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calder · 4 months

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super mutant coverage from Nukapedia's page on Disability representation. for better or worse. feedback welcome

The Children of the Cathedral are a cult in the ruins of L.A. who mutate and torture their congregants and captives to various ends, forever changing their bodies and minds. Some are transformed into pliable servitors through torturous consecration--an honor second only to baptism, the metamorphic birth of super mutants through the transformative FEV vats at Mariposa to the north.

Most super mutants are mentally impaired, but generally capable of reason. They are infertile due to their quad-helix DNA, which factors heavily into the main plot. All super mutants encountered in Fallout are slaves to the Master, so they are generally inclined to attack to the player, but almost (if not) all of them can be spoken to under specific circumstances.

Harry is a voiced mutant with a simplistic, childlike manner of speaking. If the Vault Dweller kills the various super mutants in the area, he will avenge each of his friends by name in combat, and mourn one as his brother.[1][2] If the player has already destroyed the vats, he will only ask to be left alone.[3][4]

When the Master is killed, super mutants flee the region out of fear.[5] For decades thereafter, baptized survivors of the Cathedral remained shunned from human society. Even those living in far-away rehabilitory seclusion are subjected to harassment, defamation, displacement, and genocide, engineered by the NCR government.[6]

These details contrast some later depictions of super mutants as interchangeable and inherently hyper-violent creatures incapable of peace.

Super mutants derived from prime normals (unirradiated humans) tend to exhibit hyper-intelligence, or at least normal cognitive function.

The mutant Lou Tenant speaks with a highly sophisticated and dramatic voice due to his hyper-intelligence. No other super mutant in the setting has exhibited this affected style of speech.

Some adherents are altered in a chemical process called "consecration."[7][8] The survivors of this process, though apparently human, are rendered insane.[9][10] The cult honors them as the "servitor" class, but non-believers pejoratively refer to them as "zombies" for their inability to think normally. Most of these "zombies" zealously espouse the cult's propaganda and show little individuality.

The servitor Dane is kept in the Inner Sanctum. He suffers terribly from disturbing hallucinations as a result of his consecration.[7] He converses with himself at length in two distinct intonations. At one point, he derides himself as a "schizo bastard."[11] He also experiences periods of lucidity, and begs the Vault Dweller to kill Father Lasher for his abuse of Calder the Flower Child.

Nightkin are the most exalted of the Cathedral's castes. Psychically inclined, they serve as high-level guards and military officers. They use Stealth Boys to stay invisible at all times, even when alone in their private quarters at night. A small library at the Cathedral is occupied only by nightkin, and a computer can be found in the nightkin barracks. The Master is able to communicate with them telepathically. Dane claims to hear the nightkin crying.

In Fallout 2, most super mutants live peacefully at Broken Hills, a settlement where all sorts of humans and mutants are welcome.

In Brotherhood of Steel, all the super mutants (such as Attis), are infertile. This is a key aspect of the game's plot, as the Attis Army are seeking a cure for their infertility.

Most super mutants are mentally disabled.

Several potential health and ability issues are indicated by a scene which depicts a super mutant relieving himself while flailing his arms above his head and screaming, as he blasts the back tank of a closed toilet from several feet away with an unthinkable procession of urine too visually graphic to further describe.[Video 1]

All super mutants in Fallout 3 except for Fawkes and Uncle Leo are portrayed as ravenous cannibals barely capable of speech. Fawkes is ostracized by the super mutants of Vault 87 for displaying complex thought. If the player eavesdrops on super mutant enemies, they seem to be constantly confused and angry.

Jacobstown functions as a haven and rehabilitation center for super mutants, especially the nightkin who are suffering from schizophrenia due to prolonged Stealth Boy usage. Two doctors reside here, hoping to find some way to help them medically with their mental struggles.

Lily Bowen, a nightkin herself and resident of Jacobstown, is an elderly woman with dementia. She frequently mistakes the Courier for her grandchild (Jimmy or Becky depending on the gender) and also suffers schizophrenia like most nightkin. Taking damage may cause her to lapse into violent behavior, similar to mood swings, during which she claims to be guided by a voice she calls "Leo." Her companion quest focuses on getting Lily to either take her medication consistently (to help control her psychosis and silence "Leo"), or stop taking it altogether (later resulting in "Leo" completely taking over and Lily becoming violently psychotic, perhaps permanently).

The mutant separatist Tabitha suffers from mania. She also seems to have some degree of dissociative identity disorder. A robot named Rhonda helps her manage the symptoms of her mental conditions. With Rhonda disabled, Tabitha's mental condition is deteriorating.

Tabitha's Black Mountain mutants are presented as a violent parallel faction to the peaceful community of Jacobstown.

A super mutant named Neil guards the pass to Black Mountain, and warns people to stay away for their own safety, especially at night. He maintains his post simply because he is in a position to prevent violence on a significant scale. Neil is not mentally disabled, and will not tolerate microaggressions pertaining to his condition, both out of self-respect and respect for differently abled metamorphic people. He is quick to forgive those who apologize, but any other option will result in him terminating the conversation.

The presentation of Tabitha as a violent nightkin with a comedic low-detail blond wig has been criticized as falling into cheap, antiquated tropes related to disabled and queer people. The depiction of Gail in Fallout 76 as a benevolent, dignified super mutant woman with mental disabilities has been praised in comparison.

The nightkin Dog and God has been called a portrayal of dissociative identity disorder. Both identities are aware of the other. Each desires complete control over the body and refers to losing agency to the other as being "put in the cage/basement." The nightkin's story ends with either an act of suicide that kills the body and both identities with it, one personality taking over permanently, or the Courier helping to create a new unified identity.

This new identity is, in turn, struck with amnesia, unable to recall any details of that which transpired before its synthesis.

Fans with similar conditions have suggested that the presentation of efficaciously "resolving" this person into a single personality to "unlock their good ending" is a simplistic and clichéd character arc. It presents the character's mind and identity as something to be immediately "solved" by a manipulative stranger, in the form of a life-changing ego death triggered by a single violent and traumatizing event. The relatively complex presentation of fellow nightkin character Lily has been praised in comparison.

Dead Eye is a blind super mutant who lives with a larger group of mutants.

Super mutants are once again depicted as disorganized cannibals who live only to pillage.[23] The only conversant super mutant characters (aside from the isolated case of Virgil) are Strong and Erickson, both of who were othered by their immediate groups for expressing different and/or complex thought. Super mutants in the Commonwealth can be seen impulsively carrying out suicide bombings using mini nukes, despite canonically having no ideology[23] or even an apparent internal hierarchy apart from leadership by strength.

Strong, a potential companion, became very interested in a line from MacBeth when Rex Goodman was captured while trying to teach it to the super mutants, though it seems he simply became fixated on the notion that "the milk of human kindness" was a literal physical liquid hidden somewhere in the world that confers the "power of humans" on the drinker; Strong believes he could find and drink this milk to become stronger. He was imprisoned along with Rex by Fist for this. He never particularly expresses a deeper comprehension of the literary themes of MacBeth past his obsession with finding the milk of human kindness.

Erickson became a survivalist after splitting from his group on the Island. He claims the Fog helped him "think straight," which made him unable to continue working for his brutal leader. He is the only super mutant in Fallout 4 to be seen speaking with proper syntax except for Virgil.

Virgil is a former Institute scientist who deliberately turned himself into a super mutant to survive in the Glowing Sea and hopes to reverse his condition. He retains his intelligence but suffers from anger issues. He also has difficulty articulating the use of his hands.

The super mutant merchant Grahm was arguably the only non-robotic NPC in Fallout 76 at launch. He travels with a brahmin he calls "Chally the moo-moo," apparently unable to pronounce the name "Charlie."

Gail is a super mutant woman who lives among the Core crew of the Crater Raiders. She is singularly concerned with protecting the human child Ra-Ra. She finds humans very annoying and confusing. She casually admits to not understanding some events which happen around her.

Ra-Ra mentions that she wants to grow up to be like Meg and Gail, suggesting that she sees both as powerful and dignified women.

Her design has no elements which might frame her masculine physicality as comedic, or imply she is "crazy."

Maul is a super mutant who exhibits the typical simplified speech and love of mayhem, but concerns himself with intellectual pursuits such as video games and comics. He wears a small pair of glasses, and he may respond to dialogue prompts with nonverbal scoffs. Maul is an archetypical "comic book guy" character, and accordingly resembles an autistic RPG fan. Like Gail, Maul finds humans and their interests to be obnoxious and inscrutable, and makes no attempt to hide his contempt for the player character.

Maul infodumps about his special interest fictions. His favorite IP seems to be Grognak the Barbarian.

Some of his analysis of fictional situations reveals a difficulty understanding social cues.

At times, his descriptions of the video game adaptation evoke discussions of soulslike games.

Contrasting his vocal misanthropy, he expresses great affinity for animals. He considers himself a dog person, because 'cat require more patience than Maul prepared to give.' If Maul had cats, he would name them Bramble and Zil.

#super mutant #fnv #fallout 76

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66-bl1tz-kr13g-fr1tz · 2 months

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//The Wire//1730Z March 8, 2024//

//ROUTINE//

//BLUF: STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS SOLIDIFIES MESSAGE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.//

-----BEGIN TEARLINE-----

-HomeFront-

Washington D.C. – During last night’s State of the Union address, Steve Nikoui (who was a guest at the event) shouted the words “ABBEY GATE!” during the part of the speech in which Biden was speaking about how all Americans deserve to be safe. Nikoui was removed from Congress, arrested, and charged by Law Enforcement for his actions. AC: Steve Nikoui is the father of LCpl Kareem Nikoui, USMC, one of the 13 American service members killed by a suicide bomber at the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

-----END TEARLINE-----

Analyst Comments: There are procedures in place to allow for and manage potentially disruptive actions by grieving family members at high-profile events such as this. Honor, integrity, decorum, discernment, and a host of other character traits are mandatory for those working in career fields (for example, military funeral details where these events sometimes happen), which require official personnel to continue proceedings so that the grieving family member is assisted in such a way as to keep their dignity.

At absolutely NO point, is it acceptable in any form or fashion for a grieving parent to be put in handcuffs in front of an array of reporter’s cameras, especially if that grieving family member was literally seeing himself out of the venue on his own volition after his remark. Whether intentional or not, the message delivered to the parents of fallen service members is very clear. At this point, displaying anger towards authorities responsible for the loss of a child is a badge of honor among those most directly affected by the actions of this government, and high-ranking defense officials. Not only was this message clear, but the fact that zero Representatives of the People of the United States did anything, or voiced any objection to this arrest as it was happening in full view of everyone is very telling. Several politicians have, in the hours after the event, issued statements of condemnation for the heavy-handed response of Law Enforcement, especially as none of the hundreds of demonstrators actively blocking the road to prevent the Presidential motorcade from reaching the Capitol were arrested for that demonstration. The implications of this event, which should have been the spark that ignited much larger discourse, are much more wide-ranging than a simple disruptive event. The parent of a dead child directly addressing the President of the United States, and being prosecuted for it, is perfectly illustrative of how the dynamics between various agencies, and the American people, have changed. As many Americans ask themselves when the masses of employees working to harm the American people will finally see the light, and stop being a part of these institutions…events like this strongly indicate that the American people likely already have their answer.

Regarding the speech itself, several issues of potentially grave consequence were discussed. One of which was the concept of American involvement with humanitarian aid in Gaza, largely surrounding the implementation of amphibious logistics hubs in the region, which is worthy of more commentary than the brief notes these reports can provide. However, for posterity and in the interest of time, it would be exceedingly wise to examine the security implications of American ships being in extremely close proximity to combat actions in Gaza. Examining the means, motivations, and technical abilities of “allies” in the region is also paramount, as some regional power players exhibit every possible indicator of conducting false-flag attacks against American resources, with the goal of stopping humanitarian aid.

The paradrop and amphibious delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza are exceptionally tragic delivery mechanisms considering the port city of Tel Aviv is about 30 miles from Gaza and possesses all of the necessary cargo offloading facilities necessary for this mission. Likewise the countless land crossings that are available, but not being used for a variety of reasons, is similarly horrific. The fact that that an amphibious base is not only being considered, but was mentioned in the State of the Union address, highlights discrepancies of everything from intellect to ideology within the US government and the Pentagon.

Analyst: S2A1

//END REPORT//

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thecaribbeanecologist · 1 year

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Gender Inequality and the Caribbean.

Hey everyone! Hope all your spring breaks went great! Several of my classes are currently going over the way in which several environmental issues disproportionately impact women. So I thought I’d go over some of those environmental issues and relate them to Karen J. Warren and Carolyn Merchant’s work. As a brief introduction, Carolyn Merchant and Karen J. Warren are two prominent ecofeminist scholars whose works have contributed to the development of ecofeminism as a theoretical framework for understanding the interconnections between environmental issues and gender oppression.

Merchant's work focuses on the historical roots of the current environmental crisis and the ways in which gendered and racialized constructions of nature have contributed to it. She argues that the rise of modern science and capitalism has led to the commodification of nature and the objectification of women and other marginalized groups, resulting in the exploitation and degradation of both. Merchant's work emphasizes the need for a more holistic and interconnected approach to environmental issues that recognizes the value of non-human life and the importance of social justice.

In the Caribbean, for instance, the issue of waste management disproportionately affects women, who are often responsible for household waste management. In many cases, waste management systems in the Caribbean are inadequate, leading to the dumping of waste in rivers and oceans, which pollutes the environment and harms marine life. In many islands across the Caribbean, landfills are already overfilled. St Maarten, for example, currently has a mountain of landfills. And after overflowing from the 2017 hurricane, residents must move due to frequent fires caused by the landfill. In addition, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands both currently exceed US Environmental Protection Agency’s landfill capacity limits.

In addition to waste management, rising sea levels also disproportionately impact women in several ways. Women are often more vulnerable to the effects of disasters, including flooding and erosion, because of their social and economic status. For example, in many coastal communities, women are responsible for collecting water and food, and these tasks can become more difficult and time-consuming as sea levels rise. Women may also be more likely to suffer from health issues related to climate change, such as malnutrition or waterborne illnesses.

