Pinned
Anonymous asked:
This isn't the terf blog is it
hell no, terfs can eat my entire nonbinary ass
okay ive been getting a lot of weird asks semi-recently that ive just been deleting because a lot of them have triggering shit and are unrelated to anything i post here. is there another blog with a name like mine or something that has demonstrated themselves to be bad people. or what's up
I’d like to add Rosemary by Sierra Ferrell to your murder ballad playlist. Just saw her in Charleston, WV last weekend, she was amazing life and you should give that song a listen!
excellent!! i loved it and immediately stuck it on the playlist. thanks so much for the rec <33
Anonymous asked:
sending love to y’all as a northwest florida girl who went to college in appalachia and found nothing but love and warmth there. as a floridian i know how bad these storms can get and it’s (unfortunately) something i’m always ready for. it breaks my heart to see it come to y’all. please know our hearts are with you and we are hoping for your recovery 🩷
thank you sm for this little note of support, real sorry i didn't see it til now. emotional bandwidth at an all time low.
i hope you n yours are doin okay after those two blew through too <3 its so scary out there right now. really starting to feel the dread of climate change in my bones
Anonymous asked:
hii
so, i have nothing to do with appalachia or even america cause i come from alllll the way over the sea in this tiny town in england…but reading up on this blog or experiences online // my friends who have moved over here from the states has made me think abt the huge similarities in the gentrification and religious aspects from across the globe (and it’s happening everywhere, but this is just from a UK perspective)
theres lots of rich farmland and wealthy rural areas in england. but the further into the country you get, there are towns/places in deep deep poverty because of the dead industries (that goes into heavy british politics) or facing a severe homelessness crisis because everyone is building holiday villas and country retreats. **
we used to live on an old farm before the land got renovated to make space for two other houses along the road. i would find bricks and planks// wooden posts, barbed wire fences etc around which looked ‘eyesore’ (to quote my neighbour) because of how modern the surrounding area was. literally just grey shiplap. everywhere. there were neighbours who had lived there for decades trying to help out with the land; then upon realising that the only field left for miles was now a jumbo golf course, had to move away or got kicked out by the council cause they couldn’t afford to live there and ‘just weren’t needed anymore’. moving away & meeting others myself has made me realise how many people (esp large families) moved down to the overpriced city because they literally had no other option.
** every city has its surrounding land & when they begin bulldozing a village to make another coffee place, they don’t care about you, the land, the cost crisis, your job or your roots
and that’s just my experience in england, that’s not even to mention the rest of the UK (eg. the scottish highlands, most of wales, northern ireland)
but also the heavy religious aspects, the indoctrination, the isolation, churches being built over and turned into pubs/bars and still so many communities believing that it’s just the consequences of the countries sinners..
(and that’s just Christianity cause we all know how Britain has diluted and stripped so much culture and other religions down to nothing.)
god i love these asks from intl folks who note such similarities to appalachian socioeconomic/religious/political circumstances. i think it really highlights how much rural folks really understand each other in a way urban people just can't, and it gives me a nice sense of global solidarity (as much as the shared pains fucking suck)
this was really interesting to read, thanks so much for sharing and i'm sorry this took so long for me to reply to; it's been a weird few months
take care <33
hang on is first day of buck season an appalachia thing? because if so i may need to reconsider if where i grew up is appalachia or not lol
as in like, making a big to-do, parents keeping their kids out of school kinda thing? lol my family wasn't big hunters but i do remember half my class would be missing so if you mean the Making A Day Of It thing then,,, perhaps yes hahah
Anonymous asked:
Hi!!! Love your blog and love Appalachia so much, even though I was only there for college for four years and not really in more places other than that one (the triad in nc)
Here's a very large text block with my in-depth lore ponderings relating to the book I'm writing
Today's question relates to worldbuilding! I'm coming up with lore and culture for a fictional city in a book I'm writing, and most of the city is Western European French and like Bucharest, Romania as well as Victorian London. The city is also very very steeped in immigrant culture. While there's original folk sources and original pagan lore, a lot of colonialism happened from Western Europe type countries as well as a lot of cultural shifts due to immigrants becoming a staple of the population so it's become something new.
