#I am not a historian or a professional! Just a nerd! If here is something I was wrong here please bring it up!

[anniflamma]

so…I spent like hours thinking hard on this and I can’t believe I came up with this..mind you this is my own Crackhead theory so don’t take anything I say seriously but it goes.

me and my aunt were eating dinner and talking about mythology and I told her about a really Christian man coming up to me and saying “because you don’t believe in god and Jesus you will go to hell” and my Pegan but said “cool ima go pet a three headed dog” and then my aunt told me “well Christianity doesn’t really makes sense to me because where the hell did it come from because the first prominent religions were ones such as Greece and Roman beliefs”

and that got me thinking, so I decided to do some thinking.

and I got some connections so Chaos is like the lord right? The very first and most powerful, and he created the primordials, that created the titans and so on, and then Zeus came along and screwed everything up right? Then a few hundred years later Persephone or what mortals at the time called her Core, and after our lovely goddess of spring starting taking care of all of the mistakes, such as taking care of the rejected children of Zeus and others, so I was like who the hell is her dad because she has the power of nature from Demeter but where did she get her chaotic power from? Her father can’t be Zeus because she doesn’t have any power of the sky, and it can’t be Posiden because she has no power of any body of water..

then I remembered Demeter prayed and begged for a daughter..and the fates are directly tied to Chaos so Chaos gave Persephone to Demeter..CHAOS IS PERSEPHONE DAD!! It makes sense to me when I think about it really hard..

and I also realized because the oldest version of Persephone was so feared..but because of *cough* Christian writers a lot of those stories changed because of that. Sadly I don’t think a lot of people know that.

I DO NOT HATE THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION BUT YA’LL BE CONFUSING AS HELL, and also please understand THAT NOT ALL WITCHCRAFT IS BAD I SWEAR I HEAR THAT ALL THE TIME.

okay enough of my rant I hope that shines Al title light in my head.

That is an interesting take and connection! To be honest, syncretism and the evolution of religions and cultures are my biggest hyperfixations. Well, I grew up Christian and now hyperfixate on the Bible with a more historical and cultural perspective. So I'm not really as confused when it comes to the Christian religion. If you have any questions, just ask, and I will try my best to answer them!

The thing with European religion is that almost all of them stem from Proto-Indo-European mythology. And that includes the Abrahamic faith (which makes many people feel very uneasy). This is why the planet Venus is almost always female and the sun is male, and so on and so forth! Many people don't know that the Hebrew Bible starts off as henotheistic (believing that many gods exist but worshipping only one of them, while it is acceptable if other people worship other gods). Then it rapidly becomes monolatristic (acknowledging that many gods may exist but only worshipping one of them, and it is not acceptable if other people worship other gods) and then ends with being purely monotheistic. Of course, the Bible has been edited and changed to make it fit more with the monotheistic view, such as removing acknowledgments of the existence of other Canaanite gods. And removing the goddess Asherah, God/Yahweh's wife, and replacing her name with "the grove" or just the Holy Spirit. And the Christian faith did get syncretized with Roman/Greek pagan faith. There is no hell in the Bible, but there is an underworld! It's called Sheol, the "land of gloom and deep darkness." But there is no deep dive on what Sheol really is or how it was in the bible. It was just the underworld where all the dead people went. However, Sheol pretty much got paired up with Hades in the New Testament because both of them were the name of the underworld, so it just made sense, right? But the Greeks also had Tartarus, which is the place in Hades where you get tortured for eternity. And that is where the Christian hell pretty much stems from, it's just Tartarus but with Satan....

This is just a rough generalization, and the whole thing is more complex than what I have brought up here!

I don't think, though, that it was the Christians who changed Persephone. Kore (Persephone) was already really old before Christianity became even a thing. It's a really young religion compared to the Greek gods. 😅

But the concept of Christian saints was created in a way so it would be easier to convert pagans. Instead of removing the traditions, ceremonies, and celebrations, the god they worshipped was switched with a saint that could fit the description of that said deity. So Saint Sebastian is pretty much just the Christian version of Apollo. A twink God of archery, sports, healing, plagues, and gayness was replaced with the twink saint of archery, sports, healing, plagues, and accidental gay awakening. A COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!! This is my crackhead theory!!!

And about witchcraft. Even the Bible thinks that not all witchcraft is bad. What I understand is there is good magic and bad magic. Necromancy is one of the bad ones. King Saul performed necromancy and brought Samuel's soul back, and that pissed Samuel off so much that he cursed Saul's whole family. But then we have good magic, like I dunno Jacob makes some weird unclear stuff with his sheep, and they become really healthy. I think the only thing Jesus said about witchcraft was like: "yeah, you can use your magic for good, and that is a good thing, but you don't need it if you already believe in my Father"!

There is a whole weird rabbit hole on Christian syncretization with the Greek gods....

Then we have the ancient history of where exactly God/Yahweh comes from. There is this popular theory that scholars think Yahweh most likely comes from the ancient Mesopotamian pantheon. And around the economic collapse during the Bronze Age, the worship of then Yahweh became isolated, which created the ancient Hebrews. Essentially, it started with an ancient warrior-storm god that became a god of the whole world. And I'm not even going to start with Gnosticism! What is like Christian Polytheism but with steroids!

I'm gonna stop here! Sorry I kinda derailed!

[slaviclore]

thanks to everyone who responded to last week's translation challenge (which you can see here, or under the cut below)! All your answers have been really fantastic and useful. 303 people voted, of which 119 are Polish speakers. I tallied up the votes from the Polish speakers (i changed your vote if u expressed regret in the tags after voting), and I summarize under the cut the various takes on this question and add my 2 cents (or possibly more like 2 dollars, as this is a Long Post). Read on to learn some things about the Polish language and Chopin history. :]

context again:

This is the opening sentence of a letter written by Fryderyk Chopin (who I'll refer to as FC for convenience) to his friend and/or boyfriend Tytus Woyciechowski (TW) in 1829. He's 19/20 years old (we're not sure about his DOB), and he's been spending some time with Prince Antoni Radziwiłł and his family at their palace in Antonin (near Poznań). Radziwiłł is a huge music nerd, and Chopin is having a great time over there. The mood of the letter is mostly positive and upbeat, and you can probably expect him to be at his cheekiest.

There are 3 published English translations of this letter, which I included as options in the poll. None of the 3 professional translators are native Polish speakers. They are: EL Voynich (option 1), David Frick (option 2), and Arthur Hedley (option 4). Option 3 is my own take on the translation (I am a native Polish speaker but not a professional translator).

why is this important?

1) it's an interesting grammar problem where the combination of a referred statement (FC is summarizing what TW said), a command, and a reflexive (się) makes it unclear who is to kiss who. Can we figure out what TW's original statement was based on how FC referred to it? Did he say some version of "kiss me", or "kiss yourself", or something else?

2) We have 22 letters from FC to TW, but we don't have any from TW to FC, so it's useful to piece together the way he may have written to him -- especially since we're not sure what their relationship actually was.

3) FC has a habit of teasing TW for not liking to be kissed, which historians have taken a bit too seriously, if you ask me -- this was some inside joke between the two of them. But if this short exchange was part of that joke, it gives us a chance to understand them a little better.

4) Arthur Hedley was a prominent Chopin scholar in the 20th century. His translations are the ones that are usually quoted to this day, and the choices he made in his translations and biographies have had a huge impact on the field. Some were good choices, and some were bad. Today, he's a controversial figure. I don't think he can be dismissed or blindly trusted, but rather critiqued point by point... we can take on one such point here.

The full original sentence from Chopin's November 14 1829 letter:

Ostatni twój list, w którym mi każesz się ucałować, odebrałem w Antoninie u Radziwiłła.

here's some definitions:

Ostatni twój list -- your last letter

w którym -- in which

każesz -- a command word in the second person present tense: you tell/you command

ucałować -- to kiss

mi -- me

się -- a reflexive to indicate the self, non-specific for gender or person (can be me, you, him her, etc)

odebrałem -- I received/I picked up; first person past tense

The main issues of this translation are:

the order of the 3 phrases (separated by 2 commas)

word choice, especially what to call the kiss

word order of the middle phrase, i.e., who is to kiss who

Several of you mentioned that this sentence is weird. Yeah. Sigh. Unfortunately, Chopin is very dead and has made that everyone's problem. No one specified why it's weird, but I guessed that it's the order of "mi" and the reflexive "się" in the middle phrase, so I asked you in a separate poll if another order would be better. 25 people voted on that one, of which just over half were Polish speakers. No one said that the sentence was weird for some other reason, which explains why the available translations could not agree on how to interpret the directionality of the commanded action (who is to kiss who). Voters were also split pretty evenly among those who preferred an alternative word order (especially "...w którym każesz mi się ucałować..."), and those who said that there's nothing wrong with the sentence or that changing it would change the intended meaning even if it does sound better. I therefore propose that we give Chopin the benefit of the doubt and assume that he said what he meant to say, even if it was awkward.

Some poll responders were not concerned about the kiss at all, and focused almost entirely on the order of the phrases in the sentence. They argued that starting the sentence with the "I received" fragment rather than the "Your last letter" fragment shifts the emphasis away from the location (Antonin), which is the main point of the sentence, and that the kiss is only a secondary point. Those who mentioned the kiss agreed that calling it anything but a kiss is not helpful, but the second most popular translation was the only one that replaced this word. Arthur Hedley's preservation of the sentence order, and maybe his dampening of the kiss subject, is likely what earned him second place -- 20 people voted for this translation (option 4), or 16.8% of the Polish-speaking voters.

--

Arthur Hedley, Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin (1962), pg 36:

Your last letter, in which you send me your warmest greetings, reached me at Radziwill's place at Antonin.

--

Kisses are thrown around left and right in Chopin's letters, regardless of who is writing or receiving them (friends, family, any informal context). While "ucałować" is literally "to kiss", Hedley's goal was probably to remove the ambiguity with which a kiss might be interpreted by an English-speaking audience and instead give you (the suspiciously British) "warmest greetings". This is something he did regularly in his translations and has made himself rather unpopular for it. Even if he is basically correct and the fundamental goal of the kiss is just to offer a warm greeting, replacing the word removes your ability to make the following 2 arguments, should you choose to do so:

Though a kiss is indeed a common greeting/sign-off, when FC refers to the **whole letter** as the one where you tell me to kiss you(/myself/send me a kiss), this creates emphasis not generally afforded to greetings and sign-offs. Presumably, TW wrote other stuff in that letter (if he literally only wrote "kiss me" and nothing else, holy shit i'd have fainted) -- but FC has relegated the rest of the letter as less important than the kiss, even if TW himself didn't give that bit a second thought. It's like if Harry wrote you a whole email with a bunch of stuff in it and signed off with "love, Harry", and then you wrote back, "Harry, i got your email where you say you love me". I'm not going to argue whether this is flirting or not, but I hope you see how it might be.

(watermelon sugar is playing as I write this, but u can have any harry u want in this simulation)

FC's emphasis may also be a reference to whatever inside joke these two seem to have that makes him insist (in other letters) that TW doesn't like to be kissed. So FC's intention may be the very troll-like: i got your letter where you tell me to kiss you(/send me a kiss) but i **thought** you don't like kisses?? interesting!!??

🤔🤔🤔

Either way, Hedley robs us of the TW eye-roll we deserve, so I think he blew it on this one, even if similar choices worked well in other contexts.

For me, the main difficulty in the translation was whether TW's original command was "kiss me/give me a kiss" or "kiss yourself/give yourself a kiss", with FC's rephrasing therefore being either "...to kiss you" or "...to kiss myself", respectively. So who gets this imaginary kiss? TW or FC? and which of them is supposed to give it? David Frick takes the most ruthless route to this answer (option 2), and 17 of you agreed with him, or 14.3% of the Polish-speaking voters, giving him 3rd place.

--

David Frick, Chopin's Polish Letters (2016), pg. 143:

I received your last letter, in which you tell me to give myself a kiss, in Antonin at Radziwiłł's.

--

Some of you said that this is the most grammatical choice -- while others brought up the very valid point that... why would anyone be told to kiss themselves? and how does one go about doing that?? Maybe Frick imagined TW's original command as something along the lines of: since I'm not there, give yourself a kiss for me.

I think this is a good take, even if FC made it weird and Frick refused to save him from his own grammar. In a stark contrast to Hedley's method, Frick tends to stay close to Chopin's wording and syntax. Though I do find some over-interpretation in Frick's translations and annotations, some of which I think is incorrect, his translations are very good, and I defer to his choices unless I have a good reason not to.

One poll responder brought up the alternative interpretation that actually TW's original statement was hostile. After I read Frick's translation, this did also cross my mind, and I imagined the exchange as something like this:

FC: kiss me

TW: oh ffs, kiss yourself

FC: i got the letter where you tell me to kiss myself

😔😔😔

hilarious. If TW really is as allergic to being kissed as FC insists, this interpretation is a viable option. Unfortunately for my personal amusement, I don't think he's really so allergic to it. Also, if this were the case, I would expect FC to emphasize "himself" with something like 'sam się ucałowac'. Here "sam" is a type of "self" you use to say you're doing it (by) yourself/oneself.

In this scene from Borat 2 (with which I have a conflicted emotional relationship that belongs in a different post, but I did laugh my ass off at this scene) Borat's daughter says, in reference to the monkey that was dead in the crate (in their fake language that mixes Hebrew, Slavic and Near and Middle Eastern languages), something like "sam się zjad" which is probably meant to be a Slavic "he ate himself", when it was clearly she who ate the monkey:

I think the commenter had something even harsher in mind for the interpretation of TW's letter, though, like where kiss yourself is a euphemism for fuck yourself. I don't know how people told each other to fuck off in 19th century Poland, but now I'm desperate to find out. Dearest Tytus, your last letter, in which you tell me to go fuck myself, I received in Antonin...

oh my lord this is sending me. I suspect this Bieber-esque usage is modern though, but I'm not sure! Either way, the rest of FC's letter is very affectionate so it doesn't seem super likely that he just got told to fuck off, unless he absolutely cannot take even a single hint

Since FC frequently signs off his letters with kiss me/give me a kiss, it's reasonable that TW might do the same. My translation was option 3, which keeps the structure of the sentence and assumes that FC's rewording is meant to say "kiss you/give you a kiss". This was the most popular option, with 68 votes or 57.1% of the Polish-speaking voters.

--

Me, tumblr, 2023:

Your last letter, in which you tell me to kiss you, I received in Antonin at Radziwiłł's.

--

I can't tell if Frick's "kiss myself" or my "kiss you" is the more grammatical interpretation -- if u have an answer for this from the depths of Polish grammar, I'd love to see it. But! I think it doesn't really matter! Since this is a personal letter, all we can safely assume is that FC is being rational, not necessarily that he's being fully grammatical.

On my first reading of the letter, I didn't consider Frick's "kiss myself" possibility at all. I just assumed it was "kiss you", and some of you echoed that sentiment. After I read the published translations, I ran the sentence through google translate (the least reliable of all our translators but still useful for comparisons), which agreed with me. As GT is trained on modern content, I was concerned my translation may be a modern artifact... which may also explain why many of you voted for it -- the professional translators may have simply known better.

I wondered if I could find historical precedent for this sentence structure being used to refer to the giver of the command (kiss TW) rather than the one being commanded (kiss FC). I found this in a prayer called "Litania o Milosci Bozej" or "Litany about God's Love". here is a fragment with the relevant grammar in bold:

Boże, któryś mnie sam wprzód umiłował, zmiłuj się nad nami.

Boże, który mi każesz się miłować, zmiłuj się nad nami.

My translation:

God, you who loved me first, have mercy on us.

God, you who commands me to love you, have mercy on us.

--

I haven't been in a church in a thousand years, so someone who goes to Polish church, pls tell me if I'm getting this wrong. Here, God commands the individual saying the prayer to love Him (not to "love yourself"). The grammar is the same as in FC's sentence. The last word is the specific verb (love for the prayer, kiss for Chopin), 'każesz' is 'you command/tell', 'mi' is 'me', and 'się' is the reflexive:

the prayer: który mi każesz się miłować

-- you who commands me to love you

chopin: w którym mi każesz się ucałować

-- in which you tell me to kiss you

I don't know how old this prayer is or how long it's used this specific wording, but I found a version of it from the early 20th century -- it might be a lot older. While this doesn't tell you what FC meant in his letter, it does offer precedent for the "kiss you" translation and argues that TW having asked for a kiss is, at least, a viable take that's not necessarily modern.

--

EL Voynich, Chopin's Letters (1931), pg 73:

I received your last letter, in which you send me a kiss, at Antonin, at the Radziwiłłs'.

--

Though it may not seem like it, Ethel Voynich's translation (option 1) actually comes to the same conclusion as Frick's -- Voynich was first by 80 years, tho, and the first person to translate Chopin's letters into English -- but she got the fewest votes: only 14, which is 11.8% of the Polish-speaking votes. Like Frick, Voynich switched the phrase order, which may have put some of you off. She also packaged her interpretation in a simpler way that may have felt false to poll responders. In her translation, like in Frick's, FC is the recipient of the kiss. It's just that, here, the kiss is sent to him, rather than administered by virtue of his own action, as Frick would have it. The same is true for Hedley, actually, where FC is the recipient of the greetings. Most of you, and I (and the robot), thought it was TW who should be getting the kiss instead.

One poll responder suggested a hybrid option, which agrees with my interpretation of the middle phrase but Hedley's choice to rename the kiss: "Your last letter, in which you tell me to send you greetings, reached me in Antonina".

So what do you think? Was TW's original statement something like "kiss me/give me a kiss", or more like "give yourself a kiss for me", or even "kiss yourself (hostile)"? Or did TW always intend FC to be the passive party in receiving the kiss or greeting? Was this flirting? Was it part of the "TW hates being kissed" inside joke? There's no right answer to these questions, and a consensus doesn't mean the winning answers are true. We will probably never know for sure what TW really wrote... the best we can do is guess.

Some of my takeaways:

it's useful to look at multiple translations to see where translators have disagreed and where the uncertainty lies

if you remove ambiguity in the translation of a Chopin letter (like Hedley did) or complexity (like Voynich), you're in danger of removing nuance, which Chopin stuffs into his writing like it's build-a-bear.

but if you go with the direct meaning (like Frick), you may end up trying to convince the world that Chopin was asked to kiss himself somehow for some reason

and if the only one who agrees with you is a robot, you'll probably have to dig up an ancient prayer to justify your possibly modernized take (like me).

This is the curse in a nutshell.

Thanks for reading! hope you had as much fun with this poll as i did

[thebaffledcaptain]

For Shame, Ye Take No Care, Me Boys…

Lee (he/she), history and music composition student. Tortured composer, aspiring dandy, and redcoat fifer; possibly died back in 1778. Also found at @iamthemaestro, my main, where I sillypost about history (among other things), whereas this is the more curated sideblog, and runner of @redcoatsuggestions.

My main interests being (taglist):

Anything and everything 18th century/Georgian era

The American War of Independence

Historical reenactment

British military history

Age of Sail

Folk music & field music

Classical music & music history in general

Historical fashion/military uniforms

The Flight of the Heron

Transcription, mostly of old whaling journals

My content:

Sometimes I ramble about history in a way that’s actually coherent and researched. You can find those posts here.

I play a lot of folk music.

I am not normal about reenactment.

I draw soldiers sometimes.

I also run a largely inconsistent informational series on 18th century folk/field music, known as Music of the Revolutionary Century. The audience is very niche (me), but I do dedicate research to the tunes’ histories however I can and usually talk some music theory, if you too have highly obscure interests.

Hope you decide to linger with me for some time in the past :)

Some miscellaneous information:

For reenactment purposes, I am a fifer for a the US-based 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment of Foot—if you want to know more please reach out! I would love to have more reenactment mutuals. I post about it frequently; I have a lot of regimental pride.

For this reason among others I tend to lean more toward the British history of the American Revolution. Not a British apologist but I frequently joke that I am a bit of a redcoat bastard. Please do not take me for a monarchist. I do not control the special interests.

As I've gained a following and posted more original content I've been kind of cleaning up this blog. At one point it was for anything vaguely history related but now it's pretty much just informational stuff. The vast majority of fandom and silly history stuff goes to my main.

Bigots can and will be blocked.

As always I am not a historian; I generally try not to post about anything I haven’t put research into or couldn’t provide sources for, for but I am not a professional, so take anything I say with a grain of salt and feel free to enlighten me if I might have gotten something wrong.

And lastly—please reach out if you want to talk! I am constantly looking for more people to talk history with, I'm just very bad at reaching out myself lol. I am by no means an expert but I love answering questions when I can just because it gives me an excuse to talk, and I would also love just nerding out with equally passionate individuals.

Your most hbl. and obt. svt.,

The Captain

[sisterofiris]

Everyday life in the Hittite empire

Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you had been born in central Anatolia 3500 years ago? No? Now that I’ve brought it up, are you curious to find out?

Well you’re in luck, because that’s just what this post is about. So sit back, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in Anatolia - that is, modern Turkey. Are you ready? Can you see the mountains, the red river and the towering buildings of your capital, Ḫattuša? Can you hear the chariots driving up the road? Can you feel the electric brewing of a storm in the distance?

Then let’s go.

(With a brief disclaimer: while I study Hittitology, this is not intended as an academic-level post. It was written to give general, approachable insights into Hittite culture and can be used as writing inspiration or to titillate curious history nerds around you, but if you’re writing an academic paper on the subject, I would recommend you check out the bibliography instead.)

About you

First things first, are you older than five? If so, congratulations on being alive. Child mortality in this place and time is very high, so you’re one of the luckier ones among your siblings. You probably have at least a couple of those; you may even have as many as six or seven, especially if you come from a well-to-do family with access to good healthcare. When you were little, your parents might have told you the tale of Zalpa, in which the queen of Neša gives birth to thirty sons then thirty daughters who marry each other, but you know this only happens in the stories - not to normal people.

When you were born, your parents rejoiced regardless of your sex, as sons and daughters are equally valued in your society (albeit for different reasons). Your father took you on his knee and gave you a good Hittite name: maybe Armawiya, Ḫarapšili, Kilušḫepa or Šiwanaḫšušar for a girl, or Anuwanza, Kantuzili, Muwaziti or Tarḫuzalma for a boy. Gender-neutral names, such as Anna, Muwa and Šummiri, would also have been an option. Many people around you have Hurrian or Luwian names, even if they are not ethnically Hurrian or Luwian themselves. (This is comparable to the modern popularity of Hispanic names like Diego, or French names like Isabelle.)

It’s hard to say what you would have done during childhood. While your earliest years would have been spent playing and babbling in grammatically incorrect Hittite, by the age of six or seven you may well have already started training in the family profession. If a girl, you would have been taught to weave by your mother; if a boy, you might have helped your father out on the farm, tried your hand at making pottery, or spent long hours learning cuneiform. (There may have been careers requiring gender non-conformity, as there was in Mesopotamia, but as far as I am aware this has not been proven.) You know that even the noblest children are given responsibilities - king Ḫattušili himself was once a stable boy.

Now, as an adult, you are a working professional contributing directly to Hittite society. You look the very portrait of a Hittite: as a woman, you have long, dark hair that you probably keep veiled, and as a man, your hair is around shoulder-length and your face clean-shaven. Ethnically, though, you are likely a mixture of Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, Hattian, and depending on when and where exactly you live, maybe Assyrian, Canaanite or even Greek. There’s a fair chance Hittite might not actually be your native language. Still, you consider yourself a Hittite, and a subject of the Hittite king.

Well, now you know who you are, let’s get along with your day!

Your home and environment

Your day begins the way most people’s days do: you wake up at home, in your bed. As an average Hittite, you probably sleep on the floor rather than on elevated furniture. Your floor is either paved or of beaten earth, and your house itself has stone foundations and mud brick walls, with a flat roof supported by timber beams. Windows are scarce and small, to keep the indoor temperature stable.

Outside, the rest of the settlement is waking up too. Statistically, you live in a village or small town, surrounded by forest and mountains. Summers here are hot and dry, and winters cold and snowy, with spring and autumn being marked by thunderstorms. Most inhabitants work as farmers, relying on the weather for their survival. Contagious illnesses are a constant threat - under king Muršili II, the land suffered a deadly plague for twenty years - as are enemy invasions. If you live within the bend of the red river, in the Hittite heartland, consider yourself lucky; if not, your settlement could well be shifting from one kingdom’s property to another and falling prey to both sides’ raids on a yearly basis.

Admitting no enemy forces are in the area today, you take your time to get up. You might tiredly stumble to the outhouse to go pee. Eventually, you’ll want to get dressed.

Clothing

As a man, your clothes comprise of a kilt or sleeved tunic, with a belt of cloth or leather. As a woman, you wear a long dress and, if you are married, a veil. All clothing is made from wool or linen, and a variety of dyes exist: red, yellow, blue, green, black and white are all colours mentioned in texts. If you are rich enough, you may be able to import purple-dyed fabric from Lazpa (Greek Lesbos) or the Levant. You will also want to flaunt your wealth with jewellery, regardless of gender.

Of course, your shoes have upturned ends in the Hittite style. Historians will tease you for this. Don’t listen to them. You look awesome.

Mealtime!

It’s now time for one of your two daily meals (the other will take place in the evening, after your work for the day is done). This will be prepared at the hearth, a vital element of every home, and which is likely connected to an oven. The staple of your diet is bread; in fact, it is so common that “bread”, in cuneiform texts, is used as a general term for food. It is usually made from wheat or barley, but can also be made from beans or lentils.

Worried you’ll get bored of it? You needn’t be: your society has enough types of bread that you could eat a different one each day for a whole season. Fig bread, sour bread, flat bread and honey bread are just some of your options, along with spear bread and moon bread... yes, in other words, baguettes and croissants. (Something tells me the Hittites and the French would have a lot to talk about.)

You also have various fruits and vegetables available: cucumber, leek, carrots, peas, chickpeas, lentils, beans, olives, figs, dates, grapes, pomegranates, onions, garlic, and more. Your diet is completed by animal products, including cheese, milk, butter, and meat, mainly from sheep and goats but also cows and wild game. Honey, too, is common.

These ingredients can be combined into all sorts of dishes. Porridge is popular, as are stews, both vegetarian and meat-based. Meat can also be broiled and quite possibly skewered onto kebabs. And of course, food would be boring without spices, so you have a variety of those to choose from too: coriander are cumin are just two of them.

As for drinks, you can have beer, wine, beer-wine (good luck figuring out what that is), milk or water. If you’re well-to-do enough, you may own a rhyton, a drinking vessel shaped like an animal such as a stag or bull. Don’t forget to libate to the Gods before drinking your share.

Daily work

The next thing on your plate, after food, is work. What you do depends on your social status and gender, and most likely, you do the same work as your parents did before you. You could be something well-known like a king, priest, scribe, merchant, farmer or slave, but don’t assume those are all the possibilities; you could also be, for example, a gardener, doctor, ritual practitioner, potter, weaver, tavern keeper, or perfume maker.

It’s impossible to go into detail on every career option you would have in Hittite society, so for the sake of brevity, let’s just discuss four - two male-dominated, and two female-specific.

Farmer

As a farmer, you are the backbone of your society. You and your peers are responsible for putting food on the plates of Hittites everywhere, thus ensuring the survival of the empire.

Like many farmers, you live on a small estate, most likely with both crops (or an orchard) and livestock to take care of. You may own cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, donkeys, and/or ducks. Your daily routine and tools aren’t that different from other pre-industrial cultures, though you have it a little rougher than most due to the Anatolian mountain terrain. If you have the means, you hire seasonal workers - both male and female - to help out as farmhands, and you may own a few slaves.

You get up early to milk the cows, and at the onset of summer, you or a hired herdsman may lead your livestock up to mountain pastures to graze. Depending on the season and the work that needs to be done, you may spend your day ploughing the fields, harvesting grain or fruit, tending livestock, shearing sheep, birthing a calf, repairing the barn, or various other tasks. Make sure to take proper care of everything: new animals are expensive, and losing one could get you into a precarious situation. In particular, you’ll want to keep an eye out for bears, wolves, foxes, and even lions and leopards.

Scribe

Few people are literate in Hittite society, and you are one of the lucky ones. You have been learning to read and write in three languages (Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite) since childhood, and after long years of copying lexical lists and ancient myths, your education is now complete.

As a scribe, you are the dreaded bureaucrat. In a small town, you likely work alongside the town administrator, recording tax collections and enemy sightings as well as corresponding with other towns, and with the capital. You and your peers are the go-to people for officialising marriage agreements and divorces, drawing up work contracts, and creating sales receipts. If not in the town administration, you could also work in a temple, recording the results of oracles, cross-checking the correct procedures for a ritual, and making sure everything necessary for a festival is available. If you are particularly lucky, you may be employed by the nobility or even the palace, and be entrusted with such confidential tasks as writing the king’s annals or drafting an international treaty.

Regardless of where you are, two things are essential to your job: a stylus and a tablet. You may be a “scribe of the clay tablets”, in which case you will need to carry around a bit of clay wherever you go (and some water to moisten it). Otherwise, you are a “scribe of the wooden tablets”, in which case you use a wax tablet in a wooden frame, which requires less maintenance. It’s unclear whether these types of tablet are used for different purposes.

Fun fact: you likely have a few pen pals around the Hittite empire. After corresponding with other scribes for so long, you’ve started writing each other messages at the bottom of your tablets, asking each other how you’re doing and to say hi to each other’s families. Your employers needn’t know.

Weaver

Weaving, to a Hittite like you, is the quintessential female activity, along with textile-making in general. Like farming, this is a backbone of your society: without weaving, there would be no clothes, and without clothes, well, you can’t do much.

As a weaver, you produce textiles for your family and in many cases also for sale. You work in an atelier within your home, along with the other women of the household, keeping an eye on your smallest children as they play nearby. While your husband, brothers or sons may transport and sell your handiwork, you are the head of your own business.

You are skilled in multiple weaving techniques, and can do embroidery and sew fabric into various shapes (including sleeves - take that, Classical Greeks). You create clothing for all sorts of occasions, including rituals and festivals, outdoor work, and winter weather, and if you are lucky enough to be commissioned by the nobility, you put your best efforts into clothing that will show off their status. Don’t try to cheat anyone out of their money, though; prices are fixed by law.

Old Woman

Contrary to what you might expect, you don’t need to be old to be an Old Woman - this is a career just like any other, though it probably does require a certain amount of life experience and earned respect. As an Old Woman, you are a trained ritual practitioner and active in all sorts of cultic, divinatory and magical ceremonies.

Most commonly, you are hired for rituals protecting against or removing evil. Your services may solve domestic quarrels, cure a sick child, or shield someone from sorcery (a constant threat in your society). This is done through symbolic acts like cutting pieces of string, breaking objects, and sacrificing and burning animals, which are of course accompanied by incantations - sometimes in Hittite, sometimes in other languages, like Hurrian.

Far from a village witch, you are high-placed in Hittite society and trusted by the royal family itself. You have taken part in major rituals and festivals, including funerals, and you perform divinatory oracles too. This last responsibility gives you a large amount of influence over the king and queen; if you establish that something should be done, then it almost certainly will be. Use this power well... or not.

Your loved ones

After a long day ploughing fields, writing tablets, weaving clothes or reciting incantations, it’s finally time to reunite with your loved ones. For adults, these likely - but not necessarily! - include a spouse and children. You may just live with your nuclear family, but living with extended family is also common, and there may be as many as twenty people in your household. Siblings, aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, children and babies all share the evening meal with you, and some nights, you might gather afterwards to sing and dance, tell stories, and play games.

You also have relationships outside of home. Friendship is valued by Hittite society, with close friends calling each other “brother” and sister”. You might meet up with them regularly at the local tavern for a beer and a bit of fun. Someone there might even catch your eye... Interestingly, there are no laws against that person being of the same gender as you. So, same or different gender, why not try your luck tonight?

Greater powers

It’s impossible to spend a day in the Hittite empire without encountering religion. The Land of a Thousand Gods is aptly named: Gods are in everything, from the sun to the mountains to the stream at the back of your house to fire to a chair. You should always be conscious of their power, and treat them with respect. Though there are few traces of it, you may have a household shrine where you make libations or offer a portion of your meal. Your Gods may be represented by anthropomorphic statues, by animals such as a bull, by symbols such as gold disks, or even by a stone. Either way, treat these objects well; the divine is literally present in them.

You should also be wary of sorcery. Never make clay figures of someone, or kill a snake while speaking someone’s name, or you will face the death penalty. Likewise, always dispose of impurities carefully, especially those left over from a purification ritual (such as mud, ashes, or body hair). Never toss them onto someone else’s property. Has misfortune suddenly struck your household? Is your family or livestock getting sick and dying? These are signs that someone has bewitched you.

Some days are more sacred than others. You participate in over a hundred festivals every year, some lasting less than a day, some lasting a month, some local, some celebrated by the entire Hittite empire. The most important of these are the crocus festival and the purulli festival in spring, the festival of haste in autumn, and the gate-house festival, possibly also in autumn. The statues of the Gods are brought out of the temples, great feasts are held, and entertainment is provided through music, dance and sports contests. Depending on how important your town is, the king, queen or a prince might even be in attendance. All this excitement is a nice break from your regular work!

Sleep and dreams

Phew, what a busy day it’s been. The sun, snared in the trees’ branches, has set on the Hittite land, and you are ready for bed. Time to wrap yourself snugly in blankets and go to sleep.

You may dream, in which case, try to remember as much as you can. Dreams can be a vehicle for omens. Maybe, if the Gods are kind, you might catch a glimpse of what the next days, months and years hold in store for you.

Good night!

Bibliography

Beckman, Gary, “Birth and Motherhood among the Hittites”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 319-328).

Bryce, Trevor, Life and Society in the Hittite World, Oxford 2002.

Bryce, Trevor, “The Role and Status of Women in Hittite Society”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 303-318).

Golec-Islam, Joanna, The Food of Gods and Humans in the Hittite World, BA thesis, Warszawa 2016.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Birth and name-giving in Hittite texts”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 27/3 (1968), pp. 198-203.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Daily life among the Hittites”, in Averbeck, Richard E., Chavalas, Marc W., Weisberg, David B., Life and Culture in the Ancient Near East, Bethesda 2003 (pp. 95-118).

