#but it's a lot.1830s is kind of the same

[sewlastcentury]

out of all the eras I’ve made (which is now 1530s, 1580s, 1630s, 1660s, 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, 1800s, 1820s, 1830s, 1860s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s) - the 1630s is the only one I don’t think I could wear every day. 

There’s just so MUCH up top! and the sleeves, despite being enormous, actually restrict your movement quite a bit because of the way they’re attached. I also dislike having to finagle all the cloth and skirts when it comes to putting on a bumroll, two petticoats, and THEN having to hoist yon bust up into a supportive bodice whilst constraining it under the shift. (Which honestly was an issue with 1660s too... There’s something to be said for separate bodies/stays.)

I was able to move around pretty well - stuffed myself into two Ubers without a problem, re-tied my shoes, etc. as you can see - but it just feels like a lot. I’m not sure the easy ability to bend at the waist is worth it 😂

[seresinhangmanjake]

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Soap's Sister!reader

Summary: Because Johnny found him sleeping with his sister, Simon had to live the last three months without you, but he's about to get his girl back.

warnings/notes: a little smut 18+, cursing, drinking. That's probably it. Oh, typos, im sure, as well.

words: 1830

Part 1

He drinks at the same bar. The one his team practically lived in when they were all together for an evening, but that doesn’t happen anymore, not with the entire group. Johnny stays home if he knows Simon will be attending the night out, and Simon, if informed Johnny wants to be with the team, elects to remove himself from the situation for everyone’s comfort. He figures it’s the least he can do. He’d slept with his best mate’s sister, he’d fallen in love with his best mate’s sister, and so he has taken on the consequences, no matter how infuriating and unreasonable and unfair. 

“You want another, Honey?” the bartender asks. She grins. Her eyes shine with desire, as they have all night, and it might be a pleasant sight if Simon had never met you. He might’ve taken her home, fucked her like a toy until he was spent and she was happily ruined by his cock before he kicked her out. But she isn’t you. No woman is you.

“Keep ‘em comin’,” Simon replies, downing the amber liquid in his glass. 

Suddenly, the stool beside him slides across the hardwood floor, now occupied by a newcomer he wouldn’t hesitate to shove to their ass if he could do so without causing a scene. What kind of rude bastard risks sitting next to someone when ten other seats are open?

“Actually lass, do me a favor and cut ‘im off. I need ‘im in his right mind.”

Simon almost chokes at Johnny's voice but he doesn’t turn his head as he slowly sets the glass back down on the counter, his fingers tightening around it. Anger, confusion, pain, anxiety. It all crashes over him in a hefty wave, because rolled into this one man is both the friend Simon has missed for months and the asshole who has forced him to be apart from the love of his life. And it’s almost too much to handle at once.

“I’ll take his drink,” Johnny tells the bartender, who has lost all hope now that the man she’s been attempting to charm is no longer lonely enough to be convinced to take her home. When she places the glass in front of him, he takes a sip. “You look like shit, Ghost.”

“What do you want?”

“We got a problem,” Johnny says, getting right to it. “A bit of a disaster, really, and I gave it my best shot, but I can’t fix it.” Simon blinks. His brows pinch. Johnny drains the remainder of the alcohol and wipes his mouth with the back of his forearm. “She’s miserable. And considerin’ the timeline, I’d wager it’s because she’s without you.”

Simon’s heart—though had fallen from his chest months ago—sinks lower into his gut. 

“Look, I didn' believe it was that deep,” Johnny continues. “Figured you were jus’ messin’ around. Being stupid and disrespectful with my baby sister. But I cannot have her miserable, Ghost. It won’t do.” He looks at Simon and releases a long sigh. “She loves you. I don’ like it but she does, and you need to make it better.”

“What exactly are you askin’ of me?”

Johnny’s eyes land back on the empty glass. He plants his elbows on the counter and rubs his fingers across his forehead, kneading the wrinkles. “Just…go to her, alright?”

That snaps Simon out of his grumbly attitude. “You serious?”

“Unfortunately,” Johnny says. 

Simon practically leaps out of his seat, nearly knocking the stool to the floor as he shrugs on his jacket. He’s almost at the door, but then he stops. Taking a breath, he turns back to his old friend. “Will you be able to handle this?” Simon asks. “Me and her? Because you can't ask me to let her go, Johnny. Not twice.”

Johnny takes a second, then he gives a brief nod. “I’ll adjust. Somehow. With time; lots of time.”

It isn't much reassurance, but it's enough for Simon to be on his way. He rushes out the door, jumps into his truck, and races down the road. He forgets the seatbelt. Ignores the speed limit signs. You don’t live far, and you’re worth the risk if it means getting to you faster. 

He knows the elevator in your building is much too slow because he’s been in it a hundred times. He has made out with you in it; fucked you in it, slamming the emergency button so no one could interrupt on the nights you couldn’t wait to get to your bedroom. So he takes the stairs. Two at a time, up eight flights, and down the hall. With a heaving chest, he bangs on your door. 

“Love, open up!” He knocks harder. Loud enough to make your neighbor pop her head into the hall to understand the ruckus. 

“Oh, wonderful. You've returned,” the old woman huffs. “And just when I was starting to believe I’d never again have to endure listening to that moaning and groaning at all hours.”

“We talked ‘bout this back in June, Mrs. Brimsby. Get yourself some earplugs,” Simon retorts before calling for you again. “Baby, please, it‘s me!”

“I’ll report the two of you for the noise.”

“You probably should. You’re in for a long night.” He hears a scoff but doesn’t bother to glance in the direction it comes from. 

“Still so disrespectful,” she spits before slamming the door to her apartment. 

Simon has held a low level of hatred for the old bat since the morning after the first time you’d slept together. It was an early Sunday full of soft touches and kisses and tea to nurse the mild hangovers you’d both had because of a couple of drinks the night before—the drinks that allowed the two of you to finally surrender to the sexual tension. After kissing you goodbye, he’d stepped out of your apartment with a smile he hadn't donned in quite some time, only to have it wiped away from the unexpected grandma in a collared nightgown tapping her foot as she stroked the fur of the cat in her arms. 

“You kept us up all night,” she had scolded. “We need our sleep.” The cat then hissed for emphasis. 

Now, Simon has never been so happy to have that woman blathering in his ear. She reminds him of home, because home is with you and this is where you are. Getting yelled at shoots him into the memories of the time you spent together all those months ago. The stupidly high levels of bliss that, based on the trajectory of his life at the time, he’d assumed was more of a myth than anything. But you had made it real. You had soothed the pain. You were the patch on his wounds; the brightest spot in his life which dimmed the trauma and horrors. 

He’s so lost in those thoughts that he doesn’t immediately notice when his banging fist plummets through the air.

“Si?”

At your voice, Simon’s mind instantly clears. His eyes meet yours.

“Fucking finally,” he mutters, not letting a beat go by before he’s bending at the knees, wrapping his arms around your waist, and lifting you up. Instinctually, your arms snake around his neck, your legs circle his hips, and he feels his cock begin to swell from the reminder of how natural that action is for you. How right it is that you fit together like lock and key. 

Many questions are brewing in your eyes, but you don’t ask them. You kiss him instead, hard and thoroughly as he carries you into your apartment and kicks the door closed behind him. When he sits you atop your kitchen counter and settles himself between your spread legs, his hands go everywhere; under your sleep shirt, up the curves of your body to squeeze your breasts then back down to your hips. His palms slide around to your ass and jerk you closer so the center of those thin little shorts is pressed against the mound protruding from his jeans. 