However, I also wanted to add in a lot of American culture and I really want to know more about Appalachia / know it gets a bad rep. Currently the poorer parts of the city (or at least the working class, factory neighborhoods and the mining neighborhoods) are more towards Appalachian culture but I want to avoid stereotypes and make the culture and lore feel more natural to the grand scheme of things. I'm also thinking this is an older culture from when the city was still being founded and when the city was still frontier and the colonialism hadn't fully kicked in (ie when the land was first getting settled)
Are there any resources you can share for learning about the culture / writing the culture into the lore, and any tips you may have / opinions on how I can make this work while also being respectful?
Thank you!!!
hi there <3 lord knows how long this has been rotting in my asks and i'm so sorry
thanks for wanting to include some positive representation (however esoteric) about appalachia in your novel.
when i get these asks i always like to say, to avoid stereotypes in your writing, think about why those stereotypes exist.
why do we have such an opiate problem? why is our health so poor? why do we have a 'we don't like outsiders' reputation?
appalachian culture is really broad and diverse of course because we span across a pretty enormous section of the country. for example, coal mining is one of the things that most popularly gets associated with appalachia, but where i'm from in appalachian north carolina, mines aren't so much a thing.
but i think one big takeaway from appalachian culture that is pretty consistent throughout is community and hard work. labor rights, labor fights, helping ur neighbor.
we tend to be blue collar, union-positive working class and that sets a pretty stable foundation for a lot of our cultural traits. as in the way we are very community-minded and getting our hands dirty to keep ourselves afloat and use what's left over to keep our neighbors going. sometimes, the reverse of that actually. appalachians are hospitable and generous to a fault
if you wanted to represent appalachia without falling back on stereotypes, a self-supporting community that really values community itself could be a good landing place.
in the format of my earlier advice: why do we have an "us/them" (misconception?) reputation for keeping to ourselves? it's not that we inherently 'hate outsiders.' it's because we had no choice but to be reliant on our communities historically due to being geographically isolated in the mountains without easy access to resources. because the rest of the country turned its back on us many moons ago and so we had to turn to each other.
hope this helps some <3
i feel really shitty because i have just been so despondent for the last month or two that interacting with the world in any capacity has felt so heavy
so i'm just really sorry i haven't been around.
i need to get the fight back in me. i hope this will be enough
love yall family. this fucking sucks. feel what you need to feel.
re: hurricane helene hey, y'all. so... immense survivor's guilt, subsequent depression and an overall helpless malaise has made my presence on tumblr here weaker during this horrific time. but there's nothing like some good ol appalachian rage to light a fire under the proverbial ass so i'm back to push back on some of the bullshit i keep seeing get spread about what's happening in the aftermath of hurricane helene, and in western north carolina especially.
appalachia has always been low hanging fruit for the rest of the nation, and now that disaster has struck and we are even more vulnerable than we have been in a long, long time, bad actors are using us as a way to further their political bullshit and conspiracies.
please use some of the cited-information below the cut to push back on and educate any family members, friends or otherwise when you see them spreading misinformation. now is your chance to help appalachia, no matter where you are in the united states. myths, rumors and other flavors of horseshit regarding hurricane helene debunked under the cut. please reblog.
Reblogged
hey yall, ill get to asks n that soon i promise but i just wanted to come on and check in and see how yall are doing about the hurricane
im heartbroken but glad my folks are okay. beloved childhood places have been absolutely leveled and obliterated. ive never seen highways n roads so tore up. my folks are entirely without cell service or wifi so it's hard to communicate. appalachia don't usually take this kind of intense beating from these storms, it's really fucking upsetting
please be safe out there family. my heart is also with yall in florida and everywhere else affected
if you're like me just dyin to do something to help, please consider donating or even volunteering if you're near an affected area and have the resources to do so
hey yall, ill get to asks n that soon i promise but i just wanted to come on and check in and see how yall are doing about the hurricane
im heartbroken but glad my folks are okay. beloved childhood places have been absolutely leveled and obliterated. ive never seen highways n roads so tore up. my folks are entirely without cell service or wifi so it's hard to communicate. appalachia don't usually take this kind of intense beating from these storms, it's really fucking upsetting
please be safe out there family. my heart is also with yall in florida and everywhere else affected
Anonymous asked:
just wanted to share my worthless piece on the "if i count" dynamic
lived in appalachia all my life, traveled the south a ways. i think, no matter where you're from, there's a marked difference in those of us who were spend/spent time in rural areas, tiny quiet towns, etc. and those who were raised in big cities - even big cities in the south.
