Iâd been eyeing this stunning design by @aleksibriclot for years, and a little while ago (after two years of working on it) I finally finished it! It has all the dark norse fantasy vibes that I wanted Ragnarok to be, and I figured hey, I can make it myself!
I had to up a lot of my leatherworking skills for this one, and I dove into a lot of new skills as well to try to make all the pieces a cohesive whole. It uses lambskin leather, suede cowhide, and veg tan, as well as an entire sheepskin for the cape!
This whole costume has truly been a labour of Loki love and Iâm so glad I was able to share all the madness (process) and the finished look!
There's no way to make sure you never fall for historical misinformation, and I'm not expecting anyone to fact-check every detail of everything they read unless they're getting paid for it. But you can make an effort to avoid the Worst Takes.
Ask yourself â if I wanted to verify this, where would I start? If you look at a statement and canât actually find any facts to check, then you already know itâs bullshit.
Read the Wikipedia article on weasel words. Some experts say itâs very helpful!
Look for specifics: a who, a what, a where, a when. If one of those is missing or very broad, thatâs a red flag. Statements need to be rooted in a time and a place. âPeople in the past have alwaysâŚâ Nope.
Vague is bad. Unless youâre looking at a deliberate large-scale overview thatâs being broad and generalizing on purpose, you want names and dates and places and primary sources, pictures and quotes and examples.
But an example is not a trend. Thereâs a difference between whatâs possible and whatâs common, and history is full of exceptions and outliers. Extremely unusual people and events are overrepresented in the historical record (because nobody writes down whatâs normal,) and they can tell us a lot about history, but theyâre not directly representative of their place or time. Imagine a historian trying to reconstruct the 21st century based solely on Kiwifarm.
If a historian is competent or even just trying, you wonât have to go digging for sources, they will be shoved right into your face. Not out of mere academic rigor, but because a person who found them, either first- or second hand, is proud to have found them. People who have proof want to show you the proof, people who figured something out will want to show you their work, walk you through it. If they donât, ask yourself â how do you know this? And - why wonât you tell me how you know this?
Someone might have a legit historical source, and then try to stretch it to cover times and places where it no longer applies. Whatâs true of 12th century England may not be true of 14th century Venice, even though both are âMedieval Europe,â so watch for those stretches.
Anecdotes are fine, they reveal a lot about peopleâs values and perceptions, pro historians often use them for context, but what anecdotes are not is factual truth. Notice when someone is feeding you cute anecdotes.
If someone attributes a large-scale social or cultural transformation to a single person or event, yeah thatâs usually bullshit. Chances are, that person was part of a larger trend, a small link in a long chain. You can still appreciate their contribution, just put it in context!
Second-guess anyone who acts like they possess secret knowledge that the Media or Academia (or somebody) is hiding, theyâre usually bullshit. Remember, if something has a Wikipedia article, itâs not actually a dark secret.
Remember that if it happened in the past sixty years, tons of people will still remember it, and you can literally just go and ask them.
Learn to recognise a smear tactic. Did this person really fuck dogs, or was their posthumous biography written by their worst enemy? Should we take it at face value? Also learn to recognise overt propaganda in the opposite direction: is the king that great or does he have a court historian on retainer? Remember that people sometimes *lie* in their autobiographies.
Itâs fine to speculate about what âcouldâ or âmightâ have happened, professional historians also fill the gaps in the sources with the occasional educated guess. But failing to differentiate clearly between fact and speculation is a huge mistake.
Do not seek validation in history. It's not there. Iâm not saying you should approach history in an impersonal, apolitical way, of course not. Our present situation influences our interpretation of history, and it should. What Iâm saying is, try not to hang too much of your individual or group identity on a historical narrative. Especially if itâs bullshit. Youâre worthy and human because youâre worthy and human today, not because of the deeds and misdeeds of people in the past.
TIL In 1926 the famous pianist Fats Waller (then 21) was kidnapped by Al Caponeâs gang to play piano for his birthday. He basically went missing for 3 days and was returned unharmed but drunk.