Buttons scatter across the tile from his impatience, unwilling to delicately undo each tiny closure of your shirt. Your fingers trickle lower on his body to the belt buckle you quickly undo and the zipper you harshly yank down. He’s about to tell you to lift your hips, but you do so without his command, shimmying out of your shorts, and Simon takes the chance to do the same, pushing his pants just below his ass. He springs free, the heavy column of flesh landing at your navel. 

Leaning back, you guide his cock through the slickness of puffy lips into your tight, clenching walls. It sucks the air from his lungs. His head falls to your shoulder as you both try to breathe at a steady pace. His hands brace on the counter on either side of your body, nails digging into the granite. Home.

“Simon…baby, you have to move,” you pant. “I c-can’t take it.”

“I’ve got you,” he whispers in your ear before lifting his head and placing a quick peck on your mouth. Shifting his hips, he pulls out and then slowly eases himself back inside of you. His groan drowns out the sweet song of your moan. “I’ve got you, love.”

—

“Your neighbor still hates us, jus’ so you know,” Simon says as he slides under the sheets. Were he not so exhausted, he’d chuckle at the idea of being beside you in your bed and not immediately trying to fuck you, but after the kitchen counter, then the couch, then the living room floor, you’re both worn out and in need of a good night's sleep. “Probably more now than she did before.”

Normally, you would have found his words amusing, but you remain silent on your back, staring straight up at the ceiling. Simon raises a brow and flips onto his side. Then he sees the tear slip from the corner of your eye down to your ear. 

“What're you thinkin' about, love?” he asks as he places his hand on your cheek and turns your face toward his. 

“I'm scared,” you tell him. “I've missed you so much, but the second you leave, everything will go back to how it was without you. That broke me the first time, Si. How do I go through it all over again?”

His eyes pinch tight and he sighs in shame. He should have told you. It should have been the first thing out of his mouth, but then he saw you and he needed you and that was all that mattered in the moment. “Baby,” he begins, brushing the hair back from your face. “I'm not leaving you, and we are not goin’ back to that, ok?”

“But Johnny—”

“We don't need to worry about Johnny.”

Your eyes widen. “What? Why not?”

“Because, love,” Simon says, his hand finding the middle of your back and snuggling you into his chest, “Johnny sent me.”

@universitypenguin @ghostslittlegf

[titleleaf]

so many words about historical men's corsetry

(This got way too long to send via Discord -- Dangimace in the Renegade Bindery server asked about men's corset sewing/resource recs so here is my half-assed and non-exhaustive rundown. Most of my historical sewing is focused on fashions of the UK, US, and Europe for the second half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century, so that bias is reflected here; also disclaimer overall that "menswear"/"womenswear" are socially constructed categories and real people's bodies have always looked a wider variety of ways than fashion and other social forces would dictate. I sew historical garments with enthusiastic disregard for the historical gender binary and I'm barrel-chested, thick-waisted, and narrow-hipped no matter what I'm wearing.)

Onward, lads!

Ok wrt men's corsetry: there's a whole lot of fogginess around how historical men's corsets were constructed for a bunch of annoying reasons but that means there's lots of possibilities to explore in pattern drafting and project planning. Stays and other stiffened body-shaping garments have a whole complex conceptual relationship to the body basically as soon as they start appearing. 16th and 17th century garments do a whole lot of shaping (both compressing and building up) for men and women alike, but things really kick off in the 18th century in terms of the symbolic weight placed on stays and (later) corsets. Whole lot of stuff about gender, social class, race, fatness, morality, etc. getting projected onto these garments. So I'm a little leery about people taking obviously satirical illustrations of fashion-victim dandies or Gross Corpulent Libertines getting laced into corsets as truthful and indicative of the way men were really dressing -- scurrilous gossip and exaggeration are both a pain to sift through if we want to know which men wore corsets, what kind, and why.

In the very late 18th/early 19th century corsets were part of the repertoire for achieving highly fashionable shapes in menswear. (Along with a whole lot of padding.) They weren't mandatory for all dudes, but for fashion-forward dandies and equally fashion-forward military men, male corsets/stays were definitely a thing. The whole Romantic-era pigeon-breasted, narrow-waisted silhouette can be emulated by shapewear worn beneath the clothes, pads in the garments themselves, or both; in addition to waist reduction it helped to maintain smooth visual lines underneath close-fitting garments.

(look at these minxy 1830s dudes and their tiny waists)

As the century goes on the desired menswear silhouette becomes boxier and less fitted, and male corsetry recedes into the background; we start to see patents and advertisements for men's corsetry, so they still seem to have been worn, but there's a lot more language around vigorous manly athleticism and supporting the structures of the body. It can be hard to tell whether a particular piece is intended to be worn primarily for some medical purpose or for its perceived aesthetic benefits. This is giving me such flashbacks to trying to find post-surgical compression garments.

(Side note: there's also a vigorous tradition of fetishist writing about corsetry all through the 19th century, in fairly mainstream channels, which is fascinating. Due to the relatively private and deeply horny nature of fetish tightlacing we don't necessarily know as much about what those same letter-writers may have "really" worn at home, but I hope they were having fun.)

I've seen very few specifically men's corsetry patterns from historical pattern-makers-- not even really big names like Redthreaded. I sewed my 19thc menswear corsets from the men's underbust pattern in Laughing Moon Mercantile #113 which afaik is speculative rather than reproducing a specific historical garment, but it's not too different from the women's late-19th-century underbust patterns in the same pattern pack.

(image credit: LMM)

However, a lot of underbust and waist-cincher patterns from more general historical patternmakers could be made suitable with some minor alterations. Here I'd also rec books like Jill Salen's Corsets: Historical Patterns And Techniques and Norah Waugh's Corsets & Crinolines, though their focus is definitely on womenswear and you need to be relatively comfortable scaling up or drafting from pattern diagrams.

The structural features and desired results for a man's corset are pretty much the same as any other corset (back support, compression in some areas, etc.) even when the desired silhouette is different; commercially-created patterns are drafted with the expectation of certain bodily proportions so like with all corset-sewing it's important to make a mockup for fitting purposes. (I ended up liking one of my mockups so much I finished the process and made it a whole separate corset.) I don't know much about this area but I seem to see a lot more belt-and-buckle closures and criss-crossing straps in corsets designated as being for men -- this might be a byproduct of gendered differences in how people got dressed, but it might be nothing.

There's some weird and wonderful historical examples, both extant and in images -- I appreciated this post at Matsuzake Sewing, "A Brief Discussion Of Men's Stays", and its accompanying roundup of images on Pinterest though the tone wrt historical fetishwear corsets in the blog post is a little snippy. I really want to make a replica of Thomas Chew's 1810s corset (which you can read more about here at the USS Constitution Museum) but it incorporates stretch panels made with a shitload of metal springs and I'm not ready for all the trial and error trying to replicate that.

(image credit: USS Constitution Museum Collections)

There's a pretty rich vein of modern men's corset patterns which seem like they could be easily pattern-hacked for historical costuming purposes, like these with shoulder straps from Corsets By Caroline or DrobeStoreUpcycling's waist cincher which also looks like it could be altered pretty easily to cinch with straps and buckles like some 19thc men's corsetry does. This pattern for a boned chest binder in vest form by KennaSewLastCentury is also really cool but I didn't get a chance to sew it pre-top-surgery. (I think I've also seen someone who made a chest-compressing variation on Regency short stays, but I can't find it now.) 

