More megaten-styled sprites. This time, the unused beta designs of some of the new demons in Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse. From left to right, top to bottom: Lady Danu Deity Dagda Deity Maitreya Lady Inanna Holy Chironnupu
Cosmic Funnies

★
d e v o n
YOU ARE THE REASON
Sade Olutola
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
$LAYYYTER
dirt enthusiast

shark vs the universe
we're not kids anymore.
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Stranger Things

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
tumblr dot com
Mike Driver

JVL
🪼
almost home

roma★

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seen from Singapore
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seen from United States
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seen from United States

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@abstractscarecrow
More megaten-styled sprites. This time, the unused beta designs of some of the new demons in Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse. From left to right, top to bottom: Lady Danu Deity Dagda Deity Maitreya Lady Inanna Holy Chironnupu
YOUR SHOWTIME IS OVER, CLOWN.
Since this week I’ve seen a lot of Orc Discourse, I figured I’d contribute - people like this are the kind of people who ruin every game, movie, or comic franchise they get their hands on because this is their mindset; they turn things like D&D into vehicles for their ham fisted social politics and they aren’t content with doing it to their own things, they insist the whole thing changes to accommodate them. Let’s not pretend politics haven’t always played a role even in escapism, but to put it bluntly most of the people like this are so blisteringly unimaginative that it just comes off as heavy handed preachy garbage rather than decent world building and role play.
I mean let’s not even get into the fact that fifteen years ago those “greasy Mountain Dew guzzlers” were playing the game while people like the poster above mocked and made fun of them for it until it became popular; now everyone is a “nerd” because everyone enjoys entry-level nerd shit that’s been popularized and commercialized to death to appeal to….exactly these people. Who are, despite what the post implies, currently a small but vocal minority as much as they’d like to pretend otherwise.
It’s just fucking boring, I can’t tell you how annoying it is that the only thing most people know about D&D now is “Hurr Hurr bards fuck everything” and “Orcs are akshually black people”. Fuck, gatekeeping is justified sometimes.
What I find to be really telling about the “be gay do crimes” kind of people, or theater kids, or whatever, is that they never have anything to say about actually playing D&D. It’s always these vague ideas of everyone in the party being queer or some fake dialogue that never happened at any table about the patriarchy or capitalism.
I’m sure some of these people have played in a game, but the general attitude makes it pretty clear that D&D is another fandom to them. It’s like an accessory or a collectible to display. Something they can flash to other poseurs and say “yeah, that’s right, I know what a Tiefling is” when all their knowledge comes from Critical Role clips and fanart. And none of that would be too bothersome if they didn’t throw a tantrum and pretend like this entire hobby belongs to them because they had the revolutionary idea to talk about a bunch of gay bullshit in the extremely loose context of D&D.
“That’s right! THE QUEERS ARE HERE!! Move over neckbeard incel duebro misogynerds! Cuz D&D IS QUEER AS FUCK NOW AND YOU GOTTA DEAL WITH IT!”
It’s not even particularly insulting or infuriating. No one is threatened by this wanna-be badass bullshit. No one is trembling at the idea that RPGs might be played by these people. I just want them to shut up and fuck off. They can go play their terrible, boring queer D&D where all of the Orcs are cultured and civilized if they want. I just want them to stop pretending they own a hobby they aren’t even invested in.
people bullying their way pretentiously into hobbies and demanding that everyone else treat their obnoxious, self-absorbed personalities as heroically Bringing Balance to Fantasy be like:
oops my hand slipped
“We are a part of this hobby, we love this hobby, we have always been a part of this hobby! Also everything about this hobby is terrible and needs to be changed.”
Recently I found out one of my favorite NSFW animator (Derpixion) lost their Pornhub account for being "problematic." They said on Twitter that Pornhub also got rid of the tentacle tag and it seems like the site is going after hentai. It's pretty sad that the issues PH is currently dealing with that they're resorting to deplatforming artists when they were supporting them during the Tumblr purge.
