Super-Russia and Super-China

Celestial said that there might be two hegemons in the future, but these are really China and Russia respectively, moreso once America declines so much that any of America’s current allies will defect to either one of them. God might even allow Russia and China to take over America’s allies by force due to their own sins, resulting in a near-purging of nearly all American influence in those countries. There might be the reemergence of the Soviet Union but with many more countries this time, including America for awhile, resulting in Russia becoming the seat of western civilisation for the first time in history. China might get back more than what it lost but resulting in its own version of either the Soviet Union or the European Union, or perhaps in-between the two, with all of East Asia (China, Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia) constituting Greater China, and Africa and Australsia constituting Lesser China.

America might be tempted to create its own bloc or supranational union, but this wouldn’t last long as Canada might defect to Russia to keep itself from being terribly attacked the way America will be getting, same goes for Denmark and Greenland that this makes the possibility of a new Soviet Union much likelier than a renewed Monroe Doctrine in the long term. The countries that will form the Super-Russia entity (or a renewed Commonwealth of Independent States) will include not only Britain (well the newly dissolved United Kingdom consisting of Scotland, England and Wales), Ireland and Canada but also the rest of both the current European Union and the former Soviet Union proper, this will even come to encompass countries like Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia and Albania one day.

The Greater China countries are the Philippines (the first to join and stay because America will be too preoccupied with literally fighting its own battles, to the point of being unable to save the Philippines from China and it will come to resent the US a lot more), China, Taiwan (joining China in the same way Hong Kong and Macau did), Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Timor Leste, possibly Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, possibly Iran, Japan, South Korea (soon to reunite with North Korea), North Korea, Mongolia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei and Laos. The Lesser China countries include Ghana, Mali, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Palestine/Israel, Tunisia, Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

As well as those in Oceania like Palau, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Micronesia in addition to Hawaii and Guam, Lesser China is to the Eastern Bloc as what Greater China is to the Soviet Union in a sense. The countries that are mostly unaligned will either be in South Asia (though the South Asian countries might also join China to create a Super-East or Super-China) or in Latin America and the Caribbean as to aim for neutrality. Even then this is a very different world from now where America’s not only irrelevant, but also long gone due to natural disasters and the like, as to consign it to mythology the way Atlantis underwent. So Atlantis might have been a real country, but one removed due to its sins or vices that it had to be euthanised soon enough to keep it from getting much worse.

A very different world from now for sure, so said the Lord and the new epicentre of evil would be in Italy due to the Antichrist’s emergence, as to corrupt the world again. And it would also be destroyed.

Subset of a greater nation

Celestial said something that regarding the table of nations, countries that seem to be separate from one another are really subsets of a greater nation or people. It’s this way between Northern Ireland (currently a part of Britain) and the Republic of Ireland, which is what happened when most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom. They could reunite one day if Britain dissolves into three separate nation-states (England, Wales and Scotland) not seen in centuries, though the exact same thing can be said of between North Korea and South Korea. The real reason why South Korea came into existence is because America wanted to contain the spread of socialism into the Korean peninsula, so socialism only became a feature of the northern half longer. Likewise Singapore was part of Malaysia proper, to the extent that there are even a degree of similarities between the two. Or Malaysia and Indonesia in a way as they actually speak the same language but with different registers dependent on their former colonisers (Britain and the Netherlands respectively).

America might be exempt but not in a good way as it’s really Mystery Babylon, the nation-state said to corrupt the world only to be destroyed later on by both outside forces and internal strife. A double-minded country that is so internally divided that it’s never going to remain united for long, it has happened before but briefly. This man was Jefferson Davis and he was the only president of the Confederated States so far, though a new civil war could usher in somebody who could arguably be his reincarnation. Maybe not necessarily so but that their position would mirror his, regarding ruling over a newly divided United States not seen in years, quite alarmingly they might be a kind of figurehead for either a kind of seccessionist movement or an ethnic separatist movement. Celestial even said that there might be a racial war in America and a similar one would occur in South Africa, as both of them have been marked by racial segregation and are settler-colonial states themselves. This has also been prophesised by others before, that inevitably America will truly be a house divided.

I remember saying this before that not all African Americans despise or distrust their white counterparts and vice versa, though at other times this kind of unforgiveness boils into hatred and then violence. But there’s also no mistaking that a good number of African Americans have been so repeatedly traumatised by discrimination that some will even make the move elsewhere like Ghana for instance, given many Ghanaians don’t look much different from African Americans that it practically becomes hard to tell the difference. As for Mexican Americans, given ongoing xenophobia and fears of deportation, that even when not all of them feel this way but since we have reports of a Honduran American pupil getting deported to her ancestral country, that it seems the American dream has turned its back on them. Maybe some other country would welcome them with open arms, whatever those may be, it certainly isn’t America even if these countries aren’t without their own faults.

The idea that countries like Sweden and Denmark may also constitute subsets of one nation might also ring true in another way, as their own languages are highly mutually intelligible. Or the Italian city-states at some point, as they were part of an earlier Kingdom of Italy before reuniting again eventually. Then there’s also an argument to be made for the former Yugoslavia, though another one will bite the dust and it’s Bosnia.

Countries’ Roles in the Bible: A Summary

The Philippines: Both Judas Iscariot and Judas Thaddeus at the same time as the Philippines has East Asia’s largest Christian population, yet openly and repeatedly betrays God and will betray America out of spite when it collapses as it considers joining China in the future.

