tsuki’s writing corner

🏵️ council of elders — decisions by consensus, which means decisions basically never happen on time.

🏵️ hereditary monarchy, but the bloodline's disputed — half the kingdom has a claim and receipts to prove it.

🏵️ theocracy — the law and the religion are the same document, so disagreeing with policy is heresy.

🏵️ merchant oligarchy — whoever controls the trade routes controls the throne, no crown required.

🏵️ military junta dressed up as order — "temporary" rule that's been temporary for thirty years.

🏵️ fractured city-states — technically one nation, actually six governments who hate each other on principle.

🏵️ cult of personality around one leader — the system only works because everyone's terrified of what happens when they die.

🏵️ resistance/underground faction — no official power at all, which is its own kind of dangerous.

🏵️ bureaucratic empire — nobody's evil, the paperwork is just built to crush you slowly.

🏵️ dying aristocracy propped up by nostalgia — everyone still bows, nobody still has money.

the best factions aren't good vs evil — they're each convinced they're the reasonable one 🩷

The general term for a non white person casually referring to a Black person is moreno (Moroccan) or sometimes I’ve heard Central Americans say “piel-negra” (dark-skinned) to distinguish from themselves as dark skinned indigenous people. Brazilians use pardo except that term is from medieval Spanish for a brown animal so I’d be careful there.

Black Spanish speakers say Negro amongst ourselves and I personally let my allies say it.

Under no circumstances use negrito/a/e. That’s blackie. Never use “Los negros,” that’s “the blacks.” Typically if you say something like “el negro,” one specific black man, the addition of the Spanish “the” is alienating and thus roughly the equivalent of calling someone a hard r slur.

Say “las personas negras” “communidad Negra.”