Warren's article also highlights the importance of recognizing the ways in which gender discrimination intersects with environmental policies. Women and other marginalized groups are often disproportionately affected by environmental degradation and exploitation, yet their voices are often excluded from environmental decision-making processes.

Additionally Warren and Merchant’s claims are clearly backed by historical evidence of gender inequality across the globe and the Caribbean:

A report by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) shows that gender inequalities persist in the Caribbean region. The report is a compilation of data from 10 Caribbean countries and highlights areas of gender inequality, such as occupational segregation, a high proportion of female-headed households in poverty, and gender-based violence.

According to the World Bank, in islands such as Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Jamaica, 1 in 3 young women are not engaged in education, employment, or training and are constrained due to their unequal role in family responsibilities, early pregnancy, and gender norms that relegate them to the domestic sphere. And with climate change looming, these inequalities risk being even further perpetuated.

Though gender inequality persists and is closely tied to environmental issues, Warren's work emphasizes the importance of including diverse voices in decision-making processes related to the environment. Merchant's theories also highlight the need to challenge the dominant paradigm of economic growth and development that prioritizes profits over the well-being of people and the environment. By prioritizing the voices of marginalized communities and challenging the current exploitative economic system, we can address environmental justice issues and promote a more egalitarian society that does not disproportionately impact those most vulnerable.

That's all for this week. Stay tuned for next week's post!

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phantom-le6 · 1 year

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Ramble of the month February 2023: The Importance of Accents in the X-Men and other adapted media

I’ve been a bit late with this ramble, I’ll admit, and a lot of that has been down to writer’s block across everything I’ve been writing, as well as having some difficulty motivating myself at times. However, I’ve finally managed to get my head around what I want to write this month, and with this February being the kick-off for another phase of the Marvel cinematic universe, my mind has been considering one upcoming MCU project over all others. As you’ll already know from the title of this ramble, that project will be how Marvel work the X-Men and associated mutant characters into the MCU. In particular, will they do better than Fox did for adaptational accuracy, down to the voices of the characters?

Now some people may not attach much importance to the idea of accents in films and other media, especially when it comes to something like superheroes that they expect to be US-dominated and not very accent-diverse. However, as any fan of X-Men comics worth their salt will be aware, Marvel’s mutants hail from a wide range of places, more than X-films and cartoons have managed to showcase. Indeed, Fox’s X-Men film run was rather poor in this respect, and I’m really hoping the MCU will do better.

However, I know not everyone will understand the importance of this, which is fair enough. That’s why I’m going to use this ramble to explain the importance, beginning with a look at X-Men history prior to and around the time of Fox’s first X-Men film.

The Children of the Atom in the 20th Century (not-Fox):

The history of the X-Men begins back in the early 1960’s; in 1961, feeling he was coming to the end of his time as a writer of comics and asked to create a superhero comic to compete with DC’s Justice League, Stan Lee created the Fantastic Four. The first issue of that comic went out in November 1961, and sparked the beginning of Marvel Comics as we now know it. The following year saw the introductions of Ant-Man, the Hulk, Spider-Man and Thor, which then leads us into 1963. Spider-Man gained his own comic while the Hulk’s first comic stopped, Iron Man, the Wasp and Dr Strange were all added to the growing canon of characters, and then in September 1963, two new teams of heroes were created.

The first was the Avengers, which combined several existing characters into a team of their own, and the second was the X-Men, Stan Lee’s mutant superheroes that were born with special powers and persecuted for being different. Now, at first the X-Men themselves weren’t all that diverse, which considering the era of those comics is understandable. The industry had been forced to accept a high level of censorship as a result of McCarthyistic conservativism and paranoia in the previous decade, and things like the Civil Rights Movement or more diversity-oriented media like Star Trek were either in their infancy or not due for another few years.

As a result, the whole original team were fairly standard white straight Americans and mostly male. Professor X being confined to a wheelchair and Jean Grey being the sole female team member were the main stand-outs from a diversity point when lined up against the rest of the founding team (Cyclops, Angel, Iceman and Beast). In later decades, some of the other founding members would find ways to stand out; Beast growing fur, Iceman being ret-conned as a homosexual, etc. but for the initial run, the X-Men themselves were fairly general. That being said, their rogues gallery did slightly better; while Magneto’s origins weren’t really explored much until the Chris Claremont era of X-lore, the character was ultimately established as a holocaust survivor and thus of some Eastern or Central European origin.

In turn, when Magneto’s first Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was created, the twins Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were of Eastern European descent, and ended up with a made-up country in the region (Transia, as opposed to Sokovia in the MCU or Doctor Doom’s equally fictional nation of Latveria), while the Toad was actually English and only Mastermind was an American mutant. When the Brotherhood’s line-up changed throughout the 1960’s, the only other non-American mutant to feature was the Italian Unus the Untouchable, who had a kind of force-field power. Likewise, the X-Men’s later members of the 1960’s remained very US-centric; Calvin Rankin/Mimic, Polaris (later revealed to be Magneto’s daughter), Havok (Cyclops’ brother) and Changling (a former villain-turned-stand-in for Professor X, better known to animated series fans as Morph) were all American mutants.

By comparison, the Avengers had, by the end of the 1960’s, taken in not just Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, but they’d added the Black Panther and the Vision to their ranks. Whether because the X-Men weren’t really representing the wider range of humanity they were a metaphor for the persecution of, because of other reasons or both, Marvel ended up cancelling the X-Men comics in March 1970. However, the characters lived on as guest stars in other titles, and the Beast ended up with a solo run that saw him change to become furry. By 1975, just as the now-furry Beast was joining the Avengers, Marvel decided to bring the X-Men back, starting with Giant-Size X-Men #1 by writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum.

The mandate for the return of the X-Men was the creation of a new team, one that was international and inter-racial, and this infusion of diversity was actually part of why the X-Men went from cancelled to flagship title in the space of two decades. While Professor X and Cyclops were very much kept over from the old team, the rest of the line-up was very much something different. Three of the characters already existed in Marvel lore; Banshee from Ireland and Sunfire from Japan had been guest characters in the X-Men comics of the 1960’s, and Canadian mutant Wolverine had made his debut in the Hulk’s solo comic towards the end of 1974 (Hulk having regained a dedicated solo title towards the end of the 1960’s).

To these characters, Wein then added Nightcrawler from Germany, Russian powerhouse Colossus, the African mutant known as Storm, and Native American mutant Thunderbird. This new team, led by Cyclops, was initially charged with freeing the old team from a mutant island called Krakoa, after which the question was raised; what to do with so many X-Men? Cue the return of the X-Men’s regular comic to new stories, having spent the past five years or so as a re-print magazine, and the handing of the writing reins to British scribe Chris Claremont.

In the first issue of Claremont’s extensive run, Sunfire went back to Japan due to his somewhat nationalistic attitude, and most of the remaining original X-Men left. Jean, Havok and Polaris would soon return to the title as either guest characters or as part of the team initially, while Iceman and the Angel ended up going through several other teams in between occasional returns, neither re-joining the X-Men fully until the early 1990’s. A few issues later, Thunderbird would die on a mission, and after that the team was down to being Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Banshee.

During this late seventies era, the X-Men also added the character of Moira Mactaggert, a Scottish woman who later was revealed as Xavier’s colleague and ex-fiancé, not to mention a love interest for Banshee. On the villain side, the only initial diversification came from introducing Banshee’s cousin “Black Tom” Cassidy as the new criminal partner of Xavier’s step-brother the Juggernaut, and at the end of the decade, the team fought Moira’s mutant son Kevin, better known by his alias of Proteus.

The 1980’s saw a much greater expansion of X-lore in terms of not only characters, but in terms of representation of all kinds. The decade kicked off with the Dark Phoenix saga, through which we see characters like Kitty Pryde, Dazzler and the Hellfire Club introduced. By and large, all US mutants, but a lot of them were women, and they would actually have roles to play in the introduction of characters from wider backgrounds. The biggest stand-out in this group is probably Kitty Pryde, as she is one of Marvel’s few Jewish-American superheroes (the only other one I know of is Ben Grimm from the Fantastic Four, but I imagine others exist I’ve yet to read about). Following this, we get a new version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, this time led by Mystique and the blind precog Destiny. While Mystique, Destiny and the Blob are all American, the characters of Pyro and Avalanche are from Australia and Greece, respectively.

In the first few years of the 1980’s, the X-Men also make friends with local dance teacher Stevie Hunter, a black woman who further adds to the diversity on display and becomes an increasingly key figure in the X-lore of this decade. Colossus’ younger sister Illyana is aged up from a child of six or seven to one of thirteen after a dimension-hopping incident, and following the addition of southern US mutant Rogue, along came the New Mutants. This first of several X-Men spin-off titles was meant to provide a more teen-oriented perspective on the world of mutants, and featured an opening line-up every bit as diverse as the second-generation X-Men.

To be exact, team co-leaders Sam Guthrie and Danielle Moonstar were both from the US, but Danielle was a Native American girl of the Cheyenne people, while Sam was a tall and skinny lad from Kentucky coal-mining country. To these were added Xi’an Coy Manh from Vietnam, Rahne (pronounced rain) Sinclair from Scotland, and Roberto da Costa from Brazil. The team quickly expanded to include Illyana, as well as Amara Aquilla/Magma, a mutant from a Roman colony that had survived to the present day in the Amazon rainforest, and Douglas Ramsey, a mutant linguist from the town the Xavier school was based in. Ramsey had initially been introduced as a friend of Kitty Pryde, but he became recruited when the New Mutants encountered an alien mutant named Warlock.

In turn, the Hellfire Club developed a counter-team, known as the Hellions. Among their number was Thunderbird’s younger brother, who would later join the side of good as Warpath, the Spanish emotion-manipulator Empath, French mutant Tarot and an Arabian counterpart to Sam known by the codename Jetstream. The rest of the team was comprised of American mutants, including Firestar, a mutant that featured alongside Iceman as a sidekick to Spider-Man in 1980’s TV animation, and who in comics would later join the New Warriors and at one time the Avengers.

Later in the decade, the line-up for the New Mutants would continue to change before the remnants of the team became X-Force. While most new characters along the way were white Americans, they included some diversity through the likes of Mexican earthquake-powered mutant Rictor, female mutants like Skids and Boom-Boom, and during the X-Force era, the likes of Domino, Shatterstar, Feral, Bedlam and Banshee’s daughter Siryn would also add to this aspect of the title, along with returning alumni from the New Mutants.

Returning to the main team, things changed quite a bit more following the New Mutants being introduced. Rachel Summers joined the team after travelling over from the Days of Future Past timeline (Rachel being the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey in that timeline), only to leave just prior to the Mutant Massacre story arc. Jean was supposedly dead until she turned up alive and the Phoenix turned out to be a doppleganger, Banshee had left due to injuries, etc. While the original X-Men ended up forming X-Factor, another spin-off team, in 1986, the events of Mutant Massacre shook the team line-up again.

With several team members badly injured, a new team began to develop and was finally formed by the time of the next X-title crossover, Fall of the Mutants. While Storm, Wolverine and Rogue remained with the team, and Colossus returned after recovering from his injuries, the rest of the team now included Dazzler, other-dimensional mutant Longshot, English telepath Psylocke and the return of former X-Man Havok. Fall of the Mutants led to the X-Men effectively faking their death, after which they operated out of a former villain hideout in the Australian outback. Their principal means of transport during this time was Australian Aboriginal mutant Gateway, who used a bullroarer to teleport others.

Around this time, other characters kept being added. The Native American inventor Forge was another mutant incorporated into the X-Men mythos during this era, as was English mutant Lila Cheney, a noted singer from London with a Cockney accent and an ability to teleport across galactic distances, not to mention being a thief and Sam Guthrie’s girlfriend. A solo arc for Wolverine, as well as the New Mutants, introduced X-Fans to another Japanese mutant in the form of the Silver Samurai, and the members of Mr Sinister’s Marauders, who featured across both the Mutant Massacre arc and the later Inferno one, also added to the representation in X-Lore.

From a nationality stand-point, stand-out Marauders include Sabretooth, Scrambler, Riptide, Vertigo and Malice, while the likes of Scalphunter, Arclight and Harpoon provide racial and/or gender diversity. Another notable addition to Marvel’s mutant villains on the international from in the 1980’s are Andrea and Andreas von Strucker. Collectively known as Fenris, the pair are the twin children of Hydra’s Baron von Strucker, and they can generate powerful energy blasts when holding hands. Together with Canadian mutant twins Northstar and Aurora (members of Alpha Flight, Canada’s state superhero team in Marvel lore), this continues a tradition for mutant twins that’s been going since Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (ret-cons not withstanding).

Following Fall of the Mutants, another X-Men spin off title was created in the form of Excalibur, a UK-based superhero team. Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers and Nightcrawler were brought back for this team and joined up with British superhero Captain Britain (the twin brother of Psylocke) and his girlfriend Meggan, a mutant with empathic shape-shifting powers and the ability to fly. Other X-team alumni like Colossus and Wolfsbane would later join that team, and we’d get another British mutant out of the title in the form of intelligence agent Pete Wisdom.

Meanwhile, after the events of Inferno, the X-Men began to splinter apart, being no more as a team by the end of the 1980’s. The last new X-Man introduced in the era was Jubilee, a Chinese-American orphan from California who followed the X-Men back to Australia, and who ended up saving Wolverine from torture by cyborg villains the Reavers. Jubilee was part one of a two-part addition to the presence of Asian women in the X-Men. Part 2 was Psylocke being body-swapped into the body of a Japanese mutant courtesy of the Hand, something that stood for about three decades before being undone in more modern comics.

In the 1990’s, the X-Men re-formed and saw some downturn in new characters being added on their side compared to the 1980’s surge, and where those characters were introduced, some of the diversity was perhaps slipping a little. Notable additions to the X-Men in this decade were mainly Gambit and Bishop, who at least added the Cajun culture and another African-American to the team (Storm being revealed in Claremont’s era to have US and Kenyan citizenship due to her father being African-American and her mother being Kenyan).

