#romanistan podcast

[scarlet--wiccan]

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! I wrote a short retrospective about the history of Romani representation in Marvel comics to commemorate the release of Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver, which is on sale today, 2/14. I do want to remind everyone that the BDS movement has called for a cultural boycott of Disney and Marvel products, as both entities are financially and politically complicit in the genocide of Palestine. Spend your money smartly and ethically, and get involved in local actions . Vive Palestine, et Opre Roma!

🖤🤍💚❤️

This article was written as supplement to my interview on the lastest episode of Romanistan! It's out now on Spotify or Apple, and you can support Romanistan on Ko-Fi or Patreon.

#scarlet witch #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #quicksilver #marvel comics #scarlet witch & quicksilver (2024) #romanistan podcast #romani representation

[perseph]

Baxtalo Romano Dives, today is International Romani Day, and the 52nd anniversary of the first World Romani Congress.

This is a day to celebrate Romani culture, commemorate our history, and bring awareness and action to the many social and political struggles we still face to this day as a racialized minority. Learn more: [x][x][x]

Read this investigation on anti-Romani racism and police profiling in America, which was written with help from the podcast Roma Unravelled

Follow Romanistan, support the show [x][x], and the hosts [x][x]. I particularly recommend these episodes if you're looking cultural /historical context on things like witchcraft or fortunetelling. [x][x]

Check out this brilliant list of Romani feminist articles/resources compiled by soledadmiranda

🎶🎵 Listen to this playlist of music by Romani artists

🎭🎤Check out Giuvlipen, the Roma feminist theatre company, and listen to Tehno-Vrăjitoarele, the debut album by Niko G. x Kali

🎨🪡Check out some of my favorite artists and vendors [x][x][x][x]

🌿🌱Learn about herbalism from a Romani healer

🌒🌕🌘 Consider booking a reading or ritual, or purchasing supplies and resources, from Romani practitioners [x][x][x][x][x][x]; including the Living Altar, a ritual tool and oracle deck created by Romani artists; check out this grimoire zine (I'm in it!); and learn more about tarot's foundation in Romani culture.

#international romani day #dia del pueblo gitano #romano dives

[artdefenses]

I just recently learned about the struggles of the Roma people and I'm not surprised with violence against minorities (being a poc) but the open and unquestionable hate thrown at them impacts me deeply. There's no way to get used to violence, and every hate act against them makes me deeply sad and angry, for the act itself and for the silence that follows. Our silence.

I encourage each and everyone of you to support Roma people and uplift their voices. Here are some options:

Instagram:

ciganagens and orgulhoromani (pt-br)

roma.culture

romaniuprising

romayouthmedia (german)

sintiromanpride (german)

Podcast:

Romanistan (spotify/apple platforms)

Romatopia

Other:

Roma Education Fund

ERIAC

Roma Support Group

Romani Herstory (also on ig)

Tw: violence, death, discrimination

Today, I share something that happened with a little girl in Greece. Olga - a 8 years old girl - was left to suffer until her last breath, crashed against a sliding factory door in Keratsini. All the people there watched for 70 minutes and did nothing to help her. Someone even poked her with their feet to see if she was still alive.

Guys this is pure evilness! Please don't let this go unnoticed. Media - as always - is trying hard to keep this from the public eye. The whole thing happened November 17, 2021. Share your feelings for justice in every platform you can.

Roma lives matter.

#justice for Olga #Roma lives matter #romani #human rights #signal boost #activism

[scarlet--wiccan]

Surprise, surprise! Paulina and Jez invited me, your friendly neighborhood gitano, to come talk about comic books, Romani representation, and all things Scarlet Witch for the debut episode of Romanistan Season 4! It was a huge honor to be on the show, and I'm so excited that the episode is coming out the same week Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver.

I would love for you to give the episode a listen, and while you're at it, check out my supplementary essay about Romani Marvel characters on Medium.

You can support Romanistan on Ko-Fi or Patreon. Follow JVP and IMEU for the latest news and activist efforts to stop the genocide in Palestine, and if you're planning to purchase comics this week, please consider donating to PCRF, ANERA, Islamic Relief, Palestine Red Crescent Society, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Defense for Children International - Palestine, or Doctors Without Borders,

#scarlet witch #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #quicksilver #marvel comics #scarlet witch & quicksilver (2024) #romanistan #romanistan podcast #romani representation #Spotify

[scarlet--wiccan]

What is your dream comic book writer (that previously has or currently works for marvel comics) that you would want to write Wanda?

I don't feel as strongly about this as I do about artists. Writers really surprise me sometimes-- I never expected that I would love Orlando's take on Wanda as much as I do-- and I think it's especially hard to predict how they'll handle Wanda, specifically.

In terms of contemporary writers who've already written her, I'd like to see more from Kelly Thompson. I would really like to see more of Wanda (and Jericho!) from Jim Zub, and I'm hoping Jed McKay will do more with her soon, as I feel like she's been underutilized in The Avengers so far, and I had higher hopes based on his work on Doctor Strange and Moon Knight.

Gillen and Ewing are two of my favorite writers currently working for Marvel, and I think they could both do interesting things with Wanda, based on how they've written characters like Billy and Loki.

My main desire, of course, is to get Romani talent on a Scarlet Witch title, as a writer, a co-writer, or even a consultant. I'm still not sure how I feel about Seanan McGuire, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what she does with Wanda in the What If... novel. There are Romani writers who do genre fiction-- Caren Gussof comes to mind-- and others who I know have expressed interest in the character, at least in passing... including people I'm friends with. If you'd like to hear more about that, keep an eye on the Romanistan podcast feed. You might be hearing a familiar voice this spring ;)

[scarlet--wiccan]

I agree about Wanda and vision getting back together but I have another level of dread bc. It would almost certainly be temporary (I don’t see how it could last; they exhausted that relationship’s story potential years ago) but as an x fan I constantly see kitty getting hate for leaving colossus at the alter (which is horrible to me their relationship was so deeply uncomfortable her leaving him was a good decision). Like if Wanda dumps/rejects vision that’ll be another thing for people to hate on her for. Especially if Jericho gets caught up in it somehow

That's a good observation. I've definitely seen people take that track with Wanda and Simon, even though I honestly think their relationship was a dead-end and I never really liked the way he treated her. And you know, I don't think the Vision ever really got hate for the way he treated Wanda in the early 2010s, sooooo.......

And yeah, if there's one thing I don't want, it's for Jericho to get caught in the crosshairs of the Scarlet/Vision fanbase that's now so hugely inflated with racist and, typically, media-illiterate M C U fans. Of course, none of these character are real people, so I'm less worried about the backlash they'll recieve, than the toxicity it will breed in the fandom which will ultimately impact fans and critics of color.

That's actually something I spoke about recently in my correspondence with the podcast Romanistan, and you can hear that on this week's episode where I wrote in to answer some questions about the new Scarlet Witch series, Wanda's redesign, and the infamous Nakayama cover. [apple][spotify]

[scarlet--wiccan]

Romanistan & The Living Altar discuss witchcraft as a lifestyle and an occupation in the context of Romani identity and American Roma experience. [spotify][audible]

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times-- Romani voices should be vital to our literacy on witchcraft, the witch archetype, and the history of witches in the public conscious. We are so often erased from the narrative, and yet the modern occult canon-- and the economy surrounding it-- borrow from Romani customs and exploit elements of our history and identities. If you want to learn more, this episode of Romanistan is a great place to start. Hosts Jessica Reidy and Paulina Verminsky are joined by Ylva Mara Radziszewski and Kiki Robinson of The Living Altar to discuss their experiences as professional witches who occupy a diverse range of Roma identities. For a quick primer on the subject, I recommend listening back to Romanistan's second episode on fortune telling.

#romanistan #the living altar #altars up witches #paulina verminsky #jessica reidy #ylva mara radziszewski #kiki robinson

[scarlet--wiccan]

Do Roma have a specific convention around naming children? I'm trying to write a Romani American character in a modern setting and I know that names have different rules and significance in different cultures. Also, do you have any writing tips regarding Romani characters beyond what you put in your tips for writing Wanda? And do you know of any other Roma I can ask or any exceptionally good resources? Totally ok if you don't know the answer to any of these or don't want to answer. Have a good day 💕

I'm just going to start this by reiterating my overall thoughts when it comes to gadje writing about Roma in fiction. It is not your place to convey elements of Roma culture, and I wouldn't recommend that you write a Rom as your main protagonist, but I believe that you are still able to perform meaningful representation regardless. Writers often seem to think that they need to approach Romani people as magical, totally alien creatures, but we are actually just people and I think that if you really want to include us in a way that is authentic or helpful, you should start by considering our lived realities.