all the rural areas have something in common - sure, the specific cultures and types of people who settled the land may be different, but our ancestors (and even us in modern times) had to come much more to terms with living with the land, making the most out of a little, than those who have only ever known the city, and especially those who look down on rural folks
and once you've gotten a taste of that rural life, and even the types of poverty that come with it... once you've been raised by people who lived with that, it doesn't shake out of you, no matter where you end up finding yourself. it ingrains itself in your soul, to where sometimes personally i feel like an entirely different species to those who have only ever known the concrete jungle, who have never been around anyone who trekked through the holler or hiked the plains or climbed those big mountains.
that type of living, that type of history that gets leeched into you even if you feel you didn't get the full experience of living there, puts that spirit into your soul, and you carry it. whether you got it from a life of personal experience, or you were raised by a country man or woman, or anything between.
even if you find yourself in a metropolis, you're not lookin' at it the same way that people who have always lived there do... even if it seems like them ol' hollers and hills, or plains, or valleys, or mountains are light years away.
you can't abandon it. it can't abandon you. you can try to tamper your accent, you can try to remove all signs of the "negative" stereotypes, but it's the soil that fed your roots. once you've been touched by it, you're as much the holler as the holler itself is, in a way
that's my two cents, anyway
you can't abandon it. it can't abandon you. you can try to tamper your accent, you can try to remove all signs of the "negative" stereotypes, but it's the soil that fed your roots. once you've been touched by it, you're as much the holler as the holler itself is, in a way
THIS is what i have tried n tried to say over the course of dozens of such posts, and you managed to condense it into one neat, poignant paragraph. thank you. i have nothing to add.
this whole ask is beautiful and exactly what i always want to say, actually. i'd wanna pin it to my blog but atp, i simply cannot part with The Sign
thanks so much for this. was definitely not worthless <33
Hi! Recently discovered you via your murder ballads post. Have you been introduced to Terrance Zdunich (Of "Repo! The Genetic Opera" fame) American Murder Song? I'm a big fan of his other works but reading your post gave me a good "Ah-ha!" Moment where I began to understand some of the underlying base themes.
Anyway, love your nerdy shit, maybe we can be mutuals someday.... Haha jk... Unless?
hi hello!! no, actually im not familiar with that, HOWEVER repo has been a guilty pleasure of mine since it came out so now i'm curious lol. ty for the rec!
also... perhaps we could be mutuals someday. maybe................... today, even?
Anonymous asked:
do you think its wrong to use the word coon to refer to the animal? ive always grown up with that word being used and i dont want to kill that part of my dialect, it feels like a murder, but i also know the history surrounding the word and how it was used as a slur. what do you think?
yes, i definitely think its wrong to continue using that word. words and their meanings shift, and that word has definitely taken on a meaning that is inextricable from its racist roots. especially because it is still used as a slur.
i think, as appalachians, that is a part of the self-work we have to do--disentangling from ourselves the negative aspects of our culture (including manners of speech) that are inherently harmful, including casual racism, while retaining the positives.
what i mean is: you should absolutely keep your dialectal vocabulary for other, innocuous words n phrases, but not for the ones that actively harm others, like this one.
we shouldn't want to hold onto that word. yes, there was a point for almost all of us, learning and repeating harmful shit when we didn't know better as kids. and then, there is now, when we do. it's our job to recognize these aspects and get rid of them. our sense of familiarity for lack of a better word is not as important as the safety and the comfort of vulnerable populations targeted by such language.
thanks for the question and for doing the work to think about these parts of yourself, i know from experience it can be very uncomfortable. but, again, our comfort is not more important than those oppressed by such language.
take care <33
This might be a bit of a random and tangety question, but I was wondering if y’all also experience the erasure of people already livin’ in areas about to be or in the process of gentrification.