In terms of the X-Men themselves, it’s actually some lesser-known characters that better add to the team’s representation; Marrow is a mutant woman with bones growing out through her skin, Dr Cecilia Reyes is of mixed race (Black and Latino), and Maggott is a mutant from South Africa added during the Operation: Zero Tolerance/Trial of Gambit arcs. In wider X-Lore, Magneto’s second-generation team known as the Acolytes also add to the representation; leaving aside the obvious tick boxes for race and gender, the group includes members from Switzerland, Germany, France, Scotland, Italy, Sri Lanka and Russian Inuits. Mr Sinister also has a new team in the 1990’s called the Nasty Boys; by their name alone, we know there’s no female representation, but we do get members from Jamaica, Australia and either Scotland or Ireland (my research couldn’t specify of team member Ramrod). Oh, and let’s not forget Wolverine’s old sparring partner from Russia, Omega Red.

To close off this part of the ramble, let’s consider the last X-team spin-off and a few other honourable mentions. In the mid-90’s, Marvel created another mutant superhero team called Generation X, co-led by former Hellfire Club member Emma Frost and X-Men alumni Banshee. The team included Jubilee, who was being neglected by the older X-Men due to various crises. The only other pre-existing character on the team was Paige Guthrie, one of the younger siblings of former New Mutant Sam Guthrie. Added in new were Everett Thomas (Black lad from St Louis), Angelo Espinosa (a Latino mutant from the Barrio in Los Angeles), Monet St Croix (Monaco) and Jonothan Starsmore (England). The team would later add Samoan mutant Mondo, though he in turn would betray them.

Around the late 90’s and early 2000’s, just as Fox’s X-Verse films began, other characters came up of note, albeit not ones that get much attention. These include;

-Neal Shaara, a mutant from India and the third one to use the Thunderbird code-name.

-Tessa, also known by the code-name of Sage. Believed to be from Bosnia and a long-time spy for Xavier in the Hellfire club, she was part of the X-Treme X-Men line-up from 2001.

-Lifeguard and Slipstream, Australian Mutants and brief members of the X-Men in the X-Treme X-Men title.

-Sunpyre, Sunfire’s younger sister, who joins an interim team of X-Men led by Jean Grey to rescue Cyclops and Wolverine from Magneto.

The importance of experience in character, and how this relates to accents:

So, now you’ve got some idea of just how much representation the X-Men world already had going on by the time Bryan Singer was making his first two X-Men films. Characters both male and female, of just about every racial type going and from a wide range of national origins, not to mention regional ones (even within the US-born X-characters, there are a variety of regions to factor in). Now let’s look at this from another angle; how characters are created by experiences.

To explain this, the best example I can think of is Disney and Pixar’s film Inside Out. In that film, we’re following what happens to a young girl as she deals with moving from Wisconsin to California, all via anthropomorphised representations of her emotions and other psychological elements. A key principle in this film is the concept of core memories; these are memories of formative experiences that act as a power source for the “islands of personality” in someone’s head. In other words, our experiences become memories that shape our personalities, and thus define some of who we are as individuals.

Now, let’s say we were to change something about a real-life person in the way some adaptations of the X-Men have mis-accented certain characters. For example, let’s take my own life as someone with autism. Take that autism away, would I still be the same person? No, and not just because I’d have grown up with the capacity to implicitly learn social skills and norms, etc. My autism impacted where I went to school, because I needed schools with specialist support available. This meant going to schools outside my local area, so without my autism, I’d have gone to different schools, made difference friends, had different teachers and thus my experience would be different. When you change the experience, you change the personality and thus change the person.

Given this, changing other aspects of any character when dealing with adaptations of existing characters can have the same impact, provided those changes result in a corresponding change in the character’s formative experiences. In the case of Marvel superheroes of any kind, they tend to occupy a world based on that which we experience in real life, with the various sci-fi and fantasy aspects tacked onto and interwoven with how our real world operates. For example, Marvel has showcased the same forms of prejudice we experience in the real world in comics, side-by-side with the metaphorical discrimination showcased by the X-Men.

Now it’s been highlighted in recent years that human society has not really made the strides we sometimes think it has. Racism, sexism, rape culture, homophobia, transphobia and many other forms of prejudice are still rife, and some have gotten worse as the advent of social media has drawn the closed-minded and bigoted together. As such, you cannot change character appearances and beliefs where the character is from a world based on our present-day real life, otherwise you alter their experience and thus change the character. It's ok to perform a racial shift on a character like Heimdall in the Thor films, for example, because he’s part of an alien culture that probably doesn’t have the racist attitudes of humanity. To do it on human characters, however, you’ve either got to use a setting apart from our real life reality for that same change to not impact the character (e.g. an alternative reality Earth, or one in a more equality-minded future a la Star Trek).

If we go beyond question of being treated differently by the intolerant, there’s also the matter of experiences changing just because different nations have different cultures. Someone raised in Australia or the United States will get a somewhat different upbringing and education to someone raised in the UK, for example, and those of us living here in the UK get different experiences depending on which part of the UK we live in. Heck, you could even drill down to just focusing on England or Scotland, comparing say Cambridge to Blackpool or Glasgow to Inverness, and you’d probably find a whole range of factors that differ by location, changing formative experiences and producing very different people.

How this then ties back into accents, and their use in adaptational media, becomes quite obvious from this perspective. Every time a character is taken out of the source material and put in films, TV shows, computer games and so on, and the accent isn’t kept consistent to the source material, it technically creates a new character usurping the name(s) of the original instead of translating the original character. Granted, some will argue that Marvel and other fiction franchises work on a multiversal basis, treating each continuity in each medium as its own world not beholden to others. However, if that is so, why stop at changing the accents? Why don’t we have film runs, TV series and so on where so much more than that is changed?

The answer is because the multiverse concept is simply an excuse, a convenient “get out of trouble with the fans” clause, used by fans and creators to avoid flak for altering existing characters. It doesn’t change the fact that anything based on something else is fundamentally adaptive by its very nature, and misrepresenting the original characters by altering aspects that impact who they are, however indirectly, is bad adaptation. This is probably part of why the MCU has been very careful with the accents for characters like the Maximoffs and the people of Wakanda, to use two of the more obvious examples.

Why this matters, and how diversity can be achieved without changing existing characters:

I know from arguing this sort of thing in the past that not everyone shares my views in this regard. Some people, mostly non-comics readers, either totally disrespect anything to do with diversity out of sheer ignorance and bigotry, while others have “by any means necessary” outlook on diversity. The former will dismiss anything that’s not a whitewashed, heavily US-centric superhero film, while the latter will accept any amount of changes to a given franchise if it ticks a bunch of equality tick-boxes. Both approaches, however, are extremes and, like any extreme, are not sustainable. Under-representation or over-representation are both limiting in their own ways, and they can get in the way of effective story-telling.

So why does any of this matter? Well, first off, when you take on adaptations of stories into other media, it’s because those stories have been successful in their original format. Such success brings with it an existing fan-base that has identified with and become attached to the characters therein. As a result, you’re walking a tightrope between avoiding a carbon copy of the original and avoiding fan backlash because you changed the wrong thing. The aim is to reach and hold a point of balance, and not everyone is going to agree where that point lies.

Second, I for one think that how we approach adaptational fiction and diversification in fiction tends to be a reflection on real-life matters like history and equality. If we change who and what a person is in fiction, is that done solely because fiction gives us that freedom, or is it reflecting how some of us might approach other things? Human history is often misleading because some who have recorded it altered records to show events in a certain light, not as they actually happened. It is also replete with people changing things to present a specific narrative; biblical passages have been altered to make homosexuality a sin instead of something else, for example, and even now people try to use pseudo-science to excuse homophobic, transphobic and anti-autistic attitudes, among other prejudices.

Taking a revisionist attitude towards adaptational media, even if the revisions are intended to be positive, is something I always find troubling and want to see going down. Diversity can still be improved in fiction without altering existing characters. For example, new characters can be added to these worlds in the adaptations themselves. DC’s Harley Quinn, Marvel’s X-23 and the MCU’s own Greg Coulson all originated from adaptations of the comics and were only introduced into the comic book source material after first appearing on TV or film. Moreover, as I’ve already showcased, the X-Men’s history over its first four decades is a timeline of continual creation of new characters, and it’s this which created that franchise’s diversity. It’s the ultimate blueprint for how to diversify any franchise, and only a fool would fail to realise this.

Another means of adding diversity to adaptational media is to really look at the source material and use the diversity already there. Our look at the history of X-lore shows that this area of Marvel is far more diverse than Fox’s films and most animated adaptations ever let on, and it’s not the only Marvel franchise with hidden diversity. You want to improve diversity in the Fantastic Four. Ok, aside from the Thing having a blind girlfriend, the bloke is also Jewish, and the Human Torch? Dude’s got a best mate named Wyatt Wingfoot who is native American. Throw these elements in, finally remember to give Reed and Sue kids for both the family team dynamic and a tie-in to X-Lore, and you’ve got several points of diversity without a single change of race, gender, you name it.

Want to diversify Spider-Man without steering off Peter Parker or race-shifting his original supporting cast? Ok, you’ve got Joseph “Robbie” Robertson of the Daily Bugle, his son Randy Robertson who attended college with Peter in the comics, plus several other supporting characters of colour. Throw them into the story as key supporting characters while down-playing Flash and leaving out Ned, etc. and you get the same end result without the revisionism we’ve seen in the MCU Spider-Man. So, when Marvel does their own MCU X-Men, if they’re serious about leaving aside some of the better-known characters and giving a different group of X-Men their chance in the spot-light, all they have to do is really look at the source material they created.

So, that’s it for this month’s ramble. Hope you all enjoyed it, and as ever, I’ll accept any constructive criticism, but any trolling, bigotry, etc. will get you in trouble. Anyway, until my next ramble, ta-ta for now.

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xtruss · 1 year

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Turkey-Syria Earthquake 2023: Turkey and Syria Earthquake Death Toll Nears 11,500 as Erdoğan Defends Response

Turkish president visits devastated region amid anger at what many see as slow and inadequate rescue effort

— Jon Henley | Wednesday 8 February 2023 | Guardian USA

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inspects the earthquake devastation in the south-east city of Kahramanmaraş. Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images

The death toll from the huge earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria has risen to nearly 11,500, as rescuers continued to pull survivors from the freezing rubble and the Turkish president rejected growing criticism of the authorities’ response.

Making his first visit to the region since the 7.8- and 7.5-magnitude quakes hit within hours of each other on Monday, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday acknowledged early problems with Turkey’s response but said it was now working well.

During a visit to Kahramanmaraş province, near the quakes’ epicentre, he said 8,574 people had been confirmed dead in the disaster in Turkey. Syrian officials and a rescue group in the rebel-held north-west Syria said the death toll there was 2,662.

Experts have predicted the combined tally will rise further, perhaps to more than double, as hundreds of collapsed buildings in many cities have become tombs for people who were asleep when the first quake hit in the early morning.

Amid mounting anger at what many see as a slow and inadequate rescue effort, the Turkish president said there had been ��some issues” with roads and airports but the emergency operation was now better and the situation on Wednesday was under control.

Erdoğan promised new housing within a year for those left homeless in the 10 affected provinces, where an estimated 64,000 buildings have been destroyed. He added that citizens should ignore “provocateurs” whom he accused of fanning discontent.

Top: The rubble of a collapsed building in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters. Bottom: People warm themselves around a fire near a collapsed building in Idlib, Syria, after the earthquake. Photograph: Yahya Nemah/EPA

The president, facing an election in May and wary of the impact of any perception his government was failing in its response to Turkey’s most deadly quake since 1939, has declared a state of emergency in the areas concerned and sent in troops to help.

Survivors in southern Turkey and north-west Syria, meanwhile, spent a second night in the freezing cold, many taking refuge in their cars or under blankets in the streets, fearful of going back into potentially seriously weakened buildings.

A winter storm and subzero temperatures have rendered many roads in the region – some of them already severely damaged by the earthquakes – almost impassable, resulting in traffic jams that stretch for miles in some areas. A lack of heavy equipment is also severely hindering the rescue effort.

A damaged train track shows the impact of the earthquake in the Türkoğlu district in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The World Health Organization has warned that up to 23 million people may be affected by the quakes. Many countries have so far pledged aid, and international rescue teams have begun to arrive. For those in the stricken areas, help could not come soon enough.

“Where are the tents, where are food trucks?” Melek, 64, in the southern city of Antakya, asked a Reuters reporter. “We haven’t seen any food distribution here. We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold here.”

Emergency workers on Wednesday saved several children discovered under a collapsed building in the hard-hit province of Hatay. “All of a sudden we heard … the voices of three people at the same time,” said one rescuer, Alperen Çetinkaya.

A person is rescued from the rubble in Adiyaman 60 hours after the earthquakes hit. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In many parts of Turkey hit by the quakes, shops were closed and there was no heat because gas pipes had been shut to avoid explosions. “My nephew, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister are in the ruins,” Semire Çoban, an infant school teacher in Hatay, toldAgence France-Presse.

“They are trapped under the ruins and there is no sign of life. We can’t reach them. We are trying to talk to them, but they are not responding … We are waiting for help. It has been 48 hours now.”

Authorities have said about 13.5 million people have been affected in Turkey. Aid officials were particularly alarmed, however, by the situation in Syria, already devastated by 11 years of a civil war that has hugely complicating relief efforts.

Men weep after identifying the body of a relative in Turkey’s Hatay region. Photograph: Aaref Watad/AFP/Getty Images

“Even the buildings that haven’t collapsed have been severely damaged. There are now more people under the rubble than those above it,” a resident named Hassan, who did not give his full name, said in the rebel-held town of Jindaris.

“There are 400 to 500 people trapped under each collapsed building with only 10 trying to pull them out, and no machinery,” he told AFP. Mohammed Shibli, of the White Helmets rescue group, said people were “dying every second” and appealed for help.