Britain: Shinar/Sumer in the sense of being the mother-state to future civilisations that carry over their cultures to varying degrees, it will be destroyed and be no more in some fashion (Britain might get forcibly dissolved into three separate countries by both Russia and King/Prince William in the future).

America: Babylon and Satan, the most arrogant and corrupting nation-state to emerge. It starts out as promising and full of potential, but getting much worse over time and popularises or originates questionable things like pro-choice feminism, pornographic films and magazines, rock music/most popular music genres at present (if you believe the likes of both AA Allen and David Wilkerson about the matter), celebrity culture (idolatry) and more.

Canada: Egypt in the sense of being a railway station for the enemy of the enemy to get to the biggest offender of all time and also subjected to the enemy’s influences in some capacity, it’s kind of telling that Canada has the misfortune of even sharing the same landmass as Mystery Babylon does. Also corrupting to God’s people in a way, well to a lesser extent as the real Egypt did get Christianised and still has something of a Christian population to this day.

Indonesia: Jacob in the sense that the Philippines is Esau, a nation that forfeit’s God’s blessing in favour of worldly evil. Should the Philippines ever become deeply secularised, Indonesia would be the one to evangelise to it a lot. The older sibling ends up serving the younger sibling, or in here the one with the largest Christian population at present will be evangelised to by a currently Muslim majority country.

Vietnam: Joseph in the sense of being mistreated by its family, only to get up achieving greatness in tough times. Might come to house a bigger Christian population in the future, should the government change to be amenable to their needs and wants.

China: Job because it’s lost a lot of its allies to western powers (Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, possibly Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam) and then will get them back more than it lost before, that’s why China’s friendly to African countries at present and may even form a Lesser China consisting of the African countries and their Oceanian counterparts, and a Greater China consisting of itself and all its closest neighbours.

Russia: Persia as the nation that punishes the enemy of God, subjugating said enemy before said enemy disappears without much of a profound trace.

Ireland, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, South Africa and the like: Moses and Joshua because for all their faults that got them there, they will be avenged and be brought back better than they were before.

All of Europe: Ananias and Sapphira as they got into trouble for denying God the Holy Spirit, Europe and possibly Canada and America will all get conquered by Russia one day.

South Korea: Moses because it will be reunited with its sibling North Korea but also disobedient as to live with the consequences of its actions, until it finally gets it right and gets back what it wanted to do.

Nearly forgotten associations

When it comes to conceiving of the character Ermentrude Wolfenbarger, it’s primarily based on the odd fact that wolves were actually this associated with witchcraft in some countries like Switzerland before (she is Swiss herself). Mind you even their domesticated relatives dogs were also highly associated with witchcraft in countries like France, Germany and Britain at some point, the association still exists in some African countries like Cameroon and Ghana even not all Africans believe in this themselves. Though there are African sermons and devotionals that do bring this up, they also bring out other topics like forgiveness and arrogance for instance. It is one interest but not the only one around, as they also discuss other matters like love as well.

But even then this is one association that does deserve some reappearance, if one wants a break from the usual stereotype, more often than not it’s informed by a very limited experience with certain things and peoples. Very limited interest in such things and peoples as well to boot, that’s why a number of fictions tend to be kind of dyed in the wool repetitive. TV Tropes might be interesting but not to a reliable extent since most of its obsessions relate to modern pop culture or mass culture in some way or another, not so much earlier folk cultures and high cultures alike. For both of these two, you might as well peruse both older documents (including those dating back to the early modern period) and academia to better delve into such subject matters that don’t appear often in modern mass culture.

And if you want to go the extra mile, then you could also peruse inspirational literatures and journalistic literatures on the same as well, but in a way that makes one wonder if American mass culture/pop culture is kind of very selective in some fashion. Maybe not necessarily selective but more in the lines of being really detached from the past, if because American culture kind of came out of the blue when compared to not only Europe but also China, India, Iran and arguably Senegal, Ghana (when it was both the Ashanti Empire and the Gold Coast), Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo. From the early modern European standpoint, associating dogs with witchcraft’s rather unsurprising, which goes to show you how common this association was in the past.

It’s not at all forgotten in African countries, if because it’s still relevant to this day. But I feel European countries have gotten more postmodern, alongside the profound American influence that came by. Germany had a vexing attitude to dogs before and still does to this day, only in the past it had a lot to do with witchcraft. At present it’s due to both canine predation and people poisoning dogs out of spite, but either way Germany seems more apprehensive around dogs than America is. The same goes for both Austria and Switzerland, since they also have the same problems as well. It’s kind of befitting that one of the most prominent dogs in Germanophone culture is the demonic familiar of Dr Faust, as popularised by Johann von Goethe.

One that’s more deeply embodied in German culture than what Cujo does for American culture, in some regards a lot moreso. And then there’s Malleus Maleficarum, which brings up the association of wolves with witchcraft. So associating either wolves or dogs with witchcraft in the European mind wasn’t that strange before because it used to be this commonplace, similar associations exist in America as a country but only in isolated pockets among some indigenous communities. This is where the American attitude to dogs diverges from its German counterpart, one that seems more consistently enthusiastic around them. That’s not to say Germans don’t value dogs at all, but it’s undermined by recurring suspicions of foul play. Something America doesn’t have to the same extent, really.

