ljwrites

ljwrites, 10 months ago

@futurebird corporate profit activity vs. propaganda activity in one picture

ljwrites, 10 months ago

@penfount we have some communities coming in from Reddit, like wetshaving.social and ttrpg.network, and I think it's amazing! @nebulos

ljwrites, 10 months ago

Even aside from the usual (and correct!) "you have dragons in your world," Europe has literally never been all white! Not only was it homo sapiens' and other hominid species' first stop out of Africa, even when we get to recorded history the Roman Empire--often cited as a fountainhead of Euro-civilization--included vast rich colonies in Africa and the Middle East, without which there would have been no Empire or anything that came after. There were Roman emperors from Africa. Like gtfo with your lily-white Europe lmao

ljwrites, 10 months ago

Another frequently-cited source of European civilization, Greece. Bitch an entire cornerstone of their literature and mythology is about wedding and warring with Trojans in modern-day Türkiye. Speaking of which and circling back to Rome, the Romans made a whole Thing of tracing their ancestry back to Troy through Aeneas in a tale that included the mythological roots of the later Roman conquest of Carthage through the figure of Dido.

In sum the present-day ideal of whitey-white purity meant exactly ZILCH to the claimed classical founders of European civilization who thought of themselves and acted as part of the Mediterranean region, which included people who are inconveniently nonwhite in modern terms.

ljwrites, 10 months ago

But surely the gates of Fortress Europe crashed shut after the end of the classical era, they cry. Lol are we really going to forget about a little place called Spain and its Moorish kingdoms, including vibrant Jewish cultures? Because this whole "European civilization" crowd sure seems to want to For Some Reason, even though that period is another foundational eras of this Euro-civilization stuff. It's almost as if a laser focus on whiteness actually gets in the way of perceiving Europe as it was, imagine that.

ljwrites, 10 months ago

The Reconquista and the end of the Spanish Moore kingdoms may be the precursor of Fortress Europe and one of the insidious roots of "white" even being a thing today, but it sure didn't turn Europe white. Obviously there was no European Renaissance without the Arab and Muslim world and its scholarship. The principal mathematical textbook in European universities until the 16th century was a translation of a treatise by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, whose name gives us the word "algorithm." You could not get anywhere in the fields of math, astronomy, medicine and more without reading the works and translations of Muslim scholars.

So yeah, even if your fantasy-European protagonist and everyone they know is white as hell, if anyone has had any higher education and training in the sciences and they haven't read nonwhite people? That is active erasure and a rewriting of how Europe was.

ljwrites, 10 months ago

But that was Southern Europe, the proponents of a white Europe hopefully venture. Surely north of the Alps they were squeaky white, they tell themselves, echoing Wagner's disdain of the "Mediterranean" influence (including Christianity) on Europe. Surely in rural villages of simple folk, far from the teeming hordes of the South and East--hi, Professor Tolkien!--and the high-falutin' centers of learning with its corrupting foreign influence, the ideal of a purely white Europe held?

Haha nope, sorry not sorry. Jewish and Roma people hellooo? Originating from the Middle East and India? Ever hear of them, and what white goyische Gadjo did to them and continue to do? To the extent parts of Europe were and are "purely" white it was not a passive state of being but a result of enthusiastic ethnic cleansing.

ljwrites, 10 months ago

@greengaybles I'd say almost anything Ghibli--if you've seen these movies and can tell us what fits or doesn't fit what you're looking for, that may give rise to more concrete ideas. I'd say Nausicaa of the Valley of Winds fits this to a T, with a protagonist whose defining traits are her kindness and idealism.

ljwrites, 1 year ago

@twipped Haha yeah, for all the weight such an agreement has she might as well sign it if it'll lull the dipshit into a false sense of security while she makes plans to get away. There's maybe a chance at enforceability if it's instead, say, a penalty provision if she divorces him before the kid is 18, but courts will still refuse to enforce if it can be construed as something that coerces her not to divorce, i.e. if it's a large monetary penalty that would deter her from seeking divorce.

ljwrites, 1 year ago

@johncarlosbaez These two raised the bar for "commit to the bit" by a lot

ljwrites, 1 year ago

@kazarnowicz Reddit was always a cesspit but it looks like it's set to be an increasingly boring cesspit.

ljwrites, 1 year ago

@rchopgood I'd just enter my Mastodon handles, since they're somewhat equivalent 🤷‍♀️ @writers

ljwrites, 1 year ago

@rchopgood civilization (derogatory) @writers

ljwrites, 1 year ago

@inherentlee I haven't done bookbinding in a while but I hope to get back to it sometime! I once bound an exposed spine notebook for my best friend, with pink covers, pale pink paper, and dark pink thread lol.

ljwrites, 1 year ago

@kazarnowicz Thank you! I tentatively opened a scene and straightaway fell in love with it, which is probably a good sign :D