In Aleppo, Syria’s battle-scarred second city, Youssef, 25, had been waiting by the rubble of a block of flats since Monday for news of his father, mother, brother, sister and her nephew. “Nothing is known about them so far,” he said. He talked to them on the phone soon after the quake, he said, but had heard nothing since.

An aerial picture shows rescuers searching the rubble of buildings for casualties and survivors after the earthquake in the village of Salqin in Idlib province, Syria Photograph: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images

Syria’s government, which is under heavy sanctions by much of the international community, formally appealed for help from the EU on Wednesday, the European commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarčič, said.

He said the European Commission was “encouraging” EU member countries to respond to Damascus’s request for medical supplies and food, while monitoring to ensure that any aid was “not diverted” by President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Rescue personnel and civilians search for survivors in Idlib Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

— Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

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swldx · 1 year

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Voice of America 0329 15 Jan 2023

6080Khz 0259 15 JAN 2023 - VOICE OF AMERICA (UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) in ENGLISH from PINHEIRA. SINPO = 55333. English, @0259z dead carrier s/on. @0300z “News via remote” read by female announcer. As California braces for another series of atmospheric rivers following several deadly storms that have already pummeled parts of the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested President Joe Biden approve a Major Disaster Declaration. The leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Administrator Deanne Criswell said Friday the agency was reviewing the request as quickly as possible to help the President make that determination. President Joe Biden will travel to Atlanta on Sunday to speak at Ebenezer Baptist Church, home to a political ally in the US Senate and the place where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Biden’s Jan. 15 visit will come on the eve of Martin Luther King Day, the holiday commemorating the birthday of the Black civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968. The church’s senior pastor now is Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, whose election victory against former NFL star Herschel Walker in December cemented Democratic control of the Senate until at least 2024. Militants shot and killed three police officers on the outskirts of the Pakistani city of Peshawar, authorities said, the latest violence in the restive northwestern region bordering Afghanistan. Retired general Petr Pavel scored a narrow win over billionaire former premier Andrej Babis in the first round of the Czech presidential election Saturday, securing a solid base for a runoff in two weeks, nearly complete results showed. The post does not carry executive authority but has significant powers in appointing prime ministers, central bank chiefs and nominating judges for the constitutional court. Presidents also have a limited say in foreign affairs and are chief army commanders. Authorities in Somalia say they have seized a weapons cache allegedly buried by al-Shabab militants at a house in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, during a joint operation. China reported Saturday nearly 60,000 deaths in people who had COVID-19 since early December following complaints it was failing to release data, and said the “emergency peak" of its latest surge appears to have passed. The toll included 5,503 deaths due to respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 and 54,435 fatalities from other ailments combined with COVID-19 since Dec. 8, the National Health Commission announced. It said those “deaths related to COVID” occurred in hospitals, which left open the possibility more people also might have died at home. Thousands of protesters marched Saturday against Tunisian President Kais Saied's seizure of near total power in central Tunis, demanding he step down as they marked the anniversary of a key date in the 2011 revolution that brought democracy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to visit the United Nations (UN) to address a high-level meeting of the 193-member General Assembly on the eve of the first anniversary of Russia's February 24 offensive, a senior foreign official from Ukraine's foreign ministry told news agency Associated Press on Friday (January 13). Ukraine's first deputy foreign minister Emine Dzhaparova said that President Zelensky would want to come to the UN, adding he has a will or intention to come. “But it’s still a question if there will be a security situation that will allow him (Zelensky) to come, Dzhaparova added. @0305z "Issues in the News" begins. MLA 30 amplified loop (powered w/8 AA rechargeable batteries ~10.8vdc), Etón e1XM. 100kW, beamAz 138°, bearing 82°. Received at Plymouth, United States, 10777KM from transmitter at Pinheira. Local time: 2059.

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genderglyphs · 1 year

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https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-real-story-of-the-gay-middle-east/

What is the true story of the gay Middle East?

The news articles practically write themselves. Against a backdrop of ancient deserts and the ultimate clash of civilizations, the image of the secret life of oppressed gays and lesbians plays into every one of our favorite stereotypes both about the LGBT community in general and about the Middle East.

The region is already seen as “too complicated” to understand, and from what Western readers get exposed to, it’s easy to assume that the LGBT community in the Middle East looks a lot like it does in the U.S., just more oppressed.

But to get to the true story, or stories more accurately, you can’t indulge those stereotypes, and you must challenge your assumptions.

The “LGBT community in the Middle East” is not a singular entity. Although circumstances vary according to country, gender, city or urban settings, and of course from individual to individual, as a whole the queer community in the Middle East has not been granted the same “freedoms” associated with Western ideals of homosexual progress, such as gay marriage, open displays of romantic affection, and other superficial indications of acceptance in society.

Ordinary people subject to everyday violence

More importantly, the LGBT community also lacks protection from state and private persecution. But facing violence is not unique to the LGBT community. In the Middle East, activists, dissidents, and sometimes just ordinary civilians are subject to violence from occupation, dictatorship, and political suppression and censorship, often with Western support and even participation.

Of course, the Middle East suffers from rampant homophobia and queer Middle Eastern communities face specific challenges from that. But for the average gay Arab, the personal and the political intersect daily, and queer rights cannot be separated from human rights issues that affect the entire Middle East.

However, if you were to listen to the types of stories that dominate the media, the typical reader would think that the biggest issues facing LGBT people in the Middle East are based purely on their identity as a homosexual. Everyone thinks they have a hand in how queer people in the region should come out or live their lives. Some LGBT activists are so eager to “save” queers in the Middle East that they’ll speak over queers themselves.

This simplistic story denies the LGBT community in the Middle East a fundamental personhood. By taking away their voice and their agency, by pretending that gays and lesbians in the region are just chasing behind the same rainbow flag freedoms that Western queers have, these simplistic narratives inflict a violence of their own. When vulnerable communities such as women or LGBT communities or other minorities lose their agency and are painted as simply needing to be saved, the next logical conclusion is for the West to come in and do the saving, often inflicting more violence in the process.

A space for LGBT people to be themselves

This is where Ahwaa.org comes in. Launched in 2011 at the beginning of the Arab Spring, Ahwaa filled a need that was severely underserved, without a political agenda or a foreign audience. The LGBTQ community in the Middle East found an outlet for their voice to address the issues that matter the most to them – social, cultural, economic, religious, and political issues.

In a nutshell, Ahwaa is a bilingual forum for LGBTQ youth in the Middle East that leverages game mechanics to facilitate authentic, high-quality interactions. What makes Ahwaa so necessary is that it creates a safe space for LGBTQ people in the Middle East to be themselves. So many of the narratives around LGBTQ issues in the region are implicitly or explicitly supporting Western imperialism and foreign occupation, or only talk about queer issues by painting the rest of the Middle East as backwards or stuck in time.

Instead, users on Ahwaa find a space where they define their own lives, no matter what they look like. The site currently has over 5,900 registered members who speak on almost 2,000 different topics. Some topics are universal – how do you get over an ex partner, or has anyone tried an open relationship. Other topics are unique to the region. How did the Egyptian revolution affect the LGBT community? Many want to address religion and sexuality, or vent about coming out to siblings or just vent in general. While people around the world could relate to many of the topics, Ahwaa builds a space to have a conversation that is at once widely relatable and utterly Middle Eastern.

Constantly on the watch for government censors

Like many of our projects at Majal, a digital platform to amplify under-represented voices, Ahwaa has faced many security challenges. We’ve had to take extra precautions with security and privacy because of how sensitive it is to talk about LGBTQ issues in the region. We’re always on the watch for backlash from government censors and surveillance.

However, we’re just as concerned with security when it comes to our social movement-tracking project at CrowdVoice, or with Migrant Rights which speaks out against deplorable conditions for migrant workers in the Gulf. In part, Ahwaa attracts negative attention not just because it deals with controversial issues, but because it empowers its users, and empowering people is a threat to oppressive regimes all over the world.

When Ahwaa emerged in the wake of protests and uprisings across the Middle East, LGBT people and their allies saw a glimmer of hope for meaningful social change that would accompany deep political reform.

Beyond rainbow flags and Orientalist tropes

The protests have given way to more repression and violent conflict, but the hope for change is constant. Rainbow flags can’t begin to tell true stories even in the United States, much less in the Middle East. Painting all Arabs as homophobic and backwards isn’t a true story either. When LGBT people in the Middle East have access to platforms that let them tell their own stories, the real story emerges.

The true story of the LGBT community in the Middle East is even more of a page-turner than mainstream Orientalist tropes; the true story goes back centuries, a rich and dynamic narrative that weaves through colonialism and dictatorship, violence and extremism, and also embraces creativity and poetry, love and family. There are the ancient odes to same-sex love that persisted after Islam and were only forgotten after colonialism. There are the special ways that men show affection to one another that lets the unspoken exist, quiet but always present.

Behind the simple narratives, love, and same sex love, is woven into so many of the stories of the Middle East. The most powerful part of the story of the LGBT community doesn’t come from details or context. Instead, it is the agency and voice of the storyteller, and it is this agency that makes all the stories of LGBT people in the Middle East worth listening to.

Author: Esra’a Al Shafei is the founder of Majal (formerly Mideast Youth), an online network of platforms that amplify underrepresented voices in the MENA region. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Social Media.

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drinspirelives98 · 2 years

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Caste, how does it actually affect?

What is caste ? Caste is a system created by our ancestors to divide society according to social status, which mainly depends on the career pursued by people in a region.

As the people stayed in a same, restricted space for a long period, they started having common customs and daily practices as well as common language taken up and followed by people in the area.

For example, Hindus are separated by different caste such as Koundars, Chettiars , Telugus, Malayalis and so on and the cultures and languange spoken by these people varies accordingly.

But living in the 21st century, where people are intermixed not only by caste, but also among different races and nationalities, it is important for people to be open minded and be wiling to accept and respect each others cultures and natives as much as possible.

Why am I emphasizing on this ? There are still a group of people that are very much fond of the differences they find in castes. If you are a victim of this issue, I am here to say that you are not alone. Many people are affected at multiple levels due to caste, especially discrepancy in job opportunities , relationships and basically in carrying out their daily life.

People form upper caste are considered superior and people from the lower caste are snippersnappers. Why dont people see other humans as just humans and treat them with genuine love, kindness and humanity ? Is that is that hard to follow ?

I know a number of people who are under severe mental issues for being in love with people from other caste. Let me share a story. I have gone through a hard phase in my life, just because I found love, my soulmate, my everything from a different caste. This person has all the beautiful qualities that can rarely be seen in people nowadays, someone i trust the most, always been so open-minded, loyal, had never raised voice over me even though I have irritated him with this caste matter a million times and he trusted me completely and had never questioned or doubted me, even we had been in LDR for past 5 years. What more could a girl can ask for ? But I had to go through tremendous amount of pain, not only for accepting the reality that I have to give up on my dream boy, just for the sake of my family, but for the guilt of putting the person that loves me unconditionally in pain. This isn't easy. I have cried more than i've smiled in the past years, have gone through a dark time , where I failed to see light the end of the tunnel. I still havent find proper words to describe how I actually felt, but those were one of the darkest times I've ever had. As a third year dental student that time , I had to battle with the mess in my head to get my everyday work done. It was not easy. I had no one to talk abut this ,or I could say I felt like no one will ever be ready to listen or support me in this matter, even my siblings, as they can be as helpless I already am. Soon , I couldn't recognize myself and I felt as though I'm living someone else's life. I din know what was happening to me, but I clearly knew that I cannot do that for a long time.

Once the realisation hit, I started making small changes in my everyday life. In this phase, every little things matter. From the content I see in my social media feed, to the songs I listen to, change in my routine , the food I consumed could be my trigger and can pull me back to the black hole I was trying to escape from. I started going to the gym and tried to keep myself content. I started following proper diet and getting enough sleep and tried to give importance to my mental health. I was colouring, creating arts, started cooking healthy meals, and digged deeper spiritually and just anything that keep me sane. Soon, this daily practices became my new lifestyle and I became healthier and found myself in a better mental space. I wouldn't say that these practices helped me to change what had happened to me or to cure my mental damage. But it definitely helped me to find a path towards a better future, where harming myself could have happened.

After all these years and all these experiences, I still think about the same person and I dont know if I ever will get over him, but I know for sure that my healthy mental space is more important than my family or my relationships.

Many parents don't get what kind of damage caste could do to one's mental health , as most of them are only focused about their reputation in the society. Don't be surprised, marriage among different caste is still a taboo topic in most of Indian households.

I have always wanted to share my story with others as many are not ready to open up or speak about their story because of the fear of hurting their family. I wanted people to feel that there are people who are ready to listen and share whatever they are going through.

Focus on your mental health first, talk to your therapists, family or even friends who you feel comfortable with and be ready to open up.

Hope you find blog helpful to you, thank you.

#mentalhealth #caste #relationships

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amethystpath-writes · 3 years

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Buck up captain because this is gonna be a long one

Okay so the ruling family of a kingdom has been assassinated, except for the seemingly naive and reckless princess who snuck out the night before the assassination to go on a vacation. When she returns, the conniving government officials and advisors invite her to a dinner and plan to poison her food. But then she like totally flips the tables on them and calmly switches her food with the head advisor in front of everyone, and they just awkwardly sit there waiting for him to eat it (since he’s the one who invited her, he has to eat first)

The great hall was as beautiful and decorative as ever. Reema hated this room- she always had. It was part of the reasons why she snuck out last night, into the gardens, into the woods beyond the palace walls, into a world where she didn’t have to keep her chin held high with thighs pressed together beneath a dress too big and too obnoxious to sit- or stand- in. In the woods, she could shed her clothes, jump in a lake, climb out, air dry in the summer breeze, and redress. Sometimes, if she were feeling up to it, she’d throw pebbles into a village boy’s window, and invite him to go skinny-dipping with her.

Last night wasn’t one of those nights, not as she heard heavy armour clanking and swords being drawn. The woods weren’t far enough from the palace that she couldn’t hear such horrors. She could have run back, could have tried to save the crowns she knew were being destroyed, but well- Reema was safe. Why should she throw herself back into the chaos when she was so safely away from it? Reema stayed in the woods.