The association of wolves and dogs with witchcraft wasn’t really that strange in early modern Europe, owing to its previous ubiquity, that had a character like Ermentrude Wolfenbarger emerged in say 1618, she wouldn’t have been surprising. She is a witch who not only habitually uses dogs and wolves to attack people, but also bewitches them the same, sends dog spirits to torment them and turns into a wolf herself, a witch who’s right at home in African Pentecostal thought as she would be in early modern European Christian thought. But given Canada’s greater proximity to America that a character like Ermentrude Wolfenbarger would stick out like a sore thumb, as Canada was also formed fairly recently and very much a settler-colony as America is.

On the subject of serial killers and pet dogs, there are instances where such characters do like and care for dogs. Most notably the likes of Harold Shipman (who had a black poodle), Myra Hindley who had a dog named Puppet and Dennis Nilsen who had a dog named Bleep, though the thought of murderers having dogs wasn’t so odd during the witch trials. But that’s got to do with them being associated with or suspected of witchcraft in some way that it was to be expected, Ermentrude Wolfenbarger being a murderous witch who likes dogs is pretty unremarkable in this light and likewise the same would go for Harold Shipman, Dennis Nilsen and Myra Hindley in a way. In modern fiction, the closest equivalent would be Dudley and his dog Muttley, which speaks to a kind of underrepresentation.

As underrepresented as witches with dogs, which are historically interconnected and interrelated in Europe before. To the point where if American fiction is in short supply of villainous dog owners that the only viable alternatives are real life stories of murderous dog owners and folklore involving witches who have dogs for familiars, especially if these beliefs are outside of mainstream American culture (Europe at some point, Africa at present). Ermentrude Wolfenbarger and her dogs would be a return to the earlier portrayal, as found in Johann von Goethe’s Faust, so is her using their wild relatives the wolves to do the exact same thing.

These were even mentioned in the book Demons of Urban Reform, which features mentions of documents encountering similar characters in real life at the time. Ermentrude Wolfenbarger and her canine association might be a controversially refreshing change of pace, a villainous witch who uses both dogs and wolves to antagonise people and animals alike.

The show is over

Another person goes on prophesising that not only will Donald Trump actually get killed, but also the US economy will crash so badly due to hyperinflation, that ultimately America truly stops being a superpower from then on. It kind of points out at a kind of undoing of consumerism in American culture, that makes one wonder why would a self-proclaimed Christian nation partake in crass materialism, especially when these goods don’t last long? Although this kind of materialism didn’t originate in America, what America did (as a superpower) is to popularise and even normalise this. Like it’s not enough to be able to have a nice house and stuff, you have to have more of those. It turned out to be unattainable even for other Americans, that it seems to be a case of misplaced needs and wants for years.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a nice house and stuff, but there are other people who’re really in need of it despite not having much, to the point where you either invite homeless people to stay in your house for long. Or you could build a house from something cheap and readily available as it is with some people, you needn’t to spend an insane amount of money to get a nice house when you can learn to make a nice house from rubbish. This could be a very good solution for homeless people seeking a nice house to stay in, whilst it might be more tedious and difficult than a prefab house. But it’s something that’s doable by using what’s readily available in a way (rubbish in the form of plastic bottles), that although it took take time figuring out the logistics of making a house from plastic bottles when it comes to toiletry and sinks, but it’s helpful enough to give somebody a nice home from scratch.

The Bible speaks highly of helping the poor and needy among us, that anybody who goes against this will be judged for this. It may not entirely eliminate poverty, well not immediately, but it does help alleviate problems like these. It also makes it easier for others to realise their dreams, needs and wants, but this involves putting their desires above your own. The Bible speaks about having to serve others, however awkward it may be (as it is with me before), but in this case it involves helping out the poor and needy. In this case, it’s homeless people seeking good homes to be in without having to pay much. Even when people can afford to and stay in homes for long, housing problems still exist in another manner. This involves living in overcrowded, claustrophobic places (as it is in Hong Kong), living in rooftop slums as it is in Hong Kong and so on.

It should be noted that slums were a thing in the United States before, but I feel if the US economy were to crash again in the future then slums might return. In fact they’ll become the new normal from then on in a way, blessings become curses that the American dream has become the American nightmare. American poverty might grow in unprecedented numbers so quickly once the US economy crashes so badly, along with lasting power shortages, that the United States has kind of effectively regressed. Poorer than Nigeria even, which will become a newly industrialised country very soon (same with Ghana and others). Admittedly this is going to be kind of frightening, because I often peruse US online lectionaries and devotionals to pray to God with. The loss of electricity in the US would cut people off of certain websites, the more I think about it.

Unless if these ministries head elsewhere or if God provides substitutes in their place, it would be pretty frightening navigating a world where these don’t exist. That’s how I feel about sermons not getting played at expected times, that it’s hard warming up to a substitute when you want the real thing real badly, but you also can’t be double-minded (as I learnt). Sometimes it happens due to my misdeeds, sometimes it’s something I have little control over. It would be no different for other people in this situation, that it’s possible God will provide substitutes in their place instead. This could come from anywhere else in the world, like Nigeria, China, India or Vietnam; but especially China as it’s got a rising Christian population. It’s quite possible that if American ministries were to face loss in power, he might raise Chinese ministries in their place to reach out to many people instead.

