beneath aman.

a personal, multi-fandom blog | by @nelepost helmed by a nonbinary russian millennial. trans rights are human rights.

[jpeg-anachronism]

Haven't I given enough?

[dopamining-a]

Come out here and rant about the best boy ever.

[rui-cifer]

this is, like, a part of this frustrating pattern (she said, as if this isn't hundreds of years and running) of Westerners interacting with Japan by confidently claiming something, whether it's true or not, while wrapping it up in juuuuuuuust enough language for people to be convinced. right-wingers have done this and painted Japan as a nation of a population that's completely unrepentent about its imperialist past (wrong; despite how LDP rules the country) that is so socially conservative that it'll be stuck in the so-called traditional gender and sexuality forever, as it always has (wrong and wrong). Apparently, if one does the similar, but wraps it up in a language that's amenable to people who should know better, suddenly, when it comes to Japan, it becomes no investigation, all right to speak!

[rui-cifer]

also like LDP was propped up initially by the CIA for anticommunist reasons over the popular social democrats and was given carte blanche to make legislations and governing norms by the USA to ensure their stubbornly persistent rule so maybe the uninformed in the NATO countries should focus on getting the bases off of East Asia instead of spreading weird lies about the Japanese government that are dispelled easily via investigatoin.

[dopamining-a]

genuine question, but I've seen imperialist Japan notions continue in the works of fiction made by and in Japanese people on a fairly large scale. with the barbarisation of the SEA and NE countries and people, or inspired peoples in works of fiction, especially in fantasy.

the number of moments where "Japanese culture is the best after all" and an enlightened Japanese person is bringing civilization to the poor fantasy creatures that happen during isekai far almost 100%. popular games written by large companies with, as i assume, some research, such as final fantasy, have written clearly SEA and NA inspired as Japan Lite, for example. thete are certainly strong works that criticise this, with Cowboy Bebop and plenty of Miyazaki works coming to mind, but it seems to me that the popular culture is still reflecting a strong nationalist and orientalist sentiment that exists in Japan.

so, i'd like to hear what you think about that?

[dopamining-a]

me when English doesn't have the linguistic nuance between ruskiye (Russian slavs specifically) and rossiyane (Russian citizens of about 200 ethnicities)

[anton--rayne]

the ussr era was one of the most respectful circassian people were ever treated and had fast rising standarts of living its funny when people try to use that era specifically to draw comparisons between usa's treatment of its indigenous people vs ussr's

[anton--rayne]

ill be honest i dont think usa between 1920s to 1991 was taking pride in its multicultural identity & not being an ethnostate and respecting autonomous republics of indigenous people. it takes some brain gymnastics to arrive to the conclusion those were the exact same

[dopamining-a]

there's this propaganda going around in academia and in just online journalism that ussr and russia were as bad, if not worse about colonization of indigenous peoples of north asia than the *looks at hand* people who literally spread the plague and destroyed ecosystems to clear the land for colonization. This is about French, British, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and USA colonial conquests by the way.

meanwhile russian empire's colony frontier got its ass beat so bad by chukchi and co. that it begged them to let them build military posts there and join Russia as a minimal taxation autonomy (2 fox pelts per year) so that Ekaterina could build a naval protection zone against the British and French navy aiming to start grabbing land in Asia.

[kommunistkaitou]

oh my g-d i cannot believe im seeing people on my dash genuinely call it antisemitic and/or genocide apologia to defend the molotov-ribbentrop pact like okay

the USSR requested that league of nations sanction germany when it began to remilitarize (breaking the treaty of versailles) and was told by every other LoN member to go pound sand

the USSR was the first country to propose to other european powers, to form a united front against nazi germany. this is because socialism and fascism are diametrically fucking opposed, and also because racial discrimination was extremely illegal in the USSR

they were denied this by other leaders, most notably the UK and France, because capitalist leaders were hoping that hitler would go east and get rid of the ussr for them

this is the #1 reason why they pressured their ally czechoslovakia into ceding part of their territory to the nazis as "appeasement," because in the case the nazis continued to be aggressive, wesetern europe wanted them to keep going east. chamberlain called the UK and Nazi Germany, "the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against communism."

they knew full well that they were leaving the remainder of czechoslovakia weak against further incursion and subjecting >800k czechoslovak citizens, many of whom were jewish, to suddenly living in nazi territory

this ALSO constituted a non-aggression pact with the Nazis that ACTUALLY IS as monstrous as people act like the m-r pact was

this move was supported by both churchill and by FDR in the USA

having been shown that the rest of europe + the USA would not care if the USSR was invaded by the nazis, and knowing that it was a matter of time before the nazis invaded the USSR, the molotov-ribbentrop pact was made in order to a) buy time for the USSR to prepare for invasion, and b) give the western european countries motivation to actually fight the nazis and not just hope the ussr would do it for them

the only country which suffered as a result of this pact was NOT poland, but finland, which was officially neutral but very much pro-nazi. the USSR requested finland lend them some land along their border so they could increase the defensible distance between the nazis and moscow, and finland refused. which is why the USSR invaded finland in "the winter war" and took a bunch of land from them

which sounds like a dick move and kinda was, but turned out to be completely necessary because the nazis did end up coming ridiculously close to moscow and would absolutely have gotten to moscow if it weren't for that land

this extra time also allowed the ussr to prepare for war (on two fronts, because they also fought japan) by training troops, amping up production for war-related industries, placing spies, etc

(in fact, a lot of Soviet spies from Western Europe, like the cambridge five etc. joined not because they were necessarily communists but because they were anti-Nazi and disappointed in their own govts' not taking hitler seriously)

the USSR did overwhelmingly more damage to the nazis than any other allied country, despite being less than 30yrs old, fighting on 2 fronts, and barely past their industrial revolution. they also took massive casualties

the USSR was also the only country in Europe & one of the only large countries in the world, to not put a cap on how many Jewish refugees could enter (& also accepted all other refugees, many countries denied entry to romani ppl and to communists)

(most of the rest of europe didn't even allow jews who had fled to return to their homes and instead encouraged them to go to israel)

the USSR actually persecuted nazis in all the areas they had control of after ww2 but the other allied countries esp the USA mostly did not, and in fact the USA (and Canada) both recruited Nazi scientists into cushy jobs working on nukes etc to use against the USSR

listen the USSR was not perfect. there's a lot of shit that did go down in eastern europe after ww2 that couldve been a lot better. but there is absolutely no basis for comparing the USSR to nazi germany, or calling it antisemitic, or nazi collaborationist, etc. like there literally is no basis at all. the molotov-ribbentrop pact, the only time the countries shook hands, was a short-lived tactical maneuver done in order to boost their chances of defeating the nazis later on, and it was only done after every other country involved did the literal exact same thing

[sapper-in-the-wire]

Also, even with all the time bought with the M-R pact, the USSR was an entire year away from meeting their military materiel quota.

Also the USSR requested Finland to hand over mostly what the Finns had took from the Russian Empire when the Finns invaded during the Russian civil war lmao. And then the Finns got beaten into submission and were forced to turn against their Nazi brothers.

[sexy-people-contests-2026]

Tumblr Sexymonster Contest Round 2

Dracula (again so many versions)

Dragon/Elizabeth (Shrek)

Voting ended onJun 2, 2025

[dokcha]

@/FutonNetai: ババ抜きをするシルヴァンとクロード

[taxideermied]

I hate 2 say it but being a part of a “weird” subculture does not meaningfully inoculate you against a conservative moralizing impulse. You gotta unlearn that. Saying “cringe is dead” is not enough, you have to actually be okay with things that discomfort, perplex and/or disgust you.

[dopamining-a]

we at the point of blocking v.eilguard tags because ive got enough of that on my dash, I really don't care to see any content or fan content about it.

[jeannereames]

Hello, Dr. Reames! You talk often about the Greek propaganda about the ANE civilizations and how it has influenced our sources on Achaemenid civilization. I was wondering if you could recommend works that tackle this Greek tilt in modern historical analysis?

