I drew this at my best fren Vicky’s house while she was playing the piano

Snekzine is out now! Read it during No Simp September!

For those of you who are familiar with this blog, I am the originator of a trend called No Simp September. This is where you avoid simping and you lock in for a whole month. However, I also started a trend for people in relationships called Sigmimptember. This is where you can simp over your partner but you still have to lock in. However, I have mostly spent this September brooding, pondering, languishing, lamenting, bewailing, and bemoaning my fate. Because I was bedrotting and crashing out so much, I have decided to do No Simp October instead. Once October begins, it's over for y'all. 

Throwback to 2023 when I decided to start this trend. You can see the original No Simp September post here.

Here are some goals I have for No Simp October:

- 10,000 steps a day

- Go to jim every other day 

Walking and jim have emotional benefits. They can prevent crashouts. 

Anyway, now that I have established my No Simp October goals, I have to make an exciting announcement!

The very first issue of Snekzine is out now and it's autumn themed!

I am thinking of turning this into a quarterly zine with seasonal art, poetry, fiction, and puzzles. For now, here is the first issue. Made on Canva and posted on Fleepit. 

You can view the zine here:

https://flipbooks.fleepit.com/f-123798-snekzine_vol_1

I still have to make some promo materials for this zine on my new Instagram (@ax0lotl_slime). I'm going to add some promo links to this zine on my website sidebar as well when I have time. But for now, enjoy the zine. 

The next volume will be released in the winter. I'm so happy!! I've always wanted to make a cute little zine flipbook ting. 

Bye, frens!!!

in defense of people who have internet friends (I will die on this hill)

An amazing drawing by my talented internet fren Iriria. Check out @coppereddrawings on Instagram. 

Alright, I'll admit I'm mad. I always feel like it's the most privileged, normie, suburbanite, neurotypical ass people who hate on people who have internet friends. We get it, you have generic interests and low emotional needs so you can easily befriend random people and you don't need to spend one-on-one time with people to feel close with them. You don't need to ever have conversations about something deep or interesting because you're fine with shallow ass relationships. Whatever. Just don't expect the rest of us to be satisfied with that. 

So right now, I don't really have internet friends who I talk to that much. They're nice when I do talk to them, but they're not really that significant to my life any more. Shoutout to Anthony and Iriria if ur reading this tho lmao u guys are great. Anthony is this cool Mexican guy who's a history teacher and Iriria is my Costa Rican friend who makes very pretty art!! Right now, I just have tons of irl friends who I actually feel close to so I don't really need to talk to Anthony and Iriria every day. But I also wouldn't have been able to survive my tumultuous teen years without people like them. I'm not as reliant on internet friends, but I'm grateful af that I had them in my life when I needed them.

Internet friends were very significant for me throughout my teenage years and beyond that too. I'd say they were actually pretty significant to me until I started doing my masters, which was when I was 22. So what happened when I was 22? I had a friendship breakup the year before with one of my closest internet friends at the time and it was devastating. I still respect him and I'm grateful for the impact he had on my life even though he's not in my life any more. 

After this happened, I decided to look more for irl friends because I thought this would help. But if you think about it, this is actually a stupid assumption. The friendship breakup didn't happen just because we were internet friends. A similarly devastating scenario could easily repeat irl (and DID actually repeat irl with someone I was close to during my masters). I also forgot how boring people in real life are. I'm not trying to roast anyone, because I realize boringness is subjective. You may be very interesting to someone else even if you're boring to me. But a lot of people are just very boring to me, and forcing myself to be friends with them is not good for either of us. 

The type of things I could talk about with my internet friends is just stuff that normies woudn't be able to keep up with because they don't have the same interests as me. For example, Iriria made a Discord server with me and some other internet friends and we watched Killers of the Flower Moon together while chatting live on Discord. Iriria and most of her friends are interested in Indigenous cultures. So the conversation they had about the movie was actually interesting. A normie would either not be interested or just mildly interested. 

I'm autistic, so I just like things more than you and I also get bored by things more. You can like a lot of things a little bit. I can like a few things a lot. That's just how my brain works. It's called monotropism. 

Anyway, during my masters, I didn't get along very well with my cohort but I forged a strong 'ride or die' bond with two PhD students who I met at the time. Shoutout to Andy and Sylvanna you guys are my homies. Something really crazy happened with Andy and Sylvanna. It was the first time I met people offline who I found so relatable.