There might be many more Chinese devotionals and lectionaries in the wings waiting to be used by many people around the world, that if lasting electrical shortages were to occur in the United States, that their Chinese counterparts would have to do to make up for a particular loss like these. It’s also possible for their Nigerian, Ghanaian, Cameroonian, Ugandan, Ivorian, South African and Zimbabwean counterparts to step in and do the same for other people, perhaps even those from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia just the same too. It would be a kind of miracle for nonwestern ministries from both East Asia and Africa to step in and care for people’s spiritual needs when their American counterparts are unable to help out, due to a forthcoming prolonged electrical shortage coming over to the US. I’ve been listening to a radio broadcast about miracles, so God could provide something in an unexpected way.

That is by having Indian, African and East Asian ministries provide online lectionaries and devotionals for free to make up for a loss of US devotionals and lectionaries for those still wanting to worship God, and they will explode in huge numbers to meet these demands that Christian websites and the like that don’t usually have devotionals and lectionaries will have these by then. A case of God making good out of evil, making up for the losses American ministries may face in the future, especially in light of electrical shortages that either they rely on alternative sources of electricity to remain active in some way, or turn to substitutes to make up for it. But I feel these losses would necessitate some kind of alternative, however awkward it may be at first, even then America’s increasingly less powerful as a country. And being Mystery Babylon it might be far less powerful than it makes itself out to be by now.

There’s a prophecy of America getting hit by a meteor, which lines up with neatly with Babylon the Great getting hit by a stone. So the US truly is Mystery Babylon and why it’s overdue to get revoked and destroyed for all the evil it ended up doing for the years, never repenting and never trying to do better, it deserves to be wrecked.

Forgetting America

There are prophecies about America being forgotten to time, as surprising as it sounds, it’s got to do with it being Mystery Babylon. Firstly, it was a mystery to Biblical writers as it’s something from the far future, moreso if we’re talking about Old Testament writers here. There are hints to this new Babylon: it’s west of Africa, so it must be somewhere in the Americas and its inhabitants spoke in a rather strange language, given writers like Isaiah would’ve already known some Akkadian as it was the trade language of their day. Ruling out Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Jamaica and the like as they all never became serious superpowers, or for another matter the Ashanti and Hausa empires and any pre-existing Berber kingdom (also west of Cush and Egypt), we’re left with America as the likeliest contender for Mystery Babylon.

Even the moniker of the land of whirring winds might give someone the impression of what North America looks like, since it appears to be winged and there are people who do travel by boat there. Lastly it is going to be a mystery in the future, with regards to it being mostly forgotten and people wondering where it went, what was life there back then and so on. It might invite archaeological interest, as Babylon proper did before. There will be some attempts to bring it back in some manner, however incompetent it may turn out to be. Some Canadian politician (a new Saddam Hussein) will find a way to revive America by renaming Canada to New America and fly the earliest version of the American flag, he will however be seen as a delusional laughingstock hellbent on turning it into a half-forgotten, half-imaginary nation-state.

Just as Saddam Hussein failed to bring Babylon back to its former glory, he will fail at turning Canada into New America because God had already euthanised that country for corrupting so many others. A lot like what Babylon did to Israelites, it’s their fault why their country got captured but it turned out that Babylon’s too corrupting, so God had to put it out of its misery because it’s such a spiritually miserable place to be in. America being Mystery Babylon has made others drunk on its alcohol, it utterly corrupted every nation around it in some manner as to be judged for the same sins as it does/did. This goes extra for both Canada and Mexico as they share the same landmass as Mystery Babylon, so they’ll be collateral damage to what goes on in America.

Economically, physiogeographically and politically, so much for being neighbours with it. I guess if one’s sin also affects others (as it did to me before), it’s no different that America’s own sins affect its neighbours just the same. If America gets hit by an earthquake for its wrongdoings, then it’s going to affect both Canada and Mexico as well. It’s going to hurt real badly as all three of them share the same landmass together, so they’re all in this together but for the worse. There are some people who say that America is Mystery Babylon in the sense of being the hammer of the world, strong enough to destroy things with but ultimately getting destroyed itself. There’s a Japanese saying that goes ‘the nail that stands up will get hammered down’, which is precisely what America does to its colonies and enemies in a way.

Which befits America’s status as a massive hegemon out to hammer down dissent in its colonies and allies, obsessed with imposing its values and worldview onto them real badly. America wants to be seen as the hero of the story, but turns out to have lived long enough to become the villain instead, truly deserving of the moniker of Mystery Babylon. America will be destroyed by a millstone, well an asteroid in reality, then to drown and never be seen again. Oddly enough somebody else had a similar vision but of Lady Liberty getting drunk before drowning, assuming if Lady Liberty stands in for America that America truly is Mystery Babylon. The Ashanti Empire (precursor to modern-day Ghana) was certainly one of many precolonial hegemons in Africa, but it was never to the scale America enjoyed and is ruled out. Same goes for the Hausa Empire, which became Northern Nigeria.

Thus leaving America out as the likeliest candidate for Mystery Babylon, destroyed and then nearly forgotten over time.

Pet chickens and domestic foxes

There’s a blog I follow online by somebody who raises and cares for chickens themselves, and they said that chickens are very temperature-hardy birds that have been domesticated by humans for so long, that even if they get imprinted on people before they still function just as fine with other chickens. They also have the advantage of being really easy to care for, and one of my brothers often feeds them uncooked white rice to keep them from ruining plants. But I suspect not a lot of people keep pet chickens is because they often think of them as food first, even if they’d easily satisfy the needs for having a pet bird around. Canaries and possibly budgerigars are among the few ornamental birds to have been truly domesticated by people for long, the former were even used in mines for something to get something.