In general a lot of underbust and waist-cincher patterns should work just fine for silhouette-shaping without much bust/hip emphasis -- my usual resource for free corset patterns (Aranea Black) recently took down all her free patterns but they're definitely still circulating out there. For general fashion purposes the sky is the limit and there are a lot of enthusiastic dudes in corsets out there. This Lucy Corsetry round-up shows a variety of modern corsetiers'  styles designated as being for men or more masculine silhouettes (including a SUPER aspirational brocaded corset with matching waistcoat made by Heavenly Corsets that I'd love to sew a historical spin on) and you can see some commonalities and possibilities for body-shaping.

I can also give some more general corset-sewing resources but I'm very much in the learning process here and I'd love any recs or input from people more experienced in pattern-drafting and corset-sewing.

[doomsdayoption]

Ok I normally don't go this type of analysis when it comes to movies because hey, this is Tumblr, surely someone must have already talked about it.

But so far, I haven't seen one and I say ONE person on this hellsite mention what is arguably one of the most significant pieces of symbolism in Goncharov (1973).

In the Kitchen Scene, when Katya and Goncharov are talking, she is wearing an alexandrite ring. I'm not good at GIFs and, besides, she moves a lot in the scene so it's not really easy to spot it, but man, let me tell ya.

Alexandrite is a relatively new kind of gemstone, discovered in Russia in the 1830s. One of the most magnificent properties of this gemstone is the fact that it literally changes colours. Though it's normally a deep blue/green hue, when a light shines on it, it changes to red and purple. You can never really tell its true colours, just like it's not easy to tell the main characters' true colours.

And what's more (here I gotta give credit to Cybill, don't know how many times they had to do that scene in order to get it right, but I can only imagine it was A LOT), if you pay attention to it you'll notice that she gestures with the hand that has the ring on it based on who she's talking about.

When she talks directly to Goncharov, her hand is pretty still, so the ring almost never changes its colours, perhaps symbolising the fact that Goncharov himself is trapped in a situation where he cannot be allowed to change. Same with Mario and Ice Pick Joe, who throughout the movie are both seen as characters that have been deprived of a choice to make. When she talks about Sofia and Andrey (yep, I know she doesn't say much about either of them in that scene in particular, but hey, I'm here to overanalyze and I'll overvanalyze crumbs if I have to), however, she gestures widely with her ring hand. Though she's only mentioning them briefly, and in a discussion where they are very marginal, there is a passion in her gestures you don't see expressed by almost anyone else in the movie. Though technically they are as "trapped" as anyone else, both Andrey and Sofia represent that glimmer of hope and light in Goncharov and Katya's lives respectively. They are the freedom, the changing colours of the alexandrite. They represent the potential of what Katya and Goncharov could, but are never really bound to be.

[marzipanandminutiae]

The thing a lot of people miss when they attempt to talk about some sort of “tuberculosis chic“ trend in the 19th century (an idea I take issue with primarily because I feel it’s kind of backwards – beauty standards that ALREADY EXISTED led to the romanticization of tuberculosis; TB did not create new beauty standards) is that… It applied to men, too

That is to say, especially during the Romantic era of literature in the 1830s – 50s, many men also went for the pale, languid, artistic affect

(Also a lot of male cultural commentators condemned women who tried to adopt this look, Announcing that being hearty and rosy was much more attractive. Obviously, men have always been in the habit of giving with one hand while taking away with another as far as women’s fashion, and this is the same generation that gave us both denouncements of corsets as a cause of cancer AND tightlacing porn in magazines. So I’m not saying that was a universal sentiment, but it’s a factor very few people bring up when trying to make a case for intentionally consumptive appearances)

(honestly, the few descriptions I’ve actually found in period Sources of folks intentionally trying to look pallid and sickly seem to almost be describing a sort of Proto-Goth. Someone who reads too many Romantic novels or too much Byron, and attempts– to the disdain of the author, usually –to emulate those tragic heroes or heroines)

(I read one 1882 source that basically said “some girls when I was young tried so hard to look like they had tuberculosis that they actually got tuberculosis! Check and mate, Romantic novels!“ which is definitely how illnesses work; good job Augustine Challamel)

Which is to say: talk about the Georgian/Victorian ladies who (as Hot Topic did once say) dug scrawny pale guys, and the guys who dug being pale and scrawny, you cowards

[autumngracy]

Hi, just a random question from a fan of AROS (for which I have no coherent words to decribe my admiration)- I'm sure you've been asked this a million times already, but I'm quite new to this fandom, so forgive me and feel free to ignore the question, of course- who did you base your Javert on, appearance-wise?

Actually I don't think anyone directly asked this before!

To be honest I didn't actually base him on anything or anyone in particular ... I think the reason for this is because I read the brick before ever seeing any adaptations of Les Mis, so the first Javert I pictured was just my own interpretation of him from the brick ...

And what's funny is I can't remember if I originally pictured him with short hair or long hair. I read the 1938 Heritage Press edition of the brick, which is the Wraxall translation + about 1500 Lynd Ward illustrations, and in those illustrations he has short hair. But, oddly, I didn't remember it as being short in those illustrations? I had to go back and look years layer to confirm. (Alas, my beautiful Heritage Press copy is lost somewhere now!)

So I don't know if the long hair thing was me originally picturing it that way despite the illustrations being otherwise (possibly because the illustrative style made it somewhat vague at first?), or if it was from me later getting brainrot from looking at all the post Terrance Mann Javert designs ...

Best I can say about the hair issue is, well ... I just really happen to like male characters with long hair ... idk why lol. I have a lot of male OCs with long hair and every time I make one, part of my brain goes "Another one? For real? Do we not have enough of these little bitches already? If you don't stop putting long hair on all these characters people are gonna start to think you have some kind of kink."

Which. Well. I'm actually asexual so idk lol I think it's just an aesthetic preference

ANYWAY

For his wardrobe, that's just the brick descriptions plus factual research into 1830's era menswear. The only anachronistic element of his appearance really is his hair, but I do get around that by pointing out that he could have simply picked the (older and naval oriented) style up while he was at the Bagne (which did in fact have a dress mandate for keeping long hair tied up, suggesting it was a common enough hairstyle among the guards) and just never dropped it even after it became unfashionable—because A) he doesn't seem to give two shits about being fashionable, B) keeping short hair means either spending money to keep it short or having an intimate enough relationship with someone that they will do it for you free—neither of which I can see him wanting to do—and also C) he appears to be a creature of habit, so keeping the same, easily self-maintained hairstyle over the years fits my understanding of him.

Also, I'm not even exaggerating his tools of the trade because there really is a line in the brick about him having some kind of sword, which I had to go back and reread several times because it surprised even me (but it's 3am and I'm too assed to look it up rn). And we already know he has 2 pistols and a bludgeon (which the brick says he holds tucked up invisibly in his sleeve, Assassin's Creed style, lmao).

On another subject—

Given his stiff and distanced way of interacting with the world, questionable of social skills (see him bluescreening when Fantine is pleading with him in the mairie by way of what may be thinly veiled sexual advances), as well as his black and white thinking, penchant for being distracted by his thoughts to the point of complete obliviouness, propensity to either give extremely short responses or to go into ranting monologues, with little in between—plus the idea that he hates reading but makes himself do it for self improvement reasons, and how he seems to start stimming when lost in thought—I could definitely see him possibly being Autistic or having ADHD.

Now then, about his race ...

I know originally I actually pictured him differently than the Javert I wrote for my fic—as more white, at least—the way he appeared in the Lynd Ward until I read people discussing how he was probably supposed to be part Romani. And when it came to me having to pick conclusive character designs for my fic, I thought it would be much more interesting if it was a Javert who was visibly Romani instead of white passing, which he seems to be in most everything that bothers to mention his background.

