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#timeline of western fashion
hotvintagepoll · 16 days
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Propaganda
Eva Dahlbeck (Smiles of a Summer Night, A Lesson in Love, Kastrullresan)— Beautiful, formidable, funny. Ingmar Bergman called her a "battleship of femininity" and cast her in several of his comedies. It's a joy to see her pulling all the strings in Smiles of a Summer Night while her two boyfriends make utter fools of themselves.
Maureen O’Hara (The Parent Trap, The Quiet Man)—They called her the Queen of Technicolor. That right there should help introduce people to the fiery, wonderful, stunning Maureen O’Hara. She was from Ireland, born in 1920, and started in theater at the age of ten. At 15, she was winning drama awards, including one for her performance as Portia in the Merchant of Venice. At 16, she was the youngest pupil to graduate from the Guildhall School of Music. By 18, she transitioned to film, starting off with a bang alongside Charles Laughton in Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn, and proceeded to work steadily up through the early 1970s. She was in adventures and comedies and romances, spent a lot of time in westerns giving merry hell to John Wayne (and less merry hell to the indomitable John Ford — she held her own even when he was verbally abusive and demeaning to her). She was in The Quiet Man, which was the first American-made film entirely filmed in a foreign country. She helped make American Christmas what it is with Miracle on 34th Street. She played a lineup of headstrong, forthright women second only, perhaps, to Katharine Hepburn. She was married three times, lived for a while with a boyfriend in Mexico, sued for custody of her daughter in the 1950s, AND sued a magazine for libel in the same era. After mostly retiring from acting, she edited a magazine. She eventually sold the magazine to spend more time with her grandson, but even then ran a ladies fashion store. She was an outspoken, brilliant, passionate lady, with amazing red hair, a career to envy, and — well — that face!
This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut]
Eva Dahlbeck:
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Maureen O'Hara:
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I thought she was one of the most beautiful women in the world when I was a kid and I have yet to really change my mind. Always loved her temper and her red hair. Plus she was kind of a MILF in The Parent Trap
Haughty, red hair, hot.
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The hair. The accent. The figure. The acting chops. The perfection.
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I would have to give up my passport if I didn't submit Maureen O'Hara but also have you seen her? Not only did she look like that (she was called the Queen of Technicolor, though she wasn't a big fan of that sobriquet), she was also very funny and tough as nails. She faced off against Walt Disney in a contract dispute and the legend goes that when someone mentioned her at his deathbed, he sat up and said 'That bitch!'. Her comment on that story is "At least he didn't think of me and say, 'That wimp'." She struggled to get serious roles for a time, saying ""Hollywood would never allow my talent to triumph over my face," so she plays the sexy princess/pirate/harem girl in a LOT of early movies that she referred to as "Tits and Sand" films, she being the tits in question. She also turned down so many leading men and studio bosses (Errol Flynn and Howard Hughes are among her rejects) that there were rumours spread that she was a lesbian. Many egos were battered it seems. I'm including the infamous Lady Godiva scene in the photo propaganda for the sheer Moment of it [link] . It was a bit of a flop critically, but it was one of Clint Eastwood's first film appearances and she said he told her later that he was very glad of the money at the time. She was a very proud Irish woman and when she went for her American citizenship they insisted on referring to her as British (the timeline of Irish independence is a bit wibbly wobbly, we won't get into it here). She refused to accept American citizenship under that condition and argued her way through every level of US immigration she could find, supposedly saying "I'm not responsible for your antiquated records here in Washington", until a judge finally gave up and said "Give her what she wants, just get her out of here". This made her the first ever person seeking US citizenship to be proclaimed Irish on the record! And while we don't embrace the leprechaun imagery quite so enthusiastically today, her dressing her dog up in a little shamrock hat is too cute for you all to miss so I'm including that in the photo propaganda.
*Marge Simpson voice*: I just think she's neat 🤷‍♀️
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thesimline · 8 months
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Hi, I'm Amy AKA The Simline.
From the first time I saw Singin' in the Rain as a kid I've been costume obsessed, and The Sims helps me channel that nerdery into CC curation and lookbooks influenced by history, television, movies, current events and all manner of creative inspiration. Because I cover such a broad range of styles I thought I'd gather everything into a pinned master post for ease of navigation.
I'm really happy to have you here and I hope you enjoy your stay!