How did she know there was an attack against her family? Easy. All those boys from the poorer villages were such gossips, telling the princess anything as long as she thought to ask. Being the self-preserver of the family, Reema asked about any rumours involving the royals, or nobles. There weren’t many, but some of the captains had been meeting up several regions away from the core palace- something that hadn’t been authorized by the king or queen. Reema had asked them- even snuck into her mother and father's chamber and office spaces, looking for any suspicious documents. There was nothing.

So, it was clear. There would be a coup.

Naturally, the princess would have to return. The consequence of returning to the palace on her own was better than if she stayed out. Reema would be hunted down if she continued to run, hence why she was sat in the Great Hall now, with a feast in front her- steaming hot and almost ready to eat. All she, and the rest of the Cabinet, had to do was wait for the "lead duke."

The princess peered at her plate, then to the lord boy's next to her. "Well, that is a delicacy," she said to him. Her plate was riddled with unorganized slivers of asparagus lathered in some...sauce...she'd never seen. Reema didn't even like asparagus- those nasty sprouts of green.

"Say, what do you have?" She examined the plate on her left, another plate better than her own. "So that is how it is going to be." Poisoning. Did they really view her so pathetically they wouldn't even bother giving her a proper death? Reema sighed, standing from her seat and meandering to the head advisor's still-empty chair.

They all thought she was so naive, didn't they? That she wouldn't be able to spot a difference in meals. The least they could have done was give her a meal she actually liked, but then again, why waste pockets of coin on someone who would be dead within two bites anyways? It would have made sense if the princess weren't so secretly aware.

"I am not sure what rumours you have all heard, but I do so very much like a good roast." Reema reached past the massive cushioned chair and pulled the delicious dish away before setting her asparagus- they didn't even offer her any meat on her plate-down in its stead. "His Grace will not mind if his most honoured guest gets a proper meal, yes?" She took the roast back to her own seat.

Looking left and right again, the princess was delighted to see the astonished faces of the Cabinet. They did nothing- of course they wouldn't when not all of the guards were loyal to their cause. There were perhaps more guards who did support the menacing lords, but- well, who would want to take getting pierced in the heart by the few who didn't? Better to let the leading duke fall than to have five of them gutted.

The doors to the dining hall were opened and in stepped the great duke himself. "Good evening, lords and ladies. Princess, I do hope you were able to find yourself comfortable. The servants informed me of a fall you had in the woods before you came home from your little getaway."

Those hideous spies! Of course they were watching for me. Just how many people within the princess' own castle were working against her in secret?

"A minor inconvenience, Your Grace." Reema watched as the duke crossed to the other side of the table and a servant pulled out his seat. He eyed his plate; the princess had to withhold a smile. "It was only a bruise." Only a bruise from the hand of a traitorous guard gripping her arm as she approached the front gates. Her smile fell into a thin, and controlled, line.

Seeing the devious duke sit where her father once did ripped into her gut and shredded every piece of her, but the anger and cunning outwitted the pain and sorrow she felt. The duke would die and then she would move on to taking the others out- hopefully, assuming they didn't get to her first. The odds of her surviving were seeming less and less likely.

"I did want to thank you for inviting me to this meal, Your Grace. I am...appreciative to have such a gracious and caring Cabinet to step in when...what is lost is lost." When my family has been viciously killed. The gut-wrenching feeling was growing stronger with every word Reema muttered. Maybe it was wrong of her to save her own life. Maybe she should have died with her family.

As the duke examined his plate of traded vegetables, Reema couldn't help but to wonder, Do they know I know of their crimes? They must not have if they thought poisoning her would work. Now, however, the duke eyed her with contempt.

"Shall we eat, Your Grace? The host always dines first." It would have been nice to admit that she felt quite nice having made such a statement, but seeing the way the duke's lower jaw jutted out made her nervous enough to swallow. No one at the rest of the table was objecting as His Grace forked a green stem, though.

The duke cleared his throat and eyed a servant standing nearby. "I believe I asked for the roast along with our guests."

"Perhaps we should just eat," said someone else at the table. Looking, Reema saw a knight- one who was once close with her brother. So, the knight was against killing the royal family at least. The princess would need to talk to him after this meal was over, see if he was willing to help her escape the same fate as her family. He might need saving, too. No one else in the Cabinet spoke up for a reason- it would make one a target.

"My Grace, I apologize, but there is no more roast. It was divided evenly between each guest member, except for the dish of-" The servant was cut off with a quick shush, though many may have called it a hiss.

Lifting the fork to his lips, the duke stared at a wall above everyone's head. Perhaps he was facing Death herself in those moments he bit into the green vegetable. His nose twitched, but the rest of the effects did not take place until minutes later. He coughed, gripping his throat as everyone was digging into their own meals.

Reema did not touch her plate- just in case the rest of the Cabinet had been planning to poison the duke already. It was perhaps paranoid, but when she was sat at a table of people fully willing to kill her family, she would have been dense to assume they would not try their hand at killing each other as well.

When the duke's coughs turned to chokes, the table was dismissed by one of the lords, presumably one who would next try his hand at leading the betraying Cabinet.

Standing from her seat, Reema rushed to her brother's friend, the knight, but both she and he were stopped. Her, by the arm of the lord boy who sat to her right- and the knight, by three separate men. The only reason the lord boy could stop Reema was because his hand laid where her bruise was.

"Let go of me, now."

"I am to escort you to your rooms," the boy said, certainly not letting go, and even going as far as to tighten his grip on her.

Reema, with little thought, shoved him with her free hand, unknowingly gaining the attention of those working to restrain the knight. "Under whose orders? I am your princess- queen." She was the queen now, wasn't she? Not officially, for there had not been a coronation to prestige her, but yes. Reema was Queen now. "You will release me this instant."

A new voice interceded. "No can do, Princess." The lord who dismissed dinner. Reema rolled her eyes, ceasing her small efforts of rebellion and control. "No more adventures into the woods. However you snuck there before, I have not a clue, but I promise you this; it will not be happening again." A breath. "Son, I believe I told you to take her away."

With a quick and high-pitched laugh, the princess shrugged a shoulder- her free one, of course. The lord boy was Sir Big Lord's son, huh? Perfect.

If the lord had been a Lady of the Court, Reema might have used a fist aimed high. Being a lord, though, all she had to do was jut a knee up.

The lord fell to a knee, hands over his groin. The son, in turn, released the princess- as she so pleasantly requested before.

Now, she just had to face the rest of the Cabinet in order to reach the knight. The ladies wouldn't be an issue. They valued their reputable poise and silent seething too much to intervene- especially when they knew the princess was willing to physically fight her new opponents in order to fend for herself. It was the men- the ones with swords on their...a realization dawned on Reema.

Swords and other weapons were taken from Cabinet members when they entered the Great Hall. Those would be outside the great doors. And although Reema's nails were riddled with dirt, they were still long and sharp.

Reema would claw her way to the knight if she had to.

#request fill #this was a long request so I hope I did the idea justice!#I meamt to finish this in a day like usual but one day became like four. this weekend was nuts.#alright- normal tags #medieval #medieval writing #royal assassination #assassination #poisoning #death #um #royal #royalty #??#royal whumpee #what else #royal whump #Okat that's all I've got

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alionne · 3 years

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3 | Scale

Stormblood spoilers up to & including the level 69 dungeon. 1409 words.

When Alionne first spied the figure, she thought it was a daydream, brought to life by her own desires. An unidentified male insurgent had destroyed the cannon at Specula Imperatoris, Stark had said. Which beggared belief, Alphinaud had pointed out. And Alionne’s thoughts had drifted to one such person, location unknown, with the strength to do such a thing.

Well. Mayhaps not anymore, not without the Eyes of Nidhogg. But those, too, had turned up in Gyr Abania, had they not? Perhaps he’d chased them, and… found the Eorzean Alliance, being attacked by a cannon, and… destroyed it, but without notifying anyone else?

It was the most ridiculously dramatic chain of events Alionne could imagine, which honestly made it sound more and more like Estinien, now that she’d thought about it. So, mayhaps he’d been on her mind while assaulting Castrum Abania. Mayhaps she’d looked for him, even, though if he had been the one to destroy the cannon, he’d certainly have left by now.

She hadn’t been thinking of Estinien in the command room, though— she’d been achingly worried for Alisaie, and then furious at Fordola, and Zenos, baffled by his invitation. She’d hefted Alisaie in her arms, and then looked back for one last glance in the direction Fordola had disappeared, hoping to catch a glimpse of the magitek armor bearing her away.

And instead, she’d seen… well. She couldn’t be sure. But armor did glint in a very particular way, and the shape of it had been so familiar...

Another moment, and it disappeared. She forced her gaze away, back to more important matters—Alisaie might no longer be bleeding out on the floor, but she still needed transport.

But, on the ground, Alisaie safely spirited away, they’d had a lull, the recent battle won, the next one not planned yet. A chance to catch their breath. And Alionne had never been one for resting, and she was curious…

She spies Lyse with Raubahn, which means the girl probably won’t do anything too foolhardy tonight. It takes a few minutes until the new leader of the Ala Mhigan resistance can be pulled aside, but Alionne eventually finds her chance. “Do you still have that climbing gear?”

“The stuff we used for Nyunkrepf’s Hope? I… yes, I do,” says Lyse, confused. “Are you planning another trip? We did just climb it.”

“I was thinking about it,” admits Alionne, though she doesn’t say why. “I’m feeling a little restless, and I thought a short camping trip might be a nice way to tire me out.”

“Shall I come with you, then?” Lyse asks, as if it were already decided, and Alionne scrambles to think of a reason why she should go alone.

“Oh! No need! You’re the new leader of the resistance, you should make yourself available to everyone!” says Alionne, a little too eagerly, she scolds herself. “They’ve known you as a comrade, but I don’t know that they’ve all had the chance to see you as a leader, yet. Or to realize that you’re just as approachable now as you were before, you know?”

“I... suppose that’s true,” says Lyse, reluctantly. “But, you will be careful, won’t you? I’d hate to find you injured, or worse, because a golem got a lucky shot in, or you fell off a cliff.”

“I can handle myself,” Alionne tells her firmly, thinking of several cliffs she’s stepped off of willingly, without issue. Although, don’t tell her that, that’s not going to inspire confidence… instead, she winks at Lyse. “You won’t even notice I’m gone, promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that!” Lyse threatens, but she lets Alionne depart Ala Ghiri without further protest.

Retracing her steps is easy, automatic. As Lyse had pointed out, she’d just been here, and it leaves her mind free to wander.

Alisaie, Krile, and Y’shtola are all out of commission… although that feels like an understatement, in Krile’s case. The Resistance has won the Fringes and the Peaks, and no doubt there will be a plan to secure more of Ala Mhigo in the morning. Doma is freed, and Zenos’ attention is… on her, if Fordola’s unnerving eye contact had meant anything, but better her than anyone else.

Like the mysterious assailant who destroyed their cannons, she thinks, and then she’s thinking of Estinien again, as she hitches her rope to the first point Lyse had shown her.

It may not have been Estinien, she reminds herself. It could have been a trick of the light, or another wanderer. Even if it was, there’s no reason to think he’s still lingering here, now that the Resistance has taken Castrum Abania and the region is safe. Most likely, you’ll enjoy a nice climb and enjoy a nice view.

And with that, she pushes the dragoon out of her mind, focusing her attention on the climb. The dust on her palms, the edge of the rock digging into the pads of her fingers, the rough fibers of the rope as she loops it around her arm.

It’s a meditation, though not one that comes easily to her. Her thoughts turn to Fordola’s deep conviction and unnatural speed in the command room, and then she wrests them away, forcing herself to instead consider the cool desert air. Zenos’ “hunt” pops into her mind, and for a moment, she pauses, filled equally with the desire to fight and a worry about the outcome, but a burning in her arms forces her to refocus on the task at hand. Three-quarters of the way up, Alionne pauses on a small outcropping and suddenly thinks that Hien and Aymeric would like each other. If she weren’t so out of breath, she’d laugh at how unexpected, but right, the thought is.

The stars are coming out, and it reminds her of the Steppe and the Churning Mists and Thanalan all at once. The cliff, Alionne reminds herself, again. She feels a pleasant ache in her legs as she gets to her feet.

The last quarter will be slow-going, because even though Alionne’s already scaled this exact cliff in this exact way, it hadn’t been night last time. “What I wouldn’t give for a sodding chocobo right now,” she mutters to herself, and, alright, maybe she’s not trying to meditate anymore. Maybe she’s not avoiding thoughts of Estinien, either.

The thing is, if Alionne were a reclusive dragoon, this is the exact spot she’d hole up for a few days while her friends distracted the Empire. The ruins offer some measure of protection from inquisitive parties, and it’s very, maddeningly, stupidly high, she thinks, glaring at the rock face. Because gods forbid a dragoon stay on the bloody ground like anyone else, assuming there even is a godsdamned dragoon at the top of this godsdamned cliff, which there probably isn’t because Alionne has probably invented him, because she’s been looking for a familiar silhouette on top of every building she’s passed for months, ever since Aymeric had suggested that she’d be the most likely to see him of all of them, because he’s an uncommunicative, reclusive bastard.

And mayhaps frustration has propelled Alionne more quickly than expected, because she’s got a hand atop the cliff, now. The edge is an easy hold, and she lets the rest of her body weight hang, for a moment.

She’s too tired to lie about the feeling fluttering in her breast—she’s nervous. She’s been pretending all evening that it doesn’t matter if she finds him at the top, but she’d clearly come all this way for something. And even if Estinien is up here, she’s only going to find him if he wants to be found. Which he probably doesn’t, or he’d have contacted the Scions, or helped the Resistance, or even just been somewhere vaguely approachable.

You’re being ridiculous, Alionne tells herself, but something fond uncurls within her as she thinks it. It’s nice, to be nervous about something ridiculous, for once, instead of something potentially life- and nation-threatening. She’d climbed all this way, and here she was, hesitating on the very last step, for no good reason.

