Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851
Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later
Kid survives
1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family
Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair
This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies
Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence
Bologna falls the next year, 1859
Kingdom of Italy forms 1861
By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more
(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)
(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)
Fun fact: the Catholic Church did not stop doing this after Edgaro Mortara. During WW2, many Jewish children were put in convents or catholic-run orphanages for their own safety. Sounds nice right? Except after the war ended, when parents or surviving relative went back to claim their children, the church went, “uhhh, actually they’re catholic now, no take backs!”
The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”
What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.
Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.
Documents reveal the private discussions behind both Pope Pius XII’s silence about the Nazi deportation of Rome’s Jews in 1943 and the Vatic
I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.
Idk what my point is here, just that there’s such a clean link between evangelizing, cultural/religious imperialism, and how damaging and horrifying a religion can be when it is thoroughly convinced of its own superiority. And that unless an institution is forced to change, it probably won’t change on its own.
Summrary: Shiloh talks about how it discovered it's linktype, how it influences it's life, and how imagithropy can ease some aches that don't have a common name.
I'm probably a weird kind of alterhuman. I see a lot of dragons, elves, wolves, all sorts of cool species and 'types that I would have never considered to be possible. But I'm not a cool mythological or edgy alterhuman. I'm an imaginary children's cartoon character. As in, my source doesn't exist, I made it up. AND I've got the double whammy of not relating to all the cool toons either, kudos to the looney tunes types out there. I was raised on your source and have a fondness for it even now. But, uh, I'm from a show that's similar to Bluey or the Backyardigans or Daniel Tiger. My source is called Shiloh the Great, and in this world, it's never aired. It's a cartoon about learning to grow as a person, having wacky adventures in places that are foreign to me even now, and having wholesome family fun that has probably more strange undertones than I'd probably care to name.
Getting into the how of this happend – One time I had an art trade with a really cool artist. I'm not gonna name them here, but their art is in a style typical of old Disney or Don Bluth toons. They portrayed my fursona with my favorite plushies in real life – I have one named Logan, a Build a Bear werewolf from 2021, he wears a little leather jacket and a grey sweatshirt and jeans. He even has little combat boots. When I got him, my brain immediately latched onto the idea that this WAS Logan Howlett. But how Logan came to be my headmate is a different story and not really relevant. All you need to know is that his plushie form has a lot of signifigance to me as a person, and it being portrayed in art made me really happy. Other than Logan being in the artwork, there was also Solas, who is my Steiff Snorry Wolf stuffed animal. He's also named after an iconic character (and I'll let you guess who, if you want to) with personal relevance to me. Solas, in the photo, was in my arms, as if I was introducing him to Logan, who was seated in a little drawer. The background itself is from an episode of Goof Troop, one of those classic toons from that era. I loved that art immediately, and then it planted this idea in my head.
In September of 2023, I was having the good old Identity Troubles. I didn't know who I wanted to be. My fursona was an outlet at the time – I drew it in all sorts of situations ranging from sad to happy to horrific. I knew at the time that I didn't want to grow up. I was sick of the idea that I had to be an adult all the time, and that being an adult was what everybody wanted. I was stuck in a place between being grown and not. I'd been an adult for about three years, then, but the persistant feeling of "this isn't right" was always there. I didn't like looking at myself in the mirror, because I didn't look how I wanted to. And in my head, how I wanted to look was a cartoon 8 year old golden retriever in denim overalls and a shitty baseball t-shirt.
This combination of age dysphoria and species dysphoria was a hit in the head. I stopped looking at myself in the mirror and looked inwards. My inner child was there. It told me that I didn't have to be grown if I didn't want to be. That I was right – all these expectations are too much for me. And that it's okay if I didn't ever want to grow up. My inner child rapidly became my outer child. I got myself a pair of denim shortalls, adult baby onesies, fun t-shirts, and began my treck twards self acceptence. I wasn't an adult even if I was one physically. I didn't have to be.
I read the post on imagithropy by shimmering-dragon, then, that same week. And I got it in my head that if I can be anything I want, including a child, then hell, why don't I be my fursona? And why don't I be a cartoon character while I'm at it? This all occured to me while watching an episode of Bluey, by the way. Specifically Space. Which is a really beautiful episode.