Unless if there were people who did eat canaries for food, though this might not be implausible in times of starvation. Birds of prey might also be good candidates for domesticated birds that are also exotic pets, since they’ve been trained and used by people to hunt animals. But I suppose it’s easier to go after at least most species of parrots than perhaps eagles and hawks, though it could be that the latter two aren’t necessarily domesticated in the conventional sense of the word. The thing with red foxes is that when they do get domesticated at all, they’re actually used/raised as livestock–especially when it comes to fur farming. A very vexing practise given how others complain about animals reminiscent of their dogs getting used for fur coats, that many fur farms have closed down in the west.

But then again their domestication history is much more recent than that of cats, dogs and chickens, like it would be really tricky trying to take care of them at all, especially from the start. It should also be noted that foxes weren’t used for anything useful whilst keeping them alive in any capacity, at least not as much as both cats and dogs are which is saying. Or even with carabaos, horses, sheep, goats, cows, pigs (especially when it comes to looking for truffles) and ferrets, so the domestication history of foxes is really short. Or at rather less consistently domesticated over a prolonged period of time compared to these critters, that I feel foxes aren’t really going to hold a candle to chickens anyways. Or for another matter, the other companion parrot species in this regard.

Though there are instances of dogs being used for fur* (as shocking as it sounds), there’s not much of a recorded or known case of a domesticated fox being trained or conditioned to hunt rats the way dogs and even cats undergo, not in any way I recognise even if it were possible. If Joseph ‘Mink Man’ Carter is any indication, it is possible to make mink hunt animals but it’s also really rare at that. Ferrets are kind of like mink and are also used in fur farming, but they’ve been domesticated earlier and longer than mink do and also get used for hunting animals, so in some places like Britain if people are going to hunt animals with mustelids they’re going for ferrets instead. Hunting with foxes would be just as remarkably rare really, so they hunt with dogs instead.

There are really no foxes in the Philippines and I’ve never been around one myself, coupled with that there are practically no fur farms here that use foxes in any way that fox domestication is ultimately very geographically limited. But chickens have been domesticated in the Philippines and a number of Philippine households have pet chickens themselves, so this is something I’m kind of familiar with on some level. I have even fed chickens leftover rice myself and it’s really not that hard to feed and care for chickens, that they can thrive well on rice and fruits gives them a big advantage over pet parrots (which need a more specialised diet). They can be used to attack snakes, even if it were possible to make a fox do this. Though I feel such instances are very rare, if present at all.

Fox ownership is so rare that there are practically no people who use foxes to hunt rats like one would with cats and dogs, which is saying even if the potential’s there in some way. As for pigs there are actually instances where they do get used for something whilst being kept alive, especially when it comes to hunting for truffles, though it seems to be a specifically continental European practise at that. And there’s a book on China written sometime in the 1980s (I think) which mentions instances of both dogs and pigs being used to eat faeces or something, so pigs are actually pretty useful when kept alive even when one of these uses is kind of disgusting. (Though in the days before a flush toilet arrived, this would’ve be one of the more sensible solutions around.)

There could be instances of foxes being used to hunt rats and mice just like one would with cats and dogs, though these are going to be really rare even in non-Anglophone media. Even in Sinophone media there are instances of dogs being made to guard premises and houses, hunt rodents and stuff, just like in the west and this extends to cats to some extent as well. But using foxes to do some of the same things is practically unheard of, though it’s likely some recorded instances do exist they are rare. Although it’s proven that foxes are amenable for domestication, there is scant recorded evidence of using foxes to do some of the same things as dogs do which speaks volumes really. Domesticated foxes aren’t just livestock, they’re specialised livestock.

They’re usually raised to be made into fur coats after getting killed and skinned, whereas with horses they’re actually more generalised livestock in some places. Especially Kazakhstan and Mongolia as well as Russia to some extent where they’re not just used for milk but also meat, practically no different like one normally would with cattle/oxen, pigs, goats and sheep. Though some Russians do breed foxes for companionship, there’s not much evidence for instances of domesticated foxes being used for hunting rats in any way. In some regards, fox domestication differs substantially from cat and dog domestication, and overlaps more with minks, chinchillas and rabbits instead. If because they’re used for fur more extensively and consistently than one would with both cats and dogs.

To the extent that foxes are practically livestock domesticants in a general sense, no different from chickens, pigs, oxen, goats and sheep, even if the usage is far more specialised. It’s not that foxes are one-note domesticants when kept alive, since similar things can be said of ferrets, cats and pigs as well. But that there’s practically scant if any evidence of domesticated foxes being used to hunt rodents like one normally would with either cats or dogs (with the former, it’s also like this in Ghana and Kenya), that it would take a Joseph Carter of the fox ownership world to make foxes hunt mice if it were possible at all. But it would be just as rare as to be practically and largely unprecedented, no different with the real McCoy towards mink.

Because chickens have been domesticated for a long time that you don’t just have a wide variety of chicken breeds, but also more uses for chickens as well though having limited use whilst kept alive doesn’t stop people from owning cats, ferrets and pigs in any way and they’ve also been domesticated long before in the past. There are fighting chickens, ornamental chickens, chickens kept for eggs and chickens kept for meat, then there are chickens used for pest control. It is possible to have therapy chickens like one would with therapy cats and dogs, though the former could be very rare at best in the real world. One could also keep chickens as pets just the same, which some already have.