Guys, I'm tired.
I am so tired of this anti-erotica wave, I really am.
Whether it's Patreon harassing people because they want to say that 'anime-style equals CP' or Twitter saying how DARE 18+ accounts have risque header-art or Corporate-cocksleeve Jeff D'Onofrio calling himself making this hellsite more 'family-friendly' -- which, Jeff, you never will and it is so pathetic to see you try -- or just so many platforms deciding 'I condone the spread of malicious misinformation, harassment, and pyramid schemes, but we draw the line at nipples and dicks!'
Cue rational people in the background going 'You condone the spread of malicious misinformation, harassment, and pyramid schemes?'
And the fucked up thing is that it's platforms starting to run scared about this bullshit EARNIT act and the recent surge of practically racist attitudes towards Japanese media.
Hell, let's look at how Amazon has been quietly banning certain manga and anime; even going so far as to cancel 1,000+ preorders of a manga without telling the publishers or the people who ordered it so they can de-platform it.
Porn isn't the fucking issue at hand here, I swear to fucking God! It's a bunch of lazy Western idiots who know that they will NEVER have any impact or worthwhile effect on history or societal standards so they keep going after shit that DOES. NOT. MATTER.
You want to protect children? Actually put some budget into Protective Services and fix the broken state of both the Welfare System and the Foster care/Adoption industry!
You want to protect women from being sexually exploited? Make sex work a legal, taxable profession so there can be protections put in place to prevent trafficking and women being beaten within an inch of their lives!
But, for the LOVE of all that exists above and below, stop pushing the blame onto useless stuff that doesn't matter.
Also, damn it! I had just started getting into Derpixion's stuff too!
Wait so pornhub is perfectly okay with all the incest and rape scenarios shown in brutal detail and performed by real people who may or may not have consented to this, but deplatforms people for drawing a picture of a tentacle?
Yeesh.
Okay non-European tumblr, I’m gonna explain to you why ‘white’ isn’t as simple here as it is in the rest of the world
- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’
- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction
- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour
- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’
- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc
- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from
- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant
- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white
- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’
- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired
This is all basic stuff and it’s very much taken for granted here. Race and ethnicity are not as clear cut, so it can be very confusing for non-Europeans to wrap their heads around. Which is fine. But I implore you to stay in your lane, because when you say things like ‘no white person anywhere in the world ever knows what it’s like to face racial discrimination’, it’s really fucking offensive to all of the European immigrants who are denied jobs, harassed by the police and beaten by racists, because foreign is foreign to these people, and they don’t give a shit if you’re technically white. So when you mean white American, say white American.
This doesn’t just apply to “darker skin” Europeans either (which I’m sure some Americans would argue are POC for some reason or other). Try being slavic in Western Europe. Hell, try being Sinti or Roma in any part of Europe.
Especially in the UK you can be as white as you like but if you aren’t from Britain (or in some cases just England) then you face discrimination. It really isn’t that clear cut in Europe and it drives me mad when people say white people can’t experience racism because that’s such a US-centric idea.
And if you’re from anywhere in South-East Europe then you should prepare for your country to be slandered in every UK paper. Seriously, you can’t turn on the news, go on the internet, read a newspaper, without being told how Romanian, Ukrainian, Polish people are a drain on the UK’s resources and they should be banned from the country. And guess what?
(That’s Mila Kunis. She was born in the Ukraine.)
(Sebastian Stan. From Constanta, Romania.)
(Mia Wasikowska, from Poland)
(Nina Dobrev, who was born in Bulgaria.)
They are white! Just because they are white, it doesn’t mean people from their countries cannot face horrible discrimination, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t be constantly told that they don’t work as hard as people from Western Europe, and that they don’t deserve basic human rights.
So just before you force your ignorance onto people who don’t hold the same views as you due to where they live operating in a different way, just remember that not everybody lives in America.