Now, I do have two very close friends irl who were with me throughout my tumultuous teen years. Their names are Vicky (or V*c, as I call her) and Joan. They're from the same suburb as me. I love them, but I don't think our bond is really based on similar interests. We do have some interests in common but that's not really the basis of our friendship. The love I feel for Vicky and Joan feels kind of sibling-like. They're like chosen family. And family is held together by more than just interests. I feel like there's this sort of sense of duty, protective feeling, etc. that I have for them. 

But also, even though Vic and Joan are amazing, they can't satisfy all my needs. I needed internet friends to satisfy my needs of being able to talk about my niche interests. I could talk about the Aztecs with Anthony or Iriria but not with them, because they wouldn't know as much as my internet friends would. 

After my masters, I spent a year studying the Ojibwe language. Then, I started my PhD. I have NEVER had such as EASY time making friends as I have had during my PhD. It's ridiculous. Doing a PhD for me has been like the coolest, smartest, most relatable people I have ever met begging me to hang out with them and talk to them every day. I'm not even exaggerating. And as someone who was seen as a loser in high school who only had internet friends, this is just wild to me. It's because PhDs select for people who are crazy passionate and want to yap about their interests. The type of connections you make during a PhD are so electrifying it's crazy. I don't know how to describe it to normies who only have surface-level connections. I honestly don't think you guys have experienced anything close to it even in romantic relationships. 

People who thinks it's uncool or unhealthy to have internet friends are discriminating against people with autism, ADHD, and even against LGBT people without knowing it. Where do you think LGBT people who aren't out of the closet meet other gay friends? They need the internet to form a community. There is no guarantee that someone irl will treat you better, share your values, respect your interests more than someone you meet online. 

Also, having internet friends who are good and loyal is like 1901203 times better than being friendless and like 912834021229 times better than having irl friends who are mediocre, unfulfilling, don't really care about you and understand you, etc. 

So in conclusion, what do you do if you're weird and struggle with making friends? Get internet friends, or go to grad school. Your quality of life will improve immensely. Trust me. Most normies will never experience 1/100th of the quality of the bond I had with an 'AuDHD' political boy on Twitter or the autistic PhD students I talk to. 

Good luck!!!

Half-way checkup on annual goals (it's not going well)

This post is going to be depressing. Now I want to be clear, I'm very grateful for what I have. I love what I do and I have great friends who are truly a blessing in my life. That being said, I'm very behind on my personal hobby-related goals, even though I'm fine with where I am professionally and socially right now. What really matters in life is learning. And anyone who actually cares about learning knows it has nothing to do with school or classes or jobs. So what do I want to learn? Several languages, the entire canon of western literature, and photorealistic art skills for sure. These were things I said I want to focus on this year when I made my 2026 new year goals back in January. There are other things I want to learn, like music theory and math. But music seemed like it needed to be sacrificed because the list was already overwhelming. And math was something I didn't realize I wanted to learn about until well into the year after I already made the goals.

When I realized I wasn't making much progress on my goals, I considered changing them from 2026 goals to a 3-year plan to give myself more time to achieve everything. But I'm still not sure if I can do everything. Lets go through the list now. I'm going to try to figure out if there's actually any hope of achieving these goals. 

Sharing of academic ideas

Now, one of the categories of goals is, "sharing of academic ideas." I started a podcast called PhDeezNuts, but I only released one episode and then abandoned it. But that's fine! I'm just going to take that off the list because it doesn't matter for now. I'll return to the podcast when I'm ready.

I was going to do a Substack post, presentation, or video on Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, but I don't think I will get around to this one this year. So what goal does that leave under 'sharing of academic ideas'? I would say it's writing a post about John Milton's views on marriage. I'm arguing that they have a continuity in some nineteenth-century novels that also have unconventional views on marriage. I have read Paradise Lost as well as Stephan Greenblatt's The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, where Greenblatt tells us all about Milton's love life and his views on marriage. I have read Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, which quotes Milton in an epigraph and questions the institution of marriage. I have also read Middlemarch by George Eliot, in which Dorothea and Will achieve the Miltonic ideal of marriage. The books I still need to read to write this post are probably just Milton's divorce tracts. At least the first one. So I realized I am just one book away from feeling qualified to write this piece for a general, non-academic audience! 

Reading goals

Now, I'm also going to modify my 2026 reading list. The goal is to read 69 books. I will probably achieve that. I had some books that I assigned to myself, but now I feel like my reading interests keep changing and I'd rather see where curiosity takes me than stick to a list. Right now, I'm reading Anna Karenina, On the Origin of Species, and a self-help book for people who have too many interests called Refuse to Choose. Of these, Anna Karenina is the most interesting so far, but Origin was the only one on the 2026 reading plan. But Anna Karenina isn't a waste just because it wasn't part of the plan and was something I got into later. I'm going to take off some of the required titles but keep the quantity of 69.

Art goals

The next category of goals is art goals. I realized what the problem in my art is. You see my technique is decent now, and my content is very fun and cool. But I have not yet been able to marry technique with content. If I am able to marry these two, I will finally be able to produce the kind of art I really want to. 

These are some drawings I did purely for 'technique,' their content is boring. This is just a cupcake and a rubber ducky. Just boring still life that I used YouTube tutorials for. I am fine with the colouring technique. That's not what needs to improve right now. These drawings are also okay, I'm satisfied with them for now. 

Now, there is an issue here that I realized and it is that I rely too much on colour to make drawings look appealing. I love colour, so of course I don't really want to make my favourite pieces less colourful. However, technique pieces are not supposed to be fun. They are supposed to be boring af. You draw something boring to force yourself to improve. It's the only way. I am going to make at least 8 more technique drawings this year, and I will try to make sure they are in black and white. 

I have also made some fun drawings or content drawings. If the technique drawings are like intense gym sessions, fun drawings are like 15 minute walks. That means you still need to do them to stay fit, even though they won't improve your results dramatically. But they are needed to keep your hand and eye trained.

These are the content drawings. This is the Set animal from Egyptian mythology. He embodies chaos. Notice how the colouring is good and the creature is interesting, but this is not a drawing you would praise for its technique. But it was fun. 

A cupcake and a cinnamon bun. Horrible technique. Honestly, not great colouring either. This one was quite rushed. I used a DrawSoCute tutorial and those are for kids. But you guys know I know how to make a good cupcake, because I showed you a better drawing of one already.

And here we have a forg. I am part of a forg appreciation club, and so this drawing is actually up on the club's office wall. I'm not joking about this btw. My life is pretty weird.

Now this one is pretty bad. These are some characters from an unfinished fantasy pocket novel I am working on. Their names are Mariah, Nali, Lysander, and Ostara. Although these names are subject to change. Mariah is a warrior woman from the same country as Nali. Nali is a loser and the protagonist. She is supposed to be a loser because she is from the conquered country and instead of trying to liberate it like Mariah, she works as a castle maid in the country that conquered her. And she sucks at everything. Lysander is a handsome flutist who Nali loves, although it is not reciprocated. He is from an unconquered country. Ostara is the princess of the evil country that conquers everything, and Nali is her maid. 

This is an ahuitzotl, which is a dog-like creature in Aztec mythology that has a hand on its tail that it uses to drown people and take them to the realm of the rain gods. To be honest, I kind of like this one. I was inspired by some designs of wolves in a pet collecting game I play called Chicken Smoothie.  

Okay, to be honest I actually love this one. This is my baby. I don't care if you don't like it. It's inspired by Michi Bizhiw, an aquatic lynx in Ojibwe folklore. I have a real soft spot for this one and it's the best drawing in this post. I made it my Discord profile pic and also turned it into a WhatsApp sticker. 

An axolotl doing the pleading emoji face. This one had a good reception among my frens. Feel free to crop and use in your Discord server or something. 

I don't like this one much, but it depicts some characters from Measure for Measure. They are Isabella, Mariana, Angelo, and Claudio. Isabella wishes to be a nun, but Angelo, who is a horrible person and has control of the state as the deputy of the duke wants to sleep with her. Mariana wants to marry Angelo but he has forsaken her. Claudio is the brother of Isabella, who Angelo wants to execute for having sex outside of marriage even though Angelo is worse!!!

I will be doing 2 more of these maintenance drawings. 

After that, I will make 10 drawings that attempt to marry content and technique. They will be full colour scenes with backgrounds and multiple characters, sort of like storybook illustrations. 

Creative writing goals

I would like to finish the draft of my story on medieval Spain, then revise it a few times after reading Teresa of Avila. I would like to revise and publish two of my poems, which are called 'Fish' and 'Parable of the Wolverine.' The Spain story is called 'You Told me about the Wakwak Tree.' I write so much poetry, but I am actually better at prose.

I would also like to fill up my whole diary and make at least 12 blog posts.

Language learning goals

I'm going to lock in on Anishinaabemowin and sign up for a French class. I took out the other languages for now because this is enough. 

Fitness goals

I need to lock in on this!!!! Do more resistance training and cardio. I use an elliptical for cardio. On days when I don't want to go to the gym for resistance training, I use dumbbells that I have at home. 

Skincare goals

Alright I am pretty satisfied with my skincare routine. I love the cleanser I use (the brand is called The Ordinary) and the moisturizer, which is Olay. Both are very cheap. I use sunscreen too. I stopped using rosewater toner because I actually think it was making my skin worse. So I'm doing cleanser, moisturizer, and sunscreen every day. My skin is soft and looks healthy. Sometimes, I get acne. But it's not really that bad and fades quickly. 

However, I still have blackheads that are a huge problem. I don't use pore strips because I know they aren't good for your skin. I need to experiment with a salicylic acid toner or retinol. Someone gave me a Sephora gift card, so now I will be able to skinmaxx. 

Professional goals

My goals were to try some volunteering. Right now, I am doing volunteer tutoring and I also volunteer for a mental health helpline. My other goals are to try some paid tutoring once I have a bit more experience with volunteer tutoring. I am also going to try a work simulation on Forage related to consulting. For those of you who don't know, Forage work simulations are free online. They're to help you figure out if you would even like a job before you try to apply for it. I will try to consulting simulation. I might hate it, or maybe not. But it will be important information! I have been taking some Excel classes. I will finish these. I have an idea for a small project that will use Excel and I will get started on that once I finish the online Excel course I'm doing. To improve my math, I will grind some textbooks on statistics and probability or find some online lessons. 

After doing all this self-reflection and pondering, here is the final goals list for the rest of 2026. I think this is perfectly manageable: 

1. Write a blog post or article on John Milton's views on marriage and how they may have influenced nineteenth-century novels on marriage. 

2. Read Babel by R.F. Kuang

3. Read Emma by Jane Austen

4. Read Confessions by Augustine

5. Finish reading Darwin's On the Origin of Species 

6. Read AI Morality by David Edmonds

7. Read 69 books. So far, I have read 24. 

8. Make 8 drawings that are only pencil sketches. No colour. These are for improving technique.

9. Make 2 silly drawings with colour.

10. Make 10 drawings that combine technique and appealing subject matter with colour to look like storybook illustrations. 

11. Finish the first draft of my short story 'You Told me about the Wakwak tree' 

12. Read Teresa of Avila's autobiography 

13. Revise the draft of 'You Told me about the Wakwak tree' after reading Teresa of Avila. Edit it and try to submit it to a contest or publication. 

14. Revise and publish my poem 'Fish'

15. Revise and publish my poem 'Parable of the Wolverine' 

16. Fill up my whole diary

17. Write 4 more blog posts for this blog

18. Finish the Kidon Miinawaa Anishinaabemowin course

19. Finish my personal Anishinaabemowin Anki deck

20. Spend at least 40 hours on Anishinaabemowin on Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur 

21. Finish reading one whole issue of Oshkaabewis Native Journal in Anishinaabemowin

22. Passively listen to every Anishinaabemowin episode of the Wiikwemikong podcast. I have 8 left so far. 

23. Sign up for a French class. I have access to some free ones.

24. 100 resistance training sessions. 17 out of 100 so far. lmao it's not going so well.

25. 44 cardio sessions. 19 out of 100 so far. Yes this is bad. Yes I am overweight. But there is hope that I can fix this!!!

26. Try salicylic acid toner or retinol in skincare routine, see if effective in reducing blackheads

27. Continue volunteering tutoring

28. Try paid tutoring

29. Continue mental health helpline volunteering

30. Try becoming a volunteer trainer for the mental health org

31. Try BCG's work simulation on Forage

32. Finish the Excel course on LinkedIn Learning

33. Do a project using Excel

34. Finish a stats textbook 

35. Do some stats practice with online resources 

Alright, this seems like a straightforward list now. I'll let you guys know how it goes. 

Sedna

Hello frens! Today we are going to talk about Sedna. That's how this blog works basically I log on to talk about something random that I'm obsessed with and then you don't hear from me for months. Anyway, Sedna is a goddess in Inuit mythology. She rules over the sea and is usually depicted as a mermaid or selkie.

Sedna sculpture by Bart Kappianaq at the Canadian parliament complex. This shows Sedna with a walrus, narwhal and whale.

There are many different versions of the story about how Sedna came to be a goddess and rule over the sea. But what each version has in common is that Sedna was thrown overboard by someone from a boat (in most versions, her father). When she tried to hold on to the side of the boat, her father cut her fingers off and she drowned. Her fingers became the creatures of the sea, and when she sank to the bottom she grew a fish tail and became the ruler of the sea. The rationale for why Sedna's father decided to drown her is different in various retellings of the myth. He could have been angered by her bad behavior or her refusal to marry someone.

Sedna has had a lot of influence on my art. As you may know if you're familiar with my art, my preferred subject matter is usually girls in traditional clothing accompanied by an animal. The titles of my masterpieces include "Maya woman with jaguar cub" and "Tlingit girl with raven." But I also love drawing nagin (half-snake half-woman goddesses from Hindu mythology) and mermaids. A reoccurring character in my drawings is the Candy Corn Mermaid (basically a mermaid whose hair and scales are white, orange and yellow). Given this interest in mermaids, it is only natural that I decided to draw Sedna.

This was my very first attempt to draw Sedna, with the traditional face-marking of Inuit women. I gave her fins instead of hands. She is accompanied by a narwhal.

Recently, I tried to draw Sedna again. This time, she's just by herself with no creatures.

By the way, Sedna is a character in the Quebecois movie "La Legend de Sarila," which I watched recently to practice my French. She is very beautiful in the movie. Here is a picture of her:

The music in the movie is by an Inuk singer called Elisapie. Since Instagram now lets you put songs over pictures that you post, I added the song "Far Away" from the movie over my Sedna drawing when I posted it.

Well fam, that's all for today. I'll be back next time I get obsessed with something.

I am obsessed with drawing snek girls

Okay so in Hinduism there is a half-human half-serpent race called Naga which resides in the underworld. Here is what they are supposed to look like:

A female naga is called a nagin. A lot of terrible Bollywood horror movies have nagins in them, for some reason. My general opinion of Bollywood movies is that they suck (at least when it comes to the plot). The costumes, music and set design though? All that is awesome, especially in historical movies. 

Anyways, Bollywood horror movies suck. They're not even scary. They're more funny. I am a really easily scared person but I still don't find them scary. 

I haven't seen all the nagin horror movies out there, although I hope I can eventually get to all of them. The one I did watch was called "Hisss" and it was released in 2010. It's about an evil British guy who is trying to capture a nagin to force her to grant him immortality. He captures a male cobra to try luring her in, or something like that. I don't remember all the details. 

This is objectively a horrible movie. It has a 2.9/10 on IMDb and a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I still loved it because of the snek girl. 

Anyways, so I'm NOT a good artist. At all. But I do enjoy drawing. I really liked drawing mermaids but eventually I moved on to drawing nagins. It's kinda the same idea, isn't it? You draw the upper body of a woman and then you give her a fish tail if it's a mermaid or a snek tail if it's a nagin. I make nagins look Indian and mermaids look European, usually. 

I want this post to be dedicated to my nagin art but I'll link some of my mermaid drawings on DeviantArt if you're interested. Please do follow my DeviantArt if you use it! Just go to aztecatl13.deviantart.com. 

And here are links to my mermaid drawings: 

• Mermaid (European) 
• Sedna (Inuit) 
  
• Candy corn mermaid (a fictional race that has tricoloured hair that's white, orange and yellow like candy corn) 
  

Anyways it's time to talk about my nagin art. 

My very first attempt at a nagin, back in 2017:

So at that time I struggled with proportions a lot. However, I do like the eyes and hair here. I think I like how her face is cute but the rest of her looks scary. She has a really menacing curved sword dripping with blood. She also has a snake around her neck that she's wearing like a scarf. I think that was a nice detail, but the colouring was not done well enough for the snek scarf to stand out. 

My second attempt at a nagin in 2019 (basically a redraw of the first one)

Alright, the colouring on here is much better and the proportions are better. Maybe not perfect, but I think it's a big improvement from the first one. I like doing this sort of thing a lot as a self-taught artist where I just go back and try redrawing something I made a few years ago. If you want to see more examples of me doing this sort of thing, check out this drawing on DeviantArt and this one as well. 

Anyways, I do like how this nagin's figure looks and the hair as well, although I think I could have done a better lighting effect on the hair to make it shine more. 

Digital nagin (2020) 

In 2020, I came back to this drawing and made a digital version of it with the Ibis Paint X app. Now, I'm horrible at digital art. But keep in mind I was only using a tiny phone screen and my finger to draw, so I guess this is decent. I don't have a stylus or drawing tablet. 

Yet another digital nagin 

The purple-tailed nagin with the ponytail seem to be a different character. Maybe like a sister of the green-tailed nagin. I don't have a paper version of her (except for an uncoloured line drawing), just this digital drawing which I made in the same way as the previous one. 

My most recent nagin drawing (2021) 

This is my most recent nagin drawing. I brought the green-tailed nagin back. This time she has a flower, not a weapon, and she's resting by a body of water. I went all off with the Prismacolor coloured pencils here and did a lot of shading. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I watched a bunch of really long Vaush videos while colouring this lmao (I don't like or dislike Vaush. He's a really mediocre political youtuber in my opinion but his videos are just easy to listen to while doing other stuff). 

I will definitely continue drawing nagins and posting about them, since I'm kinda obsessed with them. I'm thinking about having three different nagin characters (you've already seen the green-tailed and purple-tailed one) but I'm thinking about also having a red-tailed one and then giving them all signature weapons and different hairstyles. They could be sisters. Then perhaps I could write a story about them, idk. I should refer to the original mythology behind Naga creatures to figure out how that should go. 

Anyways, I hope you liked this post. 

Chicken Smoothie Art Shops

If you play the game Chicken Smoothie, there is a forum where you can commission artists to draw stuff for you. Sometimes you don't have to pay real money. You can use Chicken dollars which are site currency or trade pets. I have a whole hoard of rare/special pets on CS that I use to buy art.

I don't really care about the virtual pets anymore so I'm trying to swap them all for custom art. I'll keep updating this post with pictures of the art I commissioned + artist credit so you can order stuff from them too if you want. 

Viana's Art Shop on ChickenSmoothie

Their Imgur

FloofyNuggets on Toyhouse

The Lady of Cofitachequi

A long time ago, when I used to have a lot of internet friends, I asked people for suggestions of what to draw. One of my Native internet friends suggested I draw the lady of Cofitachequi. I didn't know who that was so I did some research. Cofitachequi was a chiefdom in South Carolina that the invader Hernando de Soto encountered in 1540. 

Well the original drawing I made wasn't that great. But recently I decided to do a digital version of the same drawing and it came out better. I used the drawing app Ibis Paint X. I don't have a drawing tablet, so I just used my phone. 

Here's how it turned out. I'm not so good at shading. If you have any tips let me know :) . 

Folk Art Styles I Admire

A lot of folk artists don't really have a lot of professional training, which results in their art looking childish and funky with wild proportions and bright, chaotic colours. Of course this is a generalization because folk art styles vary a lot depending on what you're talking about.

In this post I'll list some of my favourite art styles. Stuck in quarantine? Maybe you want to take some inspiration from these for your own art. 

Madhubani art from Bihar, India 

Australian Pointillism 

Huichol/Wixaritari art from Mexico 

Woodland school (Canada) 

Haudenosaunee Clan Mother

A/N: I decided to do a really small collaboration project with my internet friend, who is a great artist and does commissions! Please follow her on Instagram @artprincess235 and check out her DeviantArt account as well: https://www.deviantart.com/mariajosecreations Remember you should always support indigenous artists like her ;) . Basically, we wanted to do some informative posts about the role of women in traditional indigenous societies before Europeans arrived. We're going to start with Iroquois Clan Mothers and might continue this in the future. The art is done by her. The informative descriptions are written by me.

The Iroquois Confederacy was one of the most powerful alliances in North America prior to European contact. The Haudenosaunee, as they call themselves, have an origin story in their oral tradition about the Great Peacemaker and the formation of the league. Historians believe this to have happened around 1142. Soon after, The league came to dominate the Great Lakes area. In 1722, the Tuscarora joined and the league became known as the Six Nations.

Haudenosaunee society followed a matriarchal family structure. Each family traced its lineage back to a female ancestor. After a woman got married, her husband would move to her family’s longhouse and their children would be considered a part of the mother’s clan.

One of the most important roles of women among the Haudenosaunee was that of Clan Mother. The Clan Mothers were the leaders of the clans and were passed down the title by their female relatives. They had to oversee village affairs such as food distribution and land usage, and had to make the critical decision of deciding who would be the chief.

But even though Clan Mothers played an essential role in the government, the main reason why they were venerated was because they ensured that children were taught the traditions of the people and that the culture survived. Clan Mothers arranged marriages and named children at birth. No ceremony could begin without a Clan Mother, because they knew about all the procedures that should be followed. They ensured that the customs and ways of the Longhouse did not die out. Just as fires in the hearths of longhouses were guarded so they wouldn’t burn out, the Clan Mothers guarded the culture of the people.

Guys, seriously... what am I doing with my life?

First of all, I'd like to apologize for not updating this blog in a while. I have a lot of ideas for new content and various topics that I'd like to cover... but I've just been so busy or exhausted that I haven't had time to write the sort of detailed and informative articles that I consider of a high enough quality to post. So it's not that I'm out of ideas. I never have writer's block or artist's block. I'm just too dead inside.

And now I'm going to do something I usually never do on this blog... talk about myself. I mean, I usually post serious articles about history or politics or at least something slightly serious like art/short stories/book reviews... but I never talk about myself. So how about I do a deep feelsy post 
E X P O S I N G myself in front of the whole world? 

I don't even really know where I'm going with all this, but we'll see...

So first of all I have to say that I've been under a lot of stress and that's mainly academic stress. I'm about to go into grade 12 in September (senior year for any Americans reading this) and it really fills me with worry and dread for the future. Basically, if I don't get good grades this year I'll kinda die. I don't want to be homeless and live in a barrel even though I admire Diogenes. And also, I have no idea what I want to do with my life. My dream is to be a writer but of course my parents aren't a fan of this idea, just like any good parent should react to a child who wants to go down the starving artist path.The highlight of my summer was going to a real archaeology field school and helping to excavate a 600 year old village built by an Iroquian speaking group who were probably the ancestors of the Wendat (I know I know, you're all probably like OMG WHAT? WHEN WILL YOU TELL US MORE? Well I promise I'll do lots of detailed posts about everything I learned there later... but for now let me rant.) All the other students there seemed so legit and had their act together. Many of them wanted to go into archaeology, history or indigenous studies at Trent University. And then there was me. I mean, I love history to death (I run a nerdy history blog, remember?) but I don't know if I'd want to pursue a career in it. I have stereotypical brown parents that want me to do the doctor/lawyer/engineer thing and all my IRL friends want to go into STEM fields. 

Also, I feel like I have a right to say this because I excel in arts and humanities related subjects... they all suck. 

Seriously who would you save? Even if you have a PHD in classics from Oxford I'm sure you'd rather save the STEM majors because they contribute so much more to society. 

But i suck at math so i guess i'll die 

Everyone who knows me well knows that there are three things that I love: history, philosophy and linguistics (including the English language and all the literature and stuff that it includes). And who are we kidding, these fields are all useless to humanity. I know someone who is doing a PHD in linguistics and is relying on food banks. No one cares about what people like that do and I don't think you can blame them for not caring. 

Have you ever heard an engineering major brag about how smart they are? well even though I hate it when they do that, I have to admit they are 100% justified in doing so. Because anyone can learn Latin, analyze literature, or understand weird ideas written by dead philosophers but it takes a special type of smart person to do whatever it is that engineers do. 

Is there any way I can study something I'm really passionate about while still satisfying my parents and societal expectations?

Maybe I might get into the University of Toronto or McMaster by some sorcery into a health science program and become a doctor and then quit at some point to become a historical fiction novelist like my dreams but that's not possible. 

WAIT A MINUTE

This might be the answer to my prayers

So recently I've come across the Arts & Science program at McMaster which seems really prestigious because they require an 88% average which includes Calculus, Advanced Functions and English as well as a great supplementary application proving that you contribute a lot to the community with volunteering or extra curricular programs. It only accepts 60-70 students a year!!!!!! I CAN DrEAM. 

I just really love the idea of it because it's like an "undecided major" program because it's great for people who have commitment issues like I do and can't imagine limiting ourselves to one field. Finally, I can take classes in both physics and philosophy. But IDK if I'll actually get in. 

They should really make more arts programs that have high admission requirements instead of just a 75% average and portfolio like most of them do. That will teach people some respect for arts majors. 

ok that's all 

#rantover 

Sp00ky Windigo

Here is a sp00ky Windigo from Algonquian folklore! It's the creature that eats human flesh! Get sp00ked! This painting is probably by Norval Morisseau.

I've been reading "Three Day Road" by Joseph Boyden these days as I've already read his other two popular novels "The Orenda" (fricking amazing) and "Through Black Spruce" (meh). He's a really celebrated Canadian author and one of the only ones who writes historical fiction about indigenous people, so... I'll post a detailed review of his work on my blog and Goodreads account when I'm done (not that anyone would care xD) R.I.P me.

Oh yeah, here's a quote from "Three Day Road" that's really melancholic:

"I realized then that sadness was at the heart of the windigo, a sadness so pure that it shrivelled the human heart and let something else grow in its place. To know that you have desecrated the ones you love, that you have done something so damning out of a greed for life that you have been exiled from your people forever is a hard meal to swallow, much harder to swallow than that first bite of human flesh."

bEwArE!

So fam, stay tuned for a long book review on Joseph Boyden's work. 

6 Foods you didn't know were from the Americas

Alright, so this post is going to be about foods that you didn't know were cultivated by indigenous people for thousands of years before the Columbian Exchange, which started with Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492. The Columbian Exchange was the movement of the following things between the 'Old World' (Asia, Europe and Africa) and the New:

• Crops- the focus of this post
• Animals- such as horses that were introduced to the New World, plus many exotic birds from the Americas were taken to Europe. For example, the Cuban Amazon parrot was given to Queen Isabella as a gift from Columbus. 
• People- for example, European colonists and African slaves arrived in the Americas. A few Native Americans were abducted and taken to Europe.  
• Culture- and religion too, which in many cases was forced on the local population. 
• DISEASES- bEWAre.
• Technology and ideas- pretty complicated to explain but super interesting. 

Alright so I'll get on with it soon, but first there is a pressing question that we must answer: Has my art improved in 4 years?

 I'll let you be the judge of that! 

Wannabehistorian1491's art circa 2013 anno domini 

 NOW

This was a normal everyday occurrence in the shady alleyways of Tenochtitlan. Just kidding. Pears aren't even native to the Americas. However, many surprising crops are. Obviously maize and quinoa are both native to the Americas (everyone knows that), but here are some crops and foods you wouldn't expect:

• The Dragonfruit (or Pitaya) Lots of people think these are from Asia, but they actually originate in Southern Mexico. The Mayan word for them was "wob". I've made a post on it in detail which you can read here. 

• Potatoes No, they're not from Ireland. They were first cultivated in the Andean region. National Potato day is celebrated every year in Peru.
• Guavas I didn't know these were from Central America O_o ... but maybe because I'm just dumb.
• Turkey Many people around the world don't know they're from the Americas. Take a look at this awesome comic by Itchy Feet (a webcomic about travel and linguistics). As you can see, people think it is from random af places when it is actually from North America. Since I think it is stupid that the Americas aren't just considered one super large continent, I think Indians come close enough when they think it's from Peru. 

• Sunflowers Although the crop was commercialized by Russia, sunflower seeds were eaten by many Native American tribes and are from here. The flag of the Hopi nation has sunflowers on it:

• Tomatoes What would Italian cuisine be without them? They were once thought to be poisonous, but now they're used in a lot of things we eat today, like ketchup.

                                                           I hope you enjoyed this post :D