And just as she’s resolved to move, a hand grasps her wrist and starts to haul her the rest of the way up.

“Only a fool would climb a cliffside like this at night,” a reassuringly familiar voice growls at her.

“And only a fool would be waiting at the top,” she replies sweetly, and finds her feet at last.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2021 #estinien #lyse #me: well let's not lock down ships too early #also me: yeah but wol/aymeric/estinien tho

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oss-crime · 3 years

Text

Afterword and Work Explanations

Original Sin Story: Crime afterword

This work is a novelization of the Act 1 portion of the “Original Sin Story” doujin CDs distributed by the “the heavenly yard” circle, and it’s also a prequel to the “Daughter of Evil” and “Deadly Sins of Evil” series published by PHP institute.

The “Deadly Sins of Evil” series, similar to this work, all had their main motifs taken from songs published previously by their writer (mothy_AkunoP), and it’s also a series that was developed over close to a decade.

In these works a span of almost a thousand years passes over the course of the series, and the following order is how it goes chronologically.

“Original Sin Story”-->”The Lunacy of Duke Venomania”-->”Evil Food Eater Conchita”-->”Daughter of Evil (four books total)”-->Gift From the Princess Who Brought Sleep”-->”Fifth, Pierrot”-->”Tailor of Enbizaka”-->”Judgment of Corruption”-->”The Muzzle of Nemesis”-->”Master of the heavenly yard”

In other words, the “Original Sin Story” is the “Story of the Beginning” that occurs in these series.

And depicted in it are the backstories for the figures that debut in the other works like “Adam”, “Eve”, and “Seth”, as well as the details of the creation of the key items, the “Vessels of Deadly Sin”.

…Though, since the part depicted in this work is just the first act of the “Original Sin Story” albums, any further core content will be carried over into the next book.

My initial plan was to collect all of it into one volume, but during the progression of the plot I went “Ah, this is totally impossible” and gave up on that.

In the end I decided to split it into two volumes, but even so there were a few developments I was unable to depict in this book that would also be difficult to have in the next one.

(There was the issue of page number, but I also just wanted to avoid making the story tedious with too many digressions)

For that reason I wanted to talk roughly here about the conceptual elements I could only allude to briefly or that were cut altogether.

Magic Kingdom Levianta (the story’s setting)

As shown in the main work, it’s a country whose territory is the entire northern region of Evillious, and it was founded by excavators of the legacy of the Second Period (the era wherein lived those called “Gods” like Levia and Behemo).

The true identity of these “excavators” was a clan of sorcerers, and it all started when they set their eyes on these legacy pieces as tools to more easily make use of their magical arts.

The more powerful a magical spell, the more time and preparation it would take to set it in motion. The one to realize that by using these artifacts as an intermediary they could greatly simplify the process was the sorceress who would later become the first queen of Magic Kingdom Levianta, Alice Merry-Go-Round.

Alice hired on some help and began to mine the area around the LeviaBehemo temple where many of these artifacts slept, however it was there that the original inhabitants began to put up resistance.

These natives believed that the twin-headed dragon LeviaBehemo was a divine being, and they viewed Alice and the others who would desecrate their temple as sinners.

In order to protect the boundaries of her territory, Alice built an enormous wall around the temple.

That later came to be called the “First Wall”.

As time passed the “Second Wall” and “Third Wall” were erected, and eventually a castle took shape.

Alice named this castle Alicegrad, and declared the foundation of the country she would rule as queen, Levianta.

Even still, the pushback from the natives continued.

For the prosperity of her country, Alice decided to adopt several governmental policies to make peace with the natives.

The first was to worship LeviaBehemo as gods.

And that she would take twelve members to serve as her immediate subordinates, half of whom would be sorcerers that Alice had trained herself, and the other half being representatives chosen by the native inhabitants.

Through this reconciliation between the natives and the sorcerers, and the miraculous blessings brought about by the legacy pieces, Levianta began to walk the road of glory.

After the first queen’s death her sorceress daughter inherited her position, and at the same time also took on her mother’s name of “Alice”. That was a last ditch effort to at least somewhat maintain her majesty, the daughter being lacking in charisma compared to her mother.

But from that point on, all of the queens historically inherited the name of “Alice Merry-Go-Round”.

The current queen, “Alice Merry-Go-Round”, that shows up in the main story is the seventh queen.

The Senate

The central organization of Magic Kingdom Levianta made up of the first queen’s twelve subordinates, as well as their descendants.

Each of them are respectively responsible for running one of the twelve small towns that surround the castle.

That the senate was tightly unified through history…would be something of a lie; there exists a particularly large gap in the relationship between the six families descended from sorcerers (such as Loop Octopus, or Vaju) and the six descended from natives (like Asayev and Li).

Furthermore, in the process of Gammon becoming head of the senate the Vaju family’s assets were taken over by the Loop Octopus family, resulting in there being two members of the Loop Octopus family in the senate (Gammon and his younger brother, who was the family’s main heir).

The Forest of Held

There might be a bit of a discrepancy in the depiction of the Forest of Held (The Millennium Tree Forest) in the main work for those of you who have already read the “Daughter of Evil” and “Deadly Sins of Evil” series.

In the “Daughter of Evil” works, this forest isn’t in the country of Levianta, existing on the Elphegort~Lucifenian border far further south than the forbidden land of Nemu (the ruins of Nemu village).

In the time of the “Original Sin Story” the area around Nemu village was Leviantan territory, and furthermore the forest sat in great abundance just south of the village.

I plan to make clear the reason for the forest being curtailed by close to half its size in the next work.

Lighwatch Temple

A facility meant to cultivate “queen candidates” run by the Asayev family, and also an extremely suspicious place containing cells and execution devices. Almost like a certain tower

Those able to be selected as shrine maidens are girls who have the power of an “Inheritor of Held”. Through this power they are able to erase “malice” from people’s hearts, and also hear the “voice of god”.

Its head priest, Yegor Asayev, has the power of an “Inheritor of Behemo”, and with his particular insight he is able to determine if another person has an “Inheritor” power. He used this ability to gather his shrine maidens.

Only, Yegor keeps it hidden from the public that the shrine maidens are “Inheritors”.

Zellana and Elluka, who appeared in this work, are blood sisters of disparate ages. Their parents are long dead.

Research regarding “ghoul children”

Originally, Horus (Seth) had inherited the research of his “friend” who had been “the authority on the study of artificial life”.

These research theories also were utilized in the birth of the “Twins of God” in Project “Ma”.

The “ghoul children” he created had the trait of being able to grow up very rapidly, but this had the side effect of making them age rapidly as well.

Seth worked hard to suppress this side effect, but he seems to have been unable to completely avert it.

And to make these “ghoul children” active, he needed to implant in them a reserve false personality.

The false personality had several varieties to it, such as “clean”, “preset”, or “copy”; as the name suggests, “clean” was a blank slate with no memories, “preset” had false memories that were pre-made, and “copy” was implanted with Seth’s own memories.

Furthermore, having advanced in his research on “Inheritors”, Seth was able to utilize his results on a certain “ghoul child”.

Through this, that artificial human gained the power of an “Inheritor of Gilles”, but as a side effect it results in several problems surfacing with their false personality.

Catherine

--Once upon a time.

Catherine, a marine biologist, boarded a space ship called the “Climb I” with her husband Gilles.

She had a son with her husband, but he had been sickly, and thus was unable to become a member of the crew.

Catherine continued to lament this fact, and also grew jealous of a female psychologist named Rahab, another passenger on the ship.

That was because Rahab had two children, and both of them had been able to board the “Climb I”.

When she realized that this Rahab and Gilles were having an affair, Catherine’s jealousy turned to “anger”.

Enlisting the help of her friend, Lich, Catherine tried to secretly murder Rahab inside the spaceship.

But…she had the tables turned on her, and was brought to the brink of death.

As her consciousness faded—Catherine saw looking down on her was the man she had thought was her friend, smiling.

By the time she had realized that it was “malice” taking on Lich’s form, it was already too late.

--If I write any more than this it’ll end up spoiling some of the next book, so I’ll leave it here.

Well then…Let’s meet again in the sequel, “Original Sin Story: Punishment”!

AkunoP (mothy)

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mandadoration · 4 years

Text

you’re a fine girl - i

summary: Agent Whiskey would really like you to say his real name for once, and you refuse, playing this little game of his until he finally makes you say it. The circumstances for it aren’t exactly ideal, though.

word count: 3, 758

pairing: agent whiskey (Jack Daniels) x reader

warnings: canon-typical violence (and then some), swearing

a/n: Don’t ask me how the layout of Statesman HQ works. I really don’t know, and I’ve watched the movie to try and glean some more info, but I’ve decided, like many things, to bullshit it. This will have a predetermined length of three chapters!

chapters: i

Read this on AO3

You think it’s hilarious just how stereotypically American the Statesman agency was. Besides the front of it, a Bourbon whiskey distillery that just happens to have racehorses (you never understood that part) on a large expanse of land and have a large influence on the liquor industry all over the US, the agents that were a part of it were just so in-your-face full-blooded American. Hell, even your equipment reflected that, with electric lassos and souped-up sawed-off double barrel shotguns, to cowboy boots with razor sharp spurs and Stetsons designed for stealth and espionage. Statesman was 100% committed to proudly showing off their roots. But you couldn’t really shit on them too much since you were one of their agents as well. That would be severely discrediting you and the work you do.

Even if some of the agents teasingly call you a city-slicker.

Although you were a Statesman through and through like your mother before you, you had been raised on the less… southern half of the country because of where she was mainly stationed. Good ol’ New York was a whole different territory than Kentucky. She had still made sure you kept up with your training and be ready at a moment’s notice to take over for her. Statesman were proud of their line of agents, names often passed down from parent to child. Built in loyalty, you supposed, and a good way to keep an eye on those who knew secrets. As the world expanded and keeping the peace grew harder by the minute, they’ve strayed far from that tradition, and the organization grew to include people that had no prior connection to it. Your mom had been insistent she at least stay true to that part of Statesman, and often showed you how to watch over New York from the high rise building to groom you for the position in the future until you graduated from your unofficial codename of Ice Tea. But you had moved south to live on a small ranch a few miles from the distillery after she had died on a recon mission instead of staying up north in the concrete jungle. You inherited her position and her moniker as Agent Brandy, supervisor of the intelligence part of the agency and relocating to home base at the same time, but Agent Whiskey had taken up position up in New York in your stead.

Speaking of Whiskey, there he was, sauntering up to you with a smile playing on his lips as you flicked through reports on your tablet. You spare him a quick glance and a polite smile before you turn your attention back to the reports and mission debriefs, hoping that was enough to leave you alone, but instead he leans against your desk and crosses his arms, and you try your damndest not to look at how his arms make the seams on his jacket strain.

There’s no animosity between you and Whiskey at all, and you’ve said as much when Champagne informed him he would be taking over the New York territory instead of you. You didn’t feel guilty or mad or anything really that you decided to move closer to Statesman because it was your choice, and Whiskey had taken it in stride. You two were just doing your jobs, and that was all. You would even go to say that you were close friends with him, giving him pointers about the secrets of New York while he told you all the gossip about the other agents. The work he did would make your mother proud.

But why was he so insistent on hanging around at the Statesman headquarters in Kentucky so much?

“Your mission debrief isn’t scheduled until Tuesday, Agent Whiskey,” you say, eyes roving over your calendar before swiftly swiping it off your screen to pay closer attention to Tequila’s report. That man was awful with writing. Did he even have the spell check on? You click your tongue and run the editing software, intent on letting that run in the background while you browsed through various agent requests (there was Gin asking if you could fashion a 200 proof liquor), but Whiskey puts a hand on your tablet and pushes it out of your view.

“I know, sugar,” he says in that damn Southern accent that manages to make your ears burn. “Just thought I’d come down here to see my favorite intelligence supervisor.” You roll your eyes, but can’t help the smile that threatens to split your face. You turn your tablet off and put it down.

“Do you know many intelligence supervisors?” you ask, but your efforts to get him to leave are already an afterthought at the back of your mind. Every time you hold a conversation with him, the amalgamation of your New York and Southern accent sounds crass compared to the honeyed drawl of Whiskey. Two completely different regions. You suppose he might feel the same whenever he’s in New York. Perhaps you two had more in common than you had initially thought.

You’re off track. It’s maddening how easily he is able to pull a smile or a laugh from you and completely derail you. Even on the worst of your days, he’s able to ease you with just a reassuring smile or touch. Whiskey shrugs and shifts where he sits.

“You got me there,” he laughs. “But that don’t mean I can’t come see you, does it?” You rest your chin on your hand as you fiddle with your tablet pen. He’s trimmed his mustache, you note.

“I suppose it doesn’t, Agent Whiskey,” you say. Anytime he flies over to the Statesman HQ, you usually see him the same day he lands, if not, you’re the first thing he goes to see. It’s sweet.

“What does it take for me to convince you to call me Jack, sweetheart?” Whiskey asks, nearly whines, really. He’s been insisting you call him by his real name in private recently, insisting that you were far past those formalities.

“When you stop calling me those pet names of yours,” you retort back. He looks mock-offended.

“That’s never gonna happen,” Whiskey says. You raise an eyebrow.

“Then there you have your answer,” you say simply, and go to pick up your tablet again when it chimes, but Whiskey stops you and pushes it back down flat against the desk.

“You work too much,” he says, as if that was a decent enough reason to interrupt your work. “Pay some attention to me instead.”

“And I’m starting to think you don’t work enough,” you sigh, and slide the tablet out from under his hand and you turn it back on and check over the editing software. “God knows you spend enough time pestering me.” You don’t tell him that you don’t mind. In the hectic pace in your lives, Whiskey is a nice constant that you find yourself falling back on.

The software has managed to fix most of the typos and obvious grammar issues, but it’s mangled the nuances of Tequila’s informal writing. You sigh again and swipe the report onto your computer screen to manually edit it before you can send it to Champagne. Whiskey hops off of your desk, and he walks around it to lean over your shoulder to skim the report as well.

He’s close enough for you to smell his cologne. Smoky, mellow, and warm.