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Medieval ✺ Renaissance ✺ Tudor
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1300s ✺ 1400s ✺ 1500s ✺ 1800s
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1890s ✺ 1920s ✺ 1930s ✺ 1940s ✺ 1950s ✺ 1960s ✺ 1970s ✺ 1980s ✺ 1990s
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HISTORICAL (1300s to 1900s)
Historical CC Finds ✺ Historical Lookbooks
DECADES (1900s to 1990s)
Decades CC Finds ✺ Decades Lookbooks
MISCELLANEOUS
Portraits ✺ Magazine Covers ✺ No CC ✺ Modern CC Finds ✺ Modern Lookbooks
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Adventure ✺ Barbiecore ✺ Halloween ✺ Movie Inspired ✺ Pop Culture ✺ Sci-Fi
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CAS LIGHTING
CAS Overhaul v2 by Luumia
CAS BACKGROUNDS
Photos - CAS Backgrounds by Shasims
Cutouts - Chroma Green Background by Luumia
CAS ANIMATION CONTROL
Stand Still In CAS by Helgatisha
CAS Tuning - Controlled Position Mod
SIMS APPEARANCE
Matte Smooth by Emmi Bouquet
EA Eyelashes Remover by Kijiko
IMAGES
Photo Editing - Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom
Graphics - Adobe Illustrator
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
The Chronicle of Western Costume by John Peacock
Fashion History Timeline
DEAD LINKS
I check all my posts for dead links every three months (deleted files, deactivated creators, etc) as I personally find it really frustrating when I find some great CC, only to discover the download link no longer works. If you find a dead link in any of my posts please feel free to shoot me a message so I can update the post and provide you with a working download link (if I can find one).
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dresshistorynerd · 10 months
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kinda random question but how do you go about researching? I’ve wanted to get deeper into fashion history than just watching youtube videos, but I don’t really know where to start.
ps. thanks for making such detailed posts. they’re really interesting to read.
Thank you! I'm really glad you've found my posts interesting!
This is great since I've kinda answered this in replies couple of times, but not properly. I very much understand the struggle. Dress history is a relatively new academic field and there's not that much reliable sources available and so so much unreliable sources everywhere. Internet of course has this problem but so does a lot of books too.
I thought this would be a short one and yet, here we are again.
Disclaimer: I'm writing this from a western fashion history perspective, since that's what I know best, but especially reading up on academic research and doing primary source research applies to non-western cultures too, though often it's harder to find sources for non-western fashion.
Getting started
Imo the best place to getting started is to read a book that gives a general timeline of fashion through history. I'm not sure if that's just how my brain works, but it helped me a lot of when going deeper into one period or another to understand the broader context and what roughly came before and what after. However these books are inherently difficult to make well, because there's so much nuance and variation in every period of dress history and if you're writing about the whole timeline through thousands of years and keeping it book length, there will need to be a lot of simplification to the point of inaccuracy. There's many popular fashion history timeline books with illustrations made for the book, but I would avoid those since non-contemporary illustrations often give a distorted image of the fashion, especially when it's about earlier periods in history. I've seen some really inaccurate illustrations depicting Middle Ages and Renaissance especially.
Costume and fashion: a concise history by James Laver - I'd recommend this as the starting point. James Laver was a art historian, an important pioneer of fashion history and curator of Victoria and Albert Museum, which has one of the most extensive costume collections now. The book is therefore based on serious academic study, but being a pioneer means you'll be outdated, when the field is more established, which is partly the case with this book. There's some outdated parts, but the images are primary sources and it does give good historical background. It should be taken as a starting point, not as the end point.
A History of Fashion by J. Anderson Black and Madge Garland - This is another similar book. It's more recent, but it also suffers from some outdated parts. The writers are not academics, but it has more primary source pictures which does help (at least me) understand visually what's being said.
Books
In a given subject I'm researching I usually start with seeing if I can find a reliable book on it or related to it, if I haven't already read much on it. Often what I want to research goes deeper into details than what a book usually does, so it will work as a starting point. As said it can be hard to find these books that are actually reliable, but here's couple of reading lists to help with it.
Here's a reading list by a retired professor of dress history from Helsinki University. It's very extensive and has a wide variety of books and papers listed. There's a bit of leaning towards Finnish sources, but most are in English and about more international western fashion.
Here's a reading list by @clove-pinks, who is excellent and writes a lot about the Romantic period, especially men's fashion here on Tumblr. These are all books that can be read free on Internet Archive, which makes the list even better.
Internet sources
There's a lot of bad sources floating around in the internet, but also some excellent gems. As dress history is such a new field, there's a lot of unexplored spots and lacking research still, but some troopers in the internet have done some great legwork in going through primary sources and gathering them together. These can be excellent especially when trying to research a specific garment, since often these blog posts are by historical costumers, who are detailing their background research in reconstructing a specific garment. It's not always easy to find them, since they might not come up in the first page of the google search, but I often find them through pinterest, where the blogs are linked into the primary source images and images of the reconstructed garments. Though be sure to look with blogs like that with critical eye. The best sign that it's reliable is when each image is given a source.
There's some more general sources too that need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Fashion History Timeline - This is a page with entries to the whole timeline of fashion as well as entries of specific garments. It's very well sourced and has usually pretty good image sources too. I will say though that it often gives a pretty limited description of the period focusing on some specifics, without giving a good overall picture, especially in the Medieval sections. The medieval sections are honestly pretty useless. It's at it's best in 19th century imo (I haven't checked out the entries to 20th century since I rarely research vintage styles, but I'd assume they are pretty good too). But since it has great sourcing it is usually informative. It just shouldn't be relied upon to give full picture of a period.
Wikipedia, History of Western fashion - In some ways this is the opposite of Fashion History Timeline. Wikipedia has articles on each period. The sourcing on these articles is often quite lacking and the information shouldn't be taken at face value. Especially the terms for the garments are often used in these articles in very questionable ways. However what these articles have is pretty good primary source image collections, and what is nice is that in Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern periods they are often divided into regions, and they often have images of working class clothing, which are for some periods really hard to find. These articles often don't either give a full picture of the period, but in someways the basic picture of the period is easier to grasp from these than from Fashion History Timeline. I use these mostly for the primary source images, and the texts of them should be taken with a bucket of salt.
Academic papers
Going deeper into something will inevitably require reading up on some academic papers. I'm lucky since I get access to a lot of academic publications through my uni, but JSTOR (my beloved) gives free access to 100 papers per month (you'll just have to make an account). Through google scholar you can search for papers on a given subject, or if you don't have access to other publications, you can just use JSTOR's search engine.
Primary sources
If some MVP hasn't already combed through primary sources to gather them on a give subject, you can do that too. It's not necessarily an easy task though. There's thankfully a perfect guide for that.
A Handbook of Costume by Janet Arnold - Janet Arnold was a legendary dress historian, who really defined the modern field. This book details the process of researching dress history and how to analyze primary sources. And it's free on Internet Archives.
I'll give some basics here though.
Extant garment
Most of us who are not academic historians don't have physical access to extant garment, but many museums have nowadays excellent digital archives of their costume collections. Here's a list of the most well known ones. MET and V&A has sometimes great descriptions of the clothing and their history, but not for every item.
MET Costume Institute
Kyoto Costume Institute
LACMA
V&A Costume Collection
Palais Galliera
Extant garments are of course the ideal sources to study, since they are the actual garments and not just representations or descriptions of them. Sometimes the collections even have pictures of the insides of the garments, giving invaluable information about their construction. However, extant garments have limitations for research, since there's a strong survivorship bias. Firstly, they heavily lean on later periods as textiles deteriorate relatively quickly. You won't find extant garments from Middle Ages, at most fragments of them. Secondly, they are mostly clothing of the upper classes. Lower classes used their clothing till they broke down, and even then often salvaged any fabric that could be salvaged for new clothing and other textiles. Upper classes didn't necessarily have to do that, so what survives is usually very expensive formal clothing that people would wear rarely and rather preserve than salvage the fabric from it.
Photography
Since camera was popularized in early Victorian era, you don't get photos before that. Photography is a great source from the times it was available, since yes it's still only representation of the clothing, but there's less artistic interpretation than in paintings and illustrations, though importantly, there still is artistic interpretation. As long as there has been photography, there has been photoediting. They of course used it for creepypasta purposes by editing them holding their own heads and editing ghosts into backgrounds, but also editing their waists smaller. Basically the exact same way photos are still edited. So no, this is not really how small the waist got in Edwardian era, since this is edited.
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Another obvious limitation for early photography is that it didn't have colors, so popular colors of a given time period and given styles have to be found through other means. A great thing about photography though was that compared to painting, it was relatively cheap, and therefore a lot of lower class people were able to photograph themselves. We even get people outside in everyday situations not posing.
Photography can be found with search engines like google and pinterest, though they should be always sourced then. You sometimes come across very Victorian looking photos that are actually just modern photos that are well edited. And also it's important to date the photos, which might not be easily with photos just randomly floating in the internet. Libraries and museums sometimes have good digital collections of old photos. For example:
Digital collections of New York Public Library (NYPL) - It has a wide variety of collections including photography, fashion plates and other illustrations. I haven't found a great way to search through the collections, but the best way I've come up with is to search images within the Clothing & Dress topic, put some limiting filters, then click some right looking image and then go to the collection it was from. I bet there's an easier way but I haven't figured it out.
Paintings
A great thing about paintings and statues is that they date basically through whole history of organized civilizations. Paintings are more delicate so even with murals in antiquity, you'll get more surviving status from that time period. But because of the strong artistic interpretation inherent to these art forms, there's some tricky parts to them as sources for historical fashions.
You'll find a lot of paintings by just searching for fashion or paintings of a given period in google and pinterest, but it's sometimes tricky to source them to figure out where and when they were painted. Therefore I often check from Wikipedia a list of artists from a given time and place, and search their paintings from digital archives of museums. It also helps when you choose artists who were specialised in specific type of paintings. What kind of paintings depends on what you're researching and the time period.
Portraits are of course great sources. They depict the actual clothing an actual person wore and if the person was historically important enough you can find out who they were and gain a lot of context for the clothing. However, they are usually all rich people, though not always. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes portraits portray the subject in a costume. This became a pretty big trend among nobles in 18th century. They had costume parties and would have their portrait painted with their costume, but also there were trends of costume that were not even worn for parties, but only for having a portrait. Sometimes the painting would be painted like a scene and not like traditional portrait. Van Dyke costume (first picture below) in first half of 18th century paintings is one such example. It referred to mid 17th century fashion that was seen as timeless at the time. Peasant costume (second picture below) is another example of a popular costume for nobles to wear in portraits. Costume balls continued to 19th century, but after the popularization of camera they were mainly photographed. People would continue to dress up in costumes for portraits, but it wasn't as big of a trend as in 18th century.
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Genre paintings were a genre of paintings that became popular first in 16th century Low Countries and then In Netherlands/Belgium area during the Dutch Golden Age (from late 16th century and thorough Baroque) and during Baroque's popularity all over Europe. Genre paintings depict normal everyday life of peasants, working class people and the bourgeois. During Baroque they often had elements of idealization, symbolism and even sexualization of the subjects, so they should be taken with a grain of salt, but they do usually depict accurately the clothes the people wore. Rococo era had a lot of these types of everyday scenes about the upper class. During the Romantic era peasants were heavily romanticized in genre paintings, but there was also a lot of genre paintings of bourgeois thorough 19th century that was wasn't as strongly romanticized. These scenes were sometimes also depicted in portrait form. Realism brought another interest into the genre and Realistic genre paintings often focused on the working class. They did the opposite of romanticism though and often exaggerated their subjects to look more wretched.
History paintings depict events and scenes that were for the time historical too. They became very popular in 19th century, when Historism was the dominant in arts, but they have existed long before. There's even some from late Medieval period, and in those earlier history paintings, the historical figures are usually depicted in contemporary clothing and there's no attempt at recreating historical styles. In later periods, especially during 19th century Historism they very much tried to recreate historical styles. This is why it's important to always source paintings. I've too often seen Victorian paintings used as images for Medieval fashions.
Religious paintings have sometimes a bit of the same issue. They were very popular during Medieval and Renaissance eras, and usually the biblical figures would be depicted in contemporary fashions, though not always, sometimes in vaguely "biblical garbs". Religious paintings also have the issue of often being highly symbolic, so sometimes the characters in them are not dressed for the situation, or a character that in the biblical canon very poor is depicted in upper class contemporary fashions.