Cause I’m from the Mornington peninsula, this relatively mid sized region in Australia, some of it can be pretty rural, over all we have a population density of 230 per square km (which is 88 per square mile??) which is mostly because of the few bigger population centres.
Anyhow when I was growin’ up the ninch (as we call it) was seen as this largely poor, backwards, farming/fishing region full of conservatives who hated outsiders or somethin’ (to be honest the last part is correct)
But these days a lot of people have shifted from viewing people on the ninch from backwards hill dwellers to… not even existing?
A lot of our towns are seen as desirable as holiday realestate but this hasn’t rehabilitated people from the ninch in the eye’s of outsiders but instead they just ignore that we are even here, and that they are displacin’ us.
Does this happen in gentrified parts of Appalachia or are outsiders still hostile to locals?
i definitely do still notice hostility, but in a way, it can absolutely be framed as them just... not seeing us, like you said. they aggressively want to scrub clean the culture n the people to get to the pretty parts, to the point where, no, they don't consider us unless they're looking down on us as they "clean up the place."
ppl will come here n complain about how UnSaFe it is cause they hear guns going off in the woods with ppl just mindin their business, hunting on their own land or just shootin having fun. they come here n mock our accents and the way we live, pearl clutching bc they have to drive two hours away to get to a Target. then they just start filling in the commercial gaps instead of accepting that just aint how we live here. things like that.
basically, they want a pretty lil mountain view out the back of their vacation home, but they don't actually want the mountains; they want it to be like where they came from. hell, sometimes they dont even want the view. theyll flatten ridges to build their mcmansions instead. so, no, gentrification definitely hasn't redeemed appalachians in the eye of the general public that flock here, either.
anyway, solidarity <3 sounds like there's a lot in common between our region and yours
Anonymous asked:
Is it okay that, as someone in the general south instead of Appalachia, I still feel a sense of solidarity with y'all? (I'm on the other side of the river.) I just noticed a lot of similarities between the groups and I feel like I'd be at home there, too.
oh absofuckinlutely!! the deep south n southern/central appalachia are more similar than they aren't imo, and the rest of the nation just kinda lumps us together bc of how alike we are, actually.
like, we share the same sociopolitical and financial burdens. we share the weight of the same heavy hand of religious influence pressin down on our backs. we all are hurt by the same stereotypes and assumptions. our dialects/accents earn us unfair stereotypes and social/academic disadvantages. we all struggle grow up in shitty, underfunded schools. the list goes on.
tbh i feel like only people like us (from these regions, i mean) can tell the subtle (but marked) differences in our culture. i feel solidarity with yall too <3
Anonymous asked:
same anon from nyc; had more to add.
what i do have:
my papa has the accent and my momma killed hers
green beans and dandelions
playing solitaire from cards of coal companies; theyre my papas, and every game, he tells me the sins of each company
the pride and grit and courage
the experience on the land
the stories and folklore
soul pain…
…turning pain into armor
love
sensing family in other appalachians
generational opioid issues
abandonment
bravery
wvu hat
named after a mountain in TN
fend for yourself nights
fwiw, these are all definitely appalachian experiences. if i met you, we'd have a hell of a lot of overlap in common to talk about. do with that what you need to <3 that said--be easy to yourself okay? you don't deserve the torment of tallying your identity against your perceived self. you don't have to prove yourself to me or nobody else.
but i know how it feel to have The Crisis and how important it is to have ur identity validated. i'm so pleased if i can help give yall that.
actually, gonna use this time to say: that goes for all of yall looking to me for validation. i am honored that you seek it from me, and if i can make u feel more at home in your identities, however far removed you feel from them, i am touched. that said, no matter what i say, your identity is yours, and i am just another weirdo with a tumblr account who happens to be appalachian and whose blog got this kind of attention by sheer luck, not because i am The Authority. don't let me or nobody else tell you you are or are not who you know yourself to be. love yall <3