Basic State Relations
Mun: So let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way.
Vermont: What elephant?
Mun: Well, some people I know wonder if you states are related to America in some way or form or are like a bunch of teenagers.
Vermont: Oh Jeezum Crow (*), here we go.
Mun: Wow, I don’t have to coax you on this one?
Vermont: Let’s just settle this. No, we are not related to America. Were not his kids. And most of us are adults with a few exceptions. Most of us are barely related to a select few states anyways, which that in of itself is a stretch, but America is one we all agree we are not related to. I mean, for Christ’s sake, some of us are about his age or even older than him!
Best way I can describe the nature of most of the states relationships with America is that we operate kind of like an office department where us states are coworkers and America is the boss that sometimes gets overruled by us. We basically coexist with each other to keep ourselves afloat.
Mun: Okay, so then that leads to the next question. What do you mean by it’s a stretch to say some states are related to some? And who is considered related to who?
Vermont: Look, some of us, like Maine, Louisiana, and I just so happened to be related to each other because we have French heritage and partly got raised by France. Doesn’t mean it’s a solid blood relation, it’s more by circumstances which then developed into personal attachments.
There’s a select few where they are definitely related to one another and are willing to admit it. Like the Dakotas; they are twins that started off as one territory that then got split when admitted to the union. The Carolinas are sisters, not twins, cause North is older than South by a little less than 30 years going by the first successful English settlements. West Virginia and Virginia are twin brothers where no one knew why one colony/state needed to representations until... that war occurred and West split from the rest of Virginia.
Then you get a lot of states that were settled by England, but they don’t call each other siblings. It really depends on a state’s personal feelings and sense of family. Like Washington had some relations with England in the beginning before American settlement, but he doesn’t call himself a brother to the Carolinas or the Virginias. Or to bring it back to me, cause the Louisiana Purchase made a bunch of states, just because we have a common relation with France, doesn’t mean I call myself the older brother of a lot of them. The only one I will make an exception to in that instance is Louisiana herself, and that’s because we both personally are fine calling ourselves related and do have a sibling-like attachment.
Mun: Okay, so who would you say you feel you’re related to?
Vermont: Well, technically Maine and I are related. Like by actual reasoning. He’s my older brother. He had some of his first settlements by French in early 1600s when he was known as Acadia. Basically it’s like we share the same father but have different mothers. France had Maine with his mother, Passamaquoddy, and then he had me with my mother, Abenaki.
Then to a lesser extent I’m related to Louisiana. She was more by choice than anything due to her mixed heritage of Spanish, French and, quite frankly, a load of other cultures, that basically made it difficult for her to pinpoint who was responsible for her existence. Maine and I had a silent agreement to just consider her a little sister to us, and she was perfectly fine with it. Certainly gained us weird looks from the other states cause... well...
Mun: Well what?
Vermont: Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat things here. We were two white men and she is a black woman. Society then was not kind to blacks at all, hell, kind of is still true today. It was rough for all three of us in the union because we chose to consider ourselves related. The states then weren’t as mature as they are now. They didn’t understand then.
But we didn’t care. We didn’t have a family in our lives for a long while. Hell, my mother died shortly after the English decided to settle in the 1660s, and Maine lost his mother before that due to smallpox. Fuck, Louisiana kept getting bounced around and poorly treated for so long she thought that was how all people acted. We provide each other what we were missing or needed the most, and we wouldn’t change that for anything. We have each other’s backs.
Mun: Sounds like you three get along pretty well.
Vermont: Well, took a minute for Maine and I. We got along enough for Louisiana’s sake, but for awhile we just didn’t want anything to do with each other on the account of we didn’t quite know if France technically cheated on Maine’s mother with my mom or not due to when Maine’s mother died, and we treated each other like we were the embodiment of that fact. It didn’t improve until shortly after I joined the union and Maine was technically considered part of Massachusetts. I mean, the rest of the states found out then that we were brothers, which in hindsight was hilarious because of the look on Mass’s face when she realized that, so we had to interact a lot. Eventually, we got along well enough that the whole France debacle is more level-headed debate and we both could agree that France wasn’t the greatest parent since he kind of neglected us in favor of Canada a lot.
Mun: I would ask a bit more about France, but that sounds like a whole can of worms that shouldn’t be opened quite yet.
Vermont: I’d prefer not. That’s whole other... topic to deal with.
Mun: Well, then I guess we can wrap up for now. Later we can go in depth with different states or your relationship with America or other countries as well as your history.
Vermont: I’m guessing it’s up to asks who people want to know more about unless no one asks for a while and then you pick?
Mun: Exactly!
Some Notes:
Jeezum Crow - a Vermont expression for “Jesus Christ”
Apparently, the lost colony of Roanoke is technically in present day North Carolina, and their first settlement dates back to about the 1640s, though settling was very difficult , while South Carolina’s first settlement was in 1670 at Albemarle Point (though I also saw that under North Carolina, so I’m having a little creative license here because of the confusion, and I wanted to be different from a lot of other people who consider them twins)
the war that Vermont is hesitant on saying while talking about the Virginias is referring to the American Civil War; I headcannon a lot of the states that were involved just won’t talk about the war due to a lot of psychological damage and every single one of them having done horrible things to one another that they don’t know how to cope with
Washington and Oregon were part of the Oregon Country and the land was given to America by Britain due to a compromise between the two that nearly escalated to war
I headcannon that Maine was also considered the short lived Acadia Colony by the French, which was around 1604
Passamaquoddy is a Native American tribe that was found in eastern Maine and New Brunswick, and most of which died from smallpox upon contacting the Europeans
Abenaki spanned a large area, but was split between the Western Abenaki (mostly Vermont) and the Eastern Abenaki (New Hampshire and western Maine), though some Abenaki tribes went into Massachusetts as well; currently only recognized in Canada
The Wabanaki Alliance was a very loose confederacy between several New England native American tribes against the Iroquois (who they were long time rivals and enemies of) and several European nations. All tribes that were part of the alliance all maintained their own sovereignty and independence from one another.