s known me since I discovered the game knows I actually really liked her at first, but it’s hard to have a genuine attachment to a character who seldom even gets to have a personality outside of basic traits and Having Tits.

Julian is, admittedly, a difficult one. I am not jewish myself, but I’ve heard testimony from jewish fans that his portrayal is less than ideal (to put it lightly). At the very base, his design itself is riddled with common antisemitic imagery and was based primarily on a real brown-skinned jewish man whose melanated skin they excluded, surely coincidentally (/s). but it goes even further than that (depicting a jewish man as a bloodsucking vampire, anyone?). I don’t claim to speak for any groups I do not belong to, but with the knowledge I do have it simply makes things uncomfortable to witness.

Muriel. Oh, Muriel. Again, if you’ve known me for any significant amount of time, you probably knew I was dreading this. But as much as I’d like to think nothing could ever be wrong when he’s around, there are definitely problems. Now, I could go into all the issues with the way the writers concocted his route, his story, his character as a whole (brown man with a ~foreign~ type of magic lives in solitude in the woods and is “in tune with nature” to the point of communication, very original /s), what I really want to touch on here is how this informed the way the community treats him. Listen, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this, a lot of Muriel fans are not subtle about their (most often white, but not always) savior complexes. More times than I care to remember I’ve seen him babied, treated like he’s incompetent, made at best into an animal to be tamed and at worst into an uncontrollable monster. I’ve seen pieces of fanfiction call him, a very blatantly indigenous-coded character, a real actual slur. Not to mention how watering down the trauma he faced has become something of commonplace. And this isn’t even an exhaustive list of ways he’s mistreated! For as much as it makes me angry, it’s also extremely saddening. The devs and writers made one of their most genuine kindhearted characters into a metaphorical punching bag, and the community has only continued swinging for years afterward.

But, I think I’ve made my point. Moving on.

Portia is a combination of problems I’ve already touched on. Conveniently, all of the stereotypical traits that Julian inherited happened to skip right over his little sister. What didn’t skip over, however, was the gene of being shamelessly and gratuitously oversexualizing of her. Take a look at any of her CGs; most if not all of them are centered on her chest or otherwise use color and design to draw the eye there. Every one of her sprite outfits are low cut to show varying levels of cleavage. And the few vocal fans she does have only serve to perpetuate this over and over again. To be completely clear, there’s nothing wrong with characters who embrace their sexuality. That goes without saying. However, for being the one “plus-size” love interest– which really in this case only means short and curvy– the emphasis on her body over anything else about her is startling and sad.

Finally, we find Lucio. Our one ethnically white male love interest. You may be wondering how a character like that could possibly receive “strange treatment”. Or maybe you’re not. I will elaborate anyway. The biggest problem with Lucio, with the fans and absolutely with the teams behind the game, is and has been for the longest time the complete and utter lack of awareness of his role in the world and the consistent retroactive rewriting of his character. What I mean by that is this: Lucio, originally and in every route but his own, is blatantly written to be an unforgivably cruel and immoral man. He seeks the best treatment he can get while cityfolk all but die in his streets, he takes advantage of the kindness and generosity of others and punishes their trust. There are many assumptions that can be made but we are shown explicitly that he can know Asra, a child (as an adult himself), and make sexual advances on them in adulthood with absolutely no guilt. He blackmailed Muriel into being and staying his slave and in turn forced him to perform brutal public massacres for an indeterminate amount of time: all we know is that it was long enough for a colloquial name to become well known and for his appearance to grow unkempt and haggard. All this plus more things that I don’t even have the time to list. And yet, he is arguably one of the most popular characters. Take two steps into the fandom at large and you’ll see countless postings about how his childhood was so tragic and how he’s so very sorry, he’s just a little oopsie whoopsie uwu soft boy! The few times I personally have seen his horrible actions even addressed by his fans was to underplay them, to insinuate that he has it worse than anyone he hurt. In spite of, or maybe even because of his extensive list of broadly observable crimes, he thrives in the community. The people love him. I don’t think I really have to explain why this in particular is so extremely chilling to me.

So, with all of these things laid out… What now? We’ve acknowledged the problems, there’s pages upon pages of other posts outlining ones I didn’t even cover here, so now what do we do? What’s the solution?

The answer to this isn’t quite cut and dry. There’s no simple solution to murky waters that run as deep as these do. But, for what it’s worth, I have a few suggestions I’d like to propose.