Here it is guys, the post that finally puts what I’ve been trying to say for far too long into words!
…I didn’t know Sebastian Stan was Romanian.
But as somebody who has lived in England and the US, I can vouch for all of this. The race issues in Europe and the race issues in the US are not the same.
For the last few years, there has been an awful backlash against immigrants from Poland, with some of the same language used that Americans use about “Mexicans” (By which, half the time, they mean anyone from south of the US/Mexico border).
It’s worth understanding that
1. Racism and discrimination are everywhere.
2. They don’t take the same form everywhere.
I have lived in England for over 10 years now, and can confirm all of the above. As soon as I open my mouth people can tell, of course, that I was not born and raised British.
I was yelled at in the street because a lady thought I was Polish. People have pushed their chairs into my parents and insulted them in a restaurant because they were recognised as Germans.
Being white is not that cut and dry over here.
And being “socially” white as opposed to just pale skinned evolves over time. I mean, there have been times in America when Irish and Italian people have not been considered “white”.
READ THIS POST IF YOURE AMERICAN
I’m American and this is the FIRST time I’ve ever heard any of this. I always think I’m up to date on world issues but wow I am not. Thank you to everyone for sharing!
About discrimination between nations in Europe, speaking Finnish and Sami languages in schools in Sweden was forbidden from students because Finns and Sami people were considered to be the lower race. Of course Europe has racism against black people, but yes, thinking about Europeans being “white” as whole is weird because a white Finn and a white Greek person couldn’t be more apart with their cultures.
Yes, all of this, and let’s not forget people like the Finnish speaking Finns have historically and from some cultural standpoints a lot more common with native Americans and the Asians and Blacks in America than white Americans, despite our recent “rise” in the social rank of race.
Less than 100 years ago we were considered mongoloid (and while it’s not entirely wrong, though Uralic or North-West Asian and Caucasian mix would be lot more accurate), and were oppressed by another nation (Russia) that tried to enforce cultural and linguistic genocide on us, and before that we were oppressed and practically enslaved by Sweden, not all that differently as in any other colonized nation–which we were for 800 years.
For all intents and purposes, our “whites” are the Swedish-speaking Finns, who to this day continue to be a lot more privileged than the Finnish-speaking Finns, on average.
In Italy, Southern people are considered less than Northern people and I, as a Northern people, can assure you sometimes it’s pretty bad. Mostly thanks to an idiotic right wing party that thinks that Italy should be divided in two: over the Po and below the Po (our longest river). They even think our ancestors are Celts lmao. Also a lot of people from the South are “less white” (again it’s stupid but whatever it’s just to make you understand), because they have ancestors from Africa so they are mixed, therefore their skin isn’t white as snow.
Also in Italy people from slavic countries are often victim to xenophobia, people are always ready to see romanians/albanian/russians…etc as culprits for everything, and it’s not unusual to hear someone says “this hairstyle makes you look like an albanian!” or “why are you going out dressed as a romanian” yeah they use slavic people as an insult bc people are led to think that they come here just to steal everything from us. And guess what most of them are white as snowflakes!
I’d like to point out that also italian people have faced discrimination from other european countries. We were, and sadly often still are, always seen as part of the mafia and therefore dangerous, or inferior and poor (y’all can find signs saying pretty nasty stuff online, and i’m leaving this here even tho it’s in Italian), i’ve heard a lady telling his son to stay away from me and my family because we were speaking italian and so we could do “bad things” to him and there were times when in shops we were made feel not welcome because we are italian…..and guess what my family is white.
So please when you are outside the us don’t try to apply your “racial standards” bc they are not valid in europe.
Bless this post forever and ever
The Scottish, Irish, and Welsh are “white” peoples yet have a long history of oppression by white England. Even to this day you’ll hear celebs from those places (which are in the UK or even on the same island as England) discuss the same things as a POC actor in America, like “there are very few roles for us on TV” or “I only got the job because I changed my name and accent” and “I’ve had to play a servant or a stereotype for most of my career.”