Do some research about our history and our placement in different parts of the world so that you can nail down a realistic background or family lineage for your character. Figure out how your character's experiences or heritage will inform their perspective, their personality, or their motives. Allow those perspectives and experiences to exist visibly. Spend some time examining dishonest representations of Roma characters so that you understand what not to do, and what will create bad optics. Getting a handle on these subjects is more important to me than illustrating Romani customs. For what it's worth, if I were writing an American character who was, say, a second or third generation immigrant, that person probably wouldn't be super traditional anyways. There are larger, more traditional Roma communities in the states, but, in my experience, families that arrived in America on their own in the last century, or are descended from individual immigrants, are more low-key and/or partially assimilated, which is kind of sad, but it's also pretty common for any sort of immigrant experience.

I know that I recommend this show all the time, but if you're looking for anecdotes about life as an Romani American, the podcast Romanistan is a great place to start-- particularly episodes 1, 2, 3, and 9.

In my experience, naming and identification can get kind of complicated in Roma families, especially when you're trying to trace your lineage back a few generations and you realize that your grandmother and her siblings all have different names on different documents. I don't know, maybe that's just me!

I found this very informative post on Instagram which explains some naming practices, and their history, in European Roma communities. In most parts of Europe, your legal given name is probably going to be something from the dominant language or culture, but you may also have a Roma name-- either something traditional, or maybe just a nickname-- which comes from your family's dialect of Romani chib. Family names come from several places, but most of them were adopted sometime after arriving in the West-- they might denote an occupation, such as woodworker or smith, or they could be taken from former slave holders. A lot of families have Western names that they simply chose or married into at some point. That said, there is a serious difference between ordinary gadje names, and kushti Roma names that have remained within a family for generations.

So, when it comes to character naming, I would personally put more effort into the surname. Consider which region or country the family is from and choose something fitting. You can't go wrong with an occupational name, but I would try looking at the names of historical Roma people from that area and basing something on one of them. That's where the name "Maximoff" comes from. For the given name, just choose something contemporary, because that's the name they'd probably use among gadje. You could probably choose a European name if the family is recently from Europe, relatively speaking, but again, that's, like, normal for any family.

#robintext

[scarlet--wiccan]

Hey I was trying to access the educate yourself links on your pinned post but they both link to Instagram which you can’t open unless you have an account so I was wondering if there any other websites to educate on anti Roma racism etc because this is all completely new to me

If there aren’t any then that’s fine your posts have helped A LOT trust me so I’ll try to do my own research

Thank you!

Okay, first of all, I had NO IDEA that Instagram worked that way. It seems like you can view people’s pages, but you can’t open their posts if you’re not logged in, which is so weird and arbitrary.

One of the accounts I linked is Terms of Engagement, which posts informational slides about Roma history, current affairs, etc. This is their linktree page, which collects some of the sources they cite on their posts. It’s a lot of the same info, just less accessible. 

The other link goes to ERRC, the European Roma Rights Centre, which has a Twitter account as well, which you should be able to access without a profile. They mostly post about current affairs, legal actions, and human rights efforts. 

This carrd page is a great resource, and I’m going to add it it my directory. I haven’t read every single article on there, but they have several categories including allyship resources.

If you have the time, I’d recommend reading this paper from the ERGO Network, but it is dense! 

If you have a podcast app, I would recommend checking out Romani Tea Room, Romanistan, Smith’s Kushti Podcast, and Romatopia. 

Terms of Engagement has posted a few media and literature recommendations. I took screencaps and I’ll share them here.

[scarlet--wiccan]

I wrote up a form letter, and I'm going to try reaching out to some X-Men podcasts to see if any of them would like to host me, or my writing about Wanda, the state of Marvel's relationship with Romani narratives, and the racist implications of the present X-Men line. If anybody has suggestions for shows that you think would be welcoming and conducive to this conversation-- or really any show that you think is worth a shot at-- please, please, let me know. I'm definitely trying to focus on hosts that are LGBT and/or people of color, not because I want to put the onus on marginalized individuals, but because I know that I'll be more comfortable and likely to have an effective dialogue.

I've got my sights set on House of X and Cerebro (although the latter may be against my better judgement) and I'm actually gonna reach out to the hosts of Romanistan as well. I'm thinking that X-Reads might be a good idea, too, but I'm not as familiar with them.