i've achieved my final form

The earliest example of someone chewing on the end of their pencil that I know of

Bone styluses from a 5th century BC grave at Acharnai, outside of Athens. Now in archaeological museum at Acharnai. My photo.

I've seen the collections of favorite tumblr fiction posts; now I'd like to see what your favorite "humans being human" historical posts are. (Because sometimes it is Nice to be reminded that compassion is not something easy for us to lose; we laugh at the same bad jokes; there are entire fossil records of our kindness.)

Here are my favorites-- add on yours.

The story of the RMS Carpathia, with a follow-up (aka one of if not the best pieces of short nonfiction historical writing in the modern age and one that reduces me to tears every goddamn reread)

Bronze-age grave of teenage gamer girl lovingly buried with her sheep ankle bone collection

The 1st-2nd century CE Roman tombstone with a bar joke that reads like a Dril tweet

And even earlier: A 4500-1900 BCE Sumerian bar joke

"Please know that there's an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that's beautiful to you"

Reconstructing Otzi's shoes

The Paleolithic grandmother and the child's fingerprint

Stone-age toddlers had art lessons

Ice-age children played in megafauna-footprint puddles

There once was a little boy who loved ducks

The oldest human burial found in Africa is a toddler; they made a pillow for his head

Henry Kenelm Beste's father loved him very much

"A Timeline of Humanity"

"I have a folder called Time is a Flat Circle in which I collect evidence of humanity. Here is most of them."

"I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today. It's right-handed. I am right-handed"

A 3rd century dog carved on a marble tomb; a 1st century dog lovingly described and named for posterity

Patrice, a 1st-2nd century dog, was dearly loved

And: we found a Paleolithic dog, buried with its bone

Humanity, unified across time by everyday experiences

The Golden Record sent into space in the 1970s

Ancient Egypt had archaeologists

Egyptian figurine of a woman waiting for her bread to finish baking

The graffiti of Pompeii

Ancient Greek tourist graffiti at the tomb of Ramses V

Hidden messages on circuit boards

The earliest examples of someone chewing on the end of their pencils

"im having feelings about the uffington white horse again"

The vast relatability of Medieval marginalia (and cats peeing on things)

Potoooooooo

What our ancient ancestors would think, seeing us prosper

Engage with older art; it keeps you from forgetting their humanity

"They were just like you and me. They write don't forget eggs, and wondered if their neighbors secretly hated them or if they are reading into it too much. They loved and were loved and they wondered. They wondered about you."

"Why do you study history" web-weaving

Shout out to that one tumblr post that was like: "You know it's not just trans people who ponder their gender, it's healthy for cis people to take a look inside and be like! Yep that's all good!" And I read this post and was like.... like what do you look at inside though T O T??? I asked my boyfriend how he knew he was a boy and he said he just felt this unexplainable intrinsic feeling he was a boy... and I'm like... I HAVE GENUINELY NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT WTF 😭😭😭!!!!!!!! So apparently its like. Normal for people to feel this inexplicable 'Gender' feeling or whatever,,, I feel like how asexual people feel when they discover people around them aren't making up the fact they experience sexual arousal T O T

Obviously all my sciency stuff is just speculation! But I'm the type of person who believe that everything has a rationale behind it, and like an adopted child who is curious about their biological parents, I am just interested in my origins! The field of genetics still is mostly just like,,,, hmmm we think this whatever MIGHT be a contributing factor to a person turning out this way... maybe. If you are more interested in the topic I discussed, just look up 'Genetic Memories in Animals' and there should be some more stuff OuO!

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

I think it particularly comes up the moment an author includes any sort of marginalisation/oppression for their fictional/fantasy world. I've lost count of the times now where I've seen people read a book on, say, the terrible oppression of the Gwyllion, and immediately gone "Oh, so the Gwyllion are a metaphor for the real world X people, either deliberately or accidentally through the author's inherent racism. This is therefore super problematic because the Gwyllion are also described as Y, which means the author is also saying that about X people."

There will always be real world parallels when discussing oppression. Always. But that's because oppression is oppression - precise details may vary, but it follows the same pathways the world over, and that will naturally be copied into fiction as well. This does not mean the author is intentionally telling the exact allegory that you've projected onto it. If that's how you read everything, then yeah, everything becomes super problematic, but also, why are you reading any fiction that isn't solely about real world historical events? It's clearly not for you

And, you know, obviously there are works that are racist/misogynistic/etc, including deliberately so. But I really don't like the way people have started going "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY here, I'm ever so smart" and acting like they're the cleverest little critic that ever lived. You have to meet a work on its own terms. Lovecraft was a big ole racist, sure. Someone who has written a book about the oppression of magic users in their fantasy world, however, is rarely writing a story about how queerness lurks in family lines and must be controlled; they are way more commonly writing a story about a world with magic that they then wanted to take seriously, and while there might well be elements of queerness there, those magic users are not a 1:1 replacement.