The poster might have a kind of antifox bias on their part, but I feel given if I could be sympathetic to foxes, there’s really not much evidence in any way of people using them to hunt rodents and snakes the way one would with cats and dogs. It’s not nonexistent but it’s very rare if present, that fox domestication more closely parallels that of chinchillas than it does with dog domestication. Cat domestication isn’t like dog domestication at times, but the parallels are evident in that they’re both commonly kept as companion animals, used as therapy animals and as countermeasures towards rodents. It’s not exact but it’s more similar to dog domestication in these regards than foxes are to them.

Ironic since foxes are related to dogs but the only felids that are bred for fur in any way that parallels that of foxes would be Eurasian lynxes, which are also rarely if ever used for hunting animals by their human owners. The one felid that’s comparable to foxes when it comes to being extensively used for fur farming in Eurasia is the Eurasian lynx, the one felid that’s comparable to dogs when it comes to being used for hunting rats and also as a companion is the housecat, even if the similarities aren’t particularly exact. Though this would be an awkward realisation for some really.

*It’s also like this with their wild counterparts, wolves.

Ideas about someone

There’s somebody on Tumblr who pointed out that usually whenever redheads show up in fiction, they’re almost always somebody else’s idea of them (especially if these authors don’t have red hair themselves). They don’t necessarily nor fully have the lived experiences of most redheads, since many of them have a mutation that pairs red hair with not only paler skin, but also freckles and higher sensitivity to pain. So with the average redhead, they get blotchy skin whenever they get strong emotions of any sort, or among other things. The fact that the average fictional redhead doesn’t have these experiences means they’re essentially blonds and brunets with (dyed) red hair, so they inevitably reflect an outsider’s view of redheadedness.

So inevitably the way characters based around other things reflect someone else’s view of such things, in the case with Latin American characters like Fire in DC Comics they often reflect North American views of South Americans. They’re not necessarily how Brazilians actually see themselves as, to the point where if you want a Brazilian view of Brazil and Brazilians themselves consume Brazilian media instead. Something like Turma da Monica and the like, very much how Brazilians perceive themselves to be and live their lives. Or logically her best friend Ice but in the opposite direction regarding how Americans perceive Norwegians to be, which isn’t always how Norwegians perceive themselves to be and live their lives just the same.

This could explain why despite DC’s penchant for alternate universe stories as seen with Imaginary Stories and Elseworlds, not a single DC writer has ever come up with both a Scandinavian Fire and a South American Ice, in light of how and why a Scandinavian country like Iceland has a lot of volcanoes and a South American country like Chile has a plethora of glaciers. This is very much a combination of presumptions about these cultures and countries as well as ignorance about them in some manner, that leads to stereotypical characters as with the way Fire and Ice are presented. Or for another matter, Marvel when it comes to the paucity of an Icelandic character with a volcanic ability.

Especially since it has at least two characters with this skill and both of them are women (Magma and Volcana), it’s pretty odd why neither publisher condones the existence of an Icelandic character with this ability, despite the fact that Iceland has a lot of volcanoes itself. But it still ties into stereotypes about Scandinavians, especially Norwegians regarding how one character (Pieter Cross) kind of manipulates darkness in some manner, tying into Norway’s long wintry nights and Ice manipulating the cold herself. It’s not that Norway’s neither of those things, but similar things could be said of Chile as well.

Nights get longer and colder every June, July and August there, but it’s easier to think of those as having nearly unlimited sunshine and heat instead. Whilst this would be true for say Mexico and Brazil, it’s not the same with Chile since it’s really close to Antarctica. But such portrayals still ties into American preconceptions about certain ethnicities and nationalities, they’re not how Chileans, Mexicans and Brazilians actually see themselves as, or for another matter Norwegians regarding the same. Similar things can be said about the way African countries are portrayed, with very few DC and Marvel characters coming from real African nations.

Fewer still are well-known to the public in any way, with Storm being practically alone in the entire Marvel canon, since she comes from Kenya herself. The Nigerian Tempest/Temper could count, but she’s neither famous nor popular. One would wonder why given DC and Marvel’s habit of retconning or altering a character’s backstory, nobody bothered retroactively turning Vixen into a Zimbabwean or Black Panther into a Cameroonian. You could actually go to Yaounde and Bamenda, if you’re willing to take the extra mile going there at all. There are even radio stations and websites in Cameroon, or any other African country like Ghana and Kenya.

You could livestream stuff from Ghana and Uganda by the way, it’s not that hard but it’s not hard to see how and why western media and especially American media reinforces views of certain demographics, that eventually gets inculcated onto other people. If African diaspora communities in Britain were to seek further representation, they’d have to seek African American media a lot. Or for another matter, Asian diaspora communities in both Britain and France regarding the same. The way American publications portray certain ethnicities and nationalities kind of inculcates and popularises ideas of these peoples and cultures, that it’s practically evident with even a handful of characters.

Until recently the character of Rose Wilson (who’s a Cambodian American of Hmong descent) was shown to be portrayed as rather white-passing, not helped by her own name though it turned out to be an alias all along but her mother’s portrayed as having a stronger East Asian appearance. Also her own background seems to tie into the Cambodian Genocide at the time as well as its consequences, but it’s also brought up by America’s own interventionist attitude to Cambodia beforehand as a way to beat communist North Vietnam. Regardless which part of the former Indochina she came from, she’s very much a byproduct of American interventionism there as with Marvel’s Karma.

