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one-squash-one-end · 1 month

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I wrote a giant Raven Cycle analysis

Hi! Over the last year or so I've been working on a sort of essay about various themes in the raven cycle series, and I finally finished it a few weeks ago.

It is titled: "Why I love The Raven Cycle - An excessive analysis of the themes of friendship, queerness and growing up".

And since tumblr loves its meta (and bc I love peer validation) I've decided to start uploading it bit by bit here, making this the masterpost (if I can figure out the logistics of the linking lmao, bear with me)

(beware of spoilers up to greywaren starting at like 3b!)

Introduction

What even is the Raven Cycle?

Trust me, the characters are queer as fuck and I can prove it a) Blue Sargent b) Gansey c) Adam Parrish d) Ronan Lynch e) Noah f) Henry Cheng g) Honorary mentions

The Gangsey is a polycule

Analyzing the reoccurring themes a) Friendship b) Being a teen/growing up c) (Found) Family d) Magic (as a metaphor) e) Further themes I appreciate

Drawing a conclusion

Click here to start with the introductory parts!

1. Introduction

So here’s the thing: I love fiction almost as much as I love my friends. There’s something deeply comforting about the escapism, even if the book actually makes me want to scream and throw it on the floor (only one book has been thrown so far, I promise!). Fiction is a healthy thing to occupy my thoughts with: headcanons! Quotes being on loop in my brain! Just fandoms!

And for me, if I am hooked on a book (series), it does not even need a good plot where a lot of things happen. In fact, I would say that my enjoyment of a book is made up of 30% plot and about 70% characters and vibes. If the characters are bland, if they do not make me feel much emotion, it likely won’t be more than 4 stars (additional info: I am way too nice rating books!). I really, really need to love the characters, to be able to relate to some aspects of them, or it just won’t become an obsession.

Since I have already started explaining that a bit, let’s look at this question: What is important to make a book special to me? 1. I need to cry reading it. 2. I have to think about it often, even weeks to months after having read it. 3. Obviously, I need to love the characters. 4. I need to be in the fandom! This can be hard with some books, but the internet is a whimsical space allowing you to find at least a small number of people who are obsessed with a work of fiction to a similar extent as you are.

Now, why am I elaborating on this so much? It’s because The Raven Cycle did all that for me. It is my favorite comfort book series at the moment, for all those aspects mentioned, but of course I cannot just leave it at that. No, I wrote a whole-ass analysis on headcanons and some of its themes. You’re welcome.

2. What even is The Raven Cycle?

The Raven Cycle is all I adore and live for (next to my friends). So, naturally, it’s a book series, specifically a four book young adult contemporary fantasy series by American author Maggie Stiefvater. The books in question are: The Raven Boys (2012), The Dream Thieves (2013), Blue Lily, Lily Blue (2014) and The Raven King (2016), and yes I will admit that the publishing dates are a bit of a red flag. There is also the very relevant follow-up series called The Dreamer Trilogy (Call Down The Hawk, Mister Impossible, Greywaren), but it’s a lot less easy to get into that here as I do not know these entire books by heart, so I’ll stick to the original tetralogy here.

To stick to red flags, the books are set in the fictional Henrietta, a rural town in non-fictional Virginia, US, in the 2010s. However, that doesn’t really say *that* much about the plot, so let me summarize that really quick, because I can do better than the official synopsis! (Or let’s pretend I can.)

Blue Sargent comes from a family of psychics, yet she does not have any powers of her own. Even worse, she is a bit of an amplifier for the others, meaning she is always somehow but never directly involved in the business. As if that isn’t enough for an identity crisis, every psychic she has ever met has told her that her kiss would kill her true love. Yikes.

But because she is that amplifier, she comes to a church watch on St. Mark’s Eve, where psychics see the spirits of those to die within the following year. It’s important business, but to her it’s really just staring into the dark. Until she does actually see a spirit: That of Gansey. Of course this is not a coincidence. No, to add to this teen’s mount of problems, there are only two reasons why a non-seer would see someone’s spirit: They are their true love, or they killed them. Or, in Blue’s case, maybe both.

The aforementioned Gansey is Henrietta’s Golden Boy, the son of politicians (read: he’s fucking loaded). He does not run with the Republicans though, he runs with dead Welsh kings, meaning he has been searching for the probably dead, presumably sleeping Welsh king Glendower (*1350; †1416; yikes) for the past like seven years. Why the fuck would he do that? Well, legend says that he will grant a wish to whoever wakes him, and our favorite PTSD-ridden guy really wants that favor.

Aiding him are fellow Aglionby students Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch and Noah Czerny, plus Henry Cheng, though only a lot later in the series, but I really did not want to leave out that menace (affectionately) here. The paths of Blue and the boys cross because of Gansey’s search for Glendower, plus the fact that Blue works at a popular pizza place, but that’s a lot less whimsical. And, well, there’s the implication that Gansey might also be her true love, but perhaps she just kills him because of his bad fashion sense, it would be justified. Anyway, in true Famous Five fashion (Ronan is the dog; I won’t elaborate, the girls that get it, get it) they are of course not the only ones searching for the king, so it’s not completely a wholesome friend bonding activity all the way through.

Be prepared for: friendship and growing up, lots of treasure hunting, family mysteries, magical forests, illegal and slightly distasteful activities (our favorite of course), but most of all, heavily queer-coded (or even canonically queer) characters. Be Gay, Do Crime.

#y'all better like this it took a while #trc #the raven cycle #gansey #blue sargent #ronan lynch #adam parrish #noah czerny #henry cheng #the raven king #the raven boys #blue lily lily blue #the dream thieves #let's hope i don't forget about this after the first part #please talk to me about your thoughts

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tio-trile · 9 months

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Okay, I just got my mind blown away by this GO s2 theory/analysis:

https://www.tumblr.com/ariaste/724311712381222912/the-magic-trick-you-didnt-see-being-an-analysis?source=share

It's by @ariaste who is also a famous author, and if she's right, even a little bit, it explains SO MUCH about the inconsistency and 'bad writing' and backsliding of s2. This is me after reading it, absolutely mindblown

I think you might be interested in it? Maybe?

So, I read it (across like 3 days time) because I love and care about you all, and I would never make an opinion about something if I hadn't known about it in great detail, and the entire time I was reading it, I thought:

MAN it would be SO embarrassing if this is NOT the case. And the author of the essay had just insulted Neil Gaiman and his writing for a grand total of 36 pages. They are even meaner to the season than I am 😂 and posting this on main (when they are apparently a published author?), what a power move. Through the middle I keep questioning myself that maybe THIS ESSAY is an elaborate scheme, and OP just purely HATED the season but didn't want to insult Neil Gaiman to his face, so they came up with the world's most convoluted way to insult Neil Gaiman's writing without him noticing. 🤣🤣🤣

IF OP is 100% correct about everything (I personally think very unlikely) then...kudos to them. I tip my hat to them. Still not to season 2 tho because like OP themselves kinda explained in their essay, showing me a bunch of random things isn't the full magic trick, so you can't expect me to clap after it. (The only thing I'm upset about reading in the essay is actually that -- I'm a little annoyed that OP compared one of my favorite Penn and Teller routines to this dumpster fire that is season 2 🤣 THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. The Penn and Teller routine is incredible and entertaining and well-structured here it is)

If OP is wrong and Neil Gaiman actually wrote this season genuinely (which I think he did)......OP would have called Neil Gaiman a "Hack" and a "Clumsy Apprentice Writer" (both of these are OP's words, not mine) for 36 pages in 16k words, and I can't wait to see their metaphorical face when season 3 comes out. Actually, in a way, adaed5, you did change my mind; I now want season 3 to be greenlit and made just for that to play out.

#ask #long post #good omens critical #I told my friends that OP is way more ruthless about the season than I am lol #Insulted everything from the writing to the lighting #And buddy (author of essay). I have a lot of friends who genuinely enjoyed the season for what it is #And that's okay #If you thought the season was bad #maybe then it was?#Don't force yourself?

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blackautmedia · 1 month

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I am always thankful for people of marginalized identities being loud about their video game blorbos because of the beautiful branch of analyses and discussions they make from it. I am so serious.

I love that I can just look up videos doing gender based reads of Amy Rose and Carmelita Fox.

I love it when there's that one girl character in any given game and all it takes is the right woman here on Tumblr seeing one too many bad takes about them being too mean or them getting angry in one scene to create the most beautifully nuanced essay as a result.

I love when artists properly show love to dark-skinned characters and give them the best outfits to show off their features and give them the love and respect they deserve.

I love seeing seeing trans people come on here and casually write up a thorough education of gender and sexuality using their favorite JRPG or racing game or whatever.

I love people who disregard everything and don't need an elaborate justification for their favorite characters. The people who say "this character is Ace because I said so and I like it" are just as powerful as the people who support their reads with a mountain of support by the text.

I love seeing other autistic people casually giving a rundown on disability studies because one too many people kept picking out all the autistic traits of that one character they liked.

I love when fat characters don't get their fatness erased and not being objectifying about them either!