Oooo, Bibliographies!

Greeks (Romans) and Barbarians

Below is a collection of books, some cheaper (and out longer) and a couple more recent collections, not so cheap, where you can get a sense of attitudes.

Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy, Edith Hall, 1989. (Free, via ResearchGate)

Hellenicity, Jonathan Hall, 2002. (While it's really about Greeks defining themselves, it addresses the question.)

Rethinking the Other, Erich S. Gruen, 2010. (I think he's sometimes overly optimistic about attitudes, but he's good at pointing out contradictions, which in turn, reveal the stereotypes. Includes Romans.)

Greeks and Barbarians, Kostas Vlassopoulos, 2013. (Focused on what the Greeks were doing, especially in the colonies, versus just what they were theorizing.)

Oriental Mirages, Björn Forsén and Antti Lampinen, 2019. (This is a nice collection of chapters by various scholars and isn't purely Greek-focused. Free upload of their preface.)

There are various other books out there, and sections in books on other topics. For ATG in particular, I think both Diana Spencer's The Roman Alexander and Elizabeth Baynham's book on Curtius's history of Alexander deal with Roman attitudes about the East.

There are more, but this will get you started. Especially check the bibliography in Oriental Mirages.

[subtract-me-from-your-heart]

Wuk Lamat would never be criticized as harshly if she were a male character

[dopamining-a]

Mulling over and over the support chains between Hilda and Claude, and I think a lot of people miss out on very well hidden gripes Claude has with her that he cannot act upon and either backtracks from, or only hints at.

In Hopes, he actively keeps her at an arms' length about his worries, despite opening up to other characters about his anxieties (Shez, Lorenz, Hapi), but Hilda? Not Hilda. Hilda is a fun friend, not an open up your heart friend, and it shows.

Even when they are close in Houses, he's only inviting her to his secrets through a strongly veiled innuendo towards House Goneril's practice of enslaving Almyran prisoners of war, and a visit to his homeland.

In Hopes, he has to backtrack on his displeasure about the border conflict and the treatment of Almyrans on the Goneril side, because they are his allies now, and he is playing the role of an Alliance noble. You can hear the tires of the Crown Prince halt and screech in that scene.

There is also the casual racism that is highlighted by Hilda's treatment of Cyril in their support chain, of which i highly doubt Claude is ignorant.

Hilda and Claude are both amicable socialites as their chosen modus operandi for their own benefit, and that's why they are fast but superficial friends. This is why Claude is shocked that Hilda dies for him in routes that aren't VW. Even Hilda, if you listen to her dialogue, thought she'd feel differently about the situation up until she was presented with a choice.

Unless you recruit her out of Allience, of course, and she is not as attached to Claude because she's spent the time putting her bets into his opposition.

It's baffling to me that a lot of the ship content between them seems to ignore the enormous wall Claude maintains between them, not in the least for his own safety, in both games; or Hilda's glaring commitment issues.

[jelloia]

i cant get over how the entire time albedo's on trial, he's so dwarfed by the chair like your honor, his feet dont even touch the floor

[dopamining-a]

the last reblog is stupid on all sides, istg.

[pjharvey]

im american and i knew that like in kindergarten so i think some of you are just stupid sorry

[decadent-hag]

"US curriculums don't talk about-" ok? And? Are you guys not absorbing literally any information from the outside world? Tv, movies, books, people talking around you? Hello????

[athena-cat-wizard-official]

I'm sorry do people need to be taught that other countries have metropolitan cities in school or is that information you can kinda infer from like. existing in real life

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Absurd that people will just say shit like this with their whole chest. If I had somehow gotten through life to age 21 believing that my country had cities but my silly primitive sepia-toned neighbours didn't then when contrary information came up I'd keep my mouth shut and head right to wikipedia. I'd take that misconception to the fucking grave.