I quickly began building a headworld for my fake-cartoon-self. I decided that I was obviously the main character. My boyfriend Archie's fursona would be my little brother, and my partner's fursona Cyber would be my cool level-headed caretaker. The dynamics were in my head, I discussed it with my partners, and we decided that everything was totally a-okay. I began building a little plot in my head, too, around the show itself. What if there was a magical forest? And what if Cyber was secretly from an alien planet? And what if my baby brother and I got up to family hijinks involving said magical forest that could take us anywhere we wanted? What if my baby brother was like Jack-Jack from the Incredibles and had funny ideas that influenced our adventures?
And that's when that clicked for me. I could be a happy-go-lucky 8 year old golden retriever from a fake cartoon if I really wanted. I could do this in real life too, if I wanted. Anything is possible when you think really hard about it. And fiction is fun!
My parting question to you, reader, is What is stopping you? You don't have to take this entire identity thing seriously. Come play toys with me!
it’s actually quite easy to take over a small local government group if you really want to, bc if you volunteer consistently people will just put you in charge of whatever. I’m now one of like three people at a nature preserve making official decisions about trails, putting in a prairie, and designing a series of illustrations for a storybook trail etc., and it’s just because last summer I started coming over once a week to help the naturalist out for a couple hours. Mine now. you too can steal an organization and shape it to your will 🫵
I wrote what I am calling a "weird" essay about my relationship with being fictional, which is to say, I'm not, the fiction is ME. I use terms like "fictive" and "source" to communicate more effectively and find people with similar experiences, less because I feel like I'm "from" something fictional. And then Khadgar lives somewhere between those two points, seeing himself as needing to wrench himself from the jaws of canon, in his own words. I don't see it, myself, because I don't believe that canon has much to do with me other than curiously reflecting a good portion of my life and getting the names right. It's more folklore or a myth than a retelling, to me.
The essay is a mess and I will need to return to it a few times for editing, but I'll post it either here or on our website when it's done. Most things go directly to our website these days because it's just so much work to edit them for multiple platforms. Formatting is a real bitch. The downside is that it means that almost no one reads them because they have no way to know they exist.
This essay, I'm Not Fictional, the Fiction is Me, is now up on our website. It was also crossposted to the Fictionkind Dreamwidth if anyone who's a member would prefer to read it there. This is also accompanied by a significant update to our website in general, including essays from Mithras, Khadgar, Tanix, Research, Popel, and myself, plus Caleb and Khadgar's poems from the Centaurus Festival. (We have other poems we've written since that we're hanging onto for now since we're debating what we should do with them.)
Anyone can feel free to message us on whatever platform is most convenient if they'd like to talk about anything we've written on our website. We don't crosspost to Tumblr much at this point partially for formatting reasons and partially because Tumblr is just awful for longform discussions. Still, if it's the best platform for you to talk to us on, feel free.
Engineering teams around the world have been attempting to develop new methods of seawater desalination.
Scientists in China have developed a more efficient form of solar desalination that uses 47.4% less energy than alternatives. After the first year of testing, the scientists believe that at scale it would be able to desalinate water more cheaply than producing bottled water.
The goal is now to scale the technology for use in coastal areas and islands experiencing water insecurity.
A rare piece of Texas prairie has been saved from future development
The preserve is one step closer to its 30,000-acre goal.
A protected piece of the Katy Prairie is now off-limits to future development as conservationists continue expanding one of the Houston area's most important natural landscapes.
The Coastal Prairie Conservancy announced this week that it has permanently protected another 60 acres in northwest Harris County, moving the nonprofit closer to its long-term goal of conserving 30,000 acres on the historic Katy Prairie.
The preserve encompasses about 20,000 acres across western Harris and Waller counties just west of Houston.
Located in the Upper Cypress Creek watershed, the newly-protected tract includes native prairie, seasonal wetlands and working agricultural land.
According to the conservancy, preserving the property will help support wildlife habitat, provide natural flood storage and maintain the area’s natural landscape as development continues to spread across northwest Harris County...
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