It should be noted that sometime in the past, both DC and Marvel seemed to be in the habit of introducing somewhat antagonistic communists in the form of KGBeast, Natalia Romanova and possibly a few others, but with Natalia having become good once she joins the all-American Avengers. Because she often hangs out a lot in America that she’s only good if she assimilates into capitalist American society, same goes for fellow Russians Peter Rasputin and his sister Illyana. Or for another matter, Karma since Vietnam’s a socialist country. It’s not hard to see how and why DC and Marvel writers seem to insinuate that socialist characters only become good if they hang out a lot in capitalist America.

Which implies that socialism is deeply antithetical to American culture, whereas Beatriz’s Brazilianness is used to communicate her distance from anglophone American norms. Characters like Vixen and Bwana Beast exist to convey American ideas about exotic black people, but this insinuates that black Africans are practically contrary to the prototypical black person in the America, who’s more often than not African American. The fact that these two come from made-up African nations only furthers the view of black Africans as exotic black people, one would wonder why nobody bothered retconning Vixen into a Zimbabwean given DC and Marvel writers change the characters’ backstories all the time.

Storm is pretty much the best known example of an exotic black character in the US cartooning canon, the way she’s written (especially by Chris Claremont) is used to communicate certain ideas about Africanness. That Claremont never found black people particularly relatable could explain why she’s written the way she is while he was at it, a black woman whose ways are so strange that she has to assimilate into American society in order to not weird out people. I even felt some of the issues with the way Storm’s written isn’t just to do with America’s vexed attitude to black women, but also more specifically reveals the American tendency to see black Africans as exotic black people.

Especially when the protypical black people in the American mind tend to be African Americans, and it’s been this way for a long time there. The way these characters are portrayed reflect American ideas about their peoples, cultures and nationalities, how they intersect with American history at various points or another (Karma came from wartorn Vietnam, both Sweet Lili and Rose come from wartorn Cambodia) and so on. America had something of a good neighbour policy towards Brazil, but if characters like Beatriz da Costa and Roberto da Costa are any indication, Latin America might as well be home to unlimited sunshine and warmth. There’s never been a Chilean character in both the DC and Marvel canons who manipulates ice themselves.

If characters like Pieter Cross and Ice insinuate that Norway gets cold and dark, but I suspect that even if it were true, there’s never been an Icelandic character who manipulates volcanism. The closest would be the Swedish Sunburst, who manipulates fire and is from the Wildstorm canon. It’s a missed opportunity as Iceland actually has a plethora of volcanoes, but no such character exists in the DC and Marvel stories. It’s even more telling that Marvel has a number of pyrokinetic Latino characters like Firebird and Inferno, like as if Latinos are so hot-tempered they might as well burst into flames at any point. It really does write itself but in a way that tells you about how gringos see Latin Americans as.

Considering that Firebird is explicitly of Mexican descent, there is a difference between the way Anglo-Americans portray Mexicans as opposed to Mexicans doing their own. This isn’t the case for all characters like Kyle Rayne and possibly Jessica Cruz, but it seems one of the most well-known superheroes in the Mexican comics canon is Kalimán, who’s frankly an Orientalist character to boot who also returned to publication just recently. Whilst he does show that Mexicans are also similarly guilty of Orientalism, yet he’s also very much a byproduct of the Mexican imagination, far moreso than Firebird is to the same and she’s a byproduct of American authors like Bill Mantlo.

He’s very much a product of Latin American imagination in a way most Latino DC and Marvel characters aren’t. But given DC and Marvel’s greater popularity that they’ll always succeed in popularising American ideas about these people, even when it shouldn’t be.

The other witch familiars

As I said before concerning the character of Ermentrude Wolfenbarger is that it was actually fairly commonplace for wolves to be associated with witchcraft, whether as familiars or as witch guises, to the extent that lycanthropy can and should be seen as an extension of witchcraft itself. Especially when you have witches turning into wolves themselves that shapeshifting shouldn’t even be considered separate from witchcraft, but as an aspect of it in ways a number of fantasy writers don’t realise or consider. There’s even an old Swiss folktale about a witch turning into a wolf herself, as well as earlier accounts of witches riding on wolves that the association of wolves with witchcraft did exist before.

There are also numerous accounts of dogs being associated with witchcraft just the same, which is still the case in some countries like Ghana even if not all people are this hung up on witchcraft either even from the sermons I listen to, at least they don’t do this all the time. There’s some Scottish folktale about a witch turning into a black dog, so such beliefs may’ve persisted longer than people care to realise. Ermentrude Wolfenbarger being a Swiss witch who turns into a wolf and uses both wolves and dogs to harass people with harkens back to these earlier associations, though it may not be entirely forgotten in other fictions but it’s not the first things to come to mind for most modern minds. Even if the association may’ve lasted longer than expected, since these two folktales were recorded sometime in the late 19th century.

And even today such associations still exist in places like China, Ghana and Democratic Republic of Congo, not that they all dislike dogs nor do even their Christians obsess over the problem with witchcraft that much all the time either. Especially if you’ve listened to those sermons that it’s not as frequent as you’d expect it to be, but even then the association of dogs and wolves with witchcraft was there before. Not just in East Asia and Africa but also in Europe at some point or another, that perhaps it’s about time for witches and their dogs to make a major comeback in fiction. Perhaps a minirevival does exist in some capacity as of late, though I guess the more the merrier.