First off, I understand that all of the routes are finished. They had all completed well before the Dorian acquisition, I’m fully aware of that fact. However, in regard to said acquisition, I feel as though Dorian dropped the ball when transferring the property to their own app (and I’m not even talking about the writing of the tales, which is its own can of worms). Rather than simply copy-pasting the routes from the existing app, things could’ve been redone, remade better. Problems could have been solved now that the game had gained new life. This was much of the inspiration behind my own reworking of the concept, to address the problems and fix them. I don’t even believe that it’s too late for them yet; routes have only just begun being uploaded to the Dorian app, in theory there’s still room to reconsider things.

But that’s the problem. I don’t believe that the crew behind Dorian really cares. I don’t believe the original development team or Nix Hydra crew really cared. If the people involved really cared about these problems, there was ample time within the last nearly five years to fix things. They did nothing. They continue to do nothing. People like me shout endlessly into the void, hoping someone will hear and actually listen to the issues happening within their game. But they don’t care. They continue to make money, they continue to draw in players, why should they? If racism and misogyny and every other form of bigotry under the sun doesn’t hurt their bottom line, why change anything? Why care, why change if the community at large not only ignores it but actively encourages and supports it? Why listen to criticism if you can just block it and soak up praise from your unconditional fans? Why?

As I said, I don’t have a simple solution for any of this. But I’ve made personal choices in my own life to give less of my time and money to the company. If I want merchandise, I seek out independent artists. If I want to see or read something again, I can find screencaps. As much as I miss certain things, I don’t play the game anymore. I can’t help being attached to characters who have been important to me for as long as I’ve known them, but what I can do is make purposeful choices in response to the affection I feel. Maybe my singular actions won’t mean anything to them, but specifically and purposefully refusing to support the profits of a fundamentally flawed game that doesn’t even have the self awareness to be ashamed of itself means everything to me.

Thanks for listening. I hope anyone who happened to make it to this point can take something good from my impassioned ramblings.

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poke-muns · 4 months

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Dark Type Names

Pre-existing: Damien (démon, French for demon), Fosco (Italian for dark), Funesto (Portuguese for fatal, possibly also nefasto meaning nefarious), Gima (魔/Ma meaning devil, 欺瞞/Giman meaning deceit, ギーマ/Gima is the internal kanji of ブギーマン meaning bogeyman), Ginepro (nero, Italian for black), Grimsley (grim, sly, grimace), Karen (similar to darken), Kagetsu (影/Kage, 月/Getsu and 孽/Getsu, Japanese for shadow, moon, and evil), Marion (apparently from noir, French for black), Mary/Marnie (魔/Ma meaning devil, possibly Rosemary’s Baby), Melanie (Melas, Ancient Greek for dark/black, hence melanism), Modan/Mahkdāan/默丹 (contains 黑 meaning black), Morgana (alternate name for Morgan Le Fey, an enchantress from the stories of Sir Arthur in which she can be an antagonist), Nerio (negro, black in Spanish), Nezu (Nezumiiro/鼠色, Japanese for dark grey), Pietro (preto, Portuguese for black), Sidney (supposedly a mix of insidious, sadness, and sinister), Sixto (siniestro, Spanish for sinister), Ulrich (Unlicht, German for dark) Akira = protagonist of Devilman and has potential to include kira/キラー meaning killer Damon = demon Danica = Slavic meaning morning star, another name for the devil Dante = Dante Alighieri, writer of the Divine Comedy which had a huge impact on how the west views hell, and Dante of Devil May Cry (allusion to a dark-fire ace given hell & inferno), Darius = Dark Desmond/Despoina/etc. = despair Dirk = Dark Donnie / Frank = Donnie Darko Elaine/Lalaine = villain Eve/Evie/Evelyn/etc. = evil Fien/Fabien = fiend Immie = imp Lucy/Lucian/etc. = lucifer, the devil Malcom = Malacoda, a demon in Dante’s Inferno Nestor = Nasty & fester (could allude to a dark-flying ace given nest, possibly dark-bug given infest) Sully / Sullivan = verb meaning to taint integrity of something Sylvester = sly Viliam/Vilen/etc. = evil & villain

#gym leader ideas #gym leader oc #pokemon oc

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truths89 · 2 months

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Cosmic Comics

Life feels like a back-to-back set of impromptu acting. I know it’s not mandatory, but my higher self and her counterparts are fond of jest.

♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️

That time when your Chilean friend of four years, an NYU Medical Graduate and geriatrician, while on a cross-country trip to visit her, as you’re eating at a diner, asks how you wash your hair. For context, you were sporting a Mohawk with 3-4 inches of free-form locks, and shaved from below the ears. Both of you are above the age of 33, and neither of you has any diagnosis of autism or meets any other intellectual divergence criterion.

♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️

As expected of the medical model, you meet with your psychiatric nurse practitioner, who, amid welcomed chatter, decries the self-defense of Hamas amidst the 75-year snail crawl of a genocide besieged by Israel and funded by the United States of America. This Black 60-year-old woman feels very confident about her assessment of the matter. With the calm you speak to a child who seems not to know their place in the world, you ask her if the year were 1831 and Nat Turner orchestrated a slave revolt, would she object to such an act of self-preservation? With an uncanny swiftness, she assertively responds, ‘Not at all.’

♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️

You invite your supposed best friend into your home with her fiancé, both of whom are white, and this friend’s fiancé shares that your believed-to-be best friend is inclined to speedy driving. This friend scoffs at the insinuation as her fiancé attributes her minimization to her father, a deceased police officer, which enables her to fancy her way out of driving tickets.

In my very modest and quaint studio apartment, I am suddenly the guest to their derision of police violence that viscerally attacks my Black body’s peace in my sanctuary; while observing these fellow queer women who are both master’s degree holders and my supposed best friend, an LCSW Therapist, neither exhibited concern or awareness of the impact of their behavior.

♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️

The nature of time is divine, and after being prescribed Adderal by a physician at Smith College in the Fall of 2008, I began to experience what clinicians refer to as mania. As such, I was processing large quantities of data and making abstract connections with a labile mood and a lack of appetite. The H1N1 Virus jumped from Mexico to Springfield in about 36 hours. As evidenced by people’s fear surrounding COVID-19, I responded accordingly to the H1N1 virus. Reluctantly, I took a year off from Smith College and briefly crashed at a fellow Smithie’s place in the summer of 2009. While there, I experienced a pronounced bedlam stench from the visible accumulation of cat feces in one of the three bathrooms in this fantastically located double apartment in Greenwich Village.

Led by destiny, I explored Worldwide Opportunities for Organic Farming. I took a one-way ticket to Argentina, where I stayed for about three months to decompress from beholding the opaque imperial bars that outlined every crevice of my memory. As anticipated, I returned to Smith College, where I had a seven-credit shortage, and successfully graduated in May of 2011. Ironically, this fellow Smithie, a fellow richly melanated Black woman of size who appeared to have inherited a trust fund from her late adoptive parents, who told me that folks believed I had lost my mind, did not complete her degree at Smith College and dove her whole body’s life purpose into sex work. Sanity is indeed relative and context-based.

♾️♾️♾️♾️

In the five years that I worked with my Black Woman Psychologist, I cherished her because she achieved a privileged childhood, a foundation to secure stability and wealth as an adult, and enjoyed daily physical contact with her parents and siblings and her own family well into her 40s, which, to me, was unfathomable.

However, throughout that half-decade of a therapeutic dynamic, I was often dismayed and livid by her challenged emotional intelligence and penchant for insular analysis. I recall her saying, after divulging my very complex relationships with gender, class, race, and other intersectional identities, that I should pursue biracial women for romance. This same woman, whom I initially presumed to be biracial upon meeting in the Winter of 2019, as she was fair-skinned and her phenotype suggested other possibilities than Black American, reduced the opulence of my complex identity into a matter suitable for a stereotypical trope.

♾️♾️♾️

Because God loves a show, in 2022, you invite your Waspy friend to attend Afro-Punk with you. In preparation for the festival, she inquires if wearing kente cloth would be appropriate. Flabbergasted by the consideration, you immediately say, ‘You can wear whatever you want to, but I will not be able to accompany you in such a garment.’

Upon arriving at the event, I am elated by the demise of the Genocidal reign of Queen Elizabeth. I share brief remarks from my social media viewings to this Waspy friend, who, with a straight face, says that critique of this dead colonialist is “controversial.” For this friend, Queen Elizabeth was a trailblazer for women’s rights. This Waspy friend who, in the winter of the same year, while driving back from her Aunt’s home in Vermont, stated that racialized stratification of resources, which necessitates racism, is essentially up for grabs to whoever has the best hand, and if Black people could be the benefactors of white supremacy, it would be so. This ex-friend, who has a master’s degree from Columbia University, is in her second year of law school.

♾️♾️

About three years later, I still cannot comprehend how intimate a friendship I had with a divorced mother of two, who realized that her orthodox religion was a cult. During this one-year romantic friendship, I learned that she vehemently hated Palestinians and was adamant that their lives bore no inherent value. This woman earned her master’s in social work from Hunter College, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice who works solely with Medicaid clients.

♾️

The delayed whiplash crescendos as waves reverberate in my psyche. The irony of these interactions and fragile relationships could easily trigger lunacy, if for no other reason but being a repository for the world’s bouts with schizoid disassociation. With the universe, I have been disputing that these experiences are not entertaining but profoundly remedial and intensely demoralizing.

Although I cannot speak to the nature of teaching in these Ivory Towers and their doctoral programs, I most certainly can speak to what could be unlearned.

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meluhha · 1 year

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MELUHHA. MELAKA. MELA. MEL. TA-MIL.

Meluhha/Melukhkha - This term appears in several ancient texts, including the Sumerian and Akkadian texts, and is thought to refer to the Indus Valley Civilization. Some scholars believe that the word has Dravidian origins.

Melaka - assemblage; “visionary encounters (with the Goddesses)”; the “union” (of Śiva and Śakti); Yoginīmelaka, “a meeting with Yoginīs”

Meru - This is a mountain that is considered sacred in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. The word is believed to have Dravidian roots.

Mela - This is a Sanskrit word that means "gathering" or "assembly". It is commonly used to refer to large festivals and gatherings in India.

Melammu - This is a Sumerian word that means "divine radiance" or "divine glory". It is believed to have Dravidian roots.

Melakadambur - This is a village in Tamil Nadu, India, that is known for its ancient Hindu temple. The name of the village is believed to have originated from a combination of two words - "melai" (Tamil for high) and "kadambu" (Tamil for tree).

Melakarta - This is a system of organizing and classifying musical scales in Carnatic music, a classical music tradition from South India. The term "melakarta" literally means "primary scales" in Sanskrit, but its exact origins are unclear and it may have Dravidian roots.

Melaka - This is a city in Malaysia that was an important trading port in ancient times. The name is thought to have originated from a combination of two words - "mele" (Tamil for hill) and "ka" (Sanskrit for foot), referring to the city's location at the foot of a hill.

Melana - a form of dance in Odisha

Melap - a traditional musical instrument in Rajasthan

Melchham - a folk dance form in Himachal Pradesh

Mel - a festival celebrated in Assam

Melana - a religious festival celebrated by the Khasi tribe in Meghalaya

Mel - a community gathering in Punjab

Melo - a type of folk song in West Bengal

Melava - a gathering of people for a social or religious occasion in Maharashtra

Meluha - an ancient civilization in the Indus Valley

Mel - a gathering of people for social and cultural events in Kerala

Mela - a festival or fair held in various parts of India

Melat - a type of song in the Maldives

Melan - a traditional wrestling competition in Uttarakhand

Mela-kacheri - a type of music concert in Tamil Nadu

Melattur style - a style of Bharatanatyam dance in Tamil Nadu

Melodious - having a pleasant tune or melody in music

Melam - a type of percussion music in Kerala

Melapadam - a musical composition in the Indian classical tradition

Melakarta - a system of classification of ragas in Carnatic music

Melavu - a traditional folk dance in Andhra Pradesh

Melghat - a mountain range in Maharashtra

Melkote - a town in Karnataka known for its temples

Melnattu - a term used to describe the western region of Tamil Nadu

Melukote - a town in Karnataka known for its temples

Meliaputti - a town in Andhra Pradesh

Melavasal - a place in Tamil Nadu known for its silk production

Melachirappalli - a town in Tamil Nadu

Melur - a town in Tamil Nadu

Melathiruppanthuruthi - a village in Tamil Nadu

Melmaruvathur - a town in Tamil Nadu known for its temple

Melanam - a type of ceremonial procession in Kerala

Melapalayam - a town in Tamil Nadu

Melmuri - a village in Kerala

Melparamba - a village in Kerala

Melkam - a traditional dance in Assam

Melamchi - a river in Nepal

Melukavu - a village in Kerala

Melmadoor - a village in Telangana

Melukote Narasimha - a form of Lord Vishnu worshipped in Karnataka

Melkallur - a village in Tamil Nadu

Melasani - a village in Karnataka

Melkamane - a village in Karnataka

Melvettoor - a village in Kerala

Melthonnakkal - a village in Kerala

Melukote Vyasaraya - a prominent philosopher and saint in the Madhva tradition

Meloor - a village in Kerala

Melkavattur - a village in Tamil Nadu

Meladi - a village in Rajasthan.