This discrimination may seem less bizarre to Americans when you understand that the white minorities of the UK are descendants of peoples who lived there long before the Romans marched in and set English history as we know it in motion. It’s not about skin color, it’s about conquest, as usual.
yall really gonna use Mila Kunis as an example of a Ukrainian who faces discrimination and leave out the fact that she’s Jewish?
When Heroes first came out in Australia, I was watching it with my then-partner, my sister, and a couple of friends. My then-partner, who is American, mentioned that the show had faced criticism because nearly all the main characters were white.
“What are you talking about?” say my sister and I. ‘There are two Italian guys RIGHT THERE.”
“OMG you cannot say Italian people are not white,” he says.
“Yes we fucking can,” says the Italian friend watching the show with us, deeply offended.
And then we had to pause it and a lot of complex explanations ensued. (Including the fact that Greek and Italian people generally aren’t considered White in Australia and in fact many a Nonna will smack you if you suggest otherwise.)
Basically, ‘white’ is a category upon which no two cultures/countries can agree on the definition, they all think they have the only possible definition, and it usually boils down to Preferred Flavours of Bigotry.
I mean, I’m of sufficiently Irish descent not to have been considered White in New York at certain periods, and I’m so pink and white I couldn’t get stopped at an airport if I tried, so basically it’s all bullshit and ‘white’ is like ‘normal’… everyone thinks they know what it is, but it doesn’t actually exist except as a tool for dividing people up into The Good Ones and The Rubbish Ones.
The fashion identities in the context of a wider conversation about American nationhood, to whom it belongs and what belonging means. Race a
A really good book on the historical whitening of European ethnicities in America ^^^^^
in some countries, how you sound, ie which dialect you speak, is what classifies your “race”. so a black person that speaks proper croatian will fare much better than a white person that speaks serbian in croatia.
i get so angry when americans have white people this, black people that discourse. speak for yourself, things don’t work like that everywhere.
To all people out there:
Romania isn’t a Slavic country. Our roots were in the Dacians and Romans. Along the way we added Greek, Slavic and Turkish ancestors, but we pretty much stayed a Roman country. Romanian language contains 60% words derivates from Latin. So, we have in more common (genetically speaking) with Italy and France
Yes yes yes!
And to add on with skin color and how it’s not inherently tied to race in Europe.
I’m Swedish, and in Sweden we basically have the ~pale can’t get a tan to save their life~ swede, which I am, and the ~is pale in winter but with and hour of sun will be the share of Rihanna~ Swede, which my cousins on my dad’s side are. There is no discrimination towards any of these groups despite shade differences because we’re all considered “ethnically Swedish”. As stated above, ethnicity plays a larger role in Europe than race. In Sweden it’s even taboo to mention race and all racial discussions are based on the concept of ethnicity instead (which is kinda bad because we need to discuss race as well).
Polish people, romani people, Bulgarian, Croatian people - they’re discriminated against regardless of if their skin is paler than that of an ethnic swede.
I’m reminded of that “Bend It Like Beckham” screenshot where you could tell who understood the above and who was placing the very American form of race/ethnicity on something that breaks it once it crosses the ocean that also divides the common language. Or the very old (we’re talking 80s here) hat news of somebody mutilating the Margret “Why are people defending her now” Thatcher waxwork in the 80s in Belfast post.
I’m from America, and this was always a given t me. Like seriously, how can anyone look at a continent where every majority race is “white” and not get that American racial dynamics don’t apply there? Or even just…. not get that American racial dynamics ONLY apply to America?????
I have a strong accent speaking english and a weird accent speaking lithuanian (I’m originally from Argentina but my family’s lithuanian), the amount of times I’ve gotten weird looks because of it and how my name is considered weird everywhere else, even though I’m white as hell.
