#guys seriously I’m not a historian please take this with all the salt

[rococospade-main]

I've got a bit of an odd question, you've mentioned glove language a few times when writing Laurence and I was wondering if you had any resources/notes on it? I've spent a fair few hours trying to find helpful resources but to no avail lol. Don't feel pressured to answer this of course! I adore your writing and hope you're having a wonderful day!

So, this is the second version of this answer. The first one was shorter but much, much messier. I apparently had a lot to say on the topic. Thank you, anon, I’m glad you enjoy my fics (and enough to go looking into something from one of them)! The answer about resources is… uh, kinda.

Alright, so I’m gonna be upfront: these have citations, but the citations mean very little to me. I don’t have the academic grounding to speak to how accurate these are, and I’d ask you to treat this as a basis for hobby and fiction only. That being said, most sites talking about glove language are going to source one book from 1890: The Mystery of Love, Courtship and Marriage Explained by Henry J Wehman. (By the by, there are several guides to etiquette and manners from the Victorian period, and some of them are really funny.) If you want more detailed or vetted information about Victorians, I’d actually recommend jumping around the historical essay section of YouTube. Bernadette Banner has a lot of really cool videos on period clothing, just to start. 

Resources first:

This is the site I used when I was writing bits with glove language in Bloodborne fics last year. The page inludes an illustration showing different glove lengths (measured by buttons) https://victorianweb.org/art/costume/gloves.html

For a version that’s more accessible to e-readers, this has the relevant image transcribed: https://www.geriwalton.com/gloves-and-flirting-language/

Here’s some on handkerchief and fan flirtations: https://susannaives.com/wordpress/2012/02/the-mystery-of-love-marriage-and-courtship-explained-handkerchief-and-fan-flirtations/

Some stuff about rings and love letters: https://susannaives.com/wordpress/2012/06/victorian-lessons-how-to-flirt-with-gloves-the-importance-of-ring-position-and-writing-love-letters-that-get-you-married-or-not/

And some images talking about parasol, window, fan flirtations: https://mollybrown.org/the-language-of-flirtation/

Some notes about how I approach writing details in Bloodborne:

Usually I’ll find out about something by accident, google it a while, make a few notes, and then run with something I think would be interesting. This isn’t the best way to go about it, and I’m certainly missing nuance and details by handling it like this, but it’s fun and it gives readers something to follow up on their own time if they care to.

With gloves, I’d encourage you to look into the variety of nonverbal languages the upper classes used to communicate in Victorian England (floriography, handkerchief, fan and glove flirtations are probably the most prominent) and consider how they might end up applied. Bloodborne being a Japanese game blends really nicely, since Japanese is also a fairly indirect language and culture, so meaning can be inferred by layering in details and context.

Some real life notes about gloves: gloves were expensive, historically, and the patterns and techniques to make them are guarded by guilds. Handmade gloves tend to be better quality and more expensive; you can tell if a glove is handsewn by checking the fingers. Pointed fingertips are handsewn gloves, while machine-sewn gloves are squared off. I tend to draw workman’s gloves with square tips even if them being handsewn would make more sense (Gehrman seems like he’d make his own gloves) for the rougher appearance it grants. Kid leather is a high-quality leather made from kids (young goats) that’s valued for being supple, thin, but reasonably durable. You can learn more about leather finish by looking at the wikipedia page for grades of leather. Kid leather gloves were a very expensive accesory, the sort of thing you’d expect to see at a ball. Cainhurst gloves are probably Kid leather. 

For the Victorians, a glove was a symbol of good breeding, and functioned both as a fashion accessory and a way to keep the hand clean and unmarred (as marred hands were considered a mark of… well, labour.) For the Church Doctors, the gloves also inoculate them against disease (Laurence please get that out of your mouth my god) and keep them from cutting their fingers on glass or rough materials. So you’ve got this intermingling of a social ideal (perfect smooth hands) and a functional one (not getting sick because you cut your finger) and then blend in questions of fashion and taste and, possibly, more functionality (colour, cut, decoration). On the note of decoration, Victorians had a lot of ways to make things look more expensive than they really were. Pearls made of paste, or paper-mache finished to look like gold, comes to mind. So it’s possible that people who want to have a rank in the Church but haven’t quite managed, are trying to dress up their gloves (or any part of their costume) to look more important than they are. So with that you might utilise subpar stitching, obvious or sloppy patch jobs, or decorations like fake pearl buttons. 

Also! Gloves are fitted! It’s easy to forget since we live in a world with one size fits all garments, but a glove would’ve been made for someone, usually — which means they aren’t interchangeable, and it’s obvious if someone is wearing poorly fitted or stolen gloves, because they don’t quite fit. This would also be an impediment to their work, as anyone who’s ever tried to do anything with badly fitting gloves on can attest.

Gloves might have started as something only worn by ranking members, or at least, the nice gloves (gauntlets aren’t cheap either, but they’re not specialised for delicate work the way I suspect the Choir gloves are), and trickled down to all but the poorest hunters later as they realised that the less skin a hunter exposed, the less likely they were to become afflicted. I’m very interested in the idea of Yharnam’s fashion trending towards covering up as the disease worsened, probably mirroring some real world trends in the process (for example, in North America, fashion silhouettes tended towards straight lines during the 1920’s at least in part because it was considered gauche to try to look curvy while the poor were starving to death). 

The Choir gloves aren’t actually tight in the game or the concept art, by the by. They’re loose, and fastened at the wrist with laces, making them adjustable. I haven’t seen laced gloves in a period reference, but it’s a very interesting detail; it would be more adjustable than buttons, though perhaps as likely to catch on things. It also echoes the lacing down the sleeves of the Choir robes, which is just nice from a design angle. 

Gloves came in more colours and styles than white and short/long. At one point, lavender day gloves were a thing for men to wear while visiting acquaintances. (The visiting is a whole other thing. If you don’t know about Victorian visiting, I highly recommend giving that a quick search. Calling cards for gentlemen were a thing, and some of them were really weird.)

A note that’s somewhat disconnected from the rest, but feels relevant: Victorians had a mourning period after the death of a family member, where all of a mourner’s clothing was expected to be dyed black, including gloves. (This was apparently achieved with a large vat of hot water, dye, and pushing the fabric around inside with a stick. I’m still fascinated by the concept.) And fashion in general was much slower in this period: people had mostly the same pieces of clothing from year to year, repairing them regularly and modifying them to keep up with current trends. Patch jobs would be another useful way of gauging a character’s status, since subtle or invisible mending is something that amateurs usually aren’t capable of managing. A well-maintained (or outright replaced) item speaks to the owner having some spending money. 

The Victorian period had a lot of really specific details that won’t necessarily make sense without historical grounding. I’ve felt like I’m trying to learn another language over the last two years from working on Bloodborne fic, to be totally honest with you, and it’s involved a lot of period literature, looking at fashion plates, listening to various videos on historical fashion… there’s a lot of resources if you know where to look, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. That being said, I’m less interested in the romanticism of the era and more of all the unpleasant things that their day to day culture thrived on (and was used to cover up). The gloves end up being a really nice way to talk about it: an expensive status symbol that protects the wearer from harm, and has probably come to have threatening connotations in the eyes of the populace. Can’t you just picture citizens shrinking back from the sight of black Church gloves?

All of this to say, minding a Hunter’s gloves is probably an excellent way of determining their general status. Compare a Choir member’s immaculate gloves to a wannabe cleric with amateur-sewn, slightly discoloured leather, and paste-pearl buttons trying to bluff their way through the Church, to a Workshop Hunter’s scabbed work gloves, to the ashy, oil-stained, reinforced gauntlets of a Charred Hunter. 

Hopefully there was something of use in there for you, anon. As a sign off: the Victorian period had veils as a fashion accessory for ladies, and those are totally applicable to Bloodborne as well. If you need clothing references, look up Harper’s Bazar fashion plates plus the year or decade you’re aiming for. This can be done for outfits or accessories. A lot of items in this period were homemade or modified; richer houses might buy all new accessories or clothes from the best shops, but middle-class houses were more likely to… well, buy one or two new items of middling quality and then modify them to look better, so far as I can find. Whether a glove was kept in good repair by house staff or the owner, or… not kept in repair at all, would tell you a lot. And paying attention to that sort of subtlety is at its heart how glove language functions anyway: looking for context cues to draw inferences before you choose to speak.

Going to close out again with, I am a hobby writer learning about this stuff on my own time. If you have something relevant to add, please feel free, but if you’re looking for definitely-historically-accurate information on the period, I would at most use this as a jump off point to search and verify things. I hope this was of some use, and happy writing!

#Bloodborne #Victorian period #writing reference #guys seriously I’m not a historian please take this with all the salt #Fic writing reference #lore speculation #Victorian fashion

[reivenesque]

Requested by @lovelylittlegrim for the @teenwolfexchange

1. (Thiam) A fluffy fair fic. In which Liam takes Theo to his first fair/carnival and they have their first kiss.

Umm, not so much the fluffy fic I planned on when I started and it may or may not be their first kiss. I honestly didn’t know where this was going until I arrived there, but I hope you enjoyed it regardless *hides* I haven’t written a humour fic in ages I could feel my funny bone creaking with disuse as I was typing.

All’s Fair that Ends Fare

One of Liam’s earliest (and fondest) memories was of going to the seasonal fair with his mom and whichever boyfriend she was dating at the time. The only thing Liam really remembered about the guy was that he was a huge dick and pissed at Liam for being forced the tag along because the baby sitter cancelled at the last minute. As a result, Liam made it a point to do his absolute hardest to be the worst little shit to the guy behind his mom’s back and the most innocent angel when she turned to look at him.

The date didn’t last the night. The guy stomped off in righteous fury muttering about annoying children and stupid fairs and his mom was left in confusion staring at his retreating back.

They spent the rest of the night just the two of them going on rides and playing games, and even though his mom put on a smile when she looked at him, Liam could tell that she was hurt, but at the time, his cold little nine-year old heart didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was that the guy was gone and he had his mom all to himself again.

Adult Liam eventually came to the realization that he was a terrible, shithead of a child.

But then his mom met his stepdad and the man didn’t run away no matter how much Liam tried to chase him off, so all in all, it worked out for the best in the end.

“This milkshake sucks.”

The very first words spoken between the two of them in the merry compound of the town fair that night.

“It’s free, so shut up and drink it, asshole.”

God, Theo could be such a negative Nancy. Often times Liam forgot that he was actually Scott and Stiles’s age because of how petulant he could be. But then he remembered that neither Scott nor Stiles acted Scott and Stiles’s age so that was a rather pointless train of thought to have.

“Why are we even here? If I wanted to spend my night grinding up against the smelly sweaty bodies of half the population of Beacon Hills, I would have gone to a club – where they have air-conditioning – and alcoholic beverages instead of this… watered down gluten free soy whatever,” said Theo, swirling around the white liquid in the see through plastic cup in front of his eyes and staring at it suspiciously.

“It’s not gluten free or made of soy,” he said, exhaling exasperatedly.

“Well it might as well be,” said Theo petulantly. “How come you’re having juice then?”

“Cause I wanted to get you something special! Now shut up, Theo. We’re here to have fun tonight, and we will have fun even if it kills you,” said Liam.

“Sounds like fun already.”

Liam ignored him. “What do you want to do first? Which ride do you want to try?” he asked.

“How about that one?” said Theo, motioning towards the open gate at the far end of the field under the neon green sign that said ‘Exit’.

“Hilarious,” he said, his face completely straight and his mouth downturned in a frown.

It wasn’t how he’d originally planned on spending the night, but the funfair was in town – with emphasis on fun, and he was bored as hell – Scott was away on a bro-date with Stiles and Mason was away on a date-date with Corey, and Liam who was at that moment on a sad-date with him, himself and no one else, was feeling particularly left out. Plus he’d recently come to learn that Theo had never been to a fair before. Obviously the Dread Doctors weren’t big on the fun kind of activity that didn’t involve suffering, mutilation and death.

“What about the haunted house?” he suggested. He was pleased to see that it piqued Theo’s interest.

It was also a pivotal moment in which historians somewhere down the line would jot down in their tiny little notebooks as the moment Liam vowed to never take Theo into another haunted house ever again.

The screams of terror were not out of place, obviously, it was a house designed to scare the living crap out of the faint hearted. What was out of place was the sight of the people in ghost costumes, some covered in prosthetic fur and fake ears and fangs and other limbless figures covered in blood running out of said house in absolute pant-wetting terror, shoving each other aside and stepping on toes in their hurry to escape.

Theo’s cackling laughter beside him was like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. Theo was the nail and his face was the chalkboard.

“That’s not funny,” he said, turning around just in time to see Theo’s glowing yellow eyes reverting back to the dark blue and his fangs retreating back into his gums.

“Come on, it’s a little funny,” he said. “Don’t be such a sourpuss, Liam. If I wanted to date a boring, disgruntled old man I would have asked out Derek. Or that old guy that lives at the end of the street that likes to throw sand balls made of cat litter at people who walk past his house.”

Firstly, Liam was absolutely offended by getting compared to a disgruntled old man. Secondly, he hated to admit it but it was sorta funny, but he wasn’t about to confirm that fact to Theo, the guy was insufferable enough as is.

“So? How about it? Are we here to have fun, or are we here to have fun?” he asked with a smirk.

“I don’t know what that even means,” said Liam, furrowing his brows.

“Think of it like Troy,” said Theo, reaching over to circle an arm around Liam’s shoulder in a way that was suspiciously intimate, one hand motioning out towards the sky as if he was trying to get Liam to imagine one of the unlimited – and most likely illegal – scenarios he had cooked up in his head. Whatever he was about to say, it was bound to be bad – people were probably going to end up in tears, or dead, or both. “The best way to get in with the enemy, is to get in with the enemy,” he said, punctuating each word like a different intonation would somehow make the meaning different.

“Once again,” said Liam, “Please speak English.”

“You’re the history nerd, Liam” said Theo – completely ignoring the indignant tone Liam used when he repeated the word ‘nerd?’ as a question, greatly offended, “You know this stuff right?”

Liam scrubbed at his face tiredly. He kind of had an idea where this whole thing was headed, and he didn’t like it – or did he? He hadn’t decided. He didn’t want Scott to be disappointed in him and that was definitely what was going to happen if he went through with what he was inevitably about to go through.

“Create havoc from the inside?” he asked, turning his eyes to look at Theo, only to see the insufferably smug gaze already staring back at him. He really wanted to punch Theo in his stupid face at that moment, either with his fist or with his lips. He hadn’t decided that either.

“I knew you were smart, Liam. I’m impressed,” he said.

Liam tried to keep the blush from spreading across his cheeks at the praise. But as it is with Theo most of the time, he knew to take it with a grain of salt. Theo was only super nice like that when he wanted something in return. “Shut up, Theo,” he said, elbowing him in the ribs. “So… what do you have in mind?”

“A thought just came to me.”

“God help us all,” said Liam with a sigh.

“What if we did both? Have a little fun while taking these people for everything they’re worth? I mean, the hammer game? Come on, we could beat that out of the literal park without breaking a sweat.”

“That’s cheating,” said Liam.

“Well good thing I’m here with Liam, and not Scott, right?”

Liam let out a half exhale-half groan type of inhuman sound. “Scott’s going to kill us both when this is all said and done you know?”

“Seriously, Scott would never harm one soft, moisturized strand of hair on that perfect little head of yours. And even if he does, we’ll have a lot of kick ass stories to tell in the afterlife.”

“I don’t like this plan,” said Liam.

“You don’t have to,” said Theo, “You just have to… you know, have fun.”

Liam knew that word was going to come back and bite him in the ass. He thoroughly regretted every life choice he ever made that lead him up to that point in his short sad life.

“Yeah, fun,” said Liam in an over-exaggerated mocking tone.

Everything was on fire.

Children and adults alike were crying; bawling their eyeballs out and screaming in horror.

There was the sound of a gleeful cackle in the distance over the white noise and the small explosions still going off in the background.

Theo was picking bits of glass and pie crusts out of his hair with Liam beside him, doubled over in laughter.

“That was awesome!” Liam said through his mirth. “Who knew exploding pie could cause such devastation! That’s something they definitely don’t teach in chem class.”

Theo couldn’t keep the pleased smirk off his face. “Living with mad scientists for as long as I did, you’re bound to pick up a thing or two.”

The backdrop, the once upright and proud House of Mirrors was in shambles; its wall barely hanging off the hinges and surrounded by almost half a foot of broken glass on the pulverized ground.

“I hate to admit it,” said Liam, “But I don’t think I’ve had this much fun… well, ever. We’re both about to be killed by my dad, Scott, Melissa, Sheriff Stilinski and half the population of Beacon Hills – but, this is definitely the best night of my life.”

“You could say,” said Theo with a wolfish grin, “That we went out with a bang.”

The sound of sirens pierced through the veil of the night, approaching the once upright fair, now several heaps of rubble – some still smoking and smoldering, with parts of blown apart teddy bears strews across the ground like there had been a horrific murder on Sesame Street.

“I think that’s our cue to amscray,” said Theo, smacking Liam on the arm with the back of his hand; both their eyes looking towards the incoming source of the noise.

Liam didn’t turn to meet Theo’s eyes at first, the cogs of his brain and conscience working overtime trying to override his instincts of self-preservation and will to live. He exhaled once before squaring his shoulders.

“No point in us both getting caught,” he said as the whinnying cruisers made their way into the compound, one blaring vehicle after another. “Save yourself… I’m going down fighting.”

Theo furrowed his brows. “Why do I feel like I’ve heard this before?”

“Just go, Theo. I’m not running away.”

He could hear Theo’s frustrated groan beside him but the guy made no move to leave. He opened his mouth to speak again when he turned to look at Theo, but the words were barely out of his mouth before he felt Theo grab him roughly by the side of his face, pulling him close. Everything around him slowed down to a crawl and the sound of the sirens became muffled noises in the distance when he felt Theo’s cool lips crashing down onto his.

The kiss was haphazard and sloppy; Liam wasn’t sure where to put his hands and Theo still kind of tasted like the terrible milkshake he had earlier. He could feel the heat from the car’s headlights shining on his back, illuminating them brightly as the cars pulled up to surround them like a barricade. But the moment he found the pocket of comfort inside himself and his hands found the perfect curve of Theo’s back that sloped down and back up to frame his perfect, perfect ass, Liam couldn’t think about anyone or anything else in the world anymore.

There was only him and Theo in the moment surrounded by the police cars and what sounded like helicopter rotors flapping in the distance and the only thing Liam could think was that it was a very Thelma and Louise type of scenario, which was pretty rad.

He decided in that moment that he wanted that movie to play at his funeral. He wondered if he had enough time to write out a will.

If he had a pen on him he’d definitely scribble it down on Theo’s butt cause quite frankly he didn’t want to take his hands off it ever.

At least not until he heard the sound of someone clearing their throat very close to their vicinity and the familiar stern voice saying the word, “Boys,” in a very crisp, no nonsense tone. It was the biggest of turn offs a person could ever hope for.

Liam found his tongue flicking out to lick at his red and heated lips the moment he and Theo pulled apart.

Sheriff Stilinski’s unamused face was the sight that immediately greeted them.

“Sheriff,” said Theo with a nod as a greeting.

The Sheriff’s reply was a gonad shriveling glare that he shot the both of them.

“Explanation. Now.”

Liam and Theo shared a look before launching into the most abysmal, incoherent, inconsistent explanation that somehow involved the song Extraterrestrial, a bottle of hot sauce, two cans of skimmed milk and the Ace of Diamonds – at the same time.

The Sheriff looked like he was seriously considering murder in that moment which he said as much. “I would honestly kill both of you right now, but then I’d be sparing myself the joy of watching your dad –” he pointed at Liam with a stern finger, “– and Melissa McCall –” he said pointing at Theo (who all of a sudden looked much less amused and slightly more concerned) – “Kill both of you. Slowly. Hell, if I’m lucky I might just get in on some of that action; Scott too. As a matter of fact, we’ll make a party of it!”

“Excuse me, Sheriff,” said Theo suddenly and Liam wondered if it would still be considered manslaughter of you killed a person in front of about half a dozen officers of the law. He vehemently hissed at Theo to ‘shut the hell up’, which unsurprisingly went unheeded. “Would it help any if I said that I was offended by their terrible portrayal of werewolves? I mean, what kind of self-respecting werewolf plays basketball?”

For the record, no, it did not help any.

Getting slammed into the hood of a cruiser while having his arms being yanked behind him and cuffed with cold hard steel was honestly not much fun. It was slightly more fun watching it being done to Theo and seeing the way his face scrunched up in pain. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to get the insufferable asshole to shut up.

“I didn’t know you liked it rough, Sheriff.”

“Shut the fuck up, Theo!” he found himself hollering across the distance.

And Liam had such a positive start to the day too.

To say that his dad was livid would have been like saying a whale was a very big anchovy. He wasn’t allowed to leave the house or have any contact with the outside world at all. His only means of communication was eavesdropping whenever his dad was watching the news to hear whether there had been a reported murder in Beacon Hill or news about a dead body of an eighteen year old male, dark hair, blue eyes, insufferable attitude, washing up on the shore.

There wasn’t.

The silver lining (as Theo –god rest his soul – would have said) came a few days later when it came to light that the fair had been a front for an underground drug ring. They used the fair as a cover to move from town to town making and selling meth, and apparently, the highest concentrated amount of it was found inside the milkshake stand. Liam felt a little bad when it occurred to him that he might have gotten Theo a glass of methshake instead of a milkshake…

Sheriff Stilinski came personally to deliver the news to him and his parents. So not only was he off the hook for the shenanigans he and Theo pulled, the both of them were also getting commendations from the Mayor for thwarting a massive criminal organization.

Once he was freed from his house arrest – his dad was not so much pleased by the sudden turn of events as he was relieved – the absolute first thing he decided to do was to go see Theo (or what was left of him anyway).

Frustratingly enough, the guy seemingly came out of it completely unscathed.

“Tell me the truth,” he said straight out of the gate, “Was this whole thing intentional, or just a massive coincidence.”

Theo’s smug grin gave nothing away. “Of course it was intentional. You think I’d really wreck that much havoc on such an innocent establishment?”

“Yes,” said Liam immediately with absolute certainty.

“Okay, fine. It was a bit of both, okay? Something didn’t feel right in that place but I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I thought, what best way to get to the bottom of it while getting our kicks at the same time?”

“Right,” said Liam skeptically.

“Why do you not believe me?” asked Theo, feigning hurt.

“Cause you’re you and your middle name is ‘trouble’.”

“That’s a gross oversimplification,” said Theo.

“Oh really?”

“My actual middle name is ‘chaotic neutral.”

Liam couldn’t hold back his snort. “You’re right about the chaotic bit but there’s absolutely nothing neutral about you.”

“Please, Liam, I’m the most neutral person you know. Who else can play both sides of the field with as much skill and grace as me? Besides you, that is – I mean, between me and Hayden, that’s like opposite ends of the spectrum in more ways than one.”

“You’re really full of yourself, you know that?” said Liam, rubbing at his face with his hand.

“But that’s why you love me,” said Theo with a smirk.

“I do not –”

Liam was silenced completely by the lips that came down to meet his.

And so, all’s well that ends well, or in their case, it helped being the luckiest motherfuckers alive cause Liam was pretty fond of being alive thank you very much.

The one thing they could both agree on was to make a blood sworn oath to never talk about the Ferris wheel hot dog incident to anyone ever, dead or alive.

The End.

#teenwolfexchange #thiam #theo raeken #liam dunbar #teen wolf #reiven fics #reiven teen wolf fics #fics: all's fair that ends fare #reiven gifts