“Why don’t you just send that off to Ginger to edit? Or Soda?” he asks, voice rumbling in your ear. “‘m sure you have other things to do other than grade Tequila’s piss poor work.” You clear your throat and try your best not to become too distracted.

“They don’t have high enough clearance to read this report,” you answer. “Nor do I think they have the patience to. Besides, Ginger is tech and Soda is medical. They’d either shoot themselves or shoot me.” Whiskey laughs and leans in a little closer.

“But I have the clearance to read this as you edit?” he asks, voice low. “You flatter me, Brandy.” You blink, then gasp, whirling around in your chair and narrowly missing clipping his chin with the back of your chair as you push him away from you and back around your desk, smacking him as you do.

“You are a menace!” you exclaim. Whiskey just laughs, humoring you and letting you push him when it would be frightfully easy to just stand there. He blocks your hits and eventually grabs a hold of your wrists to stop you.

“You love it,” he says, and your face flushes as you try to scowl at him.

“Get out of my office so I can finish this report,” you order, pointing at the door. Whiskey pouts, but makes his way to the door.

“Yes, ma’am,” he sighs. He tips his hat at you. “You be a good girl while I’m gone, sweet thing,” he says in a sing-song voice, and the door clicks shut behind him before you can do some serious bodily harm to his person.

---

You don’t really know what constitutes being “a good girl”, and you don’t really have the chance to find out because you meet with Whiskey again a few hours after he had barged into your office when Champagne calls you up to discuss some technicalities that he had remained vague on.

It’s a short underground tube ride to the Statesman office building a few miles outside the distillery, and an even shorter elevator up to the top floor. Whiskey is already there when you walk in, so you go ahead and take a seat across from him, pulling up your notes in case anything important pops up. You give him a small wave, and he tips his hat at you with a smile. You turn to the man sitting at the head of the table.

“Well, Champ,” Whiskey says, “why’d you call us here?” Champagne fiddles with the lid of a decanter of whiskey before he smacks his lips together and leans back in his chair.

“Statesman is considering adding another location in California, and I need your expertise,” he announces. He motions to you. “Sent the plans to your tablet, Brandy, but here’s the gist.” The t.v. screen at the other end of the table switches from Statesman stocks to a blueprint of a high rise located in San Francisco, alongside some smaller buildings scattered over the city. “I’m planning on sending Chardonnay over to oversee construction, but this is only the third location to be located in such a large city.” You skim over the notes. Although they wouldn’t be building a distillery, there would be a sub-HQ over there, as well as some Statesman-sponsored bars to keep up surveillance. “The first one being New York, and the other in Nevada.”

“Is there something we should keep an eye on?” you ask, scrolling through various material requests. While the other could handle the usual materials, you would have to put in a special order for the military grade stuff. “What’s the occasion?” Champagne shrugs when you glance over your tablet.

“It’s been something I’ve been thinking about,” he says. “Stocks are doing good, and there's no looming threat- seems like a good time as any.” You nod.

“Then why us?” Whiskey asks. “I think Brandy is more than capable of handling this herself.” Champagne furrows his brows.

“You are in charge of our New York office, aren’t you?”

“Brandy grew up preparing to take over for it,” Whiskey says.

“Well--”

“He’s right, sir,” you pipe in. “Whiskey’s about to go in for a mission anyways. There’s no point loading his already full plate. I can handle it.” Champagne presses his mouth in a hard line, but eventually taps the table.

“Alright then. Brandy, I’ll let Chardonnay know you’ll be taking part in it so he can refer to you with questions. Agents, you’re dismissed.”

Whiskey moves for the door, but pauses when you don’t follow him. You wave him off. “I’ll catch up with you; just need to talk to Champagne about something.” He nods, and leaves. You back around to face Champagne with narrowed eyes. “What are you up to, old man?” He tilts his head and pours some whiskey into his glass.

“What do you mean?”

“Bringing Whiskey into this,” you clarify. “You know I can handle this project by myself; why try to rope him in?”

“Thought it be a good experience,” Champagne says, taking a sip and swishing it around his mouth before he turns to spit it out into the spitoon. You wrinkle your nose.

“For Whiskey?”

“For the both of you,” he corrects. “Whiskey gets to learn more about the technical aspects, you get to, well, spend time with him.” You raise an eyebrow.

“And I want to spend time with him because…?”

“Don’t you know?” Champagne asks. You shake your head.

“What? We’re good friends, but we’ve got different jobs,” you say. “So I don’t see a reason why I should be spending time with him outside of what’s necessary.” Champagne just hums with a pensive look on his face.

“Alright then, girl.” He waves a hand at you. “Off to work.” And Champagne doesn’t elaborate any further.

---

You are far too busy trying to sort out the semantics of some sort of stirrings of a coup on a Chilean website to go and debrief Whiskey when Tuesday rolls around, so you send Ginger in your stead. She accepts without complaint, but you can see how she frowns when you tell her so. You’ve never gotten the details as to why the two never seem to get along, but Ginger is the most capable person you can think of to take care of things when you’re not able to.

It takes you a solid 45 minutes to try and go through the Chilean Spanish compared to the Castilian variant you know, but you determine that the rumors of a coup bears no real weight and all it is are empty threats despite the traction it’s gained so far. You suppose you could’ve run the translation, but there were too many nuances and codes that couldn’t be translated over. Just to be sure, you set up a surveillance bot to continue to track the progress and alert you if anything significant happens. By the time you do, Ginger walks in, looking a little frazzled. You frown. “You good, Liz?” Ginger just puts down the debrief folder on your desk as she plops down in the chair across from you. You raise an eyebrow, but slide the folder over and survey the notes she’s taken during the debrief. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just Whiskey complaining that he has to fly to Spain to deal with some black market firearms dealers that have gotten too confident. Apparently last time he was there, some sailors tried to swindle him. There’s some quotes of his with choice words in the margins saying so, accompanied by a doodle of him with an angry expression. “Whiskey give you a hard time?” you guess. She nods and takes off her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose.

“I honestly don’t understand how you can stand him sometimes,” she says. You shrug.

“He treats me fine, if not a little persistent,” you note mildly. Ginger snorts and puts her glasses back on. “Hasn’t given me a reason to dislike him. Yet.”

“That’s ‘cause he likes you,” she says. Your stomach flutters at her comment. Then after a moment of pondering, Ginger says, “Think he was in a bad mood because you weren’t the one debriefing him.” You frown.

“Would it have mattered if I did?” you ask. “You’re perfectly capable.”

“It’s not capability,” Ginger sighs, leaning forward and resting her forearms on your desk. The motion jostles the cup of pens on your desk and you reach to adjust it back to its place. You click a few things on your computer to pull up the flight details for Whiskey. Scheduled for 5:50pm, an overnight flight that lands in a remote location in Madrid where then he would be promptly escorted to Andalucia.

You wonder if he’ll come visit you before he leaves.

You shake the thought out of your head before you go back to look at Ginger, who’s looking at you curiously. “If not capability, then what?” you ask, fighting to keep down the blush that’s threatening to overtake your face.

“You really don’t know?” she asks, almost critically. You furrow your brows. There’s that question again.

“Is there something I should know?”

Before Ginger can answer, a knock resounds at your door. You give Ginger an apologetic look before you call out, “Come in!” You don’t know why you’re surprised, but it’s Whiskey, again, with a bright smile on his face before his eyes darken at the sight of Ginger. She bristles.

“I’ll see you later,” she says, reaching over and giving your hand a small pat before she gets up to brush past Whiskey, and she closes the door behind you. Whiskey seems to relax at that, and takes the seat she was in.

“If you’re here to complain about going to Spain, Agent Whiskey, I can’t do anything about it,” you immediately say before he can get a word in. He takes off his hat and puts it on your desk, running a hand through his hair.

“I wasn’t here to complain,” Whiskey says, chuckling. “You wound me, Brandy.” He puts a hand over his heart and stares at you with a woefully sad face, looking at you with big, warm brown eyes, akin to a kicked puppy. “Missed my favorite intelligence supervisor at the debriefing.” You throw a pen at him, but he just catches it and puts it in with the rest without breaking eye contact.

“Doubt you’re here just to see me,” you say. “Shouldn’t you be packing for your flight?”

“I’ve got time,” Whiskey says. “If I remember correctly, it’s not until 6:00. Gives me a little under 2 hours until I gotta leave.”

“5:50,” you correct him automatically. “So less than that. You’ll wanna leave in an hour or so to account for traffic.” The grin that spreads across his face makes your heart beat a little faster.

“You keepin’ track of when I’m ‘bout to leave?” he purrs, leaning forward. You scoff, but think in the back of your mind that there’s some truth to that.

“I’m the one that booked your flight with Triple Sec,” you say dryly. “Be weird if I didn’t know what time exactly, Agent Whiskey.” Whiskey hums, but leans back in his chair and spreads his legs in an almost obscene matter that leaves you thrumming in your skin.

“Jack,” he says.

“Hm?”

“My name is Jack.” You laugh.

“I know what your name is, Agent,” you say. “It’s kinda my job to know everybody. Feel like we’ve already talked about this about a million times by now.”

“Still, it’d be nice to hear you say it,” he says, almost absentmindedly as he picks at his nails, brows furrowed in a vulnerable expression. Your face falls at his soft tone. To be honest, your refusal to say his name was more because you perceived it as a game. Whiskey would press you to actually call him by his name, and you would coyly refuse, and he would leave with a promise that he would get you to say it one way or another. But something is clearly bugging him.

You reach a hand forward, towards him, touching the other edge of your desk. Close enough for him to reach for it. His gaze snaps to your hand, and something tells you that Whiskey wants to. There is some kind of longing in his eyes that the firm, hard line of his mouth is trying its hardest not to betray. “You okay?” Whiskey’s fingers twitch. Something holds him back.

He clears his voice, forcing a smile on his face, and the moment is broken. “Right as rain, sugar,” he says. “Pre-mission jitters, I suppose.” You suppose that’s not totally unwarranted. Whiskey would be going on into the field on his own due to the delicacy of the mission, the only backup available being Triple Sec piloting the plane. And, well, Whiskey didn’t exactly blend in with the typical Madrid population with his loud voice and louder personality. Statesman didn’t have a base out in Europe either. You give him a reassuring smile, and you try not to think too hard at how the tension seems to melt out of him at that.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” you soothe. You retract your hand, and honestly at this point it seems as though Agent Whiskey has taken up permanent residence in your mind because you swear you spot some sort of deep emotion as his eyes trail after it. “Just like you always do, Whiskey.” The muscles in Whiskey’s jaw work as he clenches his teeth together before he claps his hands and stands up, that same charming smile on his face but not quite reaching his eyes.

“Well I suppose that is some improvement!” he says. You tilt your head.

“What do you mean?” Whiskey pulls the flask off his belt and takes a swig.

“Got you to say my codename without all the preamble, now, didn’t I?” he says, winking at you. You stammer and flush red with embarrassment. He holds up his hands in surrender. “Now before you start wailing on me like last time,” he says, “I’ll see myself out. Like you said, I still need to pack. I’ll see if I can bring back a souvenir for you while I’m across the pond.” You cross your arms.

“That won’t be necessary.” Whiskey shrugs and heads for the door.

“Can’t stop me, can you?” You smile at him.

“Guess not,” you say, almost to yourself, then your gaze falls to his hat still sitting on your desk. “Wait, Whiskey, your--” He holds up a hand.

“Hold on to it while I’m gone, ‘kay?” he asks. You nod. “Good girl. Give me something to look forward to when I come back.” You make a motion to grab a pen, bursting out laughing when he moves to catch it when you feign a throw. He smiles, too, more genuinely this time. “See you in a couple days, darling.”

And you can’t help but start to miss him when the door clicks shut behind him.

---

Forever Tag: @mabelleen @mando-vibes @isaissafail @adikaofmandalore

#agent whiskey x reader #agent whiskey reader #agent whiskey x you #whiskey x reader #whiskey x you #whiskey reader #jack daniels x reader #jack daniels x you #jack daniels reader #jack daniels you #kingsman reader #kingsman #agent whiskey #whiskey #jack daniels #kingsman the golden circle #my writing

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canaryrecords · 3 years

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A collection of early 20s Armenian-American indie recordings by the same name was issued by Canary 5 years ago, but having so swollen, we have broken it into 2 parts. This redux (20 songs) focuses on the MG Parsekian label; the other (now renamed A Diamond Ring) is now 23 tracks. New, more vivid transfers and restorations have been produced of all of the material as well as 1,500 words of notes with major contributions by Harry Kezelian . A significant snapshot of the moment in the development of Armenian and Greek musics in the U.S.

Margadich “George” Parsekian (b. present-day Diyarbakir, May 1883) arrived in the U.S. about the age of 14. By 1905, he was settled in northern New Jersey and working as a salesman. Among his streams of income was importing disc recordings from Turkey for the immigrant community. In 1912, he apparently approached Columbia Records in New York City with the prospect of recording a handful of immigrant musicians from present-day eastern and southern Turkey, resulting in three sessions in September and October of that year that yielded a total of 10 discs issued as part of Columbia’s “E” (ethnic) series. These were the first commercial recordings made in the U.S. in the Turkish language. (See the Canary release And Two Partridges for 14 of those 20 sides.) Both Columbia and Victor issued several dozen more discs in Turkish during World War I before essentially ending recording of Turkish and Armenian (and Arabic) language domestic recording in 1919, although they kept some of the discs in print for more than a decade and occasionally produced recordings in Turkish, particularly by Greeks, notably by Achilleas Poulos.