The US people are far too US centric and then tell us we’re wrong for not being it.
the state of the world is awful
people are being awful to eachother
everybody’s angry 24/7
i wish things could go back to normal
Do we seriously need to remind people Wendigo are not fucking real? They're quite literally a folklore monster, nobody has fucking been killed for being a wendigo, KAREN!
I could see maybe someone got accused of BEING a Wendigo by some paranoid fuck and got killed for it, but I get what you’re saying. Cultural Appropriation discourse remains stupid and almost entirely pointless.
well there was the Jack Fiddler case but that was more like euthanizing someone for psychosis/cannibalism based illness.
The sad thing about the Liam Neeson controversy is that it has made me realise that these people don’t want redemption or reform. They want to be outraged. They want to form a mob. They crave hatred. Liam told this story as a precautionary tale and as a way to let others know that you can grow and learn and become a better person. That is something very risky and brave to admit to the world. This was FORTY years ago. And yet people, seeing this BRAND NEW information, treat him as a racist.
^
hey who wants to hear some deep fate theoryposting. some real out there bull shit.
every single servant stole their face from a normal human. they’re all pseudoservants to an extent.
ive been stewing on this one for a while but recently vlad extra and sanzang said some things that made me feel like i actually had a case so check this out
heroic spirits themselves are nothing but concepts without self. just raw power with a name attached. normally if you summon them you summon a phenomena related to their legend and nothing resembling a person. the heroic spirit and the noble phantasm can be the exact same thing because they’re both just phenomena related to the legend. for many of these heroes, even if they did exist in history, their heroic spirit version is much larger than life. they’re not real people, not individuals. servants of historical figures rarely look like their real world counterpart either, cause you don’t get the actual person you get what they represent. remember back in zero where iskandar was huge despite being short irl cause thats the kind of figure he’s imagined as? remember how vlad is a vampire just cause some bastard wrote a slanderous book about him? yeah
and you only ever summon a single aspect. different parts of the legend produce different servants and these can be completely different in personality, height, voice, face, etc. just entirely different people.
BUT if heroic spirits are just faceless concepts, power to be harnessed, Where Does The Face Come From? raw power has no desires, it’s just energy to be used. why, then, do servants have desires?
remember this girl called laeticia? who was similar enough to jeanne to serve as her face and her dormant personality still influenced jeanne’s personality and desires somewhat? remember how angra mainyu had his entire self removed from history and thus has to take the face of irisviel and shirou to act as an individual in the world and playing at being shirou caused him to develop the desire to play seigi no mikata just this once? yeah
servants are nothing but concepts representing the myth behind their name, so they shouldn’t be able to develop desires beyond the confines of their story. any wish that developed after their death, any personality trait that doesn’t align with their story, is due to to the personality of the face they stole. heroic spirits are just concepts but servants are individuals, because the servant container is a humanlike vessel to contain and direct the mythological phenomena of the heroic spirit, but it’s gotta be modelled after something.
for most servants we don’t really see whomstdve’s face they stole but with servants whose gimmick is already facelessness or shaky identity it tends to be more obvious, like robin being shirou colour kiritsugu and lancelot becoming purple kariya and All These Sakura Clones. in most cases the two blend almost perfectly to the point where you wouldn’t even consider that they stole their face, because obviously they steal a face that’s similar to theirs, but no two people are the same so every servant, every aspect of a servant, is a slightly different face, a slightly different set of traits. if you take a drastically different interpretation of the myth you’re gonna need to find a significantly different face for it too.
‘but lance what about the actual pseudoservants’ yeah yeah im getting there. gods, the divine, they’re different from humans on a fundamental level. something without any humanity can’t perfectly blend in with a human personality so gods when stealing a human face end up keeping a relatively clear divide, but even then they’re influenced. ishtar for example is noted to actually be more responsible and self sufficient than usual due to rin’s influence. its only when some god steals like a literal whole entire human to be their face that it’s obvious enough for someone to step up and classify them as pseudoservant
zhuge liang is an exception because he basically really didn’t want to come so the moment he found el melloi to do his work for him he just left. dumped all his powers on waver and booked it. theoretically any heroic spirit can do this really but most of em want the grail too badly or have like, a shred of responsibility. ”real winners quit” - zhuge liang.