SIDENOTE

"mel-" or "meldh-" which means "dark," "black," or "soil” is found in various Indo-European languages, such as the Latin word "melas," the Greek word "mélās," the Old English word "melan," and the Sanskrit word "mālā."

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melanated-divine · 3 months

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#gorgeous melanin women #dark chocolate #melanated divine #beautiful dark skin #beautiful model #ebony

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lilflowerpot · 2 years

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Please ignore this if you consider it inappropriate, but I wish to ask. Do Galra females experiance menstruation, or any similar event? If not how would they view it in humans?

If it isn’t obvious by the somewhat daunting quantity of posts linked above, I very much love playing around with fantasy science—specifically, in this case, biology—so this isn’t at all an inappropriate question!

First thing’s first, as I’ve said before the galra are mammals—yes, even those whose phenotype manifests in such a way that they might outwardly appear reptilian, such as Dox & Aalk—and so are of the class Mammalia: characterized by the presence of fur/hair, mammary glands (which produce milk for nursing their young), a neocortex (a region of the brain involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, and language), and three middle ear bones. Within this class exist three subdivisions, of which the galra would be considered placental mammals because the fetus is carried in the uterus to a relatively late stage of development, rather than the young being birthed at an earlier stage to be carried in pouches (marsupials, such as the kangaroo), or hatching from an egg (monotremes, such as the platypus).

In terms of fertility, the frequency of mammalian reproductive cycles varies wildly depending on species, but males and females of the same species will be fertile at similar times to ensure successful copulation. While many mammalian males are fertile year-round, female placental mammals have one of two types of reproductive cycles—an estrous cycle or a menstrual cycle, with the latter occurring only in higher primates—in both of which physiological changes occur, with a period of fertility interrupted by a period of infertility, and said cycle being discontinued if the female becomes pregnant. Now, I don’t at all associate the galra with primates, but rather (broadly speaking) fennec foxes, and as such I’m inclined to say that female galra are monestrous, meaning that they have a single ovulatory period every decaphoeb; this limited period of fertility also lends itself to my previously established idea of the galra’s general difficulty to conceive. If conception is unsuccessful during this time, the ova and uterine lining is reabsorbed into the body rather than being expelled as is the case with humans, because this limits nutritional loss (rather important when you consider that the overwhelming majority of galra did not live in areas abundant with food/water, so conserving energy was key).

[[ spring: eyiintak || summer: ury'cht / li'xann / puinyk / khaiivrep’t / hiikyl || autumn: a'vael || winter: nydaan / sa'rhyan / sa'meih ]]

The above image illustrates Daibazaal’s decaphoebal cycle, seasons, and associated events of significance. In many mammalian species, fertility cycles have adjusted through natural selection due to timed mating and gestation, ensuring that offspring are born into optimal seasonal conditions—female sheep, for example, are receptive only in autumn/winter, to ensure that lambs are born in the spring/summer when the weather is fair and food abundant—and I think that given Daibazaal’s harsh climate a similar such cycle makes the most sense for the galra too. So the galra estrous period occurred throughout the phoeb of Eyiintak: the same phoeb in which the Divine Hunt (an Eiyyka’an fertility festival) was performed. As the typical length of a galra pregnancy is 6 Imperial phoebs, this would mean that the overwhelming majority of galra kitlings are born in A’vael which, importantly, is after the conclusion of the long summer season—which lasted five full phoebs due to Daibazaal’s asymmetric elliptical orbit—as the intense planetary climate at this time poses a great threat to newborn galra, who are unable to regulate their temperature and therefore risk overheating.

#sa'meih starts immediately after the winter solstice #eyiintak is the only true spring phoeb #ury'cht through to hiikyl is alllllllllllllllllll summer so yes Daibazaal was a particularly toasty place to live #a'vael—as the counterpart to eyiintak—is the only autumnal phoeb #then finally for winter you have nydaan / sa'rhyan (ending on the winter solstice) / and sa'meih once more #and yes every month name has meaning because it's //me//#Ao3 Little Blade #sa screams back #galra history & culture

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