It’s own entity and culture

I’m of the belief that African American culture is practically distinct from the African cultures, especially considering how you have trafficked Africans arriving on what will become modern America, being practically left to start everything and anything from scratch as to create a new culture altogether. If highlife is unique to West African countries like Ghana and Nigeria, then things like soul music, hip hop and even rock music at some point have their roots in African American communities and ethos. Even African American naming practises differ from their Akan and Igbo counterparts, not that there aren’t any Akans and Igbos with western names (or Nigerians and Ghanaians in general). Although African American culture does have African roots, it’s also isolated from the African continent enough to become its own entity.

Even if similar things can be said of the other African diasporic cultures in the Americas and also in Eurasia to some extent (Turkey, even Abkhazia), but I feel the African American culture is the most influential of all. Without it you wouldn’t get things like hip hop and rock music getting exported to and localised in countries like the Philippines, South Korea, China, Japan and Vietnam, or for another matter countries like Germany, Italy, Greece, United Kingdom and Russia. I suppose if white American culture is sufficiently different from its European counterparts, then African American culture would be just as different towards its African counterparts, like I said before. When it comes to hairstyles, the African American story would be one of resistance to white American norms. In the 1970s, African Americans would grow an Afro and keep it this way.

Then sometime in the 1980s up to now, African Americans would show another form of resistance by wearing dreadlocks or having hair braided in some other way. This is like this in African countries but to a lesser extent, especially in places like Ghana and Cameroon, where’s not much of a white presence that lasted this long. Though it could be said that there are some traces of European colonialism in schools regarding African natural hair, African schoolgirls have the option of having their hair braided. African schoolboys are always expected to either have short hair or be bald, whereas among African Americans they would show resistance to white American norms by wearing dreadlocks, cornrows and braids. Odder still is that dreadlocks is something of a divisive hairstyle among African men, since there are some who see it as effeminate.

Dreadlocks are also divisive among African Americans but mainly in the lines of being respectable to the white majority there, since white people are pretty negligible throughout much of Africa. South Africa’s the only African country that continues to have both a substantial white European descendant presence (something similar happened in Algeria but they were eventually booted out) and an influential white European descendant bloc, something West African countries don’t have much so they’d have similar attitudes towards black people doing black things. But I feel it’s the naming practises, music, literature, history and audiovisual media that make African Americans practically distinct from their African counterparts, the only black Africans comparable to their struggles would be those in Southern and East Africa as well as DRC.

(Also known as RDC in French.)

Maybe that’s to my knowledge but even then I feel African Americans are pretty culturally distinct from black Africans in the same way white Americans are distinct from white Europeans, like how amapiano originates from South Africa whilst hip hop originates from America. The African American experience is peculiar in that African Americans both constitute a very influential bloc and yet oppressed in a white majority country that’s also a major superpower, though similar things could be said of Britain and France at some point, they wouldn’t start having more black people around until sometime between the 19th and 21st centuries, where they were superpowers on the decline. So the African American experience stands out as they’re a numerically substantial, influential minority that’s oppressed in a country that’s the current superpower.

South Africa comes close but it’s not exactly that similar to America in other regards, if because it’s only an ascendant superpower at this point and its black population is the majority that’s oppressed by a highly influential white minority. Similar things can be said of Brazil, but one that comes closer to America than South Africa does, as its trajectory’s eerily similar regarding the nature of trans-Atlantic slavery in the Americas. Brazil might even give people a better idea of what America was like when it was an ascending superpower, given its growing economy and influence, as well as having a habit of oppressing its own African diaspora. So Brazil is pretty comparable to America, having the largest economies in their own respective continents.

Though I feel South Africa is a good contender for this as it’s also a rising superpower with one singer named Tyla having one of her songs (Push 2 Start) getting played on international radio, in fact it played on Radio Disney of all things, at least the Mexican version as its American counterpart no longer exists. That and its own legacy of racial segregation in the form of apartheid, but it’s still pretty telling that African Americans exist in substantial numbers enough to form their own highly influential culture. That’s not to say Afro-Turks and Afro-Akhazbians lack their own cultures, they certainly do on some level but they’re not exactly a large bloc on par with their American counterparts.

African Americans number around almost 50 million, whereas Afro-Turks number between 5000 and 20,000 with Afro-Akhazbians being possibly smaller in number still, so the former would be fairly common enough to constitute a highly influential bloc in America. It’s kind of appropriate to regard the African American community as something of a nation within a nation, as a number of their own cultural traditions and practises do diverge from white American norms. A subculture not so much in the conventional sense but something that’s a subdivision within the wider American culture, since it’s not uncommon for African Americans to do conventionally American customs and follow American holidays. Though similar things can be said of say what the Ewe people currently are in Ghana, there is a difference.

The real difference is that Ewe culture long predated American culture, whereas African American culture emerged when America as we know it started to emerge. The majority ethnic group’s culture will often be the more influential of the two, so in the case with both Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana, the majority ethnicity in both countries is Akan and both of them used to be part of the Ashanti Empire. So inevitably both successor states will carry over much of the predecessor’s culture into the present day, even after a degree of European colonialism. In the case with African American culture, the degree of westernisation is far more extensive. If because they often coexisted with white European settlers enough to have the latter’s influence rub on the former, so either they share similar customs or that European Americans habitually appropriate AA culture.

There are probably other things unique to African Americans but even then they’re pretty distinct from their African counterparts. Whether if it’s the naming practises or the holidays themselves, African Americans are culturally rather different from their African counterparts. Not necessarily so entirely dissimilar, but as much as their own entity as their white counterparts are to white Europeans.