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gemsofgreece · 8 months

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Γεια σου! I’m a Romanian History student specialising in International Relations and I am about to enter the last year of my Bachelor’s Degree, meaning I will have to write a thesis in order to obtain a diploma. I also happen to be learning Greek. I have been fascinated by the history of 20th century Greece for a while now and have written almost every essay we were assigned on topics surrounding it, thus I have picked “Greece’s foreign policy in the 20th century” as the topic for my thesis. As for any other scholarly work, I will be in need of primary sources and I was wondering if there are any Greek digitalised archives which may contain relevant documents regarding Greece’s foreign affairs and so on? Thank you so much!

Γεια! Bună! :)

I don't know if I can come up with sources for exactly what you ask in specific but here's some stuff I found.

I would first recommend the captain obvious / sly way: Go to the page of the History of Modern Greece in Wikipedia. The page is very detailed and long and it links you to even more detailed main articles about all the historical events one by one. And there are all the references you can search more and the citations you can use there. I linked the English page - but do study the Greek equivalent simultaneously. Sometimes the English one leans towards British / French "inherent innocence" in regards to its involvement in Greek matters. So both together, with their links to extra pages and all the references can provide a generous amount of information that will be pretty safe.

Old publications released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They cover several of the years 1878 - 1921. Half are in Greek and half are in French though. Here's the link.

Here you will find the pdf of the standard senior high school book on modern and modern Greek history.

This is a pdf of the Topics on Modern Greek History, the schoolbook of the senior year in high school for those who plan to study humanities and social sciences in particular.

The link I am giving you below includes online catalogs from Greek libraries (National Library, Academy of Athens and Gennadius Library). It also has links to open access databases on Modern Greek studies. It's catalogs though, research guides. Not access to the books themselves.

One that might be useful is the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. It's the scientific journal dealing with Greek history and culture exclusively after the Byzantine era.

I would recommend the podcast of historian Giorgos Mavrogordatos - Διορθωτικά Μαθήματα Ιστορίας (Corrective History Lessons). It's very serious work, based on his books as well which he mentions so you can search for them and buy them for more info or in order to cite them. You will find his podcast everywhere, Apple, Spotify, and pod.gr . It has around 67 episodes I believe, the first nine discuss other incidents in Europe and the world which could be similar to Greece's situation and then all the rest are about Greece - mostly the events of 1922 but stretching before and after that, and then some episodes about the Greek monarchy. Of course the problem is that it is, well, a podcast, therefore you need to be acquainted with listening to Greek rather than reading it.

A history website that has great quality and a lot of stuff is Η ΜΗΧΑΝΗ ΤΟΥ ΧΡΟΝΟΥ. It has also articles about world history and its own podcasts. It has a huge archive of articles on Greek history and particularly the modern one, and a lot of little known events, people's documentations and experiences of said historical events, which can give a touch of spice to your thesis. Check out its history menu in this screenshot:

See, it covers the 20th century exhaustively. Of course, it's a website, so what you can do is that once you read something useful in this website, you then make a targeted search about it on the Internet to find the scientific sources and citations because they don't do it themselves often. But they are legit.

That's the best I could do. Inviting anyone knowing history professors' by name to give us links to their publications (cos I am bad with names and remembering sources and such) or if there is any digital archive database you know out there, help Anon out!!!

In the meantime, I still think the wikipedia can save a life when used carefully. And the podcast is good. In fact, if you search your pod app with Greek characters about "νεότερη Ελληνική ιστορία", it might give you several useful results.