[darkenedyeastextract]

For USAmericans who care to listen; the issue here is not that you were never taught or exposed to facts about the world but rather that ignorance is used as a shield for criticism. This is considered a dick move as you're basically saying you know you're ignorant, you're saying you don't want to learn.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

If you're older than fifteen and not currently trapped in or recently escaped from a very overbearing cult then "I wasn't taught that at school" isn't an excuse for beliefs that reveal that you fundamentally don't think of other places as real or important. "It wouldn't occur to me to put 'USA' on my address for international shipping because I just expect everyone in other countries to know where my state is even though I don't know theirs" "I just assumed that other countries on my continent wouldn't have cities for some reason" "naturally I just assume that having states is a US thing and other countries either don't have them or they don't mean anything, other places don't have regional differences like we do, we're so varied and everywhere else is a Country Of Hats" THIS IS A YOU PROBLEM. We all have shitty education systems, yours isn't special. We all have racist governments and nationalist propoganda machines, yours isn't special. Your American exceptionalism isn't suddenly cute and humble if you try to make it about your country being extra bad instead of extra good. You just learned you made a stupid assumption due to inherent racist or nationalist or whatever beliefs? Now you have better information. Maybe think QUIETLY TO YOURSELF about what other dumb assumptions you have because of that and spend some time on wikipedia or watching foreign movies or something instead of crying to the internet that it's your fourth grade teacher's fault for not making you memorise a list of foreign cities.

We all believe dumb shit and don't know anything. You think I know anything about your states? I don't. When people from non-English-speaking countries started buying my books online I couldn't understand the address formats to post them; I had to learn. I don't automatically know which countries in the world are larger than mine, I look up the info if I need it. Sometimes I say make a bad assumption and dumb shit and people are like "Derin what you said is wrong actually" and tell me otherwise and then I learn that. This is not an issue of having information. Everyone can be wrong about stuff, but your "uphill in the snow both ways" ranting about how nobody should expect better from you because Your Uniquely Bad Culture And Schooling is at fault for every problem is getting old.

[thedragonrabbit]

Y'all don't seem to understand that, for a lot of Americans, the first time they experience truly global thinking is University. That's why Universities are so dangerous to certain political factions. It's not rocket science, but education is IMPORTANT and not all educations are created the same. I would encourage you to try to understand that an alarming % of the USA is illiterate or has a very low level of education. That's not necessarily their fault. Be kind. Understand that the world SUCKS and some people need a little help seeing that the world is this huge, complicated, interconnected machine that runs BETTER with kindness.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

What Americans leaving comments like this think they sound like:

What they actually sound like:

[buttonsgoblin]

It is true that, since this is such a widespread phenomenon among USAmericans, there has to be some non-individual factor that causes it. But that isn’t the education system not teaching that other countries have real people in them, it’s the degree to which American exceptionalism is ingrained in US culture— and I suspect that “progressive” USAmericans often can’t recognize that this isn’t just an education system problem because they don’t want to admit that they could have actual deeply rooted biases, and would rather just imagine that this isn’t all a simple educational blind spot. If that’s all it was, then you would just look it up and move on.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

You're not wrong but think more than that the answer is a little bit simpler: Americans, as citizens of the world's foremost cultural and economic hegemon, have no material incentive to learn about the rest of the world. They simply don't *need* to. Everywhere else in the world you kinda need to have a baseline level of knowledge about the USA and other first-world countries, but in the USA you don't need to have a baseline level of knowledge about anywhere else in the world, so most people never learn it.

Which honestly by itself would be fine with me, can't blame them for responding to the material incentives present in their society.

But what I *can* and *do* blame them for on a cultural level is that, when confronted with this fact, the vast majority of americans construct this weird narrative wherein lacking that baseline level of knowledge about the world is a sign of them being uniquely disadvantaged (worse educated, more propagandized, more overworked and underpaid, more unable to travel, more affected my a culture that discourages learning and intellectual curiosity) compared to the rest of the world, instead of facing the reality that it's a sign of them being uniquely privileged in the sense that they can get through their entire life without *needing* to know any of this stuff.

[localcryptideli]

Okay I am going to be mean for a second.

"But you see! America is so illiterate! We cannot help ourselves, we are just illiterate, it's a huge issue! You would never understand!"

Oh, cry me a fucking river

Straight for Wikipedia: World map of countries shaded according to the literacy rate for all people aged 15 and over.

Please note where the US is on the list.

And now look at the rest of the world, where people somehow don't react to being corrected online by claiming that the reason they never assumed other countries have cities is because they have such huge rates of illiteracy that the rest of the world could never understand their struggle.

My grandma has only four years of primary school and SOMEHOW she knows other countries have cities. It's nearly as if formal education is not the only possible source of information.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

A symptom of this I often see is that a great many Americans also feel the need to highlight to the entire world around them when something they encounter is Other, or outside of their wheelhouse, and this applies even to the most mundane of things. I have two examples of this:

First, back in 2020, a lost walrus visited the Welsh town of Tenby for many weeks and menaced its lifeboats by sleeping on the slipway. I wrote a lengthy post about this, and included the fact that the good folks of West Wales named the walrus Wally, after the children's book franchise Where's Wally.

I was inundated with Americans reacting with everything from astonishment to derision that the character is not called Waldo outside of America. It was constant. Everything from "Wait you guys call him Wally??? Not Waldo???" all the way to "Are you guys fucking stupid his name is Waldo omg"

Which is very interesting, because Where's Wally is a British franchise. He was called 'Wally' first. His name was translated into over 30 other languages, including Charlie and Jonas, depending on region. Nonetheless, I did not get one single solitary note about the name from anyone else; it was exclusively Americans, unable to keep their amazement to themselves, unable to not highlight and point out that SOMETHING IS DIFFERENT FROM US.

Second, I once wrote a post in which I, a speaker of British English, used the word 'gaol' - the BE spelling of 'jail'. Again, I was flooded with comments, asks, messages, etc from Americans who simply could not fathom why I had done so. Four of them very literally sent me asks that asked why I had done it (I mean this literally - "Why did you spell jail like that?" was word for word one of the asks), so unable were they to work out on their own that spellings differ between dialects. I responded to one, saying that I was baffled by it, and suggesting that maybe the polite thing would be to google these sorts of things for yourself rather than requesting to have your hand held through the process of learning that other places have different words and spellings than you're used to. I said I did understand, but that this was something I myself fetched up against all the time with American media, and had since I was a child - but I simply used context clues to work out meaning, or google when I couldn't, because I get that American English is a different language.

And then two things happened: the first was that a non-trivial number of Americans lost their entire shit at the very suggestion that there was anything at all rude about this (again, I really don't know what answer they wanted to that beyond "Because that's how it's spelled in my language", information readily available with a single google search), and the second was that I was then inundated with non-Americans sharing stories of how they love writing fanfic but they had to start doing it in American English because when they used their own, they would get flooded with comments from Americans trying to 'correct' them, and it just wasn't worth the hassle.

And it's ultimately a 'dominant culture' sickness, I think. When everything is constantly catering to your understandings and cultural expectations, anything outside of it feels Other, and Must Be Commented Upon. I'm Welsh, and I find absolutely any mention of anything Welsh around most English people gets the same reaction; they absolutely have to comment on the Thing They Think Is Weird. Just last week I was discussing a fieldtrip for my students with an English colleague of mine, and I said I was taking them to the Bannau Brycheiniog. He didn't interrupt, to his credit; but he got the stupid grin that I knew meant he was going to comment. He waited until I finished asking for his risk assessment input, and then rather than answering, his first response was "The Bah Bah Bluh Bluh?"

If I'd said an Anglicised or English name, he'd have just continued the conversation. But he didn't recognise the name Bannau Brycheiniog. So We Must All Flag Up That It's Weird.

And that's dialled up to 11 for a great many Americans.

(Though not all, by a long shot. I do want to stress that. In both examples I've given, I had far more Americans who agreed with me than not. But it is a common behaviour, unfortunately.)