Illuminated manuscripts
Medieval manuscripts with illustrations are invaluable sources for Medieval fashions. They are usually commissioned by royalty and detail historical narratives, so they mostly depict royalty and nobility, but some illustrated scenes depict commoners too. You often find images of the illustrations floating around in pinterest but they can be hard to source when the source is not linked (which is quite often). The illustrations can be spotted by the quite consistent style (though sometimes they are not from illuminated manuscripts but some other rarer illustrations like playing cards).
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A lot of illuminated manuscripts have been digitized and British and French libraries have quite extensive online collections of them which are linked below. The manuscrips in those are mostly English and French of course but there's manuscrips from other places in Europe too, I've seen quite a lot of the German speaking area especially.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) The British Library
Fashion plates
Fashion plates became a thing in 1780s, so they are not useful for periods before that. They are basically illustrations that show the latest trends and they were published in fashion magazines. They don't reflect the way everyone dressed, since as they did show the latest high fashion and the people who would be wearing that were mostly young rich fashionable people. However, fashion at the time had a little different meaning than today as it was linked to dress code, and to be respectable you needed to follow fashion. So everyone, even working class people, would follow the new trends to an extent. This is especially true when we get to Victorian era, when mass industrial mass production and the emerging middle class made clothing cheaper and more available to more people. They wouldn't maybe follow every new trend or with every detail and with as much extravaganza or with the most expensive fashionable materials.
While the fashion plates didn't necessarily depict specific existing clothing, they were based on existing clothing and they were often used as guides for dressmakers. Kinda like you might go to a hairdresser with a picture of a famous person's hair or hairdressers sometimes use pictures of famous person's hair to show what they might do. And the people who might not afford something as extravagant as shown in a fashion plate, might still show it as a guide and get a simpler version of it made for them. People of the middle and lower classes especially would also use them as guides to sew themselves fashionable clothing.
Fashion plates are quite easily found on the internet, but as with other things, if you don't go straight to some organized archive, it might be really hard to date them accurately. Many bigger museums and libraries have fashion plates in their online archives, for example NYPL which I mentioned earlier.
MET Fashion Plate Collection - This is a pretty extensive collection.
Regional costume illustrations
When genre paintings became popular, artists didn't necessarily have the change to go and see what peasants wore in the places they were setting their genre paintings in, but because the whole point of them was to depict authentic real life, there was a need for illustrations of regional dress around Europe. And some artists would travel and create costume collections for resource to other artists. These are really invaluable to us today, though they should always be taken with a grain of salt, because sometimes the artists who created these drew dresses for places they never had even been in. For example some of these collections include non-European dress and they should all be probably disregarded as fantasy costumes basically. You can usually assume that the closer the region which dress they depict is to their own place of origin, the more accurate and based on reality it is. It's also good to try and google the artist and see if you can find information of where they actually traveled, because sometimes we know that pretty well.
These collections can also be found in the digitized archives of big museums and libraries, again there's some in NYPL collections.
British Museum's collections by Hippolyte Lacomte from 19th century
A collection from late 16th century on BnF archives
Honorable mentions
There's many other primary sources in different periods that can be helpful, but the ones I've mentioned are the major ones and easiest to access, when you're not doing academic research with institutional resources. I thought I might mention couple of other sources that have become handy to me as examples.
Magazine and news paper ads became wide spread in the Victorian era and from that onward is a great source. They advertise specifically ready-made clothing, so clothing that was much more available to a regular person and therefore can be really helpful to understand what a regular person might wear. I don't know a great source for them though. Many libraries have digitized old papers and magazines so going through fashion magazines is perhaps the best bet, but it's definitely a lot of combing though. Some people have though gathered ads in blogs.
Satiric comics can be surprisingly helpful for researching sort of alternative styles and seeing what trends garnered backlash. For example I've long been obsessed with Aestheticism and the other counter-cultural movements related to it, and there's quite a lot of women's Aesthetic extant garments, photos and paintings available, but very little of men's Aesthetic fashion. But then I found that Punch Magazine (conservative satire magazine) loved mocking the Aesthetes and therefore drew a lot of comics with men in Aesthetic fashion. Caution should be taken though since satiric illustrations do often exaggerate for comedic effect. For example the idea that 1770s ladies made ships out of their massive hair comes from a satiric illustration mocking the large and elaborate hair of the time.