BTW I was amazed to find out that we apparently do not have a Greek-based proper, modern, attractive, friendly to use website about Greek History (all of it), addressed to everyone interested and just being a good, extensive and easily accessible source of historiographical content. I have seen many other nations, even much smaller, having such and putting a lot of work in them (although to my recollection in some cases the contents are wild and not very scientific...). You'd expect Greece would have something similar (hopefully minus the unscientific part) about Greek history but nah. This is both sad and not surprising at all. I mean, η μηχανή του χρόνου is good but it's mostly Greek for Greeks. And other blogs that are very personal and subjective may lack in integrity. But an official modern state-supported website that could engage people from all over the world? Nah. I mean, the ministry itself suggests in the year of our Lord 2023 to use IE4 as a browser! Put THAT on your thesis Anon *laughs to hide the frustration*

#greece #greek history #history #modern greek history #resources #i mean...meh #i hope buna is correct btw #anon #ask #tw long post #tw long text #tw long #coals of greece

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de-cryptid · 3 years

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Behind the curtain.

I’ll cut to the chase and simply state outright who I believe, and am almost certain, is behind the social media presence of Simon Alkenmayer.

Kristina Meister.

Kristina deleted her blog yesterday as of posting so I can’t link directly to it for the posts I am going to discuss and showcase here. I will be providing links that preserve their existence, however, so you don’t have to take me at my word alone.

For context: In Simon's world (which is how I will refer to the unreality that is his existence and supposed life), Kristina was his editor for The Creature's Cookbook and also the foot-in-the-door that is the publishing industry. She pitched the autobiography on his behalf, bringing it to Tapas media.

They maintained a friendship, both outside of the internet and here on tumblr. However, one day a fire was set in Kristina's driveway, leading her to what can reasonably be described as hysteria.

Here is an archived link to her reaction.

TL;dr is that she believes @simonalkenmayerisdead to be the only person in the world who could have possibly made a connection between her and Simon (despite the fact they actively engaged with each other on multiple social medias, that and there are far more people on tumblr that know of Simon than his critics) and threatened a multitude of legal action.

Here, The Fool explains the issue with the accusations levied against him and his followers.

Reading the exchanges between Simon, The Fool, and Kristina is what made it clear to me that Simon is Kristina. A lot of those posts are long gone due to Kristina's blog deletion, and are otherwise far too tedious to hunt down on Simon's blog, but they are quite similar to that which is linked above.

You can probably tell there's a level of irrationality (an understatement honestly) in Kristina's posts regarding the fire and her general demeanour.

As she and Simon have each other's personal contact information, which she herself showed a screenshot of, I think it's strange for Simon to respond publicly in the way he did. She's clearly not in a good mental state to be online, discussing a traumatic event, throwing accusations, cussing at and threatening her dissenters.

He's a long-lived observer of humans, in his world, and instead of recognizing this to be the behaviour of someone who isn't in the right frame of mind to be speaking about their circumstances to a substantial audience of presumably a few ill-intentioned people, he endorses everything she says and encourages her to continue on her rants.

Is it not obvious that this isn't accomplishing anything but potentially harming her more? She's shown the suspect that their tactic succeeded. She revealed her vulnerabilities in regards to her child and marriage. Simon, as a friend and the supposed cause for all this, should know better than to further feed into the anonymous attacks on his associate and instead handle it on a personal level.

But that isn't what happened.

The only way for someone to respond in the manner Simon did is for them to be as equally emotionally involved and irrational as Kristina herself is, which is clear from the notes where Simon's loyal audience reacts in a similarly distressed and irrational voice.

That's human behaviour, not that of a people-eating centuries-old non-mammalian monster who has watched famine ravage civilizations, killed countless individuals, and adapted despite it all.

But moving on, as I'm sure that in and of itself isn't enough for some people.

Let's turn our attention to The Creatures Cookbook itself. It's framed as a diary, meaning it was written in real-time and built upon over years, not as an autobiography. This is suspect for reasons I'll discuss further on.

I'd like to begin with the book's publishing history. It was first in print thanks to Fuse Literary, as can be seen in this post from their website, then moved onto the Tapas app (where it remains to this day).

Simon himself says that his book is "out of print", which is why it's not available as a physical copy outside of second-hand nowadays. This is not exactly true; fuse literary dropped the book. He isn't being represented by them anymore. Tapas, which is more of a pulp app where anyone can publish most anything, is not just the new medium he selected dutifully to act out the experiment more effectively; it was a last resort for a book people simply weren't interested in.