Sometimes these lines are blurry! But we're going way too far to one end of that spectrum

The post that got me thinking about this yesterday was someone talking about how they'd love to write a vampire story exploring vampirism as a disability (dependence on a substance to manage the condition, blindness/weakness in daytime, can't enter buildings without accommodation, etc). But, they said, they can't, because they don't want to be making the point that disabled people are parasites, and vampires are generally considered parasitic.

And like. What an incredible shame. That we'll lose that, because they're already afraid of the "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY" crowd. That would be a great story for exploring disability themes, OR just a great new take on vampires, and either of those things would be so good to read. But there would be so many people who would jump in with "So you think disabled people are draining the life force of the ableds around them?", never stopping to actually think "Vampires are not a 1:1 stand in for real world disability because they are fictional and do not exist."

So: repurposed vaguely Kinseyesque scale describing your aromantic and/or asexual protagonist's awareness of and relationship to their own aromanticism/asexuality:

Unaware That This Is A Thing People Can Be. Type specimen: Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl. Has never once considered that "not wanting romance or sex" is a thing people could feel, let alone identify as. He is normal, which means straight. It's just a coincidence that his relationship with his girlfriend was a disaster and now he's just way too busy in this new nightmare dystopia world for any of that! Anyway!

Aware They Have These Feelings, Assumes Everyone Else Also Does. Type specimen: Doug Eiffel from Wolf 359. Firmly believes that his aro-allo experiences are universal and everybody else is just better at acting like a functional human being than he is. Being a huge movie nerd also leads him to believe that "romance" as we understand it is massively exaggerated for drama in movies and people in real life don't actually do and feel that stuff any more than they mind-meld or can use the Force. He's just a fuckup at everything; why wouldn't relationships be included in that? For most of the show if you told him about aromanticism he would NOT be comforted about it, he'd probably take it as a diagnosis that his fuckup-ness regarding relationships was innate and incurable. (This doesn't have to be negative; this is also where Andy Wheyface from Arden falls and he is having a GRAND old time.)

Aware They Have These Feelings, Realizes That It Sets Them Apart From Others, Doesn't Conceptualize It As Part Of An Identity. Type specimen: Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary. His reaction to other people having sex is mostly "why would you do that." His single attempt at a serious romantic relationship didn't work out and he has a nagging sense that there is something in him that can't maintain serious relationships; attributes it to cowardice and fear of commitment. Ironically he does know what asexuality is. He's a middle school teacher in 2020s California, he has absolutely gotten LGBTQ+ Sensitivity Education at least in "pamphlet listing queer identities" form, he for sure has students with pride flag pins on their backpacks and pride stickers on their notebooks, and he is also not immune from the Culture War Bullshit around gender in schools. Knowing that asexuality exists did not even slightly lead him to apply this to himself.

Aware They Have These Feelings, Considers Them Significant, Attributes Them To Some Existential Feature Of Their Existence Rather Than A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot is very confident it does not want anything to do with romance or sex, and it attributes this to Being A SecUnit, and romance and sex are Human Things SecUnits Don't Do. Has not yet realized that this is an itself thing and not a SecUnit thing. Probably willfully at this point.

Considers These Feelings A Significant Aspect Of Their Selfhood, But Doesn't Name It. Type specimen: Sister Carpenter from The Silt Verses. Clearly confident in who she is and what she wants in her personal relationships, recognizes that as something that makes her different from others and out of step with what others expect from her, and is basically like, that's their problem. She knows who she is. Sometimes other people try to make it her problem but she has so many other problems that societal amatonormativity keeps getting pushed lower and lower on her list of Problems.

Recognizes Themself As Aromantic/Asexual As A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Nova NoStar from InCo. Clearly considers this part of her identity, but is allergic to talking about her feelings even at her therapy android's insistence and besides that's not anybody else's business is it?

Publicly Identifies As Asexual And Describes It With Period-Correct Sexual Orientation Language. Type specimen: Sally Grissom from ars PARADOXICA. The only character I've ever heard come out as asexual and lay out the definition in terms of sexual orientation and attraction to another character on-air that made me go "yeah she would do this, this is in character for Sally." Strongly feel like she would be an active commenter on the 2010s ace blogosphere. Would get in an argument about the correct definition of asexuality on AVEN.

This is a really interesting aspect that I was definitely thinking about when I put this list together, because it began as an expansion of this post and I was freely mixing characters that are canonically and intentionally written as aro and ace, and characters who were not at all intended to come off that way but really do to me and/or a lot of people. But it's true, and I think that speaks to something about how different genre narratives prioritize things that lead to these readings!

A lot more thoughts about this under the cut: