Random Thread ~Usagi-Chan ☮ Tūsurī~

[Amped]

hmmm. I thought for sure I pressed it once.

[boinsie]

Awwww.
And yes, this has happened to me before, as well. Generally it's been when my internet is going slowly and I think the first click must have not gone through or something. But accidental double-clicks can cause it, too!

[Zunu]

True, probably what boinsie said. Even her explanations are nicer.

[Starra]

I think that's one of the reasons why I go through long phases when I don't read fiction or watch movies/anime/etc. It isn't that I don't like it, because there is so much that I do like, but i have a strong tendency to get far too emotionally and mentally caught up in the stories and characters (even the lightweight, happy stuff).
So I try to balance my chronically erratic brain chemistry out by watching high-sugar-content Jpop idol shows and reading about ancient history and archaeology.

One of my problems is that I find it hard to get invested in things to begin with -- and then when I finally do it's usually series that are too heavy to recommend to people, lol.

"Hey read this manga about the mafia's drug experiments! It also contains a lot of talk about child abuse, sexual abuse and implied incest! No wait it's really good I promise!"

Or the series is so entry-level that I can't really recommend it without looking like a dumbass because everyone's either watched/read it or doesn't give a shit. It's even harder when you have to be that fucker who goes "no read the manga the anime isn't really that great".

[TotallyUncool]

I think those two extremes do kind of go together - basic stuff very often has a power of its own, because it tends to be at least semi-universal, while the heavy stuff hits areas that a significant minority of the audience can respond to, but where a lot of artists and a major part of the audience may not be willing to go.

[Shoujo Q]

So. I joined Ancestry.com a while ago for fun just to see how far back I could go. Well it was fine but then on my fathers side it was becoming very difficult. The lady who I thought was my grandmother was a totally different person! It wasn’t making any sense. I took the DNA test and my cousin soon contacted me after I got my results and we shared our trees since her father is older than my father and knew more family history than mine. Come to find out that their mother was an illegitimate child who never knew her real father and was adopted but the man whom I thought was my great grandfather. All they knew was the guys last name and that he lived in the area. My grandmother died in 2009 so all that history died with her. Fast forward to last week and I get a message in my inbox from a guy with the same last name as the guy and we match as cousins in our DNA profile. I’ve started chatting with him but I’m sure he won’t have any real answers. This was 1916 and I don’t have her birth certificate. All I know is that in her birth records she’s listed under her mother’s last name (after I found out her father wasn’t her real father I did a little more digging) But DNA can’t lie. Right? I’m interesting to see how this goes. So is my cousin. Will update if I learn anything more.

[erilaz]

I didn't join Ancestry.com, but I took their DNA test. It's pretty good at locating relatives who have taken the test. When a first cousin on my mother's side took the test, they identified him as a first or second cousin. Similarly, they connected me with a second cousin on my father's side, who sent me a PDF of a book of genealogical info that extended my knowledge of my father's father's family back to a Joseph Smith (c. 1712-1780) in North Carolina.

A friend of mine with an Ancestry.com account located a family tree that one of my father's mother's Mormon relatives had posted there. I don't know how reliable all the connections are (I spotted some that definitely didn't work), but it contains lines that go back to English nobility and from there to many of the royal families of Europe. Name a European king from before the year 1100 who didn't die childless, and he's probably in there. Beyond that, I can use medieval sagas and royal genealogies to trace my line of descent all the way back to Adam, or better yet, Odin! On the basis of all these dubious sources, I can state with pride that Sigurðr Fáfnisbana is my great×43 grandfather and Lady Godiva is my great×35 grandmother! And my great×27 grandfather is a Disney villain!

[TotallyUncool]

My family did a lot of geneaological research years ago - for the most part, it came down to some early New England settlers (in Maine), and two separate lines of German immigrants, with a few ods and ends thrown in.

These day, I just say that I'm proud to be descended from a long line of cynodonts. They hand to put up with far too much (apocalyptic mass extinctions, staying out of the way of larger and even uglier creatures, extremely extreme climate extremes) for far too long while they were working out most of the basic mammilian traits that we take for granted.

[esm]

I think obsession with ancestry is a white American thing. Some of my great grandparents immigrated to Thailand from the southern part of China, and now my family is about half Thai American (like we already have half-white people in the family), so sometimes I think it's a bit funny that I'm fewer generations from China than some white Americans are from England, Germany, etc. but I don't identify as Chinese at all in any sense... well, except to say I'm Chinese-Thai just because we really look different from non-Chinese-Thais, though no one would make this distinction in Thailand. The Chinese in Thailand that migrated generations ago are super integrated into society so Chinese culture has so much influence on modern Thai society... so it's not even that Chinese things feel foreign to me because I grew up with a lot of it so I'm really familiar with a lot of it.

Anyway, I never cared about what comes before my great grandparents’ generation, but I think it’s cool we’ve immigrated twice in just a few generations.

[Starra]

I think it's just a white people thing in general because a lot of white people don't know where their family is from beyond "Europe", which is kinda vague, lol.

At least in NZ and Australia white people aren't that far removed from our original heritages, and we're most likely going to be from the UK/Ireland, but it really does depend. I know my family is from the UK on both sides (mostly English/Scottish, I think?) -- my paternal grandfather's side has some Cornish in it and that's like, the most interesting thing, lol. IIRC there's also a bit of German in there and maybe a teeny tiny bit of French. But beyond that I don't really know. Not that it's going to be anything interesting, of course, but I think people just like knowing where their family comes from, even if it ends up meaning nothing to them beyond that.

I'm not super interested but if I was given the opportunity I'd like to know my ancestry, but that's just because I'm a nerd who's interested in history and whatnot, lol. I'm pretty sure I'm just a boring mix of British coupled with a few other western European ethnicities.