{"id":2235,"date":"2019-01-25T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T14:04:22","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T18:04:22","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-southeastern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-southeastern\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From the Southeastern USA …"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/span> I did one of these posts like a long time ago, way before I came up with this more detailed format so I thought I’d do a revamped version. I’ve been to eight out of the twelve states (Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama) that are considered the Southeastern part of the United States, so I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp of the region. If anyone is from Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, or Arkansas and would like to join in, please let me know!<\/span><\/span>
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<\/span> What do you feel is unique to your region? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b><\/span>
\nTo toot my own state\u2019s horn Atlanta is one of the biggest cities in the south and has the biggest airport on planet earth. More people travel through here than anywhere else. Atlanta has also become the Hollywood of the east. The Hunger Games<\/i> series, Divergent<\/i> series, and several Marvel films were shot here! Kentucky has the Kentucky Derby, Florida has Universal, Disney World, and St. Augustine, the oldest city in the USA, and Tennessee has Lookout Mountain.<\/span>
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I don’t think I need to tell you what this one is.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


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Lover’s Leap<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


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Kennesaw National Battlefield Park<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nThe South also produces a lot of timber, blueberries, citrus, cotton, strawberries, peanuts, peaches, pecans, and beef. You\u2019ll often see signs on the sides of the road of people selling fresh produce, nuts, and jams.<\/span><\/div>\n


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<\/span> Our celebrations are pretty standard USA but we do have local festivals to do with the ripening of produce or the blooming of flowers like the Strawberry Festival or Dogwood Festival. We also drop a big peach in Atlanta for New Years instead of a ball. We also have infamous state fairs which feature fried food, rides, and livestock shows. <\/span>
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GA National Fair<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Tell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/span><\/b>
\nWell, number one it gets really hot. The record temp in Georgia where I live is 112 F degrees and it\u2019s usually hot May-September. That\u2019s my least favorite part about where I live. Down south in Miami the coldest it gets is maybe in the 60s. But then up in North Carolina, it gets into the teens every year. In Georgia, the coldest I\u2019ve seen it get is 3F. There\u2019s meme where Georgia is the only state where you can get sunburn and frostbite in the same day. We\u2019ve gotten snow as far south as the Florida\/Georgia border (which was hilarious and rare) and where I live in north Georgia we get it one or two times a year. In North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky it\u2019s more frequent.<\/span>
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The condensation from the shower froze within the time of me taking a shower in 5F weather and that was fascinating to me.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The in-between seasons are my favorite part about living here. The weather is temperate and in the fall our trees blaze with color and in the spring there are flowers everywhere. Dogwoods, cherry, blooming almond, redbud, and apple trees are gorgeous to behold in the spring and maple, poplar, and dogwood are breathtaking in the fall. A couple notes though. Florida is basically eternal summer so the leaves never changed and most of the trees are either live oak or palm trees. Also in the spring especially in Georgia, we have a lot of pine trees which produce a TON of pollen. No seriously a ton of pollen. Sometimes the trees will blow just a cloud of yellow. It’s all over cars and when it rains it turns into a yellow paste and my cat tracks yellow dust everywhere and turns the color of a marshmallow peep. <\/span>
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Cherry blossom<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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That’s all pollen, my friends.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The south ranges with many different environments from coastal, mountainous, Piedmont, plains, swamps, and even tropical down in southern Florida and the Florida Keys. Georgia has five different environments so it\u2019s very varied. I\u2019ve seen two post-apocalyptic shows where Georgia is independent and I can really see that since we\u2019ve grown a lot of food, cotton, and lumber. <\/span>
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These are mangroves in Miami which grow in brackish water. They’re essential to the Floridian ecosystem.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The beaches on the east coast range from white sand to gray mixed with shells to gritty brown. My favorite beaches are Myrtle Beach in SC and Daytona Beach in Florida. The mountains start in northern Georgia and span upward. I love going to Grandfather Mountain in NC and Rock City in Tennessee and going tubing or seeing Lover\u2019s Leap Waterfall or climbing Kennesaw Mountain. Another cool place is the Etowah Indian Mounds in Georgia. They’re basically mounds of dirt as tall as pyramids! We even have the Ocmulgee Mounds where native Americans lived in the hills like Hobbits.<\/span>
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<\/span> Tell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/span><\/b>
\nTraditional Southern food is not healthy like at all. We have biscuits (as in the fluffy pillowy bread things, not cookies), fried chicken, green beans (the only remotely healthy thing), fried green tomatoes, blackberry or peach cobbler, fried chicken livers, sweet tea, pecan pie, and boiled peanuts. Now I don’t eat these things every day. In fact, I don’t have them unless I’m at my really<\/i> Southern friends’ houses or at a state fair, but they are classically Southern. When I had my Canadian friend down to visit I made her try fried chicken, biscuits, and southern sweet tea because they’re very quintessential to this part of the world. My favorite things out of this list have to be sweet tea, biscuits, pecan pie, and boiled peanuts.<\/span>
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Blackberry cobbler with peach ice cream.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Tell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/span><\/b>
\nNow I don’t have a Southern accent. South of Orlando, Florida it kinda dies out regionally and both of my parents are from Miami so I have the standard midwestern American accent, but I will occasionally slip in southern slang words or idioms cause I can. I have some friends and family who have southern accents and it can range in strength depending on where you’re from.<\/span>
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<\/span> The ones I’ve heard the most are:<\/span><\/span>
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