I do find it weird that he's seemingly been played by nothing but white guys except for Norm Lewis and David Oyelowo (that I can find). So there's never really been a Romani Javert in stage or screen adaptations ... However, there's still a decent amount of fanart that shows him as darker skinned/Romani, so at least there's that.

Anyway I find that a visibly non white Javert just adds a lot more nuance and depth to his character, even compared to a still Romani but white passing version of him. Because then it changes how he interacts with and views the world (and vice versa), and it changes or adds to his motivations for doing what he does. It brings his (very canon!) struggle with internal racism to the forefront, which a lot of adaptations downplay or completely ignore.

I think part of why this appeals to me is that in modern times we are very used to the idea of the shitty oppressive white cop who is approaching everything from a position of absolute privilege and authority (which is a very shallow and uninteresting archetype, character-wise) ... and brick canon Javert, regardless of whether or not he is white passing, is not coming from a position of privilege—and not just because he is poor. He is coming from a position of social insecurity and vulnerability, which (at least it seems to me) he is trying desperately to escape/overcome.

And this makes his motivations for choosing his specific job far more interesting than "shitty white cop that enforces the status quo because he gets off on exerting power over other people". It suggests a sort of willful mental dissonance and denial that also make a lot of sense in hindsight when we consider the effects of his derailment.

The idea of him snapping and realizing for the first time that most everything he was doing was morally corrupt (or at least highly questionable) is one thing (and a level of obliviousness/ignorance that is somewhat hard to believe, imo) ...

But the idea that he knew how morally reprehensible his actions were all along, and was repressing it on purpose? To gain the only foothold he could see on the ladder of a world he was born on the lowest rung of? And after decades, is forced by external factors to finally, finally look his decisions in the eye and confront himself about them?

Well, shit. That hits a lot harder, doesn't it?

And it certainly hits him pretty hard. Obviously (as I pointed out in the the fic) he did mentally store away notes of things he found morally questionable about/during his career over the years—he just didn't let himself act on them. But it implies he was aware of the injustices, even if he only relegated that awareness to his subconscious.

The brick talks about how he felt he existed outside of society and had only two choices in life—black and white thinking; criminal vs protector, etc.—and it spells out how this is pretty much the direct result of his internalized rascism—so, I mean ... I don't think it's unlikely that canon Javert knew from the beginning that he was sacrificing his his heritage, culture, and moral compass in pursuit of respect and recognition from society (and thereby, social safety).

And in a Post-Seine world, he's forced to reconcile with all of that.

I may have just spoiled a major upcoming plot point for AROS tbh but oh well I was dropping breadcrumbs of foreshadowing about it the entire goddamn time lmao

[melpomeneprose]

// few thoughts, just…

For @betterto-die-thanto-crawl & @songandflame ❤️ (mostly)…

Les Mis changes/improvements (North American tour April 21, 2024 ~ Toronto)

In the prologue, they extensively play out and highlight Jean aka Madeline getting thrown out and the priests kindness changing him, if you know the book… a lot of time is spent on the priest, the radical conventionist and Jean the every man.

In “Lovely ladies” it is sung largely by the same people however the presence of an obvious pimp coercing the women (not just Fantine) changes the context to fit the novel context I would observe better.

“Don’t make it a change to have a girl who can’t refuse” sung by all women in Lovely ladies whilst the pimp remains silent and benefits from them and Fantine is silent on the floor robbed her voice.

Young! Cossette and Young! Eponine are understudied by the same young person (as though I can’t reiterate their similarities and differences enough).

Doll scene happens (everyone cheered!)

Cosette is blonde haired and white (per most casting of the show and contrary to her medium brown hair in the book juxtaposed by Fantine being blonde).

Fantine and Eponine were both played brilliantly by mixed black women (so potential commentary on exploitation of black bodies and for Eponine colourism as she’s not considered “good enough” or “pretty” in the novel cause malnutrition and abuse etc here it can be read as colourism bonus points cause black people have been in France since the 17th century).

Eponine extra song that sounds (to me) like pining - she briefly highlights their similarities and differences and longs to be acquainted again as she feels remorse for her mothers actions and longs to be supportive of Cossette (did I mention I love Eponine?)

Enj being a flirt with girls of the Les Amis de ABC (all the bis cheered!)

Drink with me - Grantaire and Enj nearly kiss - Enj starts it!

Empty chairs takes place in something like the 1830s equivalent of a catacomb (ouchie).

The ending is functionally the same, but not, they break then 4th wall in the finale calling back to “do you hear the people sing?” And “one day more” asking quite bluntly the audience to consider what they’ve learned and to join them (the Amis de ABC) in improving the world despite or perhaps because sacrificing everything for a better tomorrow cause in empty chairs “but tomorrow never came.”

[e-b-reads]

Books of the month: March + April 2023

Failed to do any post like this for March, so now I am catching up all at once! For new followers/those who do not know, I am both a part-time PhD student and work at a summer camp (which is a retreat center in the off-season, but summer is the really busy time of year). Anyway, between the end of the semester and getting prepped for camp, the busy season has started earlier for me than usual. Doesn't mean I'm not reading! Just means I'm posting less about it. Here's books I read in March and April that I would recommend:

The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud): Had one of those impulses to use inter-library loan and reread a series I last read sometime in middle or high school. This time it's the Bartimaeus triology. (I also reread The Golem's Eye in the past two months; waiting on the third.) Anyway, I remember the books as engaging and funny, which they are; this time around I'm spending more time thinking about all the political and ethical questions raised by this fantasy society that's like our world except magicians rule everything. (i.e. I'm spending more time admiring Stroud's worldbuilding.) A series worth reading/rereading!

The Best American Mystery Stories 2020 (C.J. Box, Ed.): These were fun and fascinating, sometimes at the same time and sometimes by turns. When busy, it can be nice to have some short stories to dip into, and I always like mysteries. I especially spent time considering what exactly makes a "mystery" - some of these are more whodunnits (occasionally with a twist), others are mysterious but the reader knows what happened, others have crime and/or action but no one's solving anything. All good in different ways!

A Free Man of Color or One Extra Corpse (Barbara Hambly): Right, so I have already written about my love of the Benjamin January mystery series at least in passing. A Free Man of Color is the first in that series: 1830s New Orleans, very focused on the slave/free colored (the term at the time) community, murder mystery. I keep hesitating to recommend the series outright because it is 19 books long and, at this point, full of my blorbos, so I'm not sure I'm totally objective about it. However! One Extra Corpse is the second in a new historical murder mystery series by the same author, this one set in inter-war Hollywood but with a transplanted English protagonist. Reading this one, full of likeable characters but not the ones I feel unreasonably affectionate about, I realized: actually, I do think that Hambly's attention to historical detail, flawed but human characters, sense of humor, detail-driven mystery plots, etc., make for good books. So I do recommend either of these mystery series to anyone who likes that kind of thing! They are not flawless, but they are lots of fun.

