beneath aman.

Her support with Cyrill is an adventure into normalized xenophobia and dehumanization towards thy neighbor, how that behavior remains unpunished in Fodlan culture. In Hopes, I believe, there is a scene early on where Hilda makes a remark of similar nature about the attacking Almyran forces - something Claude bristles at. And then apologizes for bristling, because he has to work with her and Gonerils in that fight, regardless of their prejudice.

You know, a guy whose central character forming childhood trauma is being prejudiced at, due to his mixed heritage. The guy who proclaims that breaking the rules of the powerful that create barriers between people and create cycles of hatred as his foremost dream. That guy. Has to sit. On. It. Quietly, without conveying his feelings any time Hilda mentions Almyra, Almyrans and all the things she holds as truth about the world, as told by the martial glory of the Goneril.

I would like to mention, that despite Claude's self control, he self reports himself as having been a very angry child, only growing out of tantrums against injustices he faced after seeing their lack of effect.

Which MEANS (and I type this with DERANGED glee) that not ONLY will he hold Hilda at an arm's length. Not ONLY will he have ideological and worldview conflicts with her that he will need to try to scheme his way around and through.

He COULD ALSO HAVE BOTTLED UP BITTERNES AND ANGER towards her hurtful words! Because Claude, UNLIKE CYRIL, does not have freedom to voice his displeasure. WHICH ALSO ADDS A LAYER OF IRONY, BUT ALSO—

Also, makes Hilda's heartfelt feelings of friendship and comradery towards Claude, should you fail to recruit her and she falls in battle, so so so much more potentially complicated and heart-shattering for that little wyvern-flying guy that hides his heart snd hides his cards from everyone and everything.

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.

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

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.

What they actually sound like:

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

"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.

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.

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?

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

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.