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Okay, so I have two Old Guard ficlets up on AO3 now. And thinking about another one is making me wonder about Andromache's past, so here is some wild timeline speculation.
This is not about Amazon culture, sorry. The Greek idea of Amazons is partially based on the fact that their contemporaries in Scythia (north of the Black Sea) did in fact have female warriors (lots of kurgans contemporary with classical Athens have female burials with weapons), and partially the standard misogynist ideas that strong women hate men and besides no normal man would want to live with them anyway, and partially about how imaginary societies that are the opposite of your own are fascinating.
But the comic apparently (I have not finished reading them yet) says she's over 6000 years old.* In which case she would not techinically be a Scythian, though she may have hung out with them for a while. If she's 6000 years old I don't know why she's calling herself Andromache and not, I don't know, WiHrogʷʰen. She's definitely not Greek.
However, AFAICT, while individual cultures moved around and changed, basically the Eurasian steppe was pretty consistently inhabited by various nomadic pastoralists from the domestication of the horse (c. 3500 BCE) until about ... now. They're still there. So she could very easily have spent thousands of years just riding horses and fighting and drinking koumiss.
And honestly I bet Andy spends a lot of time wishing she'd never left. ( Wild Timeline Speculation )
I have just remembered that I could put this up on AO3; but then I would have to figure out how footnote anchors work and I think I'm too tired for that right now. [Next day: Here it is.]
...If I actually write a fic it will almost definitely be shorter than this. *facepalms*
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( Footnotes )
This is not about Amazon culture, sorry. The Greek idea of Amazons is partially based on the fact that their contemporaries in Scythia (north of the Black Sea) did in fact have female warriors (lots of kurgans contemporary with classical Athens have female burials with weapons), and partially the standard misogynist ideas that strong women hate men and besides no normal man would want to live with them anyway, and partially about how imaginary societies that are the opposite of your own are fascinating.
But the comic apparently (I have not finished reading them yet) says she's over 6000 years old.* In which case she would not techinically be a Scythian, though she may have hung out with them for a while. If she's 6000 years old I don't know why she's calling herself Andromache and not, I don't know, WiHrogʷʰen. She's definitely not Greek.
However, AFAICT, while individual cultures moved around and changed, basically the Eurasian steppe was pretty consistently inhabited by various nomadic pastoralists from the domestication of the horse (c. 3500 BCE) until about ... now. They're still there. So she could very easily have spent thousands of years just riding horses and fighting and drinking koumiss.
And honestly I bet Andy spends a lot of time wishing she'd never left. ( Wild Timeline Speculation )
I have just remembered that I could put this up on AO3; but then I would have to figure out how footnote anchors work and I think I'm too tired for that right now. [Next day: Here it is.]
...If I actually write a fic it will almost definitely be shorter than this. *facepalms*
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( Footnotes )