It’s officially Thanksgiving in the USA
Time to smell the gravy, marvel at your auntie’s pretty place-settings, and listen to the 5edgy9me once-a-year intellectuals crawling out of their local Starbucks like zombies from the damn grave, moaning
C̪̹͉͔͔̳̕h͈̼̯̥̭̗̍̒ͧ͟ṙ̠͍̹̈̄̈́͗ͥ̅͟i͎s̸̭̣̬̼͚͊̊ͨͬ̈́̅̚t͍͌̏̏͐͞o͈̐̉̓͐̅p̮̞͟h̦e̶͌ͪr̬̻̩͕̱̎̌ͩ͗ ̐̔͏͕̲͉̺͕Ċ͉̰͕̹́̊ͯ͆̓̾ͅo͇l̮̟͡ů̱͖̬͙ͣ̓͋̆̎m̧ͫb̵̠̲̗͂u͎͗s̟̤̭̼͕͈̃̉̒̔ ̖̹̗͔̮̱̯ͭ̅̋̆ͯ̽̍w̱̰͈̰̔̃͆́͋͌a͚̮̬ͮͨͤͬs̩͖͙̬̟̦ͫ̓̀ ̝̰̼͇̹̲͑̉̿̽͒͞a͔̬̮͠ͅ ͙͙͇̖͇͛͞m̠̲͖ͯͫ́̿ͤ͜u̪̪͖̮͂ͪ̎̽̚r̰̜ͪͩ̀ͫ̅d̬̹̲ͯè͖͇̦̖r̝̀è̯͙͈̻͖͓̪͌ͤ͑r̵̭͖̖̋ͥ̂ͅr̸̭͎͈͑r̞̫̀̔̅r͎̖̿̑̒͠r̬ͬ̄ͫ
@sixpenceee has already joined in the festivities of hilariously bad revisionist history with this little gem:
‘Cept Christopher Columbus never actually set foot on American soil – And Thanksgiving has nothing to do with him.
Thanksgiving in the USA was officially adopted as a holiday during the Civil War, though it had been off-again-on-again celebrated since 1621 – This is thought to be the famous ‘Pilgrims at Plymouth’ Thanksgiving.
Originally, it was celebrated because of a particularly successful harvest was managed less than a year after the Pilgrims first settled the Plymouth colony with the few surviving members of the journey from Europe. This sort of feast wouldn’t happen again until a bountiful rainfall broke a treacherous drought in 1623.
Only one or two other colonies celebrated similar days of thanks, and all of them were related to farming practices. Natives frequently attended these meals. Indeed, the first Thanksgiving saw about 90 Natives join in on the festivities.
That might not sound like a lot initially, but keep in mind that there were only 50 Pilgrims there, so the feast was almost 2:1 Native.
Now, with respect to ‘Genocide’, lemme learn you some knowledge..
Claims of Native genocide by the Pilgrims mostly originate from happenings during the 1637 Pequot War – Also known as the Mystic Massacre.
Essentially, in the area the Plymouth Pilgrims had settled, there were a few major warring Native bands. Specifically, the Pequot, the Mohegan, the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Algonquians.
Basically, the Pequot sucked. They were the most powerful tribe, and were constantly trying to expand their territory – Even before the Pilgrims had come. They regularly raided the Wampanoag and the Algonquians, and bullied the Mohegan and Narragansett. When the fur trade started up, they tried to scare all the other tribes out of competition.
This led pretty much all of the tribes in the area, with emphasis of the Mohegan and Narragansett, to ally with the Pilgrims when shit started to go down.