The Fool explains this quite well here.

I'd also like to reiterate something touched upon in that linked post; Simon lied about meeting his publisher, either in 2014 in that incredibly descriptive post about his agent and their experience with Tapas, or to that anonymous asker. Why is this? If the original post was incorrect, or no longer what Simon wanted readers to believe, wouldn't it make more sense to delete it? That or he, likely, forgot what was originally said about his publisher and simply made up a response for the asker. His memory spans centuries, and clearly that experience was a vivid one, given his description, but he couldn't keep consistent on his public social media. I find this suspect for many reasons.

Going back to Fuse Literary, we have articles that directly state Kristina is "writing as" Simon, which he has stated in the past was out of necessity to preserve his identity (which is somewhat contradictory, seeing as he claims that the government is aware of his species and him specifically, and also his aim is to convince people he does in fact exist).

Needless to say, a lot of little things just don't add up. Instead, they point to Kristina using Simon's character and presence as an outlet of sorts. He is an identity she assumes.

Here is another clue I stumbled upon, regarding Kristina's other writing endeavours.

Let's talk Cinderella Boy.

So Kristina is both a freelance editor (as Simon states she was for him) and a writer herself, with several published books. Easily her highest reviewed and most popular is called Cinderella Boy, a story about LGBTQ struggles from the perspective of a high school boy. I went through the reviews a while back and a lot were positive! But I noticed that many of those positive reviews were people who knew Kristina through Simon and already liked his character, his voice, his style.

And Cinderella Boy is very much the same.

I linked the Goodreads page above and recommend you go through reviews yourself to better understand what I mean, but below I will show one of the negative reviews that is... Very telling. (Click and swipe through, it's a long one)

And this wasn't the only person saying these sorts of things, either. Again, I recommend seeing for yourself. Here's another excerpt from a different review:

I want to focus in on the "70 year old philosophers" bit. The other review above said something similar about the overly deep and philosophical dialogue.

Sound familiar?

It appears Kristina's writing style happens to be that old-timey philosophically-bent verbose kind, highly reminiscent of Simon himself.

I found this rather funny. You'd think writing a modern YA would have a skilled writer attempting to make the character interactions more relatable and... Well, realistic.

It appears Kristina only has the one setting, however. And that happens to sound exactly the way Simon talks.

I will be going in-depth with the factual errors in Simon's historical assertions in the future, so I'll hold off on those for now, but a previous post of mine shows a clear miscalculation on the part of Simon's creator googling something and applying it to Simon's world, without realizing it was factually incorrect. You can see that here.

To conclude this very long post, I want to make it clear that I do not hate Kristina nor Simon, I am not posting this to harass either of them. I am only interested in making it clear that Simon is not an all-knowing cryptid and is not a reliable voice. Simon is a human creation and his readers should be aware of that. Seek real, professional help if you are looking for some advice. Do not think that an elaborate roleplay is an appropriate substitute.

#long post #simon alkenmayer #kristina meister

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nyctolovian · 4 years

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Welcome to the Queer Beer Frontier

This is an incredibly self-indulgent word vomit of my sexuality/gender headcanons for TMA S1 Archival Gang.

Summary: The S1 Archival Gang are all not cishet. That's the whole fic.

Link to AO3

"Am I right, Jon?"

With eyes glazed over with intoxication, he looked up from his glass. "Huh?"

"Keira Knightley," Tim said, raising an eyebrow. "You're the only person I can turn to for this. The other two are useless in this regard."

"I don't… I don't get…" Jon frowned and glanced towards the other two at the table. Neither was of any help though, because Sasha merely stared at him silently with amusement twinkling in her eyes while Martin busied himself with… something under the table. "What are you talking about?"

"Aww... Doesn't he look adorable when he's confused?" Sasha said, turning to Martin, who sputtered and glared indignantly back at her.

Before Jon could even begin to decipher what just transpired, Tim threw his head back and groaned so loudly a giggly group of girls at the other table peered at him curiously. In a futile attempt to avoid any association to this scene, Jon scrunched his body to hide behind his (conveniently) bigger friends.

His escape attempt proved futile, however, when Tim threw an arm around Jon and tugged him closer. "We didn't invite you to drink with us just so you can sit there looking pretty, boss," he said.

"Wh—" Jon grunted affrontedly, brows furrowing. He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand and tried to blink through his drowsy alcohol-induced haze. "I really don't—"

"I said, Keira Knightley is the very definition of hot," Tim drawled. "Don't you agree?"

Confusion crossed over Jon's features. "I suppose so."

"You suppose so?" Tim scoffed. "Alright, alright. Maybe she isn't your type. How about Tessa Thompson?"

Jon let out a non-committal noise as he pressed the rim of his glass against his lips. When no liquid hit his tongue, he blinked and looked into the cup.

Empty.

"Lucy Liu?"

Jon lifted his glass and looked around dazedly. "Does anyone—"

"What about Lucy Liu?"

"I really don't— My glass is empty?"

"Oh, sorry. Got distracted," Martin said, rubbing the back of his neck and slowly sliding out of his chair. "It's my round."

"I, well, yes, that'd be—"

Tim barged in with another question. "Okay, then, what about Anna Kendrick?"

"Not really."

"Not really?!" Tim yelled. "Alright, what about—"

"For god's sake, Tim, stop asking me these questions!" Jon groaned. "I'm too bloody ace for this."

Martin blinked at him, eyes owlishly wide with curiosity. "What do you mean?" he asked in a half-squat above his chair.

Jon's initially liquor-tinged face blanched. Suddenly it was show-and-tell in Year 2 all over again, eyes fixated upon him, as he struggled not to cry from stage fright. Except the topic today was far less innocuous than 'My Favourite Animal'. He ran a hand over his face.

Jon wished he could time-travel two hours back to throttle himself for accepting Sasha's invitation to drink. He should have gone home and taken a good long nap.

Unfortunately for him, he was stuck in this crap-hill of a situation. Jon gulped, looking everywhere but at his friends, as he tried to push Tim away. The silence was suffocating and he was pressured to fill it. "Fuck. I didn't mean to…"

Sasha leaned across the table. "Wait, you said you're ace? As in asexual?"

"I… uh, yes?" Jon shrunk into himself. "So what?" he hissed defensively.

Hands shooting up defensively, Sasha shook her head. "Oh, it's not like that! I'm also—"

Tim interrupted her with a whoop so loud that Jon had to yank himself out of his chokehold lest his eardrums burst. Martin had to leap off his chair and cover a hand over Tim's mouth to stop the hollering. Even then, he still did a whole lot of muffled yelling. "We're in public, Tim!" Martin chastised.

Tim tried to pull Martin's hand off, but to no avail.

"I'll take it off if you promise to stop yelling."

He rolled his eyes and nodded. As soon as Martin let go of Tim, however, he flashed the smuggest smirk and said, "So archiving is a gays-only event."

Martin let out a groan and Jon frowned in confusion. "What?"

"We honestly thought all this while you were homophobic," Tim said. "But turns out you're one of us."

Sasha raised her hand. "Disclaimer: I didn't think you were homophobic. Just uptight."

"But I..." Jon muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Wait, so you're all gay?"

"Alright, fellas," Sasha said, clapping her hands. "From the top! I'm aromantic heterosexual."

Tim dramatically placed a hand upon his chest. "And I'm the neighbourhood Bi-con!"

Nervously, Martin said, "Uh, no labels. But not straight."

Invitingly, Sasha gestured towards Jon.

He blinked. "Oh. Uh. Panromantic asexual. Um, and also nonbinary."

"Niiice," Tim said, patting his back hard. "I can't believe we took this long to figure this all out."