Marcuson, Hannah, “Word of the Old Woman”: Studies in Female Ritual Practice in Hittite Anatolia, PhD thesis, Chicago 2016.

Wilhelm, Gernot, “Demographic Data from Hittite Land Donation Tablets”, in Pecchioli Daddi, Franca, Torri, Giulia, Corti, Carlo, Central-North Anatolia in the Hittite Period: New Perspectives in Light of Recent Research, Roma 2009 (pp. 223-233).

[darksunrising]

Sola Gratia (9/?)

Masterlist

Rating / Warnings : General audiences, no particular warnings.

Fandom : Bram Stoker’s Dracula, BBC’s Dracula, various Dracula and vampire lore.

Part 9/? (2000 words)

Author’s notes : I’m trying to get the chapters a more consistent length, I think 2000-2500 is good ! Means I’ll be able to work more consistently, but please don’t hesitate to tell me what you think about it ! Also, sorry for all the build-up, but a girl’s gotta set the decor a bit !

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

During the following weeks, the presence of the Count became almost familiar. Every day, he waited for me with a different kind of pastry. I tried to protest at first, but quickly had to make my peace with it. At some point, seeing me wince at my terrible coffee, he forbade me to drink it anymore, and added that to my daily breakfast. I asked him exactly once why he insisted on feeding me, to which he replied that he liked my blood healthy, with a toothy grin. I hit him over the arm, he laughed. Other than that, he was careful not to step over my boundaries, and seemed to find the way to only be there at the appropriate time.

That was not the case for Leah, however, who was delighted to see Vlad was going to be a recurring presence in our lives. The two of them got along far better than I would have wanted. Vlad especially enjoyed playing along with her when she started asking probing questions about the both of us, although I had to admit he was an expert at deviating any question that could have revealed his true nature.

It took me some time to fully realize how much he had actually seen, and lived. He died around the 1470s, which meant he had all the time in the world to see the Sistine Chapel being painted, the construction of the Eiffel Tower, or the damn french Revolution. He could have just been a very polyvalent historian, which is what I told Leah. She interpreted that as a challenge, considering he and I were, as she put it, “introverted nerds who need to see the light of the sun once in a goddamn while”. She started dragging us along in random activities. There was a pottery class, to which I was barely able to make the Leaning Flower Pot Of Pisa, while she somehow made an incredible owl sculpture, and Vlad had made a delicate greek-inspired vase. Seeing him, sleeves rolled up over his elbows, hair tied up in a ponytail, his long fingers working in precise, expert gestures, probably had noting to do with my absolute failure to make anything correct. I decided then that manual activities were a no-go for me in the car ride, where I sulked on the backseat, while Leah and Vlad were still crying-laughing about my sorry excuse for a pot.

After the rousing success of that experience, she wasn't about to stop. We did a haunted castle themed escape game, which Vlad curiously sucked at. That would explain some stuff. Leah then found out that a Renaissance faire was taking place in a small town, about an hour or two outside the city, and decided we definitely had to go. I tried to pretend I had too much work and wouldn't be able to make it, but Vlad and her insisting, I caved, and marked down my calendar with the red pen of defeat.

Being stuck in period costumes with the both of them wasn't the only reason I tried protesting. Laurent really did throw a ton of work on my shoulders, and that wasn't considering the whole Stephan Helder situation. The kid was highly motivated, sure, but he started making me feel uneasy, for some reason. After all my classes, he came to chat, and always found a way to ask questions about Vlad. Strangely phrased questions, or about how he couldn't find publications under his name. Legitimate questions, to be fair, but his insistence was bugging me.

“I'm telling you, that is weird. Those are weird questions”, I told Vlad, sitting on my windowsill. He didn't react. “I am serious, what if he knew ?”

“How would he know ?”, he sighed. “Why would he even want to know ?”

“Well, that's a fair question. Which needs an answer, don't you think ?”

He tilted his head, softly smiling. “I think you are being a bit paranoid.”

“I spend most of my free time hanging out with an immortal murder-machine, I think I deserve the right to be a bit paranoid”, I snapped.

“Fair enough”, he laughed.

Being immortal had to have dulled his sense of danger. Although, I could see how a skinny 20-year-old medieval history student wouldn't spontaneously raise red flags.

“By the way, I am going back to Romania”, he told me.

I felt a small pinch to my heart. “Oh.”

“Only for a few days”, he completed with a smirk. “I have to pick up some things, and oversee the moving company. I do not trust them with half my things.”

I furrowed my brow. “Moving company ?”

“Oh, did I not mention it ?”, he innocently replied. “Before I even arrived, I bought a little something a little ways outside the city. The renovations are done, and you of all people understand I cannot live there without a decent library.”

I took a second to process it. He had a smug look, obviously enjoying my confusion. I had to say I didn't even think about where he spent his nights. I figured he either turned into a bat and hanged somewhere upside down, or simply didn't sleep. Did he even need to rest ? Gods, so many questions I didn't even think to ask. Every day, I felt like I discovered a puddle, only to realize it was part of a lake.

“When I come back, would you come visit ?”, he asked, sounding a bit hesitant.

“Sure. I mean, as long as I don't have to wear heels if you decide to go feral on me.”

He took a dead-serious expression. “I promise you, Eris Cetero, that as long as you live, I will never, ever, make you wear heels again.”

I threw my head back with a groan of agony. Was it so bad that this kind of humor was actually funny to me now ? Was having a six century old bloodthirsty creature imply he might try to murder me again really that hilarious ? Apparently so, as I was unable to contain a giggle. Maybe it was because the look he had was all but threatening. Maybe because every time I was near him, even with all that happened, I felt... Safe. For a few weeks, I had been able to decide staying over at the University library until ungodly hours. I didn't have to thing about what time I had to leave at before it became too risky for a woman with very limited knowledge of martial arts, alone.

I mean, he was arguably more dangerous than any encounter I might have had, but still... I knew he wouldn't hurt me. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Then again, he had plenty of occasions to lose it. Last week, for instance, I had no idea what to expect when I left my apartment, dosed with painkillers, as Mother Nature, that ruthless bitch, decided to drop by for her monthly visit.  He was simply waiting for me at the usual spot, looking a bit off, but holding a large box of chocolates along with my breakfast. He made himself scarce for the following three days, but I could tell he tried to act natural.

“I should let you get some rest”, Vlad told me, dragging me out of my thoughts.

I nodded, slowly. “When are you leaving ?”

“Some time tomorrow. I will still pick you up, if that is what worries you.”

He smiled, teasing. “Yeah, that's... That's it. I'd miss my personal chauffeur.” I looked away a second. “Now, get off my window, I need to sleep.”

“Of course, my Lady”, he replied, and backed away with an overly low bow. “I bid you good night.”

Once again, with a fluttering sound, the usual bat replaced the tall man. I called out to him, offering my hand as a perch. The tiny black creature gripped a finger. I would have expected a Vampire Bat, to be fair, and almost laughed when I realized it was a common little brown bat, only changing in the darker color.

“Well, don't you look adorable”, I told him.

I could take a more frightening appearance, if you want me to.

“Telepathy, huh ? That's new”, I commented. Nothing surprised me that much anymore, to be honest.

I try not to pry, it's usually considered rude.

“You don't say.”

He stretched out his wings. They were so thin I could see the tiny veins running across the membrane. I had to use all my will not to just scoop him up and pet his tiny head, or scratch his belly. Now, that would have been rude. Probably. Those kind of reflexions were a bit new to me.

I would stay here all night if I could, but I am starting to feel a bit hungry.

“Oh, by all means. I won't keep you.”

I heard a small squeaky sound I interpreted as a laugh, and he left. I closed the window, and the quiet made me rethink the situation. If he was gone, that would leave me some time to look into the Helder situation without him interfering. Now, I just needed the help of my favorite professional stalker. With a little smile, I slipped under my covers, and almost instantly faded into sleep.

~ ~ ~

After Vlad let me off at the University, he only came over to say hi to Leah, and announce his departure. He left right after, with a kiss for her hand, and one for my forehead.

“Do you need some ice ? You look pretty hot”, she snarked at me once he was gone. “A cold shower, perhaps ?”

“Oh, shut up, will you ?”, I groaned, placing the back of my hands onto my cheeks.

She snickered. She was the best friend I could ever hope to have, but man, as soon as someone was involved, she became absolutely unbearable.

“By the way, I need your help with something”, I told her, lowering my voice a little.

“Oooh, sneaky voice, I like it already. Tell me.”

I brought her inside, and we went straight to my office, a small, cluttered room in the old building. I dragged a folding chair next to mine, behind the heavy wooden desk.

“I'm having a weird feeling about a transfer student”, I told her. “I wondered if you could-”

Before I could even finish my sentence, she had already taken out her laptop, her glasses sitting on her nose. She turned on a bunch of apps she left running in the background, and turned to me.

“Name ?”

“Stephan Helder, with 'ph'”, I told her.

I kind of felt bad about it. If it was nothing, I was just prying into his personal life – or having Leah pry, anyway. She began typing away, and in less than three minutes, she had results. Stephan Jonathan Helder, 18, your typical genius type. Skipped a few middle-school classes, finished high-school at 15, with straight-As. Spotless criminal record, less so for the medical one, with a few bad cases of pulmonary infections. Didn't have one in years, though. Seemed like he was from a good family, but then again, no information on them showed up. Huh. I asked Leah to look into them.

“That's crazy”, she said after a good five minutes. “I mean, there's barely anything.”

“You mean he's an orphan, or something ?”

“No, it's just blacked out. I mean, most of the stuff has been scraped, erased.”

She sounded annoyed, but also excited. I knew she loved a challenge.

“Nothing I can't break”, she commented, and went back to it.

After a few more minutes, she finally had a triumphal shout.

“Got 'em”, she told me. “Stephan Jonathan Helder, the father is Thomas Mark Helder, and the mother is Mary... Huh. That's a cool name.”

“What is ?”, I asked, leaning over her shoulder to read.

My blood froze in my veins instantly.

Mary Van Helsing.

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Taglist : @carydorse @angelicdestieldemon @bloodhon3yx @thewondernanazombie @battocar @moony691 @mjlock @thebeautyofdisorder @festering-queen @paracosmfantasy

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/23 & 10/25/2018: HALLOWEEN (2007) & HALLOWEEN II (2009)

By the time Rob Zombie made the bold move of remaking John Carpenter’s name-making classic HALLOWEEN, the horror rock-star’s directorial career had already proved to be incredibly divisive. His 2003 film debut, HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES drew a cult from among diehard fans of his music, but was largely panned by critics who identified it as a ramshackle, self-indulgent disaster. The movie was little more than a Frankensteining-together of Zombie’s favorite things, but he managed to follow it up swiftly with 2005′s semi-sequel, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS. With this project, he appropriated three of the principle characters from his cartoony, ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW-like first feature, and reimagined them as the redneck antiheroes of a story that plays like a cross between THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and THE WILD BUNCH. While DEVIL’S REJECTS showed major improvements in terms of drive and focus, it still felt unsettled. It is an emotionally confused movie that has trouble deciding whether its tale is more tragic for the innocent victims of its psychopathic protagonists, or more triumphant, for the Rejects’ anti-establishment swagger and charisma. Rob Zombie displays a refined aesthetic sense, and seems sincere in his storytelling, but he didn’t have much time to let these things ferment into a more potent cinematic brew before he stepped up to bat again with his controversial remake of the beloved HALLOWEEN in 2007. 

Reviled even by the likes of John Carpenter himself, Zombie’s dour, ponderous retelling of the archetypal slasher story was baffling to critics and genre buffs alike. Loaded up with clunky psychoanalysis that flies in the face of Carpenter’s original intention--Michael Myers is PURE NO-REASON EVIL, FULL STOP--this iteration of HALLOWEEN worked for few people besides Zombie’s hardcore stans. In spite of that very large and general problem, the writer-director was back again in 2009 with a sequel to his own remake. With HALLOWEEN II, he took two major creative risks: Bringing the ubiquitous Sheri Moon Zombie back even though her character died early in the first film, and centering the narrative on Laurie Strode’s psychological recovery, or lack thereof, from her original ordeal. It is easy to see how this setup would draw more complex and ambivalent responses. Mrs. Zombie’s appearance as the ghost of Myers’ mother, whose character is plagued by a lot of Jungian nonsense, was identified fairly as ludicrous by many viewers. On the other hand, Scout Taylor-Compton’s return as Laurie Strode takes a character who was little more than a cardboard cutout in the first film, and turns her into a convincing mass of trauma who undergoes a profound transformation over the course of this sequel. As with THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, HALLOWEEN II suggests that even while Rob Zombie can be an incredibly frustrating filmmaker, he still seems to be on to something. Even in my most stuck-up moments, when his smug use of slow motion and arias of unshocking cuss words make me want to forget everything I just watched, his movies nag at me in a way that I have a hard time describing.  I’m just now starting to formulate an understanding of why.

Often, I find myself asking: Who is Rob Zombie? First and foremost, he is a professional nerd. His music, art, videos, and feature films are strung together by his scholarship in all things genre, whether he’s invoking Tobe Hooper’s snuff-like realism, or the innocent sitcom pleasures of the Munsters. Zombie is vastly erudite about horror, and really anything remotely culty. This is actually to the detriment of HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, which is so bloated with pop culture references that it almost chokes out the movie’s dubious originality. But while he has that irritating nerdy compulsion to competitively show off what he knows, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who buys and bags comics without even cracking them open. Rob Zombie is clearly, legitimately passionate; it’s heartwarming, and enough to make you want to root for him even when you don’t totally love what he’s doing. His craftsmanship is on point, too, as a multimedia artist whose talent has been abundantly evident since the early band flyer days. It comes as no surprise that he attended Parsons School of Design, and he occasionally shows his hand as an amateur film historian with a love for golden age Hollywood. So, whatever he wants you to think about his hellbilly stage presence, he’s clearly no hick, and no basement-dwelling dweeb either. He’s an educated artist with a background in New York City’s brainy ‘80s noise rock scene. It’s because of this that I find the worshipful attitude his films take toward their sociopathic murderers to be, well...kind of annoying. Why am I supposed to think it’s so cool, as the movies’ punk rock tone suggests, that the Firefly family tortures random bystanders to death for no apparent reason? Why doesn’t Rob Zombie know how tired the whole “scary clown” thing is, and has been for a long time already, even when it’s someone as magical as Sid Haig under the greasepaint? Why do I feel like Zombie’s interest in pimps and ho’s is deeper than just exploitation pastiche, which makes it potentially worse than if it were just a shallow affectation? The thought of this Massachusetts-born college boy fantasizing obsessively about being so crude and violent and salt-of-the-earth is kind of lame. So, instead of just, you know, being a hater as usual, I looked it up--and discovered that Rob Zombie’s roots are actually in the fairway. As Wikipedia aggregates from various interviews: 

While raising their sons, Rob's parents worked in a carnival, but they chose to leave after a riot broke out and tents were set on fire. Zombie recalled the experience in an interview, stating, "Everybody's pulling out guns, and you could hear guns going off. I remember this one guy we knew, he was telling us where to go, and some guy just ran up to him and hit him in the face with a hammer – just busted his face wide open. My parents packed up real quick, and we took off."

Suddenly, it all started to make sense. Sure, the costumed popstar isn’t an undead cross between Jerry Lee Lewis and Charles Starkweather in real life, but he isn’t a complete poseur either. It isn’t immediately clear, from underneath his mountain of collectory movie references, that he is, more or less, writing what he knows. He isn’t just emulating his cultural heroes, he’s mythologizing his own childhood. 

In view of this, the key to Rob Zombie’s movies is not an awareness of horror history and semiology; it’s actually all about outlaw culture. So, back to 2007′s deeply flawed HALLOWEEN. It’s a heavily bro-y movie, in its outsidery way, that breaks up the Dr. Loomis-Michael Myers-Laurie Strode love triangle, and focuses almost entirely on building a Myers biography. The fascinatingly sullen Daeg Neergaard Faerch plays young Michael, a fatherless boy on the verge of snapping from the relentless torment coming at him from all directions: his slutty sister, school bullies who fixate on his stripper mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), and his mother’s latest violent, depraved boyfriend. Michael follows the serial killer script perfectly, graduating rapidly from torturing animals to brutalizing other kids to annihilating his sister, her boyfriend, and his mother’s beau one Halloween night when his sibling chooses sex over taking her little brother trick-or-treating. He soon finds himself installed in a mental institution where he moves on to slaughtering the staff. Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) spends years evaluating the boy, though he is ultimately stymied by Michael’s profound lack of humanity. As Michael increasingly retreats behind the folksy homemade masks he spends all day crafting, the opportunistic Loomis gives up on him, instead committing his energy to a money-making true crime/pop psychology book about Myers. Flashing forward, we find the hulking adult Michael Myers (played by the 6′8″ wrestler Tyler Mane) getting ready to bust out of the asylum and wage war on his home town of Haddonfield. There we finally meet teen dream Laurie Strode, a spunky babysitter with a gaggle of gal pals who are perfect grist for the slasher mill. In the final leg of the film, Myers carves his way through Laurie’s social circle, in an apparent attempt to reunite with his sister: Laurie herself. Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) reveals that when Michael’s despairing mother committed suicide years ago, he took her infant daughter and had her adopted out anonymously to insulate her from her family’s tragic history. Laurie, for her part, is unaware of anything other than her need to survive, which she only barely accomplishes.

Naturally, Laurie’s story is the weakest part of a movie that is otherwise so focused on male experience. That is, the experience of needing a father, the ambivalent and ambiguous craving for maternal intimacy, the trauma of having your masculinity impugned by your (fag-obsessed) peers, and perhaps even the undermining influence of academia and capitalism on a man’s natural-born strength and worth. When the newly-freed Michael Myers storms through a truck stop to begin his pilgrimage to Haddonfield, and Rob Zombie chooses to accompany this scene with Rush’s regal outlaw anthem “Tom Sawyer”, it tells you everything you need to know about this take on HALLOWEEN. Like the rampaging Firefly family in DEVIL’S REJECTS, Michael is certainly evil, but he also represents something essential about the formation of and reinforcement of one’s individuality in the face of castrating societal norms--something the carnies among whom Rob Zombie grew up would have found very relatable.

It’s worth noting here that, while the sexuality of the women in Michael’s life plays a role in his distorted development, he is not reacting to their sexuality in and of itself. Michael Myers is not driven by the kind of covetousness that we associate with the archetypal slasher, who gives sexually frustrated male viewers a vicarious thrill by punishing sluts and teases. Michael’s problem is that his mother and sister’s sexuality contributes to his isolation. His classmates use his mother’s profession against him, and that profession keeps her from being able to tuck him in at night. Similarly, Michael doesn’t get to enjoy Halloween with his family and the other neighborhood kids, because his sister is too busy getting laid. Michael is abandoned, even while he still has a home to return to, an outsider even in his own house. 

This leads me to an important point about why the portion of the movie that is devoted to Laurie's struggle is so ineffective. It is a flaw in the film, but a virtue of the director: Normal, attractive teenagers are not Rob Zombie’s people. He doesn’t even participate in traditional slasher movie misogyny, he’s so far away from thinking about them. His movies are full of badass women who are fully possessed of their sexuality, and who wield it like a weapon against hypocrites and assholes, and this is always shone in a heroic light. Moreover, he delights in casting women of all shapes and ages, often assigning them immense personal power, as in LORDS OF SALEM, an enormously satisfying movie about society’s original persecuted outcasts: witches. Rob Zombie is deeply committed to outsiders, and his definition of them isn’t limited to banal lawbreaking--he also rejects conventional beauty and our cultural obsession with youth. His films are populated by all manner of human beings, and the farther away they are from looking like model material, the more likely it is that they’re meant to be the heroes. On that note, whatever you think of his movies, you have to acknowledge that they are almost never dehumanizing. Zombie is an accomplished actor’s director who gets a full spectrum of emotion out of his performers, and who excels at creating a feeling of camaraderie within his ensemble casts. It is this surprising sweetness, and compassion even for the victims of the villains he lionizes, that makes HALLOWEEN II so peculiarly effective.

If 2007′s HALLOWEEN was a remake on which Rob Zombie couldn’t resist draping some of his personal hangups, HALLOWEEN II is almost a completely original and separate entity from what one thinks of as the franchise started by John Carpenter. In it, Michael Myers is presumed dead but his body is missing--and indeed, his character is missing for much of the movie. We find a disturbed, scarred-up Laurie Strode living with her surviving friend Annie, and Annie’s father, Sheriff Bracket. Laurie is dealing, poorly, with a heavy dose of PTSD. Along with nightmares and flashbacks, she also has trouble just being nice to people, or accepting affection. Annie and her father’s attempts to be charitable with their adoptive family member are no match for Laurie’s increasing surliness and mistrust of the world. Once a good-natured and optimistic young woman, her appearance becomes vagrant-like (curiously similar to Rob Zombie’s own casual look), her attitude is more and more nihilistic, and she develops a drinking problem. I’ve always wanted to see a movie with a slasher-like narrative foundation, but that focuses on aftermath and recovery, and recent gimmicky efforts like FINAL GIRL and LAST GIRL STANDING did absolutely nothing for me. HALLOWEEN II--at least, the superbly-acted Strode part of it--is the movie I’ve been asking for.

The other part of the movie is also interesting--or more specifically, it’s as ballsy as it is flawed. The movie gets off on kind of a bad foot when a title card quotes an obscure psychology text book called The Subconscious Psychosis of Dreams: 

WHITE HORSE - instinct, purity, and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction.

This is the excuse we have for the fact that the ghost of Deborah Myers arrives with a white horse to compel her son to find his sister Laurie Strode, aka Angel Myers, to reunite their family, presumably in the afterlife. Deborah Myers is kind of a spectral cross between Glenda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, at once welcoming and sinister, drifting in and out of Michael’s consciousness in the company of a sort of ghost of his childhood (Chase White Vaneck, who is no Daeg Faerch honestly). It might be easy to dismiss this anomaly as an expression of Michael’s mental illness, and his desire to experience an idealized version of his youth in which his mother still looks after him--except that later in the movie, during the final standoff, Laurie is shown to be physically affected by these spirits. Maybe the implication is that she and Michael suffer the same psychological ailments, but for them to share such specific hallucinations without speaking is borderline supernatural in and of itself. So, while Sheri Moon Zombie does her best with her impressive force of personality and compelling physical presence, it’s hard to say what this part of the movie serves. When I first saw the film, I was completely outraged by this, not only because it made no sense to me, but because it felt like a cheap ripoff of Sarah Palmer’s similar prophetic visions of a white horse in Twin Peaks. That was all I managed to make of it. 

Today, I still don’t love it, but I have more trouble faulting Rob Zombie for trying to make HALLOWEEN his own, something more than a remake. He also does this by truly letting go of the Shape. The famous William Shatner mask was blown in half by Laurie at the end of the 2007 HALLOWEEN, and scarcely makes much of an appearance in this movie. Michael Myers is a disheveled drifter, literally haunted by his past, whose only real aim is to find a place to belong. It’s sort of funny, in retrospect: When John Carpenter made the first HALLOWEEN, he-by-way-of-Dr. Loomis declared Michael an empty shell of a person, someone who was simply born evil, as reflected by the empty-eyed mask he wears. For some reason, though, a whole legacy of directors just couldn’t resist trying to explain Myers away. The original HALLOWEEN II then says, “Well...what if Michael Myers is on a rampage because LAURIE STRODE IS HIS SISTER? What’s that you say? Why is that a reason to rampage? Ummmm...” And then HALLOWEEN 4 sees him pursuing other young female relations of his, and then in subsequent movies there’s an accursed rune, and druids, and immortality rites, and by the time you get to HALLOWEEN 6 you have this absurd stone soup of bad ideas. It’s a miracle that this franchise became such a thing. Rob Zombie makes the same fundamental mistake, but at least he tries it in the simplest possible way, asserting plainly that Nurture, not Nature, made Michael into a killer. Now, terminally lonely, he’s like a clown waking up in his trailer to find that the carnival left without him. Exiled from mainstream society, he seeks out what remains of his family, who, due to his own violent actions, has grown up more like him than he may have imagined.

I’m not saying I think this was the best thing to do with HALLOWEEN 2. Personally, what I crave in horror movies is something that is farther beyond explanation than this--something that gesturally resembles my life experience, but that plunges past the veil of mundanity into a deeper, darker world of primordial fears and urges, addressing things that unsettle me because I cannot rationalize them. For me, horror is definitionally incomprehensible, and Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN diptych is fundamentally sane. But, I think what I’ve discovered is that these movies are not proper horror movies, in spite of their relentless sadistic violence. They are outlaw fables, with more DNA in common with something like EASY RIDER, than with FRIDAY THE 13TH. It’s funny to watch myself coming to a compassionate understanding of these movies that are themselves about outsiders and rejects who are specifically deprived of understanding. My goal in all this was not so much to convince people of the value of these movies, which one might reject on any number of reasonable counts, but to explain to myself why I keep coming back to them. It isn’t to condescendingly heckle them, and it isn’t just because they’re often handsome-looking, or because they’re so emotionally authentic even when the narrative is less than compelling. It must be because, even when I’ve found him challenging, I can’t help seeing Rob Zombie as a person with vision, someone who heroically eschews common consensus on taste and sense-making--the consensus even among horror fans and his own cinematic heroes--in order to say what makes sense to him personally. Finally, he has begun to make sense to me, too.

[ailynss]

i am strong but also destructive. i’m restless and harsh and hopeless. though i have love inside myself. it’s just that i don’t know how to use love.

AILYN WILKES is NEUTRAL in the war, even though HER official job is as A HISTORIAN the TWENTY FIVE year old PUREBLOOD is known to be INTELLIGENT and STEADFAST but also INDIFFERENT and HAUGHTY. some might label them as THE WISEACRE.

INSPO: pinboard and stats page.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: emotional and physical abuse/manipulation, (parental) alcholism.

hey gang! this is an updated intro for ailyn! i changed some of her family background and basically went back to my original setting for her. 

history.

ailyn’s youth was filled with lies. her parents were skilled liars, pretenders, people who bended the truth because the truth was something nasty. her father said his business was booming, while unpaid bills kept piling up, and he kept reassuring them with alcohol on his breath and an unshaved face, that nothing was wrong, that he was fixing it all. when ailyn turned ten, he had gone bankrupt and visited the pub every day, rather than his job, and when his mother kissed him on the cheek every morning and told her kids that she loved him, she was lying, too. she smelled of others when she came home, and she was having not one, but two affairs.

and so ailyn learned that truth is a relative thing, something to bend to your own will. she learned it from her parents and continued it when she went to hogwarts, where she spoke of her father’s wonderful business and her parents happy marriage as if it was nothing but truth. she learned of their secrets before she left (and they weren’t that hard to figure out, in all truth, if you looked well — all it took was following her dad to work one day and bursting in her mother’s bedroom out of nowhere) and kept them, but added in some aspects of her own. if she had to live a lie, why not make it a good one?

besides, her family was doing a good fucking job at keeping the truth quiet: her maternal grandparents supplied enough money for them to continue living in their home, to afford the bare necessities, to make sure that ailyn and her brother would not show up at hogwarts looking like the poor kids they were without their grandparents. gotta love that classicism! :)

her parents had been supporters of tom riddle for a long time, but her father losing his riches and business, kind of made him an ... embarrassment. he still joined the death eaters, when the time came. he used his power as a death eater to steal money and get some of that money that they’d lost because of him, not bettering his reputation among other death eaters, but regaining some of his pride.

[ abuse, alcoholism tw ailyn’s dad was furious at his wife, at the world, at himself. he hated that he relied on his parents-in-law for money, hated that it was his fault, hated that his wife was fucking everyone but him. he drank too much, lashed out at his wife when intoxicated, both verbally and physically. his anger turned to his kids at times, too, but was mostly aimed at his wife end of tw’s ]

going to hogwarts was good. ailyn got to get away from home, and surround herself with others, with people who came from different places, who weren’t stuck in purist beliefs. ailyn was sorted into ravenclaw. a booksmart kid, she found herself more interested in the library and all it offered than what her classes tried to teach her. besides, ailyn found out pretty soon that she was rather bad at practical magic; she was soon behind in charms, transfiguration and DADA. she wondered if something was wrong with her wand, for a moment, wondered what was causing her to perform so poorly.

it took a while for her to accept how it was; she was brainy, not brawny. she wasn’t good at magic, but she was good at analysing texts and understanding motives and looking at things objectively and writing killer essays. ailyn kept her grades up by using her brain, planning to drop most practical subjects once she could --- who cared if she wasn’t able to tickle someone with a charm when she was one of the best in ancient runes, and was one of the only people who could impress binns? she knew where her strengths lied. 

it was during these realisations, during her time away from home, that she started to step away from the purist idealisation she’d been raised with. she’d never subscribed to them much, to start with, but she hadn’t distanced herself from them, either. being away from home, surrounding herself with muggleborns, halfbloods and ‘blood traitors’, as well as her whole journey with ... being rather shit at magic made her realise how fucking stupid it was.

history was her favourite subject. sure, the subject could have been better, had there been a better teacher, but binns wasn’t the worst if you paid proper attention and actually read the material. ailyn found herself staying up late in the common room, learning about muggle history, but also delving into obscure parts of magical history.

ailyn graduated with five newts and sought out bathilda bagshot, wanting to intern under her so she, too, could become a magical historian. and she did! while she was researching with bathilda, she also worked at the ministry for a while, mostly filing away in a back corner, wanting to earn some money for herself. ailyn wasn’t planning on turning her back on her family or pureblood society, but she wanted/needed independence.

finished working with bathilda after a few years and started making a name for herself, then. she had a good name, ties to the ministry and proof that she had a good brain, and so it didn’t take long for ailyn to become known as a historian. she currently does some freelance consulting for the ministry and besides that freelances at the prophet and wwn when they need some Commentary from a Professional ( cue ailyn smiling smugly as i type this ). she mostly sticks to writing about the war, though, and has published a book at this point. besides that, she does a lot of research. SHE WORKS A LOT BC SHE LOVES HISTORY SHE’S A NERD!!

takes a very neutral position in the war, allowing her to provide objective commentary and to look at things wiht a clear head. does have her opinions, though ( mostly: voldemort is just another white dude ruining a whole country, what a surprise wow ) but shares them with a fair few.

ailyn also hasn’t distanced herself from her family publicly, nor does she publicly voice her feelings on blood purity. this is a war, and she’s not here to fight, nor to become a martyr and die. her relationship with her parents is very much strained and there’s a lot of shit there, but she knows better than to become labeled a blood traitor at this point in time. self preservative as hell.

[ emotional abuse tw it’s only been recently that ailyn has allowed herself to realise how toxic her family is, how her parents used clever, manipulative ways to influence her. still sticks with them publicly, yeah, but has cursed them out and let them know that she wants nothing to do with them if she can help it. end of tw ] 

personality & rambling.

ailyn is a true neutral, powder pink lipstick lesbian who will drag your ass through the mud while speaking to you sweetly with a :) smile :). or she’s just charming and chill, depending on who you are tbh.

anyway. ailyn is very outspoken on certain topics, like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc --- she’s generally tired with the men of the world, too ( her studying history is mostly her sighing at men ).

hyperfeminine & unapologetic about it. think elle woods!!!

kind of really selfish when it comes down to it? like. ailyn is just self serving as hell. there’s exceptions, of course, and there’s room for more people to be added to that list, but still: she’s not here to be the hero, nor a martyr. she’ll save herself, and if she has the time to save you, too, she might.

loves mythology a lot, but it’s more a hobby than something she’s interested in for her career. 

feminist af.

likes red wine a LOT??? will gladly drink with you and badmouth people for a whole night because? it’s fun.

her morals are a mess, so dont even ask me about it?? she’s very indifferent on the surface, and to a certain extent she really is indifferent about a lot of things, too. still, ailyn isn’t cold or heartless, either? very emotionally driven? she hardly understands her own motives and morals tbh, so neither do i!!! it’s a mess!!

[english-ext-2]

hello! just wondering about your thoughts on art degrees - are they really 'useless'? i can't think of any other way to study literature :( thank you!

I have many thoughts on this so it’s best to start with a disclaimer: I’m only speaking from my own experiences, am in no way representative of all Arts students, and definitely don’t represent employers’ perspectives (who might have very different opinions to mine).

Before I go anywhere, the following point is the most important: if you want to study literature, then study literature. There is nothing worse than picking a degree you think will be ‘employable’ only to realise you hate it (actually, what’s worse is becoming indifferent to it).

I’m clearly biased here, but Literature is good and not at all useless, and I would strongly encourage you to study it. I don’t want to say anymore else I’d go on forever, but that’s my position. The rest of my answer is under the cut because boy did it get long.

Arts in General

Firstly, arts encompasses a huge range of disciplines. In terms of diversity of knowledge, arts is far from useless. I’m at Usyd, where the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is the largest by far. It’s divided into schools, then departments. A single school, e.g. School of Social and Political Science (SSPS), has several departments. My majors fall under SSPS, the Department of Government and International Relations and the Department of Sociology and Social Work. But you’ve got education, social work, philosophy, museum and heritage studies, archaeology, media and communications, linguistics, languages, a whole range of departments under other schools too. Are all these subjects ‘useless’? Nope.

In purely humanistic terms, people with arts degrees have contributed so much to society. Where would we be without novelists, film producers, directors, script writers? Monty Python was a troupe of over-educated nerds who put their Oxford and Cambridge educations to dictionary-altering satirical use (soz Terry Gilliam, I know you’re American), and we’re better for it. Our world would be poorer without artists of all stripes and the insights that sociologists, historians, anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, etc. have made. The ultimate strike: your teachers studied Education, i.e. Arts. Without them you wouldn’t be reading this, and I wouldn’t be writing it either. Even if arts degrees are semi-jokingly characterised as useless, they’re not. (Btw I aggressively do not enjoy the STEM v Humanities debate because it reduces both sides to shitty stereotypes and gives rise to godawful Discourse, has anyone heard of polymaths.)    

Types of Arts Degrees

You also have to consider the type of arts degree. Once I finish this semester I’m going to graduate with the pass Bachelors of International and Global Studies (i.e. your standard three year degree). In terms of tertiary education, it’s the most basic. I chose not to do a combined degree with, say, Law; nor did I choose to do Honours, which would’ve added an entire year to my degree doing a thesis. Arguably, arts honours and combined arts degrees are less 'useless’ than your run-of-the-mill three-year arts degrees because you supposedly gain advanced research skills and the, well, non-arts part of your combined degree (lol). (I would recommend Honours only if you’re truly, honestly looking for an intellectual challenge and are fully prepared to commit, not just riding along for the perceived employability advantage. A thesis is hard work! I have a friend in Melbourne who can testify.) Incidentally, your three-year arts degree will be an infuriating obstacle if you’re thinking of applying for grad school in North America since most universities only consider candidates who have at least a four­-year undergraduate degree. On another note, I actually once met a girl who was doing combined law/arts and took a cinema elective unit because she enjoyed cinema but knew it wouldn’t likely help her find a job.

Employability

But given the state of the job market these days, almost all undergraduate degrees by themselves are next to useless. A freshly-graduated 21-year-old with a single Bachelors and nothing else to their name, no matter the discipline, won’t be zipping up the salary ladder any time soon (would probably struggle to get an entry level job, never mind kickstarting their career). We’re a long way from the days when just having a degree was proof of your knowledge and thus qualification for the job. Higher education is more accessible, and employers’ expectations have changed. The substance of the degree matters less than the transferable, or 'soft’ skills you gain at university. I’m talking leadership, adaptability (a big one), teamwork, written and verbal communication skills, cross-cultural awareness, self-management, time management, problem solving. Your grades are no longer the sole determining factor in your hiring, and may even take a back seat to strong extra-curricular or sporting achievements, or your experience in various casual/part-time jobs. In some ways it’s a welcome change for employers to expressly state they value recruits as people with talents in fields other than academia, and it’s certainly more inclusive of socio-economically disadvantaged students who might not have done well in school but are nonetheless hard workers and have displayed merit in the 'real world’.

From certain other perspectives, the job market is still capitalism, and individuals are still in competition with each other. As soon as employers make it known they’re looking for “well-rounded indvidiuals”, the students with the most cultural capital and financial resources rush off to, say, intern at a law firm, a think tank, the state government, or travel overseas to teach English in a South-East Asian country, i.e. they grab opportunities to expand their set of transferable skills. Doesn’t matter if you’re an arts student; the wealthiest are more likely to have the means to seek out and actively pursue the experiences that’ll enrich their CVs and make them more appealing to recruiters. It takes money to travel, and you need to be from a certain social milieu to know of, if not apply for, valuable career-hopping opportunities (I kid you not, one guy applied to the organisation where I volunteer wanting legal experience because his parents were allegedly dentists and not in the Right Lawyer Circles to get him a paralegal position or clerkship). All of this is a long way of saying that doing arts is but one factor amongst many affecting your job prospects. 

To bring the discussion back to more pleasant grounds, big corporations (read: banks, consultancy firms, your Comm Banks and KPMGs) are recognising the skills and talents that arts students can bring to their companies. The critical thinking skills you gain from analysing those long-ass readings and putting them into practice are highly sought after because they show you’re not just someone who follows instructions, but can analyse, evaluate and synthesise information appropriate to audience, which applies to literally anything in any workplace. Usyd even has a program called ArtSS Career Ready that offers summer/winter internships with various organisations to Arts and Humanities students only.    

It’s implied in the above paragraphs but what it comes down to is that you’re very likely going to end up doing something that has only the faintest relation to your degree. A student who majored in sociology might end up in a consultancy firm; a history student at St George or Westpac. If you’re going to worry about what you’re studying, worry on the basis of whether you’ll enjoy it rather than whether it fits your projected career path. 

Arts Degrees in Context

So far I’ve spoken about arts degrees in very general, abstract terms, disconnected from the institutions that offer them. Does it make a difference if you study English Literature at Usyd rather than UNSW? (Usyd’s English department consistently ranks well in the QS rankings, 18th this year and the highest Australian university if you were wondering, with UNSW at equal 49th.) Though whether an English major from Usyd is more employable than an English major from UNSW, well, Usyd is ranked 4th in terms of graduate employability in the QS rankings but that’s not necessarily reflective of Usyd’s English department. Anyhow, the 'usefulness’ of a degree will rely on its quality, and that quality is directly influenced by two things: the degree structure, and the people teaching your degree. Both will of course vary from uni to uni.

Degree Structure

What do I mean by degree structure? I’m talking mandatory units or majors, and even mandatory internships. Take my INGS degree. The features that differentiate it from your generic Usyd arts degree are:

four mandatory INGS units 

three mandatory language units 

a mandatory one-semester exchange 

a mandatory major chosen from a list (double majoring is optional)

It sounds fancy but if you were a discerning arts student you could take multiple language units and go on exchange; the list of compulsory majors we choose from is not exclusive to INGS students. The real appeal lies in the INGS units, which are themselves an interdisciplinary mix but which in my experience don’t build graduate abilities any more effectively than any other arts unit. Exchange was good though, and certainly useful in the sense I picked up a range of transferable skills (if not applicable in professional contexts then at home; baking soda and vinegar are great cleaning agents.)  

My degree structure wasn’t revolutionary and didn’t necessarily equip me with skills that might make me more attractive to recruiters. Enter mandatory internships. Some universities in their arts degrees make practical experience (internships, practicums, research projects, etc.) compulsory. If this opportunity is already built into your degree and/or discipline, e.g. you have practicums if you study education, then it’s a huge advantage as you don’t have to go looking for one yourself. Macquarie University makes PACE units (Professional and Community Engagement) a requirement of graduating with an arts degree. Students get practical experience in the community with a partner organisation and undertake an “experiential learning activity”. I mention this because I’ve met Macquarie (and UNSW) interns at my volunteer workplace who’ve contributed significantly to various projects - experience that makes them competitive when they graduate. And yes, there’s a PACE unit for English! (I’ll admit that to Usyd’s credit they have the above-mentioned ArtSS Career Ready program.)  

tl;dr not all arts degrees are created equal, the better ones include mandatory practical experience.  

The People 

Secondly, the people teaching your degree. I have thoughts (Thoughts, I tell you) on education as a collaborative effort, which I’ll just boil down to this: your teachers matter. The people you learn alongside with matter. You don’t learn in a vacuum, and yes, while you’re responsible for your education and how much effort you put into readings, assignments, asking questions, and so on, your teachers and tutors play an essential role in how you absorb and understand the material. If you’ve got a lecturer who reads slides out at a catatonic audience, that’s… not helpful. If your course coordinator gives you one-sentence replies to lengthy, well-considered questions, that’s… also not helpful. But if a teacher can engage you with what you’re learning no matter the subject, you’re more likely to develop a genuine interest in it and to do well. Good lecturers and tutors crop up in unexpected places and often at random, and the best way to find them is through word of mouth. In employability terms, these teachers make for sterling referees. If you get to know them enough, they’ll happily vouch for you.

This answer has gotten ridiculously long but I hope it addressed and assuaged any doubts you may have had.

[obsidianarchives]

Ajuan Mance

Ajuan Mance is a Professor of African American literature at Mills College. A lifelong artist and writer, she works in acrylic on paper and canvas, ink on paper and, for the 1001 Black Men project, ink on paper and digital collage. Ajuan's comics and zines include The Ancestors’ Juneteenth, A Blues for Black Santa, the Gender Studies comic book series, and 1001 Black Men, featuring images from the online portrait series of the same name. Ajuan has participated in solo and group exhibitions from the Bay Area to Brooklyn. Both her scholarly writings and her art explore the relationship between race, gender, and representation. Ajuan is partly inspired by her teaching and research in U.S. Black literature and history. Her most recent scholarly book, Before Harlem: An Anthology of African-American Literature from the Long Nineteenth Century, was published in 2016. Her art has appeared in a number of publications and media sites, including The Women’s Review of Books, Cog Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, Buzzfeed.com, BET.com, SFGate.com, and KPIX.com. Her comics have appeared in the Alphabet and We’re Still Here anthologies, from Stacked Deck Press and the upcoming Drawing Power anthology, from Abrams Press.

Black Girls Create: What do you create?

In my work as a Professor in the English Department at Mills College, I describe myself as a literary historian of the Black nineteenth century. This means I teach and write about U.S. Black writers of the 1800s.

In my work as an artist, I create comics, paintings, drawings, and illustrations that use humor and lots of bright colors to explore the complexity of race and gender in the 21st century.

BGC: Why do you create?

In all honesty, I create because it's what I've always done. Some of my earliest memories are memories of making art. I've often said that I've been an artist almost as long as I've been Black; and when you've been drawing and painting for that long, art simply becomes part of the way you experience and process your world. I don't think it's an exaggeration for me say that art helps me understand who I am.

BGC: Who is your audience?

There are two answers to this question. The first is that I create the art I want to see in the world, and I hope it resonates with other people. That said, while my art is really, truly for all audiences who find it compelling, I feel especially accountable to the people I depict in my work; and those are, for the most part, Black people and communities of color. In my comics and zines, I also depict the experiences of queer and trans folks of color, and I hope that these communities find my works relatable and reflective of some of their experiences.

BGC: Who or what inspired you to do what you do? Who or what continues to inspire you?

I take a lot of inspiration from people who are thriving in their art practice and who are creating work that I love. I try to learn from those who are doing some of the things I want to do. I am very much inspired by those artists who are doing interesting figurative work, as well as those who are using comics and other visual media to tell stories that center the experiences of people of color. Some living artists whose careers I actively follow are the visual artists Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Iona Rozeal Brown, Paula Scher, and Mickalene Thomas. I am also very much inspired by the work of the comic creators John Jennings (co-creator of the graphic novel version of Octavia Butler's Kindred), Thi Bui, Jimmie Robinson (some of whose work is set in the Bay Area), Spike Trotman, and Jillian Tamaki. I could list a whole lot more, but I'll stop there.

By the same token I don't know if I'd call it inspiration, but I was very much motivated as a developing artist by the support of my mom and dad. Even as an elementary and middle school student, my parents took my art as seriously as I did. I grew up in the New York area, and they took me to museums where I could study the work of others. They also took me to buy my supplies at the same stores where art school students shopped. All of this helped me to think of myself as a professional, even at a very young age.

BGC: What inspired you to become an English professor?

As an undergraduate, I was very much focused on earning an MFA and becoming a professor of creative writing. One day, though, one of my former advisors, Suzanne Woods, pulled me aside to discuss my plans for graduate school. She encouraged me to apply to PhD programs in English and to become a literature professor. She even told me where to apply. I changed course (away from the MFA), and I've never looked back.

BGC: Is there a connection between your work as a professor and your work as an artist?

There is a definite connection between my academic work and my art. Both forms of work revolve around the experiences of people of African descent. Also, in some ways, I use art as a research tool. I use art to explore issues and questions about Black life, Black history, and Black futures. My research in early African American literature and history has taught me a lot about the depth and breadth of Black creative experience (literature, art, and activism), and this directly feeds and informs my art. This knowledge of our long history of using creative work as a tool of resistance, celebration, and exploration has strengthened my sense of entitlement to a public voice.

BGC: How do you balance creating with the rest of your life?

I prioritize my art and illustration work, in order to make sure it doesn't simply fall prey to the myriad other tasks demanding my attention. I think of the common financial advice that you should, "pay yourself first." Prioritizing art is my way of doing that — of prioritizing the art practice that sustains me and helps me navigate my world.

BGC: You recently completed your 1001 Black Men Project. What inspired you to create this and how did you decide who to sketch?

The 1001 Black Men Project was inspired by my concern that even those Black-owned media outlets that seek to celebrate Black men seem to depict only the narrowest vision of what Black manhood and masculinity can be. I wanted to try my hand at creating a body of portraits of Black men that was truly representative of the full diversity of Black men's experiences, aesthetics, classes, and identities. Initially, I started by drawing the men I noticed when I was out and about in the Bay Area. I drew the security guard at our local grocery store, the men I saw during my regular trips to the public library, the people seated near me during my annual trips to San Diego Comic Con. Then, around my 300th drawing, I started to use each century point (300 drawings, 400, 500, et cetera) as a check-in, to consider which constituencies I'd somehow left out, which groups of Black men seem to be over-represented, and why. Over time, I became more aware of my own biases and more intentional about depicting those Black male populations I'd somehow seemed to overlook.

BGC: Why is it important, as a Black woman, to create?

As Black women our lens on the present, the past, and the imagined future is critically important. Everyone benefits when a broader range of perspectives is represented, and the constellation of identities and experiences that shapes each of our lives as Black women gives every one of us a unique vision and creative imagination. In addition, art in any form — performing, visual, literary — can be a wonderfully sustaining and affirming practice, and Black women deserve to access every available avenue for affirmation, sustenance, and creativity.

BGC: Advice for young creators/ones just starting?

My advise for young creators is to commit yourself to your creative work. Do it every day, with little attention to what others might think. By the same token, pay attention to the work of others, learn from other artists, and allow their work to inspire you. Go to gallery shows, museums, and comic and zine fests. Be open to community and connection with other artists. Also, set goals and work toward them — a drawing each day, a finished comic, a collection of short stories, etc. Then celebrate with friends when you've reached that milestone. And celebrate yourself whenever you've created something new, something you like, or something that was hard for you. 

BGC: Any future projects you’re working on?

I enjoy long-term projects that I can manage to sustain in 3-5 hours a day. I'm currently developing three projects. One is, Bay Area Heart and Soul: Black Artists in a Time of Change (with Filmmaker Pam Uzzell). I am creating a series of portraits of Bay Area Black artists (visual, performing, and literary), and I will be posting them on a website, in much the same way as I did with 1001 Black Men. The difference is that these portraits will also incorporate the words of the artists themselves. Pam Uzzell is creating short video interviews with roughly one in every 5 of the artists I'm drawing. Check All that Apply is a web-based comic strip about life as a Black nerd, and it's inspired by events in my own life. I'll be launching that project in early April. In addition, I'm working on a bi-monthly web comic about time travel. Stay tuned!

[obsidianarchives]

Black Woman Creator: Afiya Augustine

Hailing from the tropical isle of Trinidad, Afiya Augustine is a writer, freelancer, podcaster, and creator of Pretty Poet Ink, an online handcrafted accessories boutique. Afiya finds tons of inspiration for her work from her love of pop culture, nostalgia, history, science fiction and fantasy. When she is not crafting, she spends time listening to music, tweeting, writing poetry and prose, posting photos of her family, catching a flick, or learning something new. We spoke to Afiya about being a creator, balancing creating with a nine to five, and who some of her favorite Black women creators are.

Black Girls Create: What do you create?

I create quite a few things, actually. First and foremost, I am a writer. I’ve been writing poetry, short stories, and novels since I was twelve and have been a professional entertainment writer/editor for well over five years.

Next, I am the creator and founder of Pretty Poet INK — an online boutique of handcrafted wonders. I both design and create a plethora of things, which (at the moment) includes wearable and useable art otherwise known as jewelry and accessories. With my jewelry,  I often use actual semi-precious stones, crystals, glass and wood beads, in addition to plated and precious metals. My accessories are mostly fabric-based items like bow ties, hair bows, and I’m slowly venturing into things like wallets and pouches. In addition to pieces that are of my own design, I also do custom pieces for others, usually for special occasions like weddings.

Lastly, I host a podcast, called ‘Adult-ish’, which is tackles the everyday trials and tribulations of transitioning into adulthood and all the responsibilities that comes with it no one ever really tells you about.

BGC: Why do you create?

I started creating because quite honestly, I liked it. I’ve always been a person interested in creating. I like to express the way I’m feeling through my various crafts. I use my writings to express my emotions, thoughts, daydreams, and wishes. I used my jewelry to convey a feeling, a connection to a certain aesthetic, imagery. I love the idea of bringing something from my imagination to life. It’s very calming and it's also a feeling of accomplishment to see something start as just a few beads or a thought and watch it come together as a necklace or a poem.

The same kind of goes for my podcast. I record to connect; to share my experiences with others who may have gone through the same things I have.

BGC: Who is your audience?

I create for an audience of like-minded individuals, which at times is a very small group. As it pertains to anything I write or record, I’m reaching out to an open-minded audience, individuals who aren’t afraid to push their boundaries or ask silly questions. With regard to my jewelry, a lot of my pieces are for those who are OK and accepting of something “different,” who can find a deeper meaning in the baubles and connect to them on the level from their inspiration.

For instance, I really love historical content so biographical films or movies set in different decades fascinate me and can be reflected in my work. I also love MCU and DCEU films and books, so you’ll find pieces dedicated to that. Science-fiction and fantasy are genres I’ve been reading since I was a child, so some of my pieces are emblematic of those worlds as well as countries and cultures I’ve never seen but wanted to.

Overall, everything I create is for the nerds, the historians, the world traveler, and those who can find themselves lost in fantasy and wonder.

BGC: Who or what inspired you to do what you do? Who or what continues to inspire you?

I can’t recall when I was first inspired to write. I just remember picking up a pencil and making a story. I can remember when I was about seven or eight years old, I was with my mom visiting my aunt in the hospital. She was dying of cancer and so my mom was there with her speaking to the doctors. I was moving around a lot, so my mom fashioned a little book out of medical tape and napkins. She gave me a pencil and so I wrote a little story with illustrations. I remember my aunt even peaking, asking my mom, “What is she doing?” and I just kept making my little story. Since then, I’ve just kept a pen and a piece of paper on my person at all times.

I was inspired to start making jewelry when I worked in the bead shop of a craft store. It was one of my first jobs out of college back when trying to get a job in editorial was a long shot thanks to the recession. I would glance in magazines like Beadstyle or Stringing and see all these beautiful pieces and think, “how can I inject a bit of myself into this?” I loved the color compositions, the textures, and I wanted to make them expressive of who I was and what I could do. It was about bringing something to life… even though it’s an inanimate object, proving to myself that yet again, there was something I could do. And I’m continually inspired by the idea of being able to make something new. Putting a new object into the world. A sense of pride and accomplishment washes over me with each piece. So much so that I often find it hard to sell them! It’s me saying to myself, “Yes. I made that. I can make it and I did make this.”

The podcast came out of a conversation with a friend who thought our random, off-the-wall chats would be fun to listen to and so, after meeting with a few people interested in our chatter about turning into adults, a podcast was born.

BGC: Why is it important as a black person to create?

It’s important for Black people and especially for Black women to create because there aren't many of us who can have our voices heard. It’s very endearing to hear or see another Black person creating, whether it’s a book, a comic, a clothing line. I feel like we, as a community, have a super strong purchasing power and are always hungry to consume new things and as such, we should be investing in one another. Why not lift up those who can relate to you? Who can create items for you — that not only speak to who you are, but what you are? As a Black female entrepreneur, I’m trying to reach other Black people with similar interests to let them know 1. You are not alone and 2. Here’s a way that allows you to express yourself.

For me, I feel it’s important for us to create to connect to individuals like ourselves and to do so with our creations.

BGC: How do you balance creating with the rest of your life?

Terribly. LOL. I work a full-time job that requires me to travel upwards of 4 hours a day (and 5 hours on a bad day). But I do my best to think of creating. During my commute, I might jot down an idea for a design, write down combinations of colors and shapes that I like, or brainstorm ideas on how to sell or pitch a product. I’ll spend my downtime at work scrolling through websites for ideas, tips, supplies, etc. Maybe put some in a shopping cart and save it for later.

In the past, I used to commit to writing at least one new piece of prose a week, usually about something I observed on my commute home. But that’s when I used to get a seat on the trains. Now, if I have a thought for a story or a line for a poem, I may either jot it down in the Notes section of my phone or post it on Twitter.

On the weekends, I try to record an episode with a co-host one day and craft the next day. The only thing that sucks is that I have to limit my time when the ball starts rolling because I can find myself creating well into the midnight hour. And Lord knows I need all the sleep I can get to have the energy for work.

BGC: How do you balance creating when you feel drained or exhausted?

It’s very trying to balance creating when I’m drained or exhausted because when I’m in that mood, I really want to do nothing but relax and recharge. Sometimes, I will give in, but when I realize I’ve done for too long, I will put music on and sit in front of my table. Often times, touching my supplies, organizing materials, and going through my bins with all the little goodies, brings me back.

BGC: Do you have advice for young creators or ones just starting?

The first bit of advice — learn more about your craft. Next, take your time getting into it. Find a good teacher or mentors who can help you through it. Take a class here and there and see if you really like it or not. It’s OK if you realize it’s not for you.

In the very beginning, I was so excited about jewelry crafting that I spent a ton of money on beads and didn’t know what to do with them. I was also self-taught and found myself constantly looking for tutorials on the web to guide me through. Several years in, I’m still asking the pros questions and learning new techniques as well as understanding there are just some aspects of crafting that aren’t for me.

My writing is OK, but it can always be better. To improve that, I do my best to read one of the many books I haven’t cracked open yet on my bookcase. In seeing some of the different styles, vocabulary, structure, etc. I can better find my own voice.

BGC: Who are some other Black Women creators you admire?

Well, one is definitely my mom. She’s a seamstress and has been working a sewing machine for as long as I can remember. She’s also pretty handy with a glue gun when she’s ready, though I’ve probably surpassed her in that area. Other women I know include Tandeka Fable of Fabl Design and Shirley Blanc of SincerelyMe Sweets, both of whom are crushing it with their startups.

Women I admire from afar include Lorraine West of Lorraine West Jewelry, a handmade luxury brand based in NYC, as well as actor/writer/director Issa Rae because she’s hella dope. I’ve been admiring this woman since Awkward Black Girl on YouTube, and she even gave the OK for me to send her some of my jewelry pieces! Who doesn’t love her, like seriously?!  (Holla at me if you want more pieces, Issa!)

BGC: What are your future projects?

My future projects include expanding Pretty Poet Ink into several brands. As I previously mentioned, I do custom work for special occasions and am looking to bridge that into a bridal brand where I will be making custom bridal pieces and accessories — veils, bouquets, brooms etc.  In the not-so-distant future, I’d like to venture into home decor. It’s my dream to have people not only wearing but living with Pretty Poet Ink around them.

Also, I would ultimately love to finish and publish at least one novel, and a chapbook of poetry. And when it comes to podcasting, I’m hoping to land a spot on HBO or Showtime like some other famous podcasts out there. If not that, at the very least a live recording at a little bar with our few faithful fans.

You can shop Pretty Poet Ink here and subscribe to the brand on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as find all her editorial work on her blog. You can also listen to the Adult-ish podcast on Google Play, iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, and Spreaker. Check out Adultish on Twitter as well.