u/WildFlemima

(I picked Languages for a flair because the other categories all seemed more wrong)

(to be clear up front, I am not interested in discussing the merits of the APA's decision for this to be their official style)

I am describing, very briefly as part of dialogue to get another character up to speed, why the APA style guide is currently to capitalize Black when it is used as a descriptor of Black people

What is the most succinct and accurate way to describe the reason for this change to the APA style guide? This should be able to be put in one short sentence*.

What I am currently writing is "the APA style updated to reflect the racial experience of Black people". I am not totally satisfied with this way of wording it but if it's good enough then it's good enough. I am second guessing on if it's good enough

*I fully understand that this is a complex topic with a lot of history behind it and there are people who are Black, black, and non-black on each side of the Black vs black style debate. I see good reasoning for Black and also for black. I am not Black/black. I try to use the capitalization that I see someone using for themselves or for their own context when I'm talking to them in text bc I feel that's the most polite solution. I am not trying to bring that debate back up and I already feel like I talked about it too much but we all know how Reddit is with topics like this. I'm just to factually summarize in a short sentence why APA style changed.

They are implied to not scavenge food meant for other animals in the ecosystem (there's another thread in the sub about it, I'm too lost to tag the people talking about it).

I think there's more to it. I think the resources they scavenge all has to be there bc of human influence in the first place, and that depriving other animals of life is a secondary concern, whether the plurbs consciously know it or not. Supporting example: driving cars kills bugs, they can do it anyway bc they are using up pre-existing human resources

They eat their dead. Dead humans are commonly culturally thought of as replenishing the earth & providing food for crawly creatures in the soil when they are buried (i know modern embalming kind of ruins this but lots of cultures don't do modern embalming or do funeral pyres that leave behind nourishing ash etc)

Anyway the point I'm getting to is that the plurbs are already depriving animals of scavenged food

I don't think the proscription against killing to eat is actually a proscription against killing to eat.

I think that may be what it is presented as by the plurbs to the survivors, or how the plurbs think of it consciously. But the rule is actually "use the resources that preexisting humans created, without tending to their continued existence"

They can eat the apple that falls from the tree domesticated by humans. They can't tend to the apple tree so that it will keep producing in the future, or plant more, because that destroys things that humans didn't create

I think the plurb virus "goal" is to infect dominant sapient species -> use up all their pre-existing resources to transmit the virus, without affecting the resources of the planet itself -> planet now has no dominant sapient species, which means a new one can arise in a few thousand years, which means the virus can re-infect

**it's the common cold and the body is the entire Earth biome**

Earth biome becomes "immune" when the plurb infection is purged. But you can catch a cold again, especially if you haven't caught one in a while. So Earth becomes vulnerable again when it has a new infectable species. And new infectable species have an evolutionary booster shot because of all the novel environments that humans will leave empty. Give the raccoons a few hundred thousand years, with their thumbs and their adaptations to human-made cities, and the plurb virus will come back to wipe them out

My thoughts so far:

\- bike frame - Westeros afaik does not have aluminum, so the bike would have to be made of heavier metals. How much of a difficulty would this pose over a medium distance, to what degree does this make a bike less practical, since someone with stronger legs must be the rider? If an average woman who knows how to ride a bike rode a heavier bike for a few miles, would she have been better off going on a horse?

\- bike tires - Westeros afaik does not have rubber. (If it does, please correct me). What material for a tire (tyre if you're posh) would work as a tire but also hold up on pre-modern roads & possibly dirt/stone paths for a long enough time to make the bike worth the effort? Leather over wood or metal? Bare wood or metal? Some kind of sturdy textile? And I'm assuming tires with air inside are just a bit too advanced, but are they really? Infodump me

\- roads and paths - does Westeros have enough roads and paths to make bicycles useful as a means of transport between towns & villages?

\- downhill/uphill - I can imagine there are places where the Lord lives mostly downhill or mostly uphill, which would affect bike couriers, especially if they have to contend with a heavier framed bike. What holdings are notably downhill or uphill from most of their surroundings? I can think of KL, which would probably be a good place to use a bike if it weren't for the crowds, and the Eyrie, which is almost certainly better off sticking with mules and donkeys than bikes

What prompted me to start thinking about this is that I was thinking of horses and how over long distances they're actually basically on par with a lightly packed fit human on foot. The main advantage to a horse is what it can carry and it offers a sudden burst of speed if you need one (but horses can't sustain that obviously which is why they average out comparable to a fit man on foot). I think bicycles would be an improvement over horses for uses like messages by courier

(You might also see this post on the citadel sub, I posted in both, that one is currently in moderator approval queue)

https://preview.redd.it/syr5a0twrfdh1.png?width=492&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e170b87088112ed2e67533747392f910ee8a6b7

the "black dress white apron" was not prevalent / expected for maids & servants until some time in the mid-late 1800s - most pseudo-European manhwa should show maids and servants in clothes like these, normal but practical day clothes

I think I am hearing cohost Gorky call Red Robe "Valencia" or something similar. I don't think I've ever heard Gorky call Red Robe, Red Robe. Is this a reference to something?

I hope the tags in the title are correctly used, first time posting here, apologies

I put spoilers as a tag bc rules but I myself am beyond all spoilers, feel free to tell me anything

Polygamy in old Valyria:

- I gather it wasn't unknown but wasn't common either

- Do we know any more than that?

Incest:

- I gather this was common in old Valyria, but I would still expect that families would occasionally outbreed instead of inbreed for the sake of alliances, arranging dragon mating, etc

- also, if incest is to keep dragonriding blood pure, close incest might not have been seen as so culturally necessary by the Targaryens, pre-doom, until they fled and became the last dragon riders

- does canon have anything to say about this?

Related:

- it was Aegon's "duty" to marry Visenya. I tend to interpret this as, "the oldest child, if a girl, has the right to marry her brother and become Lady of Dragonstone; the heir of Dragonstone has a duty to marry the lord of Dragonstone's eldest daughter". Thoughts? Thoughts on this duty becoming tradition after the Doom, when the Targs are the only dragon riders left?

I'm looking for AU that change the nature of Planetos and Westerosi/Essosi culture, magic, social structures, etc in some innate way

I don't have stellar examples

There's the crackfic A Gift from the Gods, or a Curse on spacebattles where everyone gets a sigil companion. But it is crack and also doesn't go far enough. It would fit my request if everyone had always had a sigil companion and this had significant downstream effects on history, like an ASOIAF / His Dark Materials crossover.

A few crossovers I've read kind of fit, but don't go deep enough in change

There's also a fic whose name I can't remember, where Jon is a girl and enters the harem of the emperor Aegon (son of Elia). Everything is basically Ottomanized, back to the Conquest as far as I can tell. That one was fun and I want more and much stranger

Anyway, yes, please throw your best AU or crossover at me, as long as they make Westeros / Essos wild and strange and aren't modern

Probably others as well, just a reminder to check, i'm buying them all right now

- The pets were basically colored doodles

- You could level them and a leveled pet would get more resources

- Design of game overall was very simple

- You could have many pets and there were many different species

- The main thing was the minimalism and simplicity, it was cute and smooth with little to manage

- I think it was founded by one guy

- I can't remember the name at all