"I don't like assuming," Jon admitted.

"But I thought we were being incredibly obvious. Well, me and Martin were at least. We just thought you never mentioned because you were ignoring all of it on purpose."

Jon hummed. He had caught Tim flirting with a couple dudes who came to the archives before. Somehow, however, he had never registered those incidents properly and the idea that Tim wasn't straight had sailed past him entirely. He felt a bit stupid, thinking back right now.

He tried to recall an instance for Martin but drew absolutely nothing, however. "Was Martin very obvious?"

"Oh!" Sasha wheezed, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Martin here is–" she slapped his back "— painfully obvious."

"Huh," Jon muttered. "I really never noticed."

"You really should," Tim said. "Oh, right. Isn't it your turn to buy us a round, Martin? Do you want to get some right now? While we talk to Jon."

The flush that overtook Martin's face made his freckles darken as he resolutely sat in his seat, beside himself with distraught.

"Alright, alright. Enough teasing," Sasha said to Tim. "Martin, I promise I will keep him in his place so just get us the round already."

After Martin's eyes darted from Sasha to Tim to Jon, then back to Sasha, he shot up from his seat with a huff. "I trust you, okay?" Then, he made a beeline for the bartender.

"Am I missing something?" Jon asked. "I feel like I am."

Sasha shook her head. "We're just all feeling pretty excited is all. It's not every day the notorious Jonathan Sims would come out to people."

"Notorious?" Jon wrinkled his nose. "From what I'm gathering, I'm not very welcome in this archival team. First, I'm homophobic and now notorious."

"Hey," Tim said, "you can't blame me for thinking you might be a homophobe. You don't exactly give off queer vibes."

"Aspec people like us don't really get much opportunity to be overtly queer," Sasha muttered, leaning back. "We're a low-lying bunch."

"Hey! But I could tell that you weren't straight. But Jon flew right under my gay-dar. And I'm usually really good at detecting comrades."

"Time to send that radar for repairs then," Jon replied with a smirk.

"You're not much better!"

"I never claimed to be good at detecting comrades."

Just then, Martin came back, and Jon was pleased to finally get more alcohol. With how much he'd been blabbing already, it felt like that kind of night.

After a while, Jon's head started spinning in what felt like cartwheels and somersaults. Drowsily, he placed his head on the regrettably grimy table. He watched the other three's back-and-forth for a while before suddenly stepping in. "Why no labels?" he asked Martin. "Just curious."

"Hm?" He straightened up. "Oh. Just… not too fond of being put into labels. None of the terms ever sit quite right with me for some reason."

"Fair enough," Jon muttered, voice thick with exhaustion. "I took ages before finding what felt right for me."

"How did you realise you were ace then?" Tim asked.

"Don't know. Just sort of always knew but didn't have a word for it. So when the word asexuality came along…" He waved his hand as though to say, "And the rest was history."

"Is it not liking sex?" Sasha asked. "I personally never really got what's so good about romance. I think it's just messy stuff if you ask me."

"Sex is… It's fine?" Jon winced. "I don't hold any strong opinions on the matter although I do sometimes find it quite fascinating."

"Jesus Christ. It's sex, Jon. Not some academic discussion," Tim scoffed.

He pouted.

"Then, how did you figure it out?" Martin asked.

"Oh. I, uh… It just felt like there was something everyone else seemed to have no trouble getting that I couldn't. Turns out that thing was sexual attraction." He shrugged. His eyelids were growing rather heavy. "I quite like being ace, you know that? I've never told that to anyone else," he slurred the admission.

"Are you tired, Jon?" Martin asked.

"Mhm."

"Do you want to take a nap?"

He nodded, rubbing his face against the wooden table. Sasha ran her fingers through his hair and he hummed, eyelids sliding shut.