[blazevillains]

Yo yo yo could you tell me more about regency era dresses?? 👀 they sound sick

ok so i dont know like a whole ton abt how they were really constructed. but i do think theyre pretty. so

anddd like this may not be super accurate AGAIN just stuff ive picked up ^_^

uh uh cut this might get long. and unorganized.

obvs the most notable factor is the empire waist that sat right below the bust. bc of this most women wore short stays (there was also long stays, usually for chubbier women), kind of a more relaxed kind of corset that only really goes to well a bit under ur bust. ive heard them described as super comfortable. Anyways

the backs of dresses were sometimes buttoned or closed with clasps or tied. theres this image that really shows the kind of pattern i described earlier with the sort of diamond panel

obvs its not the same for all dresses, just a pattern i noticed while i was thinking of drafting up my own regency dress pattern lol

there was also these other types of dress that i cant find a reference of right now, but its kind of like an apron. you'd put the dress on. like an apron. and flap a part up on the chest and then Boom . apron dress. sorry bad description here is image

ANYWAYS !!!!! ok SO like if youre looking late regency, youll notice that the waistline starts to get more cinched and goes down towards the natural waist a bit, and thats bc we r going into the romantic era!!! 1830S CRAZY FREAKING HAIRSTYLES. thats all ill say

oh another type that looks like an apron is well. i dont know how to describe. so look.

sometimes, like on the right, its more of a vest and then skirt that comes down open like a robe at the skirt. sometimes the full chest is covered like on the right. if that makes sense.

I believe day dress was a lot more covering, whereas nightime was a lot less. In the day ladies would wear bonnets, less fancy dresses, sometimes spencer jackets as well. i freaking love spencer jacketsssss look look look

A lot of regency ballgowns had pretty overlays as well, maybe just a BIT more . extravagent .yeag

here is one of my fav plates illustrating that

no bonnets at night either, and long almost elbow length gloves

Overall the idea was Light and Flowy and Airy. i believe the fashion in this era was meant to emulate that of the ancient greeks, and you can see inspiration of that in the hair as well

oh and ! a lot of the times ladies would have shawls ^_^

AND FINALLY.

MY FAVORITE PART. COURT DRESS .

See the waistline being high was fashionable at the time, but like. there were still like. idk if it was panniers but i think it was. and the ladies still had to wear those so

yeah.uh

well anyways it was custom for court ladies to come with gold in their dresses and white feathers in their hair ^__^ so

i didnt really go in2 bonnets . 2 spare u. ur welcome

anyways heres some regency dresses i just like ^__^

[eurydicees]

Birthday asks: music rec or Wikipedia dive on Victorian era automata!

hello hello!! under the cut bc boy did this get out of hand :P

1. craving a music rec?

currently listening to my brain itch playlist, here are some of the recent spotify shuffle choices: 

new person, same old mistakes (tame impala) 

bridges (BROODS)

king (years & years) 

holy (zolita) 

4. let me teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about a topic i learned about from 10 minutes of wikipedia articles alone (ask about a topic or i’ll choose one)

ok SO. prior to this ask i knew nothing about victorian era automata. but let’s dive the fuck in. this stuff is so cool holy shit i’m PUMPED. 

so real quick let’s get some definitions. “automata” is just a self-operating machine, also known as an automaton (more common word). it’s generally associated with a machines that give off the impression that they operate via their own power (the electronic version would be animatronics, like you might see in it’s a small world or other similar rollercoaster rides).

aaaand i started reading the mathematical definitions and got overwhelmed so we’re gonna skip that bit. 

the victorian era (~1830s – 1900) is fun because this is where we start to get “modern” (as in, things start to get popularized and become cultural staples). looking at the first few decades of the victorian era, we got some fun inventors like innocenzo manzetti doing stuff like this: 

which would play music! which, honestly? insane. what the fuck. it could do 12 different songs, bow, stand up, and roll its eyes (why that was a necessary function i don’t know but it’s kinda hilarious). this is the same guy that built the first zamboni, which is not relevant but is kinda cool anyways. 

another guy who was building stuff was this french illusionist/magician/watchmaker/inventor, jean-eugène robert-houdin. he was the guy who made magician stuff entertainment for the rich rather than for the lower classes because he did his shows in a theatre in paris rather than at fairs. this man is not to be confused with harry houdini, whose name is in honor of jean-eugène robert-houdin. 

but i digress. he’s credited with the mystery clock, which is fun! he also built mechanical figurines like a singing bird and a dancer on a tightrope. he used his automata in his stage shows (for magic stuff, i guess? idk.) his biggest thing is an automaton that can write and draw, which he sold to p.t. barnum, who you may know from the greatest showman as the circus guy. 

ok so let’s fast forward to 1860s, which is considered the “golden age of automata.” as far as i can tell, this is in part because it becomes (a) popular and (b) production and exports go through the roof. this is super cool because a lot of them are from family based companies in small workshops rather than, like, a factory and sweatshop kind of situation. today, all this stuff is super rare/expensive, which sucks, but back then, these companies were thriving. this is particularly strong in the oh so lovely paris. common products are clockwork-based automata and mechanical singing birds! 

major manufacturers included roullet & decamps, a french company in the 19th-20th c. that went rip in 1995, and blaise bontems, who was a parisian and specialized in automata with really realistic birdsong. bontems’ singing bird boxes were exhibited in the london exhibition and the birds were supposedly life size and in cages, and it is genuinely tragic that there are no drawings included of them. they sound so cool. here’s what the singing boxes looked like, though: 

and here’s an actual photo: 

^^this one’s from 1890. i’m obsessed. god… the things i would give to have one of these……… 

anyways, the drawings are from a catalog from 1910, so a little past the victorian era. let’s rewind a bit. other big victorian automata projects were fortune tellers! they became accessible on boardwalks in britain and the USA, and were coin operated. wind up toys were also made in mass, and european creators started making them out of tin in the 1880s. once the alkaline battery became popular in the 60s, wind up toys and what not kinda died out. f in the chat tbh. 

a lot of this stuff is currently being collected in museums! for example, there’s the musée d'automates et de boîtes à musique in switzerland, which specializes in musical boxes. there’s also the cuckooland museum in the UK, which has more than 700 cuckoo clocks. 

overall, very cool topic. 10/10. i feel like i learned an appropriate amount of useless information. thank you very very much <3 

the wikipedia pages i looked at: 

automatons

innocenzo manzetti  

roullet & decamps

blaise bontems

singing bird box

wind up toy

jean-eugène robert-houdin

[polizwrites]

Questions for fic writers: all the numbers that end with zero and five ;)

Ambitious, aren't you? OK - here goes!

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

Struggling with this one - I don't know what I'd want someone to ask about any of my fics, off the top of my head - sorry!

10. How do you decide what to write?

That's one of the reasons I sign up for so many bingos - plenty of inspiration! Songs can be an inspiration, same with fanart. More or less whatever catches my fancy at a given moment! 😉

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written?

Oh - this is tough! If we're going with an AU with lots of worldbuilding- probably my MCU/Temeraire fusion platonic Stony longfic Home of the Brave - aka '1830's America with dragons'. If we're going more modern/no powers AU, I have a huge soft spot for my college/road trip WinterIron fic So Open Up, I'm Climbin' In

20. If you wrote a prequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

Again - tough to answer this without having a specific fic in mind. 🤷‍♀️

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?

I use the MCU Wiki quite a bit for my canon-compliant/adjacent fics; otherwise Wikipedia or a general search for whatever factual tidbit I want to include.

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

The first smutfic I wrote (Natasha/Steve) was out of my comfort zone at the time, but I've obviously gotten a bit more comfortable with it. 😁

35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life?

You mean besides the whole superhero thing? 😉 Well, most of my fics are set in either New York City or Southern California, and I live pretty much right inbetween the two in a small college town.

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

I comfort re-read fics - both from my favorite authors and my own stuff. I can't tell you how many times I've clicked the Kudos button only to be told I've already left kudos!

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

Probably my comfort level overall with the process; that and finding my own voice.

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!

Little did I know that back in 2015 that when I wrote down a little story based on a dream I had that I’d end up spending so much of my time thinking about these characters - but I certainly don’t regret it!  

Thanks so much for the ask!!   If anyone else wants to play along:   Questions for Fic Writers

[titleleaf]

Experiments In Early Victorian Skincare: Unguentum Resinosum

(Note: since Tumblr seems to be making text posts deliberately inaccessible to anyone not logged into a Tumblr account, I'm still crossposting these posts to the Gallipot Project stand-alone blog over on Wordpress.)

This element of the project I stumbled upon while reading about Royal Navy medicine chests — even in all the excitement and anxiety of the recovery of Erebus and Terror, with plenty of discussion of the potential to glean information from what the crew left behind, it slipped my mind that among the relics recovered from the final Franklin expedition there might be actual medicaments (or at least their residues) left behind. My brain is a thick sludge right now due to a spicy range of events, but I wanted to give a little more detail about this chapter in my experiments.

Unguents Of Historical Significance

The original item that served as the springboard for this was a component of the Victory Point medicine chest recovered by Lt. William Hobson with the McClintock expedition of 1857. The medicine chest and its contents are now in the Royal Museums Greenwich collection. For more on the chest, I recommend this series of posts by S.L. over at 70 North Beset, which includes a wonderful guide to the chest’s cryptically-labeled contents and their uses.

The item we're discussing is by all appearances mislabeled, or rather stored in a repurposed container with a label indicating its previous contents. (If you've ever kept Band-Aids in an Altoids tin or safety pins in a medicine bottle, you're carrying on a proud tradition.) There's no image of the container by itself on the RMG's website, but I believe it's the round black container with the octagonal paper label on the bottom left here, just above the sticking-plaster box.

Image © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

(so what the fuck is that supposed to be?)

Franklin expedition research frequent-flier Richard J. Cyriax’s “A Historic Medicine Chest”, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 1947, describes the box and its contents as follows:

a circular metal box said on a label to contain ground ginger but actually containing what seems to be an ointment, now dried up almost into a ball. McClintock’s inventory mentions a box containing shrunk ointment, and no other article in the chest agrees with his description. The ointment is of a light yellow colour and possesses no definite odour; it may be “unguentum resinae”, which was very often used in surgical practice.

Okay, great, but wtf is unguentum resinae? I took this recipe from the 1830 Edinburgh New Dispensatory, compiled by Andrew Duncan, professor of materia medica at the University of Edinburgh.

Presto, salve plus resin.

So yeah, there are a lot of different salves in play in this era, some of them damn close in formulation. As much as I like making funky little unguents, making a full slate of these recipes might be overkill. This same text contains a whole mess of recipes for other liniments, ointments, cerates, and plasters, including a half-dozen variations on the theme of “some proportion of some kind of fat + some proportion of wax, white or yellow”. Duncan’s description continues on the next page:

THESE [presumably meaning the preceding recipes], which are varieties of the basilicon ointment, are commonly employed in dressings for digesting, cleansing, and incarnating wounds and ulcers.

(Basilicon ointments supposedly achieved this effect by, uh, causing pus production. Thanks, I hate it.)

Side note: If a salve is oil-based, how can it dry up, like the sample in the ginger container? This is how my dumb ass learned that oils can indeed evaporate over time. Presumably the inclement weather conditions at Victory Point didn’t help, but it’d be an interesting experiment for a long-haul-minded Franklin enthusiast to keep a tin of this stuff around over the course of years to see how it responds.

What is this salve for? Why carry it all the way to Victory Point? Why abandon it there? Honestly, I find these questions pretty confounding, starting with the first — the use of unguentum resinae appears to have been so wide and unremarkable that I’m not getting a lot of detailed information about how they were meant to be applied, and the information I am getting is very much framed like you (the presumed-medically-trained reader) should know this shit already. The recovered medicine chest also contains a stockpile of materials used for bandaging and dressing wounds: bandages, lint, sticking plasters, and cotton wool. So wound care definitely seems like a focus of this set, and I’d wager this salve’s use fits right into that mix.  One interesting thing that both Cyriax and the writer over at 70 North Beset remark upon is that the Victory Point medicine chest is unlikely to have been a government article issued to the ships’ officially recognized medical personnel; even to my eye, it lacks any obvious broad-arrow branding. Was this some random officer’s personal supply? Was it carried to supplement official medicine chests or perhaps salvaged from a late officer’s belongings? I’m looking forward to more news from the wrecks to see if they shed any more light on the material culture of medicine aboard Erebus and Terror.

I encountered a source remarking that “unguentum resinae” was simply a drawing salve by another name — this assertion gave me pause since I’m used to “drawing salve” itself being another name for black salve, a whole category of corrosive salve used in bogus cancer cures that you should absolutely, absolutely not use on any part of your body. But drawing salves are a whole category of their own in folk medicine (including folk veterinary medicine) and were very much in use during the 19th century, without necessarily entailing the corrosive effect of sanguinarine and its eschariotic sisters.

In turn, what kind of salve did I make? I made two batches, one plant-based salve with more similarities to ceratum resinae, and one pork lard salve more closely replicating the Edinburgh formulation for unguentum resinae/resinosum. The recipe for either salve is pretty damn straightforward, so I didn’t feel driven to document all the double-boilering and pouring here; the only tricky element was sourcing my pine resin. Lots of people go out and wildcraft their own tree resins, which is fully possible but not something I have access to; I bought my resin from a Canadian retailer selling food-grade pine resin for wax wrap-making.

For my first non-lard rendition of this salve (sort of an “inspired by” version) I took cues regarding the proportions of liquid oil:butter:beeswax:resin from modern salving. Folk medicine practitioners still use similar pine resin salves as a topical treatment for minor wounds, an anti-inflammatory joint rub, or a reliever of chest congestion — it’s also a pretty basic emollient for dry skin and these are the uses I focus on when I make salves for myself/my loved ones, rather than dressing more serious wounds. If you tweak your ratios, you can also use the same basic elements to make reusable beeswax wraps for food storage; this is actually the stated purpose behind the pine rein I sourced, since I’d feel some qualms about using resin earmarked for specifically holistic purposes in my silly living history project.

For my second batch, I used the same resin and beeswax but paired them with a pork-derived lard. I put this round off at first due to hesitation around how to best source a non-hydrogenated rendered lard. Since concerns about shelf-stability were the motivation behind my first oil-based batch, I didn’t want to go about rendering my own pork fat au naturel or buy the $25/lb impossibly-bougie Epic lard aimed at keto/paleo people who have Whole Foods $$, but I also didn’t want to go with your Armour lard in a shelf-stable brick — I ended up tracking down a local butcher shop that renders their own.

Honestly this version came together even more smoothly than the previous version — I crushed my resin into smaller pieces rather than waiting for big old rocks to melt down, and the lard gave a more slick, less “tugging” consistency to the resulting balm. It doesn’t smell meaty or pork-like at all; there’s a faint odor of wood resin, but that’s it, and if I didn’t care for that it would be pretty easy to doctor up with essential oils. I will say that at room temperature the consistency seems a little firm for use in a plaster, but I might need to glob it on more generously and allow body heat to soften things up. A little bit of a raw deal for those dealing with polar weather extremes, but maybe unavoidable.

How would you make a natural preparation using approximately 1840s ingredients that remained soft and spreadable at colder temperatures? Honestly, I don’t know if this is something people planned for, since abandoning ship wasn’t anyone’s first choice, but it would have been relatively easy. Increasing the proportion of fats/oils to beeswax is one way to adapt any fat/wax recipe for colder weather use, but another option I can think of could be using fats/oils that solidify at lower temperature points. Some useful data there you probably know off the cuff — if you put olive oil in a cold fridge, it’ll solidify into a chunk; if you keep your coconut oil out at room temperature, you can tell the weather’s warming up when it goes fully liquid in the jar — but for better suggestions than that I had to resort to Modern Science.

I’m based in the US and use Fahrenheit most often but this is a pretty clear case where Celsius is superior. The Franklin expedition crews were dealing with outside temps of -40° and lower, and while interior temperatures (as long as the ships’ heating systems held out) weren’t nearly as nippy, they might well have been in the “your Costco coconut oil remains firm and opaque” range. If they wanted emulsified oil-based salves with maximum spreadability at ambient temperature, something runnier from the low end of the freeze/melt temp scale might have been handy.

[For a table listing different values here, head over to the blog!]

Not all of these are suitable for salvemaking (linseed oil, my old enemy) but castor oil is feasible, for instance. I might make up some compare-and-contrast salves to explore this but uhhhh not any time soon, because I already have so many fucking salves. The plant oil-based salves are up for sale on my Bigcartel site now -- would you be interested in buying a beef tallow-based salve? Speak up in the comments and let me know!

Overall I’m very pleased with the result of my salve-making, and the smaller or nonexistent amount of butter ingredients like cocoa butter should hopefully prevent the slight granularity that some of my other creations have developed in cooling. I like the tallow-based salve a little better and its emollient consistency is lovely.

How skin-safe is this product? The biggest issue is that pine resin is a well-known trigger for dermatological issues like contact dermatitis. If you know you’re allergic to it, please don’t make this recipe or buy salves containing it! You have way better options for wound care than a stranded Victorian sailor.

How vegan is this product? Well, not at all vegan, in either variation, due to the beeswax. I have gotten my hands on some vegan waxes, so sound off if you’d be interested in a purely plant-based version of this recipe too, or another exploration of Early Victorian receipts adapted to modern methods.

Meanwhile… I get to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of this lard.

[totheidiot]

🕰️: uhh i'm bad at thinking of specific questions but i'd love to hear more about this ^^ so you can just ramble if you want to lol

turn back the clocks !!! that little story is my child !!! you have unleashed the ramblingsss

so ! basic character ! there are only really two characters that actually have a presence throughout the novel, the rest are here for one part and then because of time travel, they never show up again.

it is dual pov, the characters are two siblings. the older one is a 15 year old boy named ernie solace, he is very quiet, studious, the loner type. very much has got anxiety. also is queer but it only exists as subtext because i wanted to experiment on characters whose orientations are never specified but you just know. the youngest sibling is 12 years old, her name is lizzie and she's the opposite of her brother. she is extremely loud and blunt, very kind but she can be a bit too flashy and a bit too much. they have very contrasting personalities, you see. a lot of the books revolves around them doing risky activities that might threaten their life. ernie is very cautious, they almost didn't go time travelling because he was not into the idea. lizzie, however, is all about the adventure, seize the day, never doubt yourself. a lot of her decisions do stem from her burning wish to be the same always, never grow up, never leave the present moment. so you can probably guess she is most open to time travelling.

the actual time travel thing. the first chapter of the novel, their uncle whom they have never seen before, he shows up. he is a scientist and at the end of his visit, he confesses that he is here for them. apparently, there was another obscure scientist in the 1830s who had found the answer of time traveling and had even done it himself, traveling to the past. but the thing is, he is trapped. he cannot return to his present time, he is stuck in the past forever. he did leave behind journals, which were found by the uncle and had given instructions on how to save him. but, it was very specific on who could save him.

I don’t know. I have taken steps, in case I fail to return back on my own, and I am positive that even if all fails, these tasks shall prove to be what I need to return home. I have been precise of what needs to be done and how exactly it shall be done, the only question is: who will do it for me? I do not hesitate to call myself a lonely man, it is only the truth. I have no one to do favours for me, I can only rely that someone discovers this journal and pities me enough to find me in some hidden corner in time. Well, Reader, if you are reading this, I do need help. What are the chances that you know of me or have some fondness for me to partake in these tasks for me? I do only wish to return back home, if you will allow me — It will be laborious and I think it can be done by only some. It is not to be done alone, a pair is necessary by all means. Two people, siblings or friends, two people who have trust in one another and it is characteristic for them to work together. Different mindsets perhaps, two people who think in different ways. It must be too much to ask but I want them with love. I want them to love, I think, if they love, they shall find these tasks only an adventure. Curious people, who will find more than the objects I tell them to find. Suffering should not be characteristic for this pair. In the end, I think the only thing I expect from them is hope. There are very few grown persons who match this description, only children have that hope and curiosity and love in their hearts. But I do not want to ask for much, I do not even expect for you to find this. But please, if I am gone or disappear, send someone to save me. Anyone.

the uncle thought lizzie and ernie seemed to match the descriptions, so he had asked them. eventually, they did agree though ernie challenged him. they are to travel through five periods and find five objects.

1884 - a single diamond earring that belonged to a girl named mariana.

1850 - california gold rush where they have to find a specific quantity of gold

1648 - a map of a sea voyage, acquired from a pirate ship

october 14, 1066 - battle of hastings, a cloth of linen dropped by a fallen soldier

something like 10 million bce? - a leaf and drops of dew, untouched by human beings.

the theory was that, if all these items scattered and found from different times were brought together, these could cause such an anachronism that it would revert all the changes that were done to by both the scientist and lizzie and ernie, placing all three of them in their actual present time. it doesn't work on the scientist's end, spoiler alert. yeah, he just realized something huge and opened something that was more huge. the second book is about that, basically.

the book is essentially about hope above all. hope that the scientist has for his life, hope that lizzie and ernie have to save him, hope matters in a personal and character-specific way too. lizzie's hope is that nothing really changes for her while ernie doesn't mind change but he just hopes that whatever comes, it's going to be okay. it plays around with sibling dynamics and that familial co-dependency. even their last name, solace, means comfort and hope.

thank you for that question !!!!! i loved answering that :)))

and give me more asks, everyone !!

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

I'm happy you like TTPD but god. It just can't be me.

It's not just the cringe lyrics it's just all of it's kinda bleh?

Its messy and nothing at the same time

But god the cringe lyrics are killing me its giving notes appbthe 1830s thing god nooooooooooo

I get where you're coming from but I definitely feel a kinship to the album that colors it differently. it does help that I don't need things to be good™ to consider them Good. I don't generally take critics or reviews into consideration when forming my opinions on art. I'm not saying you do that but I do think most people sense a cultural need for things to be good™ before they're allowed to like them.

the irony is that I do sort of agree with your criticisms of ttpd but I actually see them as merits (and maybe even intentional) so I am quite enjoying them. I really enjoy it when art makes me uncomfortable and this album did in many ways. it felt visceral and kind of ugly, in that way that the most hidden corners of our own selves are too.

and idk, I didn't find any lyrics particularly egregious tbh. she definitely has silly lines in all her works and they're usually pretty tongue in cheek. a lot of times I find that critiques of taylor's lyrics are often taken out of context. the 1830s line you mentioned, for example. to me that line isn't so much about taylor trying to seem progressive or "woke" but about that all too common feeling of making people uncomfortable by bringing in reality to a situation that is meant to be pretend.

I definitely appreciate you're willingness to have your own opinions even if they're not one's I agree with. I will say one final thing though, and this isn't necessarily directed at you but at people who have these and similar criticisms towards the album. you don't have to like it but if you don't, why don't you? I think that's always a good thing to ask yourself about art. it makes me feel so and so. great! but take it a step further and ask yourself why. "it makes me cringe." awesome! why? "it's messy!" you're not wrong. why does that bother you? art should always teach us more about ourselves than it does about the artist, imo and it's why I always keep coming back to taylor's music

[bogmommy]

I mean I am chronically online and it doesn't seem ironic too me

Like the 1830s thing is the exact kind of thoughtless attitude she has shown in the past (reminds me of the comments about capitalism in time's article, like so weirdly thoughtless)

And the tattooed golden retriever... again it's on brand for her. She says stupid stuff like that about weird men (travis being sweet and metal... we know he doesn't wipe his ass)

Like none of these lyrics feel like Matty Healy lyrics. They just feel like previous bad taylor lyrics dialed up to a hundred. It's like Me! But so much worse (or do you think that was ironic too?)

It seems a lot more likely that shes just surrounded by yes men and has no self awareness then shes doing a really bad job of parodying people like Matty Healy. Because her impression is a million miles off and just sounds like her on a bad day

Like I believe if she was making fun of him and guys like him, she'd do a better job

here is the full paragraph that that is from (taken out of context it sounds HORRIBLE, i agree) and i personally focused on "USED to play a game"..."everyone would look down cause it wasn't fun now" = the game stops being fun once you point out something that breaks the bubble of romanticism, in this case that the social conditions were horrible; both bc of racism, and in the next line she also acknowledges misogyny. idk how people miss the part where she says that in hindsight the "game" wasn't fun at all and that she would have hated it in whichever decade. nostalgia is a mind's trick = romanticisng the past makes you forget/ignore that "back in the day" actually kind of sucked (to put it lightly).

she has definitely said a lot of weird things and i'm absolutely not going to defend every single one of her actions, but which artist/celebrity hasn't? 😭 didn't matty healy have a scandal recently bc of his involvement with racist/violent porn? and he heiled on stage a few years ago, was that also ironic? personally that's a lot more icky to be than "you touch me as your boys play gta", it's obviously a shitty lyric but like? 💀 idk. that's just a bit cringe, not a fucking hatecrime. " I pissed myself on the Texan intersection" isn't particularily poetic to me either tbh.

i thought the tattooed golden retriever thing was a reference to that tiktok thing where people call their boyfriends "golden retriever coded" bc they're himbos. a LOT of people called joe alwyn that, and the whole song is making fun of him SO MUCH but again i guess you have to be a very specific type of chronically online find some of these things funny, otherwise it does sound stupid; when i saw an excerpt of that before i listened to it i was ready to HATE this album because it does genuinely sound SO bad out of context.

as for ME!, it's an atrocity and i try to pretend it doesn't exist ❤️ same with the entirety of reputation tbh and like half the songs from midnights, i hate it when she tries to be ~tough~ and ~cool~ and i don't think i will ever like those albums but i actually liked TTPD and it annoys me when people shit on things bc they don't understand them. i don't particularily care for her as a person, but i like a lot of her music bc i think it's just. fun to listen to? i like upbeat songs 😭 and i do find some of the songs to be relatable etc but i'm FULLY aware of the fact that some people just "don't get it" - i'm like that too with a lot of artists and that's completely fine! but i keep my opinions about them to myself :D

however at the end of the day i don't think she cares if people "get" the album or not; she probably did it for shits and giggles and it's not as if she won't afford to put bread on the table if this album flops lol. i don't even know why i got so worked up about this, i might be getting hangry tbh

[skiplo-wave]

This is going to be a bit tedious because this has a lot of tentacles involved with it. In regards to POTC, this is all speculation and rumors for now.

(Before getting fully into this, I want to start by saying this so that you know this is not a big waste of time. But we do have reason to believe that a lot of these rumors is to be true due to confirmed spoilers for The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan. And to back this up, Rob Marshall has a track record like J.J. Abrams. So the answer is, yes this will be a shit show like TROS. When the first teaser for TLM released 6 months ago, it wasn't to long after that, parts of the movie on Twitter and YouTube came out. Parts that was not even shown at D23. Before the official and last trailer came out during the Oscars the other night, two channels on YouTube that is still up, you can go look, leaked part of the trailer out a month early. That's when people knew the leaked images from the movie and concept artwork was real that was released in discords and other private groups early December. We don't understand how these YouTube channels are not getting banned but it was the same case when the leaks came out months ahead of TROS. So don't be fooled, we believe they have the whole movie and not just the trailers.)

With that being said, read with caution that this does contain some spoilers! This is what being said according to someone that is credible that has close ties to Rob Marshall's studio whom is the director of the Live-Action TLM. This said person is saying with the cancellation of the POTC reboot, Disney was left to figure out what to do moving forward but also combating the backlash they received. Disney or rather the Mouse went in panic mode because it's coming up to 20 years on June 28th of this year when POTC first made it's debut with The Curse of the Black Pearl. This person who has ties to Rob's studio is saying what is being said and where they are at right now is that there are talks about Johnny Depp returning as Jack Sparrow. Disney is ready to negotiate a new contract with him but Johnny has neither agreed or declined yet. And what this all has to do with The Little Mermaid? Oh buckle up sweetheart. This is going to screw up the timelines and possibly the whole POTC series unless as theories suggest Jack is cursed or time travelling like some kind of Kingdom Hearts + Once Upon A Time fever dream. Keep in mind that POTC is set in the 1700s. The Little Mermaid is set in the 1830s. Unless there was a time period change for TLM. What the leaked images are showing and what the leaks are saying for The Little Mermaid (2023) is that they took a darker turn from the original story and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008) movie. We get a brief origin story about King Triton in the beginning which could also setup a Live-Action Hercules lmfao (Lawd help us). Ariel's mother is kidnapped and killed by some familiar looking mf's dressed in red and black coats. Now you have to imagine the controversy this is going to stir up considering that Ariel's mother is black. These soldiers are wearing familiar British uniforms seen in the POTC series. It's said that the audience will only see the shadow of Ariel's mother being stabbed. The soldiers intentions was to kill the whole family but the mother sacrificed herself so they could get away. Triton tries to save her from being captured and trying to save his daughters at the same time. He drops his trident during the struggle. When his eldest daughter is free, he swims down to the ocean floor to retrieve his trident and he was going to go back to the surface but the ship is blown to pieces killing all the men onboard. King Triton and his daughters swim back to Atlantica. (This is what fuels his hate toward humans and why he see's them all as enemies.) The scene pans out and you see a ship in the distance and although it's not mentioned, it's obviously the Black Pearl in almost like a ghost ship form. The image of the ship was leaked and it definitely does look like the Black Pearl. They said we see the ship again at the end of the credits. It's sailing in the midst of fog with nobody on it. It pans in on Jack's compass and map of Never Land. And again, just like The Little Mermaid, this messes with the timelines because Peter Pan is set in the early 1900s unless Never Land is open to different time ports. It's said that only Jack Sparrow's name is mentioned in Peter Pan (2023). And the place that Captain Hook takes Tiger Lily too is said to be the same island from the first POTC - Isla de Muerta which plays on the theories that Jack is cursed but he still could be time jumping somehow but also Jack could had been to Never Land previously before the events of Peter Pan took place.

I have a bad feeling they are going to end up making a Live-Action Kingdom Hearts.

def a lot to read ngl