Runaway ads of slaves and indentured servants are bleak, but can be helpful source for the clothing of poor people during 18th century. This is specific to US, but because of the colonialism poor people there would often wear at least similar clothing as those in Europe, especially Britain and France, which had the most colonial presence in that region. The clothes were described in great detail in these ads for identification purposes. These runaway ads can be also found in news papers of the era, many of which are digitized in archives of bigger US libraries, but it's definitely even more combing through. Though again some people have done some of that work already and documented it in blogs.
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racefortheironthrone · 8 months
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What texts would you recommend to develop the sort of general knowledge needed to write something like your economic development plans? I am currently trying to write a setting which has a few major reformist leaders with big plans, and it would really help to know a bit more about how to come up with a workable economic development plan for a fantasy region - I really admired your work on the subject, and thought you were the person to ask.
This is a great question!
Something I've discussed before wrt economic development, is the need to avoid presentism as much as possible. So I've always taken as a central limiter of my economic development proposals that they have to fit within the boundaries of what was known/technologically feasible during the Late Middle Ages through to the Early Modern period.
In this fashion, I try to avoid the Connecticut Yankeee in King Arthur's Court scenario where all of the sudden steam engines appear hundreds of years early out of nowhere - because we shouldn't be assuming that economic development is some teleological process that has to go through the same stages as Western European economic development did in our timeline. The result is that I got really into reading about the Commercial Revolution and the technologies that drove economic development during that period - hence why I became obsessed about canal-building, because canals were a key technology that the Early Modern nation-state used to create and reshape markets.
So here is a meta-list of books I'd recommend on economic development in the Middle Ages through the Early Modern period:
books about medieval and Renaissance governments.
William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis, Lawrence Goodwyn's The Populist Moment, and Will and Wong's Nourish the People on the making and remaking and regulating of agricultural markets.
books about Medieval and Renaissance urban development.
books about medieval guilds.
Robert S. Lopez' Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages.
Joseph Gies' Merchants and Moneymen: the Commercial Revolution.
Pamela Smith, Paul Findlen ed. Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe.
Ralph Davis' A Commercial Revolution.
Anthony Burton's The Canal Pioneers and The Canal Builders.
John Blair ed. Waterways and Canal-Building in Medieval England.
A.E.J Morris, History of Urban Form Before the Industrial Revolution.
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15-lizards · 10 days
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How much do you imagien fashion changed in westeros? Like, the time spans we are given are crazy (like the starks being kings for 8000 years), so do you think it changes slower because of that? Like, how much did style, preferred silhuettes etc change from the conquest to the dance to the war of five kings?
The length of the timeline for the history of Westeros is fucking ridiculous if I'm being honest like...to put it in perspective Rome (as a kingdom to the fallen western empire) lasted from 753 BC to 476 AD, which is just over 1000 full years. And the Starks lasted 8 of those George is so unserious. So to shape it so that it fits my historical realism standards I imagine everything developed much slower than in real life (which was already pretty slow pre-industrial revolution) if we are only just getting to pseudo-medieval fashion by the current time period and there's already been more than 10,000 years of recorded history.
So in the age of heroes, clothing was very slow to evolve due to the need to put other things first. It still developed according to need, but not rapidly. 200 years could pass and someone would be wearing clothing really similar to their ancestors. By the coming of the andals, when there's slightly more stability but still heavy turmoil, there starts to be significant developments that sprout out of both practical environmental needs, and the need to be seen as different from your enemy across the border. By the time of the conquest, things are moving moderately faster, due to the lands being settled and more trade probably going back and forth. Its development has peaks and valleys depending on the Targ king, but for the most part it accelerates much quicker, thanks to the unification of the lands.
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lansplaining · 8 months
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Sorry if I ask but can you explain to me wwx's development character? I know I came as stupid but I can't see it😭😭. He doesn't even say sorry to jzx for killing him one time and he prefers to hide to lxc about sisi so he doesn't 'make the wrong choice'. I feel like he doesn't grow a lot...
this is actually such an interesting question and something i've been thinking about a lot since I finally finished my re-read of the final volume.
i don't think that wei wuxian undergoes what western readers at least-- i'm not qualified to speak for other traditions-- would expect from a protagonist's journey of growth. and, like i was talking about earlier today, it's certainly not a journey of growth that rests on a christian concept of 'redemption' through confession, atonement, or apology for the sins of your past.
wei wuxian is absolutely aware in the present timeline that his yiling patriarch phase was intense to say the least. he comments on having probably taken it too far re: the wen corpses he weaponized, and he cringes to see the way he struts around and publicly defies jiang cheng. when he first returns to life, he wants to just fuck off and ignore everything, but quickly realizes that he can't separate himself from the past, either practically or emotionally-- a step of growth!
but wei wuxian spends the entire novel in a state of denial so profound that he can't even directly confront, much less move on or grow from, the things he did in the past. he can't apologize in his head for killing jin zixuan because that would mean really thinking about what that meant and letting those emotions come back. he just keeps running from jiang cheng because deciding jiang cheng hates him is easier than opening his mind and heart to all the other things jiang cheng might be feeling and might have felt because of his actions. he can't make a real choice about what to tell lan xichen because that might require stopping and really thinking about where his consistent determination to make choices on other people's behalf has gotten him, and whether they were ever really better off for it.
a different story would be about wei wuxian confronting and thus working through and growing and changing because of these things-- but MDZS isn't that story. i'm not saying he doesn't develop as a protagonist, but the ways that he grows and changes are primarily about his relationship to lan wangji-- and in true MXTX fashion, the things that the primary couple feel for one another don't tend to extend into other areas of their lives or apply to other people. wei wuxian can confront the things lan wangji did for him, and his feelings of guilt about that-- and thus he can move on from them, he can wipe the slate clean. there's no need for thank you and sorry, we don't have to think about the past anymore, we just need each other in the present. it works for a romance, especially the specific terms of wangxian's romance, but denial is rarely a great route for increasing one's understanding of oneself.
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artist-ellen · 5 months
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I just wanna say that I love all your character redesigns, they're all very beautiful! I also wanna ask if you have any recommendations of sites or books for researching historical fashion.
Thank you so much! I’ve had a lot of fun over the years <3
Historical fashion is a very big amorphous topic so take all of my recommendations with their usual grain of salt and keep in mind that the most important of things are primary sources and authorial context. For example: the portrait of a Queen is generally going to be the beautified propaganda version of the day, but still a primary-ish source of her fashion. Channel your inner historian and examine your sources critically. Who recorded this history? Why?
Photographs are stellar. While there were “photoshop” tricks those usually don’t change the clothing. Extant garments? Bog bodies? Gold mines. So never be afraid to dig into clothing that has been preserved or displayed.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that what kind of fashion and when it happened is going to set the parameters for the majority of your research. It’s too big a topic to have an easy answer, tragic I know. However there are communities upon communities online that specialize in certain historical moments, countries, styles, art, etc, etc, etc.
If you want a really great general overview by decade of Western/European fashion I recommend the website Fashion History Timeline. They don’t have a lot in their Medieval or ancient sections but 14th century to 21st century is a LOT of ground to cover while still being an easy to navigate website.
If you want even more Renaissance to vintage clothing research to the point where you could make or purchase those items yourself there is American Duchess.
And finally, honestly, someone has probably made a YouTube video about it. Double check their research and sources but if you want a plain speech audible research paper with visual aides… it’s kind of the place to be. University lecturers have slide videos up about fashion, the historical “cosplayers” do a ton of research and trial and error construction, history buffs will tell you all about it. There are so many talented people out there, from ‘Not Your Momma’s History’, ‘Off the Great Wall’, ‘Mochi Hanfu’, ‘Dandy Wellington’, ‘Bernadette Banner’, ‘Priorattire’, ‘Pinsent Tailoring’, Mina Le and so so so many more!
And I think that’s everything for now? Let me know if you have more questions
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prismatic-bell · 11 months
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So I got part of Avenue Q stuck in my head, and you know how people say something was "a product of its time" when talking about racism, sexism, etc.? It is occurring to me I finally get that. Because while sometimes it's just...wrong and was always wrong, I have to wonder how many people who either weren't into pop culture in the late 90s/early 00s or simply weren't alive then don't realize Christmas Eve is supposed to be poking fun at weeaboos. The show was written at a point in time where America just kind of went crazy about Japanese pop culture for awhile. Like. Everyone. Everywhere. A major pop singer (Gwen Stefani) literally paid for a group of "kawaii girls" to follow her around as part of her image, and Smile.dk (which had zero Japanese members) debuted with a song called "Butterfly" in which the singer "