In the early 20s, Parsekian capitalized on the expiration of patents related to the technology of disc recording, launching his own recording label and disc-manufacturing facility in what was then West Hoboken (now Union City), New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan. Parsekian’s label issued about 40 discs between about 1923 and 1926, the first 30 of which were recorded acoustically (that is to say, mechanically, without the use of electricity or microphones). It stands to reason that Parsekian’s factory was also responsible for manufacturing recordings by other independent Armenian-owned labels that sprung up at the time, including Sohag and its Oriental subsidiary, and and the "vanity" labels of Hovep Shamlian and Harry Hasekian. (See the Canary album A Diamond Ring: Armenian-American Independent Releases ca. 1922-26) Coincident with the introduction of electrical recording, Parsekian handed off his masters and artwork to the Vartestian Brothers who ran a jewelry and watch repair shop on 3rd Avenue in Manhattan. They used much of the Parsekian catalog (as well as Mugerdich Douzjian’s Yildiz vanity label) to launch their own Pharos label, which lasted two or three more years, issuing several dozen more titles. (See the Canary album Very Sweet: Armenian-American Recordings from the Pharos Label ca. 1926-29.)

Parsekian’s flagship artist was Karekin Proodian (b. present-day Diyarbakir, ca. 1884) who recorded about half of the label’s catalog. Proodian immigrated to the U.S. in 1903 settling in the West Hoboken, New Jersey neighborhood populated by a community of others from his native region called Dikranagerd in Armenian, including Parsekian. A photoengraver by trade, he became a citizen in 1910 before returning to his hometown where he married 19 year old Haiganoush (“Annie”) Akmakjian. In 1912, the couple returned to the U.S. with their child Vahan (Frank). Two more children arrived, Siranoush (Sara) and Setrag (who later became a clarinet and saxophone player, appearing on several LPs. He published a memoir called Brothers Abroad. We are actively seeking a copy.)

Between February and December 1916, Proodian performed as a vocalist and kanunist on 18 sides for Columbia and Victor Records, all of which were in Turkish except for the revolutionary ballad “Ipreve Ardziv,” which was in Armenian. (6 of them appear on the Canary album And Two Partridges II and 4 more are on the album If I Were a Nightingale.) In the 1920s Proodian adopted the thinking of a movement among Armenians to present Anatolian music in the Armenian language advocated by the Dikranagerd-born northern New Jersey songwriter Hovsep Shamlian. When Proodian recorded again for M.G. Parsekian’s label, 18 of the 22 sides he cut were in Armenian, only 4 in Turkish.

Parsekian, Proodian, and Shamlian formed a kind of Dikranangersti musical ecosystem in West Hoboken. All three having come from the same region, each contributed his own skills. Parsekian had the record business; Proodian had the voice; Shamlian had the songs. (The rather elaborate labels on some of the discs including photos of the artists may, we can speculate, tie back to Proodian's work in the printing business.) The first two songs Proodian recorded for Parsekian’s label were not only Shamlian’s songs (including his “greatest hit,” “Hasagt Partsr”) but were also accompanied by Dikranangersti accompanists. 16 of Proodian’s 18 recordings for Parsekian in Armenian were Shamlian compositions, albeit accompanied by objectively superior musicians, Harry (Haroutiun) Hasekian of Marash on violin and Edward (Yetvart) Bashian who emigrated Constantinople on oud. Harry and Edward also released instrumental discs as a duo on the Parsekian label as well as on Hasekian’s own label, which, again, were likely produced by Parsekian. (Only the traditional folk song “Ouy Janem” and the revolutionary ballad “Keriyin Yerke” weren’t Shamlian creations.)

After Parsekian’s label was sold to Pharos company around 1926, many of Proodian’s recordings were kept in print by them for several years. Although he did not record again, he stayed active in music singing in Greek and Armenian nightclubs, coffeehouses, and restaurants on Manhattan while still working for Scientific Engraving Inc.” (later Scientific Engineering) at 406 W. 31st on Manhattan. In 1942, he copyrighted a song called “This Is Our Heaven” with lyrics translated by Joseph Stamboolian for use in a movie, although we have not yet traced the film. He died in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 1977.

Maksoud Karabed Sariyan (b. Bursa, Turkey April 17, 1897) arrived in the U.S. on Oct. 22, 1920. He recorded only six sides with clarinetist Hovsep Takakjian (b. Palu, Turkey ca. 1895), four of them for Parsekian and two of them pseudononymously as Karakash (“Black Eyebrows”) along with violinist Vartan Margosian for Margosian's label. By 1928, he had settled in Detroit where he married a Bulgarian-born woman and worked as a professional musician. He died on Jan. 10, 1946. Takakjian moved shortly after making their recordings for Parsekian to Fresno, California for his health, having contracted tuberculosis by loaning his instrument to another musician. Takakjian performed and recorded prolifically with Oscar Kevorkian for several decades. (See the Canary album The Undertaker’s Picnic: Armenian Kef Music in Fresno ca. 1940s-50s.) He died in Fresno in 1976.

The first non-Armenian to have recorded for Parsekian’s label was the Romaniote Jew Mazeltov Matsa (b. Janina, present-day Greece, 1897) who performed first under the name Amilia Hanoum and later as Amalia Bakas. A definitive biographical study was published by David Soffa on the 2002 Arhoolie label CD Amalia!: Old Greek Songs in the New Land, 1923-50 and summarized on the Canary album No News From Tomorrow: Greek and Turkish Speaking Women in New York ca. 1942-50. She was, in the mid-20s a young garment worker and mother of two in the Jewish Lower East Side moonlighting as a singer of Turkish and Greek folks songs in restaurants and coffeehouses. She cut her first five discs for Armenian-owned independent labels (three for Parsekian; two for Sohag) before an acrimonious divorce, a brief stint running her own little nightclub around the corner from Marika Papagika’s place on 8th Avenue, and then nearly 30 years on the road as a nightclub performer. She recorded for the Victor label in the late 20s (likely introduced to them by Marika Papagika with whom she became very close, George Katsaros with whom she regularly toured in the 30s, or perhaps Marko Melkon who also first recorded for Parsekian in the early 20s and then operated on the same circle of performers in the 1940s-50s.)

Likewise, Parsekian was likely the first to release discs by the Greek singer and oudist Achilleas Poulos (b. July 1893 present-day Balikesir, Turkey) a close friend of Marko Melkon (see the Canary albums of Melkon, I Go Around Drinking Raki: ca. 1942-51 and HiFi Adventures in Asia Minor) who had already cut his first disc for Parsekian accompanied by Harry and Edward. Poulos was in a fury of recording activity in the mid-20s, cutting a total of about 125 performances for Parsekian, Pharos, Columbia and Victor as well as the short-lived Oriental label (related to Sohag) between 1925 and 1927. His best-selling 12” disc for Columbia of “Nedem Geldim Americaya (Why I Came to America),” a folk song he’d rewritten about his personal experience as an immigrant, differs from his performance for Parsekian notably in that it benefits from the violin playing of Nishan Sedefjian. Sedefjian, who performs on nearly all of Poulos' Victor and Columbia material was a diamond setter at the Vartesian Brothers shop. Poulos was the lead performer on the last dozen Parsekian releases and on several of the first Pharos discs. Pharos even issued two discs of Poulos' niece Soultana when she visited from Balikesir. (See the Canary album Why I Came to America: More Folk Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora ca. 1917-47.) It seems likely that he was the bridge between the two labels. After ’27 Poulos simply ceased recording and moved to Connecticut, where he worked at a coffee roaster and died in 1970. Like Parsekian, his influence on the scene of Turkish, Armenian, and Greek speaking immigrants in New York outlasted his activity for more than a generation.

#78rpm #78 rpm #ottoman #armenian #greek #turkish #romaniote #immigrant

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freshouttaparsnips · 3 years

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You were a simple kind of guy.

Life decided you deserved a little bit of complexity.

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a new series of fic that im gonna work on in my spare time!! its a skeletoncest polycule, but with an added reader twist uwu

tags: Reverse Harem, polycule, Poly of Skeletons, Fontcest, Papcest, Sanscest, but there's also a reader, Slice of Life, no real plot, Tropes Babey, Series, Homelessness, Reader is homeless, Reader has a dog, Reader is FtM, reader is unnamed

read it Ao3

or read chapter 1: Meeting the Horror Fellas below!

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You were a simple kind of guy. Sure, you hadn’t meant to make this move over to the Ebbott region, it was actually on the end of the long list of places you wanted to move. But that was where your job had moved you, so that’s where you’d picked up and gone, both you and your boxer pup, Peony. She hadn’t actually minded much; there were lots of dog parks here for her to hang out in, long stretches of sidewalks just around your apartment that definitely went on just long enough for her to get the need to GO out of her system. Your job was cushy, paid enough for you to splurge a little on the weekends, for you and Peony both.

You appreciated the finer sides of living just under a mountain… at least until said mountain damn near exploded and “Monsterkind” came through.

Now, that was not to say you had anything against monsters. Not in the slightest! You weren’t from around here, you understood a little of the general bias that people had against anything new.

But when the monsters had started entering the work force, well. People on the semi-lower rungs like you? Booted to the curb without a second thought in the name of equality. You’d lost your apartment, and Peony and you had been living in your squat little Ford ever since. It was rough, but you’d been saving up to rent a trailer on the outskirts of town for a few months, and your acceptance of monsters had remained, if not hardened a little.

You weren't going to blame them for needing the essentials of living, just the same as everyone else.

Which led to where you were now, warily watching a couple of more rough looking monsters that were chatting up the tiny, blond lady that worked the front counter of the store you’d finally gotten a job at. Peony had been adopted by the owners of the store as a guard dog, the little old couple chattering on and on about how cute she was. It just meant that you were allowed to keep her with you when you were on duty, a little vest velcro’d around her with the name and logo of the store on it.

You were stocking shelves, Peony keeping an eye on the situation just like you were. The two monsters were clearly from a Fellgrounds, a few other mountains nearby that had also opened up to reveal some monster societies that had gone a little sideways. Most of them had scars, war wounds, and generally had a distrust for other people.

You felt for these monsters more than others; they had to go through extensive testing and rehabilitation to even leave their Underground, though a lot of them had passed those tests if the local news was anything to believe. You weren’t really sure what to believe much these days, but you knew that Polly up at the cash register was trans and had already dealt with a few assholes today. Monster or human, you weren’t letting it slide.

Before you could even set down your can to head up, just to make absolutely certain nothing untoward was going on, a shadow passed over you, the lights above flickering in uneasy patterns as you stood stock still. The tallest monster you’d ever seen in person was passing through the next aisle over, their skeletal head nearly scraping the ceiling as they moved silently towards Polly. Something inside of you was terrified at the sheer display of power, the intent of magic thick in the air, but even you with your limited knowledge could tell it wasn’t directed towards her.

The two monsters were staring right at him, your own eyes locked on his lanky form as he made his way silently to the very front and tilted his head. “Evening friends, are you having issues with the cash register working your cards? I had such an issue the other day, I can help walk you through the process.”

There was nothing but primal fear in their eyes as the two monsters meekly shook their heads, jerking a thumb towards the door as they left, citing their sudden need to be elsewhere. The skeleton watched them go with something like satisfaction in his eyes, and it wasn’t until then that you noticed his outfit.

A bright pink and green tracksuit covered him from neck to ankles, and a bright peach exercise band around his head that said “JOG BOY” on it. Something about it made you relax a little from the tense state you’d been in, your hands setting the cans they’d been tightly holding on their respective shelves.

It was then that you noticed that the intent from earlier was gone, and good lord, was all that just from this dude? You watched as he leaned down to see Polly better, his expression one of humble kindness. She seemed to know him, looking relieved, and you couldn’t hear their full conversation so you figured you’d ask her later just what that was all about… and if you needed to take on more shifts to make sure that people, human and monster both, weren’t harassing the workers.

You’d grown to love working at this store, what with the inclusive policies and the fact that they let Peony stay with you on shift, and you weren’t going to see anyone or anything take advantage of it.

Just as you’d turned back to your work, though, momentary worry about your coworkers abated, that intent came back, only this time it felt cold. The skeleton up front’s warning had been hot, blistering to the mind, a sheer warning of pain.

This one felt like someone had dunked you in an ice bath and was threatening to leave you that way.

“You okay there, pal? Yer looking a little white around the edges.”

The voice came from just behind, your eyes squeezing shut before you turned around and glared hard at whatever asshole was trying to start shit… only to find yourself looking at the chest of another really big monster. He was also a skeleton, but he was shorter by a few feet (even as he towered over you). He was dressed more modestly, what with a simple ratty blue jacket and a pair of gray basketball shorts, but he was wearing a small pink bracelet around his wrist. Before you could even try to guess what it meant, he was leaning toward you a little.

“Hey, you okay? Seriously, I didn’t think Paps’ magic was that strong- well. Naw, that’s a lie, it is that strong.”

You blinked, still staring up at him, when suddenly you were grasped between two boney hands, lifted up and up until you were looking into the hollow eyes of the first skeleton… Paps?

“Oh, my dear human, I haven’t broken you, have I? I can admit my intent can come off a bit… excuse the pun, but intense, to those who aren’t used to our magic signature.” Then he was squinting at you, somehow, and you felt as though your very soul was being examined. You could smell the very subtle hint of some kind of fruity cologne, which made you want to laugh hysterically; what skeleton needed to wear perfume?

“He’s probably fine, Paps. We need’a get back before Red takes off.”

“Paps” rolled his eyes, gently depositing you back on the floor where Peony was severely sniffing all over you as if looking for damage, before nodding.

“Yes, I suppose you’re correct. Human!!”

You stood at attention and he laughed, handing you a little, lime colored business card. You took it with questioning hands, peering down at it as he explained.

“This is my phone number. Please text whenever you have time and would like to have lunch, I wish to apologize for putting you through such shock.”

And with that he pat you on the shoulder, seeming not to notice as you buckled a little under the weight and headed for the front doors, the other, shorter skeleton following along behind with a snicker.

You blinked hard, before collapsing to your ass on the floor, Peony licking your face vigorously once she’d found no signs of injury. You patted her gently both to assure her and to keep her out of your face, but stared down at the card, a simple number on it from the local area.

~THE PHONE NUMBER OF THE GREAT ICHOR!~

You blinked back the tears that had been growing, of both frustration and mild fear, and huffed in pain as you made yourself get up off the floor. Polly would be worried about you, and you really needed to finish stacking these cans.

#fresh writes #undertale #fontcest #papyrus/reader #sans/reader #undertail #fluff #angst #all the good tropes

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