[mekanikaltrifle]

I had this very experience with the infamous 'housecoat poll', where I used two UK English variant names for a particular garment worn within the house, often when feeling lazy or in pyjamas, or after a bath. It was meant for like at max 10 people, most of whom would be using UK English. And it blew up. Many non USAmericans responded with their own local version of the name, and that was cool! Canadians even responded pretty politely, which was nice. But the yanks. Most responses from them were anything from the smarmy warrior cats meme, to acting like anything other than 'robe' or 'bathrobe' was illiteracy, to outright mockery. One or two folks even (probably-jokingly) claimed they wanted to 'beat the British out of OP', i.e me. Now, if they had any idea, they'd know that calling a Scottish person British or English is very likely to be at least a faux-pas, if not generally offensive by itself, but the aggression and threatening attitudes genuinely got upsetting. Ended up getting hatemail over it, too. The worst bit about it all is that if you respond with a 'don't talk to me like this', you're likely to be met with the same aggression that they'd been dishing out for no good reason in the tags. It could have been avoided by simply googling the words 'dressing gown' or 'housecoat' and finding out they're just words from a different version of English than that of the majority.

[bigcheesevik]

important to keep in mind that the US is a highly diverse country with huge regional and income inequalities as well as a large proportion of people that go to non-standardised educational institutions (religious schools and (largely unregulated) homeschooling), which means while there's a lot of Americans that are pretty well off, there's tons that are well below the poverty line and also receiving a poor education (or even an actively incorrect one)

There's also the fact that these things usually get expressed online in mostly English-speaking spaces (hence predominantly american with an expectation of other people being american), and the people that tend to leave obnoxious comments are...well, the type of people to leave obnoxious comments. It's not a hugely representative sample of USAmericans as a whole, i feel.

You don't tend to find people from other non-English speaking countries being dicks about geography or whatever because they're much less likely to be on English-speaking spaces? Because they're way less likely to be able to speak English?

Also feel like shaming people for being honest about their deficiencies and ignorances is counterproductive. It's GOOD to be honest about what you're wrong about, and it's good to be nice to people who are honest about what they're wrong about because that means they can learn better

[belladoes]

Do you. Do you genuinely think the rest of the world is not hugely diverse? That there are no big income inequalities in other countries? That there are no extremely religious groups and schools in other countries? That no other countries have a lot of people living under minimum wages?

People from other countries do in fact also communicate online in English speaking spaces. Because that's the way to interact with both people from your own county and people from other countries. Because English is seen as the international language. When people are lamenting abt shit online, big chance theyll do it in English so there's a bigger chance people will understand them. "Way less likely to speak English" I cannot even begin to comprehend how stupid this statement is. Do you think people in other countries just. Don't get taught English? Even though it's the main international language? Do you think every English-speaking person online is from the USA??

(Also, the USA isn't the only country that has English as it's main language? Did you genuinely forget about ENGLAND, the whole British isles, Australia, New Zealand)

We got a bingo

[vigilantsycamore]

Literally anyone ever: There's a problem with USAmericans being ignorant of other countries and considering themselves both more normal and more special than everywhere else

USAmericans: Ok but you need to keep in mind that this is because America is a real country, unlike all of those other places

[dopamining-a]

@localcryptideli I would like to note, just on the principle of the thing, that you supplied the UN census as of 2025, during which USA, Canada, and Australia, among others were not included in the census. That doesn't mean that USA is 100% literate on the map. It means that there was no data presented for it. Which you can confirm if you look at the legend for the map.

Also don't forget to source what you are presenting.

Alright then, let's ask ourselves, what is the data that we have? There is a map of literacy scores by state given here for 2024 and statistics here for 2025. To quote the latter article:

Approximately 79% of adults in the United States have medium to high English literacy skills, leaving about 21%. These 21% of the adults with low literacy rates are approximately 43 million in the country.

Besides, over half of the people in the United States read below the 6th-grade level and one-fifth read below the third-grade level.

[titsay]

[thatsbutterbaby]

A girl luring quicksilver from a mine by her beauty. India, Mughal dynasty,mid-18th century. Opaque watercolour on paper.