The Pequot seemed to have the least resistance to the foreign bacteria the Pilgrims brought in, and it weakened them a lot, leaving the other tribes and Pilgrims the ability to reclaim or take over a lot of their land.
About 700 Pequot died during the war. A great deal of them were also taken/given to the other tribes as slaves.
A great deal of the bullshittery surrounding the settlement and colonization of North America comes from people who are unwilling to admit that Natives were brutal with each other… That they were just these awesome, no-socialist hippies that just sang songs and ate berries all day.
I don’t just think that’s dishonest, I think it’s pretty derogatory.
I remember vividly a time I was on a long busride in my home of British Columbia, which has a very high Native population. I was seated next to an Aboriginal man from a Kwakwaka'wakw band and he told me, very proudly, about his tribe’s impressive archive of ancient weave records depicting a great victory over neighboring tribes leaving 600,000 of them killed by the Kwakwaka'wakw warriors, who were greatly outnumbered. I would find out later that Kwakwaka'wakw were known headhunters and cannibals.
Once again, Thanksgiving was celebrated very sporadically, and certainly not as a consistent holiday, until the Civil War.
Thanksgiving never had anything to do with the Natives, other than their participation in a mutually-beneficial relationship with people who genuinely appreciated their help, and thus were willing to share what little food they had with them. It was about farming and harvesting, and later about peace and reconciliation.
We here in Canada celebrated Thanksgiving back in October, but I’ve always liked the story of American Thanksgiving better. To me, all of it’s incarnations have represented unity in one way or another – Different people working together to make everyone’s life better. Whether that be the Natives and the Pilgrims, or the Northern and Southern States.
People just being good to each other, if only for a little bit.
(Oneida Indian Nation has participated in the Macy’s Parade every year since 2010 in what they call ‘The True Spirit of Thanksgiving’)
Happy Thanksgiving, guys!
Reblogged this last year, but reblogging it again for this year for people who haven’t seen it yet.
Stephen/Steven
A famous scientist from England often considered the smartest mind of the current era who helped modernise and revolutionise the science of cosmology with his groundbreaking theories, including the idea that black holes produced a certain type of radiation that led to their eventual destruction by reducing mass and energy if they were left ‘unfed.’
Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford, England in the year 1942 to parents who, despite financial troubles, regularly attended Oxford University and had three more children, Hawking’s two sisters and an adopted brother. Hawking himself was not known for his good academical skills, despite being often referred to as ‘Einstein’ and once famously attended St Albans High School for Girls, which at the time, allowed younger boys up to the age of ten to be educated there.
Eventually, however, Hawking found a love of math and science, and despite his father’s desire for him to study medicine, he attended Oxford’s University College to study physics and chemistry, a task he found rather ‘easy,’ soon earning him a first class honours degree that he used to enter Cambridge University where he would meet his first wife, a young student named Jane Wilde.
He found the classes difficult as he was unable to relate his experiences in math to the study of cosmology, and worse still, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a slow-acting motor neurone disease, more commonly known as ‘Lou Gehrig’s disease’ after the famous baseballer. After being informed he had only two years to live, and with an ailing body and losing the ability to speak, he fell into a deep depression of which he overcame, married Jane, and returned to his studies, earning him a PhD.
Outliving his predicted death, he continued to work his way through the scientific communities and soon became a celebrated figure, iconic for his motorised voice and wheelchair.
He and Jane went on to have three children together, before the strain of Stephen’s illness and his view of her strong religious nature led them to separate when Stephen fell in love with his nurse, Elaine Mason, a fact his family and other nursing staff were disturbed by. After his marriage to Elaine, they became increasingly worried he was suffering abuse, though police investigations found no concrete evidence. Soon, however, the pair separated and Stephen resumed a happier relationship with Jane, his children and his grandchildren. His life would later be made into an award-winning film, ‘The Theory of Everything,’ in 2014.
Stephen passed away peacefully on Wednesday, the 14th of March, 2018.
He shall be missed greatly.