Jon remembered how frustrated he used to be when he was younger. Curious and stubborn since he could remember, there was no way he would let this thing he couldn't understand simply slide under the rug. He remembered thinking he might be pansexual, but that didn't sit right in his chest. It took years of hunting down a proper answer and a couple more to acknowledge it.

Sometimes, Jon would mourn over the fact that he would never understand what on earth this "sexual attraction" thing was. Most of the time, however, he found himself quite comfortable in his own skin, finally able to categorise his experience. Now, asexuality was a label he embraced.

And it felt good knowing there were people close by who accepted him.

#tma #magpod #the magnus archives #asexual jonathan sims #aromantic sasha james #bisexual tim #tma fanfic #non binary jonathan sims #panromantic jonathan sims #my writing #not sure how else to tag hmmm

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kayla1993-world · 2 years

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Queen Elizabeth's Favorite Handbag Brand Launches New Retro Style | PEOPLE.com

Queen Elizabeth is rarely seen without her iconic handbag. Now, the brand behind her go-to style has dug through its archives to launch a new take on a vintage style in honor of its most famous customer.

Inspired by the monarch's historic 70 years on the throne, Launer's Jubilee Bag is based on a style that they launched in 1972 — one that the Queen herself used to wear.

"It's a beautifully finished product — we stick to what we are good at, which is making structured bags," CEO of the brand, Gerald Bodmer, tells PEOPLE from his factory in Walsall, near Birmingham.

The limited-edition bag, which costs $3,385 and is available in five colors (with names including Monarch Purple (see above) and the Queen's favorite, Ebony Black), features a special leather plaque with "Platinum Edition Jubilee" written in embossed gold foil on the inside, while the outside features the brand's distinctive gold-plated twisted rope emblem.

The making of the bag was possible after a member of the public contacted the handbag designer after discovering the original design (identified by a number rather than a name) in his grandmother's attic. With the pattern for this bag long lost, Bodmer thought it was the perfect time to reinvent the classic retro style.

"I always liked that bag, so I used it as inspiration. I don't know why the Queen stopped carrying it. Maybe it wore out?" Bodmer says.

The Queen was last seen wearing the original version of the bag in 1995 when she attended a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey. Made of black patent, the pared-back style was worn with a bright pink jacket, floral dress and matching pink floral hat.

"She always looks so smart and elegant, and I think our bags go together with that," says Bodmer, who welcomed the Queen to his factory in 1992 and also counts Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall as a customer.

While the Traviata, handmade in fine calf leather with a soft goat suede lining, was once her go-to style, the Queen has more recently opted for the smaller but sturdier Turandot, which Bodmer makes specifically for her, with some minor adjustments.

"She wants less weight in her bags now, so I try to make the bag light enough for her to carry. There are many extras, so I just try to make it as light as I can without spoiling it," says the 89-year-old proprietor, who took over the brand in 1981.

The handles on the Queen's bag are also made longer for ease of movement, something that's even more essential now she's about to turn 96 and using a walking cane more because of mobility issues.

"She's often carrying a stick, and that takes some effort to carry a bag as well, but just like my wife, the Queen told me she doesn't feel comfortable without a handbag!" Bodmer says.

Indeed, the Queen has worn six different styles from the luxury brand over the last five decades and her bag is much a part of her look as her signature pearls or brightly colored jackets.

The royal family's history with Launer dates back to the 1950s, when the Queen Mother purchased her first bag from the brand. Founded in the 1940s by Sam Launer, who fled Czechoslovakia with his wife and two sons during the war, the brand was given a Royal Warrant in 1968 and the Queen has become its longest-standing customer to date.

The British heritage brand, who launched its e-commerce site in 2008, has seen a steady increase in online sales over the years, with many online customers opting for their unique "build a bag" service, where you can choose your own materials, colors and personalization in six easy steps. It's something the handbag designer is immensely proud of — as he is of Launer's longtime association with the Queen.

"I feel a certain amount of satisfaction — it's wonderful that the Queen still carries our bags after all this time and it's marvelous that she supports a small independent company like us," he says.

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