I love when there's that one character who is tucked in the background with little consideration to their existence and artists and writers go "no, I'm going to make them the most interesting character ever."

I love that there's that non-white character who didn't have that much thought put into their design and people run with it and make the most loving designs.

I love when Black character can have fanart or people gushing about them in a space without having to look at "comment deleted" 500 times too.

I love that people are calling out the misogyny baked into so many reads of Yukari Takeba.

I want someone to publish literature about Dixie Kong.

I love that there's more talk about how messed up Nintendo's writing of Ganondorf is.

I am no stranger to seeing racism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other -isms in such spaces, but I do want to also shout out and thank the people who create spaces to identify with, speak to, and critique characters they put more thought into understanding and create a space that welcomes other people to do or feel the same.

Spaces like this aren't destined to be awful spaces and I love the way people out there will carve out even a small little comfort for others to feel seen and welcome in how they show defense, analysis, and even loving criticism toward the characters they like.

So y'know, have fun with your games and may you be as weird as weird and loud as I am. You're doing the lord's work

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justworthlessreblogs · 7 months

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no cause you’re so right for naming Kirakira in that potential canon post, I could name every character in that show and make arguments for each one, villain and cure alike. the characters were too ambitious for the show! like, don’t just reinforce that Akira cares a shitton about people, tell us why! Ichika feels that she has to put a smile on her face no matter what, show us more! Noir and Lumière are probably meant to be an allegory for abusive relationships, please elaborate!

THANK YOUUUUU i'm so glad to hear others feel the same way, it makes me feel better knowing that it's not just me overthinking things. i am actually in the process of writing a mini essay/reflection on the characters (will not be published until i finish the series) and it's funny that you mention ichika feeling like she has to smile no matter what because i actually bring it up in the analysis. i think they definitely had the foundations for a good arc where ichika learns that it's okay to cry sometimes and i'm so mad that they just ignored it and went with "ichika learns she has to put precure duties before her personal wants and needs" when that conflict had literally never come up before. with regard to akira i really think she has potential and i love her caring nature but they never actually Do Anything with it and it's frustrating. while i haven't actually gotten to the noir&lumiere backstory episode yet i do know what happens courtesy of being in this fandom for 6 years and yeah. i definitely think they could have done way more with it

#the curse of kirakira having way too many characters and not enough time tbh #i will forever be mad about my dream ichika arc not happening because i literally did the same thing in middle school and it would've been #so powerful and reassuring for me to see a character realize that negative emotions are okay at that age #like minami taught me it was okay to change my dream and i think it would've been awesome for precure to teach kids that feeling sad is oka #anyways it kinda ties into my 'kirakira kinda sorta has a toxic positivity problem' issue #i guess it's not always toxic positivity. sometimes it's also 'some characters' emotions are given more validation than others' cough cough #ugh i will forever love the characters but wish they were in a better show and had more time to shine and were shown more love and care fro #the writers #i also believe that kirakira was brought down by the writers leaning too much into it being a kids show #but like come on guys we got fresh and heartcatch and gopri we have proved that we can do complex characters!!!#sorry for the rant i am just Very Passionate about this #precure #pretty cure #kirakira precure a la mode #ichika usami #akira kenjou #asks #anonymous

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asachuu · 10 months

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My absurdly long take on Rimlaine that is years overdue (1/10)

A few forewords to begin with:

So…who would have guessed such a niche ship as BSD Rimlaine would have prompted me to write an entire essay speaking about it and everything surrounding it? To an extent, not even myself, but upon dwelling in this fandom for long enough and trying my hand at explaining my personal thoughts on it here and there, I seemed to have realized very shortly that none of this would manage to fit into one single textpost I could write and publish the very same day, and thus we are here now. I’m hoping I managed to cover everything from top to bottom, given context for those in the BSD fandom who may not be too familiar with the ship itself and given my own perspective about this pairing, but before I start, I naturally have to give out a few disclaimers.

Firstly, this has, by no means, been written to tell anyone or even dictate what to think of this pairing, I would like for this to be established very clearly. I am not claiming all of this as the absolute, indisputable truth, as at the end of the day, a fair amount of it is nothing but my own opinion and nearly every single topic in this world has a lot of nuance to it, that of course including this one, where I will most likely not manage to cover every single existing point out there even if I try. However, certain other parts of this essay were indeed written with the intention of bringing some things to light, even if your own thoughts are ultimately up to you to decide, and this doesn’t mean I don’t believe in my own view nor do I have any reason to change it.

Continuing on from that, it is only right of me to give out a fair warning. If you hadn’t known me prior or it wasn’t immediately apparent from the nature of this work, I will not be taking kindly to the ship at hand whatsoever, nor will I express any support for it. Aside from me having my own criticisms surrounding it, it is also somewhat of my personal discomfort, and while I have chosen the route of attempting to take the least forceful path I could find with my wording to not turn this into a mindless or overly serious hate rant without proper context, this does not mean I will be giving it any credit or appreciation. If this is something that you do not wish to read for any reason you may have, I advise you to stop right here, and I thank you for your presence nonetheless.

Furthermore, I also wish to clarify that I absolutely did not write this with the intention to call Rimlaine shippers harmful, “toxic” or anything of this kind. None of this is targeted at any individual whatsoever, it is only my own point of view as from what I have seen, many things surrounding this pairing are not quite brought up enough, if at all, even though they should be. Whilst I will certainly call the ship itself unhealthy at least a few times, it is not meant to attack anyone who finds enjoyment in it. There could be a myriad of reasons for that, some of which I will go into further down the line, and I do not believe anyone, or at least the vast majority of people, mean any harm engaging in it. My sole intention is to perhaps bring a little more awareness to some issues I do not see mentioned practically anywhere, not to ruin people’s enjoyment of fictional media just for the sake of it.

Lastly, some people might fully disagree with this notion, but I don’t believe I have much right to explicitly label this ship itself as “toxic”, and thus I will not be doing so anywhere in this minor dissection of mine. It is not only because that word has been misused and joked about so much in the past to the point it began sounding ironic or like a complete exaggeration, but also because of my personal reservations on this note. Regardless of whether I think of this ship as such or not, as someone who has seen several people label entirely harmless pairings, characters or content with that word instead of elaborating on what they find unsettling or wrong about the given media and subsequently not being taken seriously for it, I would not like to accidentally mislead someone into thinking I will only be throwing around heavy baseless accusations without reason. Even so, if you choose to read any further and come out of this finding it to be exactly that, I will absolutely not be trying to convince you otherwise, as with full disclosure, I do believe it to be so, which also serves as my final warning to folks who may still be here purely to upset themselves.

Now, with all that said, the links to all parts are below.

GENERAL CONTENT WARNING: Aside from Fifteen/Stormbringer spoilers, there will be some discussions of topics such as abuse, suicide and BSD-typical descriptions of violence. I will do my best to specify these in their respective sections, but please be warned before going into this as I could miss some.

Links (will be updated):

[Part 1] — Is there a “perfect” ship?

[Part 2] — What exactly is Rimlaine?

[Part 3, 3.1, 3.2] — Fifteen, The fight and Chuuya’s memories, Paul’s appearance

[Part 3.3] — Fifteen’s response

[Part 4] — The real-world relationship

[Part 5] — Stormbringer

[Part 5.1, 5.2, 5.3] — Arthur’s memoir, Chuuya’s flashback, the epilogue

[Part 5.4] — Stormbringer’s aftermath

[Afterword]

#text post #bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd fifteen #bsd stormbringer #bsd storm bringer #bsd arthur rimbaud #bsd paul verlaine #rimlaine #asachuu #THIS IS WHAT I CAME HERE TO POST TWO YEARS AGO #I BECAME AN ART ACCOUNT IN THE MEANTIME #I promised someone I’d post this but I have no clue if they’ll ever see it #so now it’s everyone’s problem. I sincerely apologize

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bettsfic · 1 year

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craft essay a day #2

this isn't actually a craft essay, but the first chapter of a craft book. looking at my shelf, a great many essay reviews are just going to be book chapters. in the case of some of the narratology books, probably sections of chapters because they make my brain hurt.

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley, Chapter 1: "Introduction"

beginner | intermediate | advanced | masterclass

filed under: process, drafting

summary

the premise of this book is that Smiley read 100 novels for the purpose of writing this book on writing novels. after the table of contents, those 100 novels are listed chronologically, starting strong with Tale of Genji and ending weak with Jennifer Egan's Look at Me (no offense to Egan fans; she is just not my favorite, but who knows, maybe i'll love Look at Me). as someone who once faced down the whitest white comps list ever devised, this seems like a pretty good list. i've only read about 10 of them and there are some on here i haven't even heard of.

in the introduction, Smiley narrates the story of how she came to write this book, and how her identity as a novelist has changed over the years. infuriatingly, she talks about how easy writing has always been for her, and that she wrote all of her very well-regarded, award-winning books in different ways but mostly painlessly.

"If to live is progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness."

she goes on to discuss dry spells of writing and why they happen. as a Dickens biographer, she elaborates on how prolific he was until the end of his life, and speculates why. after a few other examples, she concludes that she fears writing is the result of "pain and lack" and that when writers find happiness, sometimes they stop writing. she goes on to talk about how her love of horses changed her relationship with writing, and that she personally loved her novel Horse Heaven but not many other people did.

"Was the old truism I hated so much really true, that art, or at least novelistic art, is created out of pain and lack? I had resented and resisted the idea for years; art, I thought, is created out of observation and insight. You don't write a novel to salve a wound, but to bear witness."

the essay ends with her sitting down to write a novel and realizing she has no idea what she's doing. so she read a hundred novels, and wrote this book.

my thoughts

i labeled this as "intermediate" even though it's only really a personal essay because it's more than a little jarring to read about a pulitzer prize winning writer realizing, after publishing a dozen novels, she doesn't know how to write a novel. what hope do the rest of us have?

for me personally this chapter was both very validating and very nauseating. as a writer, i've just never been able to hit the mark, because the things i like to write about and the way i like to write them don't seem to have a place anywhere. but it's always validating to read about other writers who find joy in the process of writing, and see it as a privilege rather than a burden.

on my good days, i think about how my life is my own, and that publications and awards and every other signifier of success doesn't really matter. what matters is how i spend the minutes of my day, and any minute i get to spend writing is a good one. but a few of those minutes each day should be dedicated to putting my work out there somehow: posting fic, applying to residencies, submitting places. if i put my work in the world, i have to trust that eventually good things will happen.

overall i found this essay very humbling. sometimes i get in my own head and think "i'm a pretty good writer" but then i read writers who are lightyears beyond me, who don't have to rewrite things a dozen times to get it right, and remember i am no genius; i have no natural talent, only skill; and i'll always be less a writer than i am an editor and teacher. i'm glad to remember these things. they lower the stakes a bit and make me less precious about my work, insofar as i do have the freedom to write whatever i want, even if it doesn't land anywhere.

i'm also reminded i need to spend less time writing porn and more time reading literally anything. novels, essays, stories, fanfic, anything!! 2023, i gotta commit.

craft essay a day tag | writing advice tag | ask me something

#cead #process #drafting #intermediate

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liapher · 2 years

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in love with your dta book binding and i find i am increasingly more invested in wanted to physically hold a copy of dta so i was wonder if you had any advice or resources (programs/materials/web sites) for beginners or like point me in the right direction if you don’t mind?

Okay so keep in mind I'm very much an amateur at both typography and bookbinding

Alright, typesetting. What I initially did was just open some of the books on my shelves to see how those were designed and just use that as inspiration. That absolutely worked, although there are some details I would now do differently. Last fall/winter I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole and read every typography book that I could find at my library. The ones i would actually really recommend are the following:

“The Elements of Typographic Style” by Robert Bringhurst. This one is a really nice intro to all kinds of typesetting details. It’s also pretty easy to find PDFs of this book on Google :-)

Jan Tschichold’s essays on typesetting and book design, if you can get your hands on them. I think they were translated and published as “The Form of the Book.” Tschichold explains the typographical choices that have worked well for centuries and how to do modern (20th century) versions of those. He’s very much not into having fun and experimenting though. I nevertheless found it really interesting and useful to read what he wrote and to then decide whether to heed that advice or to deliberately ignore it (since I’m here to have fun with typesetting).

If you speak German: “Lesetypografie” by Friedrich Forssman and Hans Peter Willberg. Its thesis is basically: book design has to be for the reader, and it's really good at explaining what that actually means with tons of examples.

For a free online resource, you could also check out practicaltypography.com, especially the sections on page layout and text formatting.

Moving on: typesetting software. I use LaTeX because I was already used to using it for typesetting academic texts, and because it allows me to be a little control freak about all kinds of details >:) and because it allows me to programmatically import the text and change its design. If you’re already used to working with LaTeX or if you enjoy programming, I definitely recommend it, but otherwise I have to warn you that the learning curve is very steep. This document contains links to how-to guides for various other kinds of software though, maybe those might be useful to you?

For re-ordering the pages of your PDF so they’re in the order you need for folding signatures when handbinding a book, you’ll need an imposition tool. I use LaTeX, but I know lots of people swear on this online tool.

Designing a cover (if you want to use a print-on-demand service or if you want to add a dust jacket to a handbound book): I use Affinity Photo, mostly because that’s the image editing software I already had anyway, but I'd also generally recommend it; it can do lots and is sold at a very fair price imo. My general tip is not to place any elaborate design details near where the spine and the front/back cover meet (and the front/back cover and the cover flaps)—if you use a print-on-demand service, they might end up printing the cover just a smidgen too far to the left/right and it'll look weird if part of your spine design is now on the front cover, and if you design a dust jacket, you might underestimate the small amount of extra material you might need to fit the dust jacket around the spine or around the fore-edge of the cover. Before exporting the print-ready PDF, merge all layers—this will considerably reduce the size of the PDF.

Printing books via print-on-demand services: I've used lulu.com, which prints books that are of a fine enough (but not perfect) quality. If you want to design a cover + interior to print via their service, definitely make sure to read their formatting guide where they explain what kinds of trims/bleed edges/etc. you should take into account. To find out what dimensions your book cover is gonna need to have (specifically how wide the spine is gonna be), use their pricing tool and enter the page count, select the binding type etc. My tip here is to only start designing the cover once the interior is done and you know how long the book will be—otherwise, you’re gonna spend a fair amount of time adjusting your cover layout to work with a new spine width... :)))

Printing dust jackets: go to your local copy shop and check what kind of glossy, slightly-thicker-than-copy-paper paper they have available and ask if you can use their paper guillotine to trim the printed cover to the size you need.

Handbinding a book: I read the “printing” and “physical assembly” sections of this document, and I also watched a lot of Darryn Schneider's videos on Youtube—he’s a professional bookbinder who makes a lot of incredibly useful videos on various bookbinding techniques. Really great if you’re a visual learner! To get started, I’d watch his video on tools for beginners, his series on making a case bound book, and his video on the square back case binding. I really like the latter technique—it’s great if you’re making thinner books where the width difference between the spine and the rest of your textblock isn’t too, too pronounced, and if you're a bit scared of actually backing and rounding spines / don’t have the appropriate tools. I also found it very helpful to ask questions in this fanbinding discord!

In terms of tools, I have:

A good-quality cutting mat + cutter (Olfa, definitely worth the small investment so far), and a metal ruler

A bone folder (great for, well, folding stuff, but also for smoothing out creases as you glue cloth or paper to the bookboard)

An awl (and a couple of pieces of (mostly) corrugated cardboard stacked on top of each other to protect my desk when I punch holes into the signatures)

Two bristle brushes, a large one (about an inch across) and a small one (less than 1 cm across)

Sewing needles—I’d recommend using one that’s relatively blunt and large but a bit thinner than the awl for sewing the signatures, and a thinner and pointy one if you want to make headbands

I don't have a press, I just use a stack of heavy books

and as for the materials:

Off-white 80 GSM paper, but I’ve also used whatever off-white copy paper the library printers happened to stock. Real bookbinders use paper with the grain running parallel to the spine—I don’t since it’s way more expensive, at least where I live.

Bookbinding glue (see also here and here)

Cotton gauze

For these books, I used some random leftover woven cotton tapes, but afaik if the book is fairly thin you don’t need tapes and can just sew the signatures together with the French link stitch instead. (That's what I’ve been doing at least)

2 mm thick bookboard (solid cardboard, preferably acid-free)

Bookcloth. It’s special in that it’s made from non-stretchy fabric and backed with paper, so you can glue it to the bookboard without any glue spots staining the cloth. I’ve been buying bookcloth from bookbinding/stationery suppliers, but you can also find online guides to making your own bookcloth (no recommendations as I haven’t tried that yet)

Some pretty paper for the cover and/or the endpapers (optional, you can also cover the entire cover in bookcloth and use plain endpapers). Since this involves applying a bunch of glue to the paper, it’s a bit easier to work with if the paper’s a tad heavier than copy paper (around 100 GSM maybe?), although that isn’t a requirement

Linen thread. I got some from a bookbinding supplier and picked the 18/3 one, which is nice, but if I had to choose again I might consider getting something ever so slightly thinner. Also full disclosure I don't know how or if this thread is different from regular linen thread. Lots of people apply a thin coat of beeswax to their thread, but I haven’t done that so far, and haven’t had any problems with that (will report back if that changes)

Optional: a thin leather cord (or shoelaces) and some thin thread you happen to have lying around for making headbands

Also optional: some pretty ribbon to use as a bookmark, like those thin fabric ribbons you can buy for gift-wrapping

I think that's it? For the most part it’s about approaching this with a can-do attitude and not being too afraid of just trying things out

This is a bit all over the place, but if you have more specific questions, feel free to send me another ask! :)

#also regarding wanting to have a physical copy of dta: if it's really just about wanting to hold a book in your hands but you're not too int #interested in the design/assembly: feel free to pm me and i can share print-ready pdfs with you #but if you are interested in typesetting/crafting: absolutely do it i promise it's lots of fun!!!!#bookbinding #replies #deangloriam #mission update

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sebastianmincewiczblogcas · 1 month

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CREATIVITY; POST 9 - February

Without doubt, this has been my largest writing project to date. As I had said at the beginning, I have never written a work this extensive, both for a lack of time and because I never really felt like anything I wanted to make required such a form. I generally do not believe in padding out any story with filler segments, introducing nothing of value; I think it always detracts from the overall value of the final product and bores both the writer and the audience, no matter whether it’s a literary or a visual work. I think what makes my favourite stories is being rich in language but utilitarian in content; epic in scale, too, if the setting allows – however to elaborate on this would, ironically, be tangential. To continue on my reflection, then – as I have assumed at the beginning of the project, its completion has obviously not elevated me to a professional level. It did, naturally, bring me closer to it, and yielded many benefits besides, on which I will elaborate momentarily, nevertheless, the work will not be published – certainly not under any name of mine, at least. Still, it was an extensively teaching experience, and one that I am frankly rather proud of. Of the benefits I mentioned earlier: I have, lately, been trying to get more into literature, and I can safely say that at this point in life I read more than ever before, which I attribute in no small part to this project. I must also credit an essay I read after recommendation from my English teacher, “Politics and the English Language” penned by Orwell – while the ‘politics’ part is largely irrelevant here, the work contains a myriad of observations and suggestions on the usage of language that I found helpful both in the project and outside. To conclude this reflection, I can safely say that this project was highly constructive and, while I may not immediately be jumping into another one of this scale, especially so considering the growing workload that looms ahead, I certainly have derived much and more when it comes to operating on language, and I feel both proud of and thankful for the experience.

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friendlyneighborhoodplebeian · 8 months

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friendly reminder that J.K.Rowling views anyone that enjoys her work as supporting her, and that that is the only thing minorities will ever agree with her on.

First, to the person that sent this, I’m sorry I could not respond sooner and privately before I post this, I want you to know this is not an attack on you, if anything you are doing me a great service to allow me address JKR and her doings without it seeming out of the blue (I feel uncomfortable to make grandiose statements out of no where, I’m not here to be political. I’m posting jokes and thoughts that just come to my head about fandoms I like for fun). If you feel attacked in any way by this I’m sorry and I implore you to reach out to me, so we can talk this out and so I can privately apologize.

Second, to address what you/they said I was not aware of this particular view of her’s, I’ve never really kept track of what JKR was doing and her beliefs, (I’m not into keeping track of any public figure’s life) after finding out about her being a TERF I no longer bought or participated in anything that would directly support her (buying merchandise and the such(I will elaborate more about the “directly support her” line in my fourth point)).

Third I do stand with the people/communities she has hurt, as a person who is also minority (I’m a Fil-am, queer, and not fully gender conforming) anything I do is not meant to offend or hurt in anyway and I’m sorry if I’ve ever done such and I would like for those willing to point out my wrong doings, so I could apologize and educate myself, so I do not make these mistakes again.

Fourth, my take on separating the art from the artist is that as long as your contribution to the fandom does not directly supporting the author, (the use of direct is because as long as people care and remember about any of her works, we contribute to the remembrance of her and the continuation of her infamy, but that thought can be better handled by someone else and not what I’m on tumblr to do) so I don’t not consider participating in fandom by making posts to be supporting her, and if it looks like I’m supporting her in any way; I’m sorry that I did not do better, you deserve to see posts and to follow someone that is better and can make these sort of things clear, I’m sorry that I did not make my stance obvious and I’m sorry if any of you are disappointed, angry, or hurt by me. I will try to be better.

Firth, the reclaiming of works, I am of the belief that works/art (literature, imagery, painting, etc.) to a certain point do not belong to artists anymore after they are published/public. People through their interpretation transforms works into these amazing things that exist outside of the author, they transform characters from one form of being to another and make it their own. I believe works can be reclaimed and transformed into something that is not hateful, that works can be transformed into something beautiful (though that is a two way treat, misconstruing works into something that it never was and actually the complete opposite of what it was intended to be in a bad way 100% exist, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov comes to mind, there’s really great video essays about Lolita on how this happened on YouTube I suggest you take a look at those). The Harry Potter fandom had taken the world of Harry Potter away from horrible bigoted women and transformed the work into something beautiful and accepting. They transformed into something that JKR was to bigoted and untalented to create herself. I don’t Harry Potter see to be a creation of JKR, but the fandom. In the minds of many we in-vision not the work of JKR, but the work of the fandom whether or not we realize it. The fandom was the reason I like Harry Potter at all, they are the reason I’m apart of this fandom, they are the reason I can look at Harry Potter with such love and nostalgia. JKR was too untalented to do what the fandom is capable of. I want to thank the fandom for this, you guys are truly incredible.

Lastly, if anyone made it this far, thank you. I hope I’ve touched on everything well and respectfully. I also hope you give me another chance and not see this as an overreaction, I felt I needed to explain/ defend myself and that this subject need to be touched upon if I continue to make Harry Potter posts. I’m uncomfortable with sharing things about myself and avoid doing so and outside of jokes I don’t really post anything else, but I felt this needed to be said, thank you for reading this. And in the worlds of Truman of the Truman show “Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight.” Thank you.

-Much Love

Your, Friendlyneighborhoodplebian

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denimbex1986 · 9 months

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'It is a pleasure, in my latest Q&A, to talk with Kevin Williamson, my old friend and colleague. We cover the waterfront, or a stretch of it: climate change; U.S. politics; transgenderism; Ukraine; books; “Barbenheimer” — especially the “heimer” part, Oppenheimer, the new biopic.

I have not seen it. I don’t plan to. Then how in the world can I talk about it? I know that Lewis L. Strauss is a villain of the piece. I know some other things, too. I object to a gross misteaching.

More than most, I think, I believe in the separation of art from politics, and even, to a degree, the separation of art from facts. I know that Oppenheimer is “just a movie.” But is it? This movie will teach, or misteach, millions upon millions about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Admiral Strauss, and the controversy of that time. How many will read No Sacrifice Too Great, the biography of Strauss by Richard Pfau, published in 1985? Eleven?

Talking with Kevin, I thought of a piece written by Tom Wicker, for the New York Times. It was published in 1991. Wicker was responding to JFK, the latest Oliver Stone movie. In this movie, Kennedy is the victim of a plot by the U.S. military, the CIA, and the FBI, with the complicity of Vice President Johnson.

Just a movie, right? Well, yes and no. As Wicker says, the movie rewrites history. It is a misleader, and miseducator.

I imagine that some number got their view of the Kennedy assassination from Stone’s movie. But there are a zillion books, documentaries, and other things about the Kennedy assassination. The Stone movie can do only modest harm. But when will people ever get another view of the Oppenheimer–Strauss matter?

As I mentioned to Kevin, I have not seen The Death of Klinghoffer, the opera by John Adams. Don’t think I will. To me, the Achille Lauro hijacking is a contemporary event. I was riveted to news about it. To me, it is not really a subject for artistic treatment.

In 1985, you recall, Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Italian cruise liner, the Achille Lauro. They murdered Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American Jew, confined to a wheelchair. They shot him and dumped his body overboard.

Writing in 2014, the editors of the New York Times said, “The opera gives voice to all sides in this terrible murder.” Here on the Corner, I wrote,

“All sides” — really? Maybe I am misreading the editors, but this “all sides” business seems an almost comical example of moral relativism run amok.

Palestinian terrorists murdered an innocent, helpless man in cold blood because he was Jewish. Period. The terrorists have a “side,” true: They are monsters. Or am I being judgmental, in my simple, Reagan-like way?

Let me give you a footnote: By sheer coincidence, John Adams also composed an opera about Oppenheimer, Doctor Atomic.

Before closing, I’d like to return to Lewis Strauss. In 1997, I wrote an item about him for The Weekly Standard, where I was working. Alfred Kazin, the famed literary critic, had “casually perpetrated a drive-by infamy,” I said. In the course of an essay on another subject,

Kazin gratuitously smeared Adm. Lewis L. Strauss, who in a long and controversial career was private secretary to Herbert Hoover, an investment banker on Wall Street, a wartime naval strategist, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and secretary of commerce. In a discussion of the sainted J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom Strauss opposed, Kazin remarked en passant that Strauss “pronounced his own name ‘Straws’ to make himself sound less Jewish.”

This would be a hilarious allegation if it were not so contemptible. Strauss was as prominent a Jew as could be found in the United States for four decades. If Strauss was out to disguise his faith, he could not have done a poorer job of it.

I elaborated,

He was a member of numerous Jewish organizations, assuming a leading role in many of them. In the summer of 1939, he was in Europe, attempting to rescue Jews from Germany. For over 10 years, he was president of Temple Emanu-El in New York. He once refused to eat a ham lunch that Queen Elizabeth served him. And until his death in 1974, he was in the forefront of Jewish philanthropy, donating large chunks of his fortune.

A bit more:

Kazin’s lame excuse for the libel is that he heard it from people, long ago. The truth is that Strauss grew up in Richmond, Va., and, like other southerners, pronounced the name “Straws.” (So had his father and grandfather.) Presented with this explanation, Kazin would have none of it, insisting that anyone saying “Straws” had to be trying to pass. With Strauss’s Jewish credentials, Kazin was irritably unimpressed.

The truth is, Lewis Strauss had no interest in making himself appear other than as he was. He was notoriously blunt, bold, and proud — even if he pronounced his name as a Virginian, rather than as a German...'

#Oppenheimer #Lewis Strauss #Barbenheimer #JFK #Oliver Stone #No Sacrifice Too Great #Richard Pfau #The Death of Klinghoffer #John Adams #Doctor Atomic

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one-half-guy · 11 months

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🎮, 📉 and 😘! ^-^

Hehey, Good Afternoon!!

🎮 First Game?

Classic Trilogy, Sonic has been in my life since my very first days before I ever dream in get invested in the fandom, so the 3~5 yo me played these games often along my sister around 2006~2008, I just am not sure if was in a Mega Drive that still was an outstanding model around my country or if was in a relaunch to PS1 or something like this 🤔 ... The things gets foggy from there 😅

Buuuuut also, when I got back to around the franchise around 2017, the first games I played were the Advance Trilogy around 2018 through emulator.

But the most solid and old memory I have around Sonic games was to playing the browser fangame Final Fantasy Sonic X there back in 2011~2012, with a lot of effort I managed to obliterate the True Guardian in the pt. 5 and Aeon in the pt. 6 😎

📉 Underrated Character?

I could easily get the entire list of the Post-SGW originals (Gold the Tenrec, Cassia & Clove the Pronghorn, Eclipse the Darkling, Relic the Pika, Maw the too complicated name to write so I should've pulled the etc sooner, so etc) But it's no use cry over spilled milk, right? 🥲

Then let's speak of the milk that wasn't spilled yet Silver the Hedgehog & Blaze the Cat.

To keep it short: Separately these two have lores that could expand the franchise's story and give us great stories going deeper and centering just around them, but Sega keep insisting in put them together as mere extra characters. 😤

That's it, I would elaborate a little more but it ended becoming a entire messed essay 😂

😘 Favorite Ship

That is actually a simple one, but I like to make the things complicated... You can tell it as you notice the name of my first published fanfiction is "Mixed Universe"

I usually have no preferences around ships, if the fan content has good quality, develops characters and their relationship well, respect their canon traits and makes me see a charm in the ship I am enjoying it quite satisfied. I was not a ship person for quite a long time actually.

The only reason why I started to actively and purposely produce ship focused content was because...

Short response: Goldaze was the first ship I formed all by myself, without external influence, ignoring canon, so I realized they had no attention of the fandom but the solid 5 people who apparently agreed with me I could find. So I decided produce content of them by myself.

Long response: Well, I read all the info about Gold I could find in Evan Stanley's blog and thought "Hmmm, so Gold's type is quite Blaze the Cat 😏" So I thought for the first time ever "I wonder how the fandom used this information, what funny stories and cute fanarts they did? 🤔" And so I found like... TWO Discord meme drawings about it 😤 So I waited... And waited... And waited believing some more skilled fanfic writer in general would actually show interest and try to work with them... And in the best I got three more persons who agree with me sharing the "her type sounds like Blaze" opinion and still nothing, so when I found the Year of The OTP event I thought "you know what, this is the last straw, I will do it myself 😤" 😂😂 So now I guess I will focus in lesser known ships if I ever create other ship centric fics because I think they deserve more attention while more known ships like Sonamy, Silvaze, Espilver, Knuxouge or Sonadow, for example, already have a way more of people who genuinely enjoy produce about them 😉.

#thanks for asking!#i think I got carried away in the last one... 🤭🤭#buuuut acording to my image folder... my favorite is whispangle

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captainmdhridoyhossain-blog · 11 months

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[ad_1] Buckle up because this is going to be huge for you! No, I mean it, this one is actually a game changer! ChatGPT is a true superpower when it comes to writing. And getting started and using It as your assistant writer is not very hard. But there are several hidden prompts and formulas that you really need to know about to get the most out of it. And at the end of the day, if you're using ChatGPT you already have a competitive advantage. But even within that, this content will give you another advantage over all the typical: "I am a large language model" answer receivers. And first I want to begin with a use case that you've probably already seen, and that's asking it to Write an essay. But I need you to start thinking differently about this. Because this is what ChatGPT really sees in the background. And if you see the formula written out like this, it allows you to craft prompts that are completely unique to you. And then you can start expanding it With building blocks like: "in the style of", and then you insert the style. This is really the key to becoming a little more advanced here. Okay, and here's a quick tip on a few things you could insert instead of the variables. Instead of essay, you could say a poem, blog article, or song. And instead of Hemingway, you could pick most public personalities who have published a large body of work. This could range from all the way from philosophers and religious figures to comedians like Dave Chappelle. Now that you understand the basic writing prompt, I want to show you some tricks and Keywords that will help you get the most out of your writing. I'll just take the first paragraph from Wikipedia of my favorite artist, and we will use some of the keywords here. So when I insert it into ChatGPT and put it into quotation marks. One fantastic keyword here Is "rephrase"; what that will do is express the same ideas in a different tone. Now yes, this could easily be abused to plagiarize, but I'm not here to judge the ethical implications. I'm simply showing what is possible with this technology. And as you can see here it turns the Wikipedia Article into an almost original piece of text, kind of. And if I use a basic plagiarism checker, and first, check for the Wikipedia article and then for the ChatGPT output after I rephrased it this is what I get: The Wikipedia article is 80% plagiarized, obviously, actually it's kinda Surprising that it's not 100 right? And as you can see the ChatGPT gets a 100 % unique rating. Now look I am fully aware that universities have more complex plagiarism checkers, but the point is that the keyword: "rephrase" is pretty damn powerful. Ok so the next super powerful prompt right here Focuses on a different aspect of writing. A lot of times if you write you first have to research. And in order to research you have to absorb information. And if you do your work well you absorb a lot of information, like a book! That would also be a typical school assignment, Wouldn't it? I could just go ahead and say: "Provide me with an outline of for the book The Old Man And The Sea."By the way, I read that, and so should you. Incredible book. But let's see what ChatGPT can do here. Excellent work, honestly. So as you can see "provide me with an outline" is an extremely powerful prompt because you can run this on books, articles or even transcripts that you feed it yourself. And you could always go in and say: "Elaborate on the second point". "Santiago Sets out to sea early one morning, hoping to catch a big fish and end his streak of 84 days without a catch. And then in the end: Overall Santiagos struggle with the fish serves as a metaphor for the human struggle to Overcome challenges and persevere in the face of adversity." A legendary story worth reading, but also a very useful prompt. Okay so here's one that you could totally use for learning purposes when working with a young person.

Let's say they write a text and they use a pretty basic Vocabulary: "Yesterday I went to school it was really fun me and my friends had lunch and then we played cards". Now instead of explaining to that person hey maybe you could string these together or maybe you could use more advanced words or adjectives. Simply put this in quotation Marks and tell ChatGPT the following: Replace my simple vocabulary with advanced English. "Yesterday I visited the school. The experience was quite enjoyable. My friends and I shared a meal together and afterwards engaged in a game of cards". And honestly using a tool like this, This is one of the better ways to communicate with a human being. You can take input that they generated and show them instantly, how else this could be approached. And as per usual can follow Up with: "Now write it in the style of a video game dialogue" and instantly picks a tone of voice that resonates with young people. If you appreciate this content hit that like button for me but now let's move on to the next point. Alright and here's my last one and buckle up because This is going to be huge for you, no I mean it. This one is actually a game-changer. Act as a professional spelling and grammar corrector and improver. "sure I'd be happy to help. please provide the text." and now we'll completely butcher this and see what it can do okay? Okay, let's just submit this and see what we get. That is perfect! And here's one bonus tip Now write that in the style of a Pulitzer Prize winner. If you didn't know Pulitzer prizes are literary Oscars. "Greetings dear sir or madam as a connoisseur of the english language I find Myself in need of a refreshing beverage and what could be more fitting than a classic Coca-Cola." Pretty cool, and as previously mentioned, you can think about these in terms of formulas, So really I just gave you the secret sauce to so many functions. If you think about it. (All of them are in the video's description) Because act as a professional spelling and grammar corrector and improver can be seen as act as a Professional, insert profession. Now you pick and right away you can start talking to a psychologist or electrician. And trust me, you'll be surprised by how professional and educated they actually are. Alright, so what all these have in common is that they took a different approach to communicate With the AI. And that's really the key here. The dataset that this has been trained by is, in certain ways, superior to what humans can know. But then there's other things we do way better. But, by knowing some of these tips and tricks, you can really combine the best of both worlds; your Intuition, emotional intelligence, and knowledge, with the AI's data. And that's the whole point of this channel. But, in this video, I was only able to show you five prompts, but the truth of the matter is, there is so much more. And I decided to start a weekly newsletter featuring the best And most innovative prompts so you can get the maximum out of this revolutionary technology. It's completely free and trust me, I'll make sure it's the opposite of spam. Meanwhile, here's a video with even more creative prompts and, as per usual, put these to work responsibly. [ad_2] #Secrets #Writing #Chat #GPT #Responsibly For More Interesting Article Visit : https://mycyberbase.com/

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beamloaddirective · 1 year

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B01: Why I Write

Title: Why I Write Author: George Orwell History: Found at a library sale in October

If my piece on Chuck Klosterman’s “The Nineties” from last year indicates anything, it is that I have little sense of how to write about books in a non-academic essay sense. I am not in the habit of reading book reviews outside of those published in journals (maybe that’s a habit I should get into. Come to think of it, I’m not in the habit of reading reviews of any medium at the moment. Maybe that’s another habit I should get into.) Forgive me if I’m shaky to start out with here.

Orwell is a writer with whom I have limited experience. I wasn’t in the classes that read 1984 and did the whole accompanying ‘Big Brother is Watching’ game in high school, and I know that I own a copy of and at least at some point started reading a collection of his essays (it’s in my huge stack of books in the profile picture) sometime since the start of college, mainly because I read his essay on being in boarding school in a narrative essay collection I was assigned for one of my creative nonfiction classes back in college. I was struck then by how much weight and complexity he could infuse into the emotional experience surrounding wetting oneself as a youth, and that’s been my primary memory of his work as a writer and a thinker to this point, a fact which I’m sure he’d be happy to know.

This collection features a few essays written in the 1940s, mostly discursive/argumentative essays about England’s cultural existence, England’s place in World War II and Europe, socialism, and patriotism.

Orwell is refreshingly straightforward. He dictates in the collection’s last essay, “Politics and the English Language,” that he values precision highly, and it’s reflected in each of these. We might call him “brutally honest” nowadays, or more accurately ten years ago we might’ve called him that, back when that tendency was seen as a genuine virtue and not an annoying front for callousness, i.e. back when we used that phrase without scare quotes. He’s so adept at stating or defining something precisely in a single sentence and building off of it. It makes me miss teaching, I want to use his essays to illustrate the value of a good thesis statement. A great example was in Part II of “The Lion and the Unicorn” –

What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism – that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit – does not work.

Which is gorgeous as a thesis statement. Orwell states his argument and defines the main term of the argument precisely before elaborating. He states this, he states the claims which build up the argument, the reader can agree, disagree, be enlightened, be disgusted, whatever, but there’s no kvetching to it. Especially in comparison to so much editorial writing I’ve read recently, I liked reading a man confidently (and competently) state his argument the way that Orwell did here. I couldn’t immediately think of who Orwell’s writing is contrasted with in my mind here, but as I write this reflection, I keep thinking of reading The Athletic’s college football columns during the first half of this season before I realized I hated each of the primary columnists, and I might even be thinking of lengthy Tumblr and Reddit posts by non-professional writers. That is probably the answer: I don’t seek out enough good writers to begin with. It’s my own fault that I dislike so much of the writing I read. I know where I can find good writing, or at least I know where I keep finding the type of writing that makes me want to grind my knuckles into the desk in front of me until I hit the bone, and yet I often choose the latter.

Orwell’s opinions do not align so neatly into modern defined scaffolding. He’s a socialist and an imperialist and he values patriotism. Through modern eyes these immediately struck me as contradictory opinions, but he argues precisely and thoroughly. His argument about England continuing to occupy India reminded me of contemporary arguments on the American presence in the Middle East, but I came around to his argument on patriotism’s role in getting a mass of people on board with a broader mission. The one thing I envy about him writing in that era (and I mean the one thing. I don’t envy him writing that with airstrikes landing in the streets around him) is that achieving his ideological mission seemed much simpler and more feasible in his era. In a much less connected world, the list of simple steps he lays out for his socialist vision struck me as feasible, and some of those steps around state ownership seemed to have come to fruition in the UK. I don’t envy the modern socialist rhetorician, as a pragmatic approach like Orwell lays out feels difficult in such a complex and interconnected world.

I should clarify that the depth of my knowledge around these topics during Orwell’s era is limited if that isn’t already clear.

I appreciated Orwell’s criticisms of his contemporaries, even if I didn’t know who he was specifically criticizing. There was something fun about reading criticisms that I could imagine a modern writer like Freddie DeBoer or Max Read making towards similar groups in a Substack post – The middle and upper management classes are built on nepotism and are fundamentally incompetent. The intellectuals are annoying and so stuck in idealism that they’re functionally useless. I read criticisms like this all the time from modern cultural critics. That was maybe the most interesting aspect of reading this book: How many of his criticisms have reflections in the modern day.

I’ll end on my favorite section (fitting given my profession), “Politics and the English Language.” I like that he succinctly lays out his main criticisms with contemporary writing: “The first is staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision.” His complaints on staleness touched on something that frustrates me about modern writing as well. I think of my frustrations with reading Defector, a site whose mission as a sports-based subscriber-funded cooperative I admire but whose writers I dislike reading because of these sort of rhetorical handrails they hold on to, so many of them adopted from old tweets (‘it’s good, actually’ or ‘you can have a little whatever, as a treat’ or ‘types of guys’), which were grating to me initially (and clearly aren’t to their reader-base) and only grew annoying as time and language has progressed. It’s a champagne problem that the people on my side politically write in a way I find annoying, but it’s pushed me to try to write differently myself. Orwell credits this to an innate issue with writing under any orthodoxy.

The conflict between he and I (and my central criticism of my own writing at the moment, though I have so much fun doing it that I don’t want to stop it) comes from an inability to be precise and direct in much of my work. I’ve worked on it in this post, I don’t know if it’s come through. Precision, in political writing, or even just in basic argumentative writing, has significant benefits, but I’m fine as it stands with my creative essays leaning purple. Once I get the final Football Hell essay published, I might try to take these lessons into account.

What I want to take from this work comes from this passage:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

I hope to make asking these questions into a habit going forward.

#George Orwell #Why I Write

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deoffal-mp-adm7000-n-s1-2022 · 2 years

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Side note post: Emailing Eugene Thacker for this project

I just wanted to document a side part of my professional development and away from the show and all of the details concerning that too. Due to the amount of times I discuss the significance of Eugene Thacker’s work on my work, I finally thought I should bite the bullet and email him, asking for feedback on my last essay and in hopes of sharing my first volume of Noumena with him (Noumena Volume 1 being rightfully completed first), as I am looking to pursue a PhD and expand my intellectual representation I thought it would be best to contact him directly as a fan and contemporary that is an example of his work manifest in the art industry as it were. I was able to contact him as his website has said details available and open to the public as pointed out here on his website:

https://eugenethacker.com/about

I sent him this message:

My name is Deoffal Maldoror and I am a dark surrealist illustrator and a current student of Ma Fine Art at BCU's School of Art in Birmingham. (Deoffal Maldoror is my professional alias by the way, just wanted to clarify)

I wanted to get in contact with you because I wanted to let you know that I am currently producing an installation and research project that is heavily inspired by your work and field of expertise. Since studying your work from the end of last year to now, I have really been able to establish the direction and specialism of my work, and I am currently applying to study for a PhD to write a thesis in the same field too. The current project of mine being primarily based on the concepts featured in the Horror Of Philosophy series in particular.

Here is my website so you can see what I do:

https://deoffalmaldoror.wixsite.com/deoffal-maldoror And my Instagram in case there is an issue directly accessing my website:

https://www.instagram.com/deoffal_maldoror/ I also wrote an essay explaining the current potential of practice and its concepts, elaborating on many of your concepts from an artist's perspective as my specialism in the area continues to grow. And if you have the time, I would love to get your feedback and general opinions on what you think of my work and essay.

Also, with your permission of course, any feedback or response you can give would be used in my current research and greatly appreciated all the same. I have also attached a proof of one of my current publications being made for the show, just so you can see what's currently being done in the way of independently published material too. If any of it interests you, then again any feedback, or questions, would be massively appreciated.

P.S. Excuse some of the wordings and citations in the essay and this email, I am quite dyspraxic and so they may seem not as formal or correct as they could be. Sorry for the long email, but I still hope you can enjoy it all the same. Take care and I hope to hear from you soon.

(The actual email as proof)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In summary, I was as anxious as any person could be, especially when trying to write formally for someone you have alot of respect for and take alot of inspiration from, I am yet to see them respond but hopefully they will get back to me soon enough and maybe enjoy what I do, but who knows, as this must seem very out of the blue for someone as academic as Eugene Thacker to have someone directly inspired by their work message them with work made after their work, really odd I guess. But such is the influence of philosophers and artists as discussed in a previous blog post, it’s what we do when we meet and collide our outcomes together to push the culture deeper into the unknown.

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audreydoeskaren · 3 years

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(Rant) Chinese historical clothing and corsetry myths

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*TERFs do not interact

tw misogyny, racism

Intro

Hi y’all, I wanted to make a short rant but it ended up becoming a full blown essay about clothing and the patriarchy. If you’re into this sort of stuff, buckle up and ride along. I was reading some articles both casual and scholarly on Qing Dynasty Han women’s fashion recently and it struck me as really odd that a lot of them mix in some age old myths about European corsetry for absolutely no reason. In their pathetic attempts at entry level feminist analysis, in order to prove that historical Chinese clothing was patriarchal and oppressive to women they always bring up European corsets and stays to make the argument that women in the past were oppressed no matter where they were. After I received a stupid and disturbing response to the foot binding ask regarding foot binding and corsetry, the making of this post appears much more significant.

As a feminist and European historical fashion enthusiast myself, the wildly inaccurate, sensational and sometimes pseudo-Darwinist corset myths they perpetuate make me cringe to my core. Popular fashion history bloggers like Karolina Zebrowska and Bernadette Banner have been debunking corsetry myths for some years now so anyone active in the Western historical costuming community would have been able to avoid them, but that information has largely failed to reach their Chinese counterpart. While I understand that Chinese fashion historians don’t need to know about corsets and stays, why would they bring up corsetry all the time if they don’t know fuck all about it to begin with?? It’s really unprofessional and frankly stupid.

Before we begin, I have to get this out of the way: corsetry in the West is not comparable to foot binding in China. They were completely different practices with completely different consequences for a person’s body (person because men wore corsets too). I am sick and tired of talking about foot binding so I won’t even elaborate, have a thought about it yourself.

Debunking

Ok, so moving on to the debunking. I’m gonna show passages from two pretty representative articles that pull corset myths out of their arses and show you why they’re wrong. If you’re into Western fashion history or corsetry in general, I apologize preemptively for the cringe.

The first one is called “ 18世纪中法女装造型对比研究与创新应用 ” (comparison between 18th century Chinese and French womenswear: research and innovative application) by 高夏 published in 2018. The passage on corsetry goes like this (the translation is my own)

Corsets or stays achieve structure by inserting whalebone, wood, ivory or metal, so that it can have better shaping. Usually of a v-shape, corsets or stayrs cover the chest and waist, diverging into tabs at the bottom, hugging the figure, but doesn’t interfere with the movements of the lower body; usually in the shape of a tank top, the straps are sometimes on the shoulder, sometimes of a cap sleeve design. Lifting the breasts, taking in the waist are both the most aesthetically striking features of the corset, but under this beautiful appearance, what is more terrifying is, corsets or stays cause long term compression to the torso deforming women’s ribcages, shifting their organs, pressing against the nerves and blood vessels, causing difficulty to breathe and other illnesses.

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18th century stays

Jesus Christ what is going on. Also the sentence structure in this one gave me a stroke just reading it. First off, I don’t know a single 18th century person who used ivory to bone their stays I’m pretty sure nobody did that. It was acceptable to use as busks (the straight front piece inserted into the chest area), so was wood, but it sounds impossible to use them as boning. Metal boning didn’t become a widespread thing until the 19th century. Whalebone is the only correct option. Congratulations author, you made four guesses and one of them is correct.

Second off, women’s ribcages and organs were fine, this has been debunked a thousand times. Like Karolina Zebrowska mentioned in one of her videos, if corsetry really had this much power, wouldn’t all Western women who lived through the 17th to 20th centuries have deformed ribs?? And that is obviously not true. If you don’t tight lace I don’t see how anything can be compressed, I tight lace a lot and even my organs are fine. The human waist area is naturally pretty squishy so you can lace down a lot no problem. Plus, the effects of corsetry are not permanent, whatever shifted during the day when you are wearing corsets/stays would return to their previous positions once you take them off in the evening. Even if the ribs would shift over time, I don’t see how that would cause a problem? The effects stacked over time so the changes wouldn’t noticeable to the wearer. Difficulty to breathe? It depends on the design of the specific corset/stay, some styles don’t even cover the chest, I’d be impressed if those things gave you difficulty breathing. Even for 18th century stays, which covered most of the chest, breathing shouldn’t be a problem; modern opera singers wear corsets and stays as part of their costumes as well, and they can sing in them. From personal experience, I breathe in a slightly different way when wearing corsets tightly, and the effect is barely noticeable when not tight laced.

Third off, medicine was very much not developed in the 18th century and I wouldn’t advise anyone to trust doctors at the time writing about what caused women to become sick. On top of their lack of expertise, there was also the prevalent problem of misogyny in the male dominated medical profession; male doctors liked to blame illnesses on things related to femininity such as the uterus (hysteria) and obviously, stays.

The moment the author mentioned ivory boning, all credibility was lost... It’s kind of unfortunate because the whole point of this dissertation is to compare 18th century Chinese and French women's’ fashion and the author couldn’t even get one of the most basic premises of French historical fashion correct.

One of the only legitimate health concerns for wearing corsets is that you shouldn’t be wearing them all the time, like 24 hours a day, because your muscles will get used to the support and weaken as a result. But this could be countered by taking off your corset a couple of hours everyday and doing exercise, and also not sleeping with your corset on. Also, it’s good to wear a breathable layer under corsets, like a cotton shift that can be frequently washed, so that sweat wouldn’t accumulate and cause skin problems. With that said, I’m not a scientist and I also haven’t read every single piece of literature on corsetry, if there are any other legitimate health concerns for long term wearing of corsets, please let me know!!

Onto the second one. This one is about the practice of breast binding in China since the 15th century; it starts out pretty normal and informative but as soon as the author begins to compare breast binding to corsetry it sashays off into pseudoscience.

Corsetry began in the court, rumors say that Queen Josephine of France got pregnant out of wedlock, and in order to conceal her pregnancy she used fabric to bind her torso, accidentally discovering its effects to lift up the breasts, combined with the low cut clothing popular at the time, the breasts became very visible, becoming a trend, this shows that the beauty of breasts were prized during that time period.

I’m sorry I can’t stop laughing at this. You mean Empress Josephine? At the time she was born (1763) corsets/stays have been around for more than a century... When she was empress in the 1810s, the empire/regency style of dress was popular and it did not show the waist whatsoever, I don’t think anyone would notice if she was pregnant lmao. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did cheat on Napoleon, because cheating was super common back then, but heaven be damned if it had anything to do with corsetry. The part about short regency stays lifting and separating the breasts is legit but not for the reasons the author thinks; low necklines exposing breasts have been around in the 17th and 18th centuries as well, it’s just that during that time the boobies were pushed together, and after the waistline rose during the ancient Rome/Greece inspired directoire era, the boobies became increasingly pushed up and separated. It was just the fashion tbh, people wanted to do something different to what was done before.

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Portrait of Empress Josephine (I think? It’s weirdly difficult to find a good quality legitimate portrait of her somehow) in a high waisted gown with separated boobies.

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1790s short stays. They don’t cover the stomach at all?

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1780s Marie Antoinette with exposed boobies pushed together. She was, obviously, wearing stays.

This is the wildest corset origin myth I’ve seen yet and it would be funny if it weren’t kind of deranged. It’s very representative of the kind of popular history (野史) floating around the Chinese internet, which takes an average historical event and embellishes it with sexual degeneracy. I can’t help but be reminded of the iconic Lu Xun quote “ 一见短袖子，立刻想到白臂膊，立刻想到全裸体，立刻想到生殖器，立刻想到性交，立刻想到杂交，立刻想到私生子。中国人的想像惟在这一层能够如此跃进。(One sees a short sleeve and immediately starts thinking of bare arms, the naked body, the genitals, sexual intercourse, cheating, bastards etc.. The imagination of Chinese people can only make such great leaps on this matter)” Why is this still true 100 years later. I mean, Chinese people are definitely not alone in this, it’s just weirdly pervasive on the Chinese internet and sometimes even academia, mostly perpetuated by gross middle aged cis straight men going through midlife crises who love to boost their fragile egos by making up shit on the internet (such as my dad)...

By the way this is the photo included in the original article, showing some suspiciously retouched lingerie photoshoots from the 1880s/90s. I shudder to think that the author would believe 1880s corsets and regency short stays are the same thing...

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I love the 1880s. I love Photoshop. If you think these look freaky, don’t, it’s a real ass woman doing her thing and she doesn’t care about your opinion. Plus it’s photoshopped anyway.

Analysis

This is only the beginning of the journey. The passage goes on to cite Abba Goold Woolson, a dress reformer during the 1870s, saying that if a woman wears a corset, she suffers but is therefore able to please men and ascend the social ladder that way. I’m pretty sure the quote was taken out of context but Woolson herself also isn't the sole authority on the subject. The author buys into this bullshit wholeheartedly and comes to the conclusion that corsets were invented by the patriarchy to reduce women into sex objects. They write:

Breast binding is a sign of misogyny, stemming from the psychology of being disgusted by women’s breasts, it is a custom born out of a desire to restrain women’s natural beauty and attractiveness, the resentment for female attractiveness to men. Corsetry is a product of the patriarchal culture in the West, a product of women accentuating their figures to seduce powerful men.

This is nothing short of pseudo-Darwinist and kind of disturbing. There is so much to unpack here I might as well just move. First off, I don’t know who needs to hear this but corsets are supposed to be comfortable and not to kill you. They served a practical purpose before an aesthetic one, such as supporting the wearer’s bodies and the weight of the gowns, which in the 19th century, were some heavy gowns. Especially for bustier women, corsets provide superior bust and back support compared to modern underwire bras. If they were made with whalebone boning, spiral steel boning or cording, they were very light and flexible and wouldn’t interfere with everyday activities at all. This is the thing, the people calling for the complete abolition of corsets seemed to forget that busty women existed; if you’re flat chested you can go braless no problem, but if you have very big breasts it’s very difficult to move about without support, which corsets were supposed to provide. A lot of innovative designs with elastic panels and less boning were available in the second half of the 19th century so any woman who wanted to get one should be able to. In addition, if a woman didn’t want to wear corsets, what other options would she have at the time? Brassieres were not commonly available and the ones that did exist were worn in conjunction with corsets, elastic was only invented in the mid 19th century, being braless might be inconvenient for bustier women etc.. Corsets and stays were just normal underwear throughout their time of popularity and men wore them as well.

By the way, if you want to know how credible Abba Goold Woolson and other dress reformers were on the subject of fashion and feminism I suggest checking out the speeches they gave in the 1870s. Just to pick out a couple questionable things, she mentions that mothers with compressed torsos give birth to “inferior children” and is bad for their race, praises Thai women’s fashion but only because “barbarous tribes allow still greater freedom in their attire” and criticizes how “civilized people of the West” clad their women in impractical garments. The way she fetishizes and infantilizes the fashions of Asian countries is frankly uncomfortable to read, like she thinks white people are so special that only white women modify their bodies for fashion, and indigenous women are dumb, but at least not dumb enough to wear corsets. A lot of people involved with dress reform and the Arts and Crafts in general fetishized non-white cultures and European peasantry because of their supposed “primitiveness” and “purity” in opposition to the “degeneracy” of urban white folks. It’s a whole load of problematic Orientalist bullshit that I don’t even want to unpack. In regards to corsetry and comfort, 1870s dress reformers suggested making garments whose weight solely rested on the shoulders, which to me is quite unreasonable because anyone who has worn a heavy coat or something without a belt would know how freaking uncomfortable that is.

Second off, I take massive issue with this notion that corsets were invented for the male gaze, like, you give men way too much credit for fashion. This is a weirdly pervasive view, people will often instantly label any fashion trend men find attractive “oppressive” and “invented for the male gaze”, neglecting the fact that 1) correlation doesn’t equal causation 2) men could find attractive/fetishize a trend after it has been popularized. Just because men find something attractive doesn’t mean it was made for them and definitely doesn’t mean that feminist women have to stop wearing it. If men decide to collectively fetishize shampoo tomorrow do you suppose women stop washing our hair as well? That’s obviously absurd, so why should it be different for corsetry. Corsets are actually a prime example of a garment fetishized well after the height of its popularity; corsets and girdles used to be functional undergarments but started to fade out of popularity in the 1960s (though never really going away) and began reappearing as counterculture/fetish wear later. Similar fates befell stockings and garterbelts. Before the 20th century, fashion was a very female dominated field, it was one of the only industries where women had a voice. During the time when stays and corsets were invented and popularized, it was women behind the trend and men did nothing but ridicule women for it. The few men who were on board the trend were often deemed effete and called homophobic insults. Literally every Western fashion trend in the 18th and 19th centuries have been satirized by men at every possible turn, it really confuses me as to why people think it was men who put women in corsets if men hated them so much?

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1770s satirical drawing of women’s fashion, exaggerating the small waist and big coiffure. Notice how the male servant is drawn “normally”. I actually think this sort of satire is insanely misogynistic, maybe that’s a hot take. It stems from men’s belief that fashion, a then mostly feminine pastime, is “frivolous” and nothing of importance, and women who chase after fashion trends are stupid and vain and don’t know better. Excuse your mouth, fashion is a noble pursuit, without fashion human existence would be so boring. It’s not women’s problem that menswear stopped being interesting in the 1840s. I’m going to play the Miranda Priestly monologue on loop now I need to recover.

Also, the author completely neglects the fact that some women liked wearing corsets and even tight lacing because they enjoyed having the fashionable silhouette. The notion that corsets and stays were worn to create a specific, nuanced silhouette rather than to simply make the waist smaller or the boobs bigger is almost unknown to Chinese fashion historians (and a lot of people in the West as well). For example, 18th century stays create a very conical shape, 1890s corsets make the body a rounded hourglass and 1920s girdles flatten the chest. They just, uh, cannot entertain the possibility that corsets and stays were fashion trends and not some tool of patriarchal oppression with deeper, philosophical meaning. It has the same energy as Jordan Peterson claiming that women wear red lipstick to imitate sexual arousal, completely forgetting that some people wear blue or black lipstick; what are they imitating then, poisoned corpses? Sheesh why is it so hard to admit that fashion is for fun and art not just sex.

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The “pigeon breast” shape created by early Edwardian corsets and padding, I think these look cool as hell. 1901 issue of De Gracieuse.

This ties into the bigger problem in the research of Chinese fashion history, which is that scholars love to read deeper meanings into places where there likely is non, while being severely lacking in factual description of fashion trends. Like, I just want to know what common embroidery patterns were used in the 18th century and instead I got lectured on how traditional Chinese patterns were a service to the gods and among the most sacred and important accomplishments of my people and race (yes a lot of Chinese fashion history articles are very völkisch I hate it here).

I really appreciate the Western spirit of experimenting with and pushing the boundaries of the shape of the human body, the idea that you can modify your body temporarily with structured garments to achieve a certain look. It’s so cool and should be accepted/encouraged as long as it doesn’t have permanent health risks (like foot binding did). To some extent you can argue that this was the same spirit that drove Chinese women to bind their breasts, because form fitting tailoring techniques were not available in China (or at least not popular) so women changed their natural bodies to fit their clothes. And to me, personally, it makes sense, because I’ve tried wearing Ming Dynasty robes with a full, modern bra and it really doesn’t look neat with the protrusions.

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1520s portrait. By flattening the chest, the clothes fit better.

Conclusion & personal two cents

In my opinion, it was not corsets, stays, breast binders or any trend/garment that was patriarchal but the fact that women were forced to adopt them in order to be considered respectable; it’s the lack of choice and bodily autonomy. Men in power used these garments/trends as tools to police women’s self expression but it was never about the garment to begin with. For example, if you were a Victorian lady who loved to tight lace and wear form fitting, extravagant gowns, you were likely to get slut shamed and called frivolous or immoral, but if you were a fan of the Arts and Crafts and wanted to wear a loose, Pre-Raphaelite inspired reform dress without a corset, guess what, you were still gonna get slut shamed and called immoral. You just cannot win. The only way for a Victorian woman to narrowly avoid slut shaming is to wear a corset just about the right tightness, but also she had to wear outer clothes that are beautiful yet at the same time not flashy or drawing attention to her. That is such a difficult game to play and the rules are not fair, so why don’t we ditch this game altogether and dress however the fuck we want? It, has, nothing, to, do, with, corsets, but everything to do with the acceptable level of femininity and women having agency. People bash women who tight lace or waist train for being stupid and stuck in the past, then turn around and demonize women who choose to present more gender neutral/masculine. Any voluntary deviation from the norm needs to be punished from the patriarchy’s perspective, whether it is in the more feminine or masculine direction, because it is a sign of agency and rebellion against patriarchal assumptions about gender. In my opinion, we need to be careful not to pit women against each other, the braless/not corset wearing “not like other girls” girl against the tight lacing girly girl. We women (and other non cishet men people) need to stick together. Some feminists wear corsets, some feminists tight lace, some feminists wear bras, some feminists don’t wear bras; the agenda is not to police clothing, but to come for the patriarchy’s arse.

Circling back to Chinese fashion history as well, from my personal experience I’ve noticed the strangest phenomenon: the people who call feminine women’s fashion frivolous or unnecessary also tend to be the ones who dunk on 1960s/70s mainland China for not having fashion?? Like, they want people of all genders to only wear practical clothing and ban modification of their bodies with corsetry, makeup, plastic surgery or other such “frivolous” practices, so theoretically mainland China during the Cultural Revolution should be a utopia in their minds, yet they’re somehow suddenly not ok with it and call it authoritarian?? I feel like deep down they still know that fashion is fun and necessary for human entertainment but they could only accept it on their terms, i.e. when women are doing fashion in a way that doesn’t step out of line and show their bodily autonomy. During the Cold War and even still nowadays, mainland Chinese women in the 1960s and 70s get shit for being “too plain” or “not attractive enough”, often with some racism and irrational anti-communist sentiments mixed in, in contrast to women in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and other areas who dressed feminine and were praised for their “oriental” beauty and submissiveness. Both takes are problematic as fuck, and it’s almost as if it had nothing to do with what the women were wearing to begin with, but rather some people’s need to pit women against each other and police the way women dress for their own benefit.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. :))) Here is a final photo dump showing the wonders of fashion made possible by corsetry, enjoy.

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#corset #corsetry #stays #victorian fashion #historic fashion #costube #18th century #19th century fashion #19th century #chinese fashion #qing dynasty #ming dynasty #chinese history #feminism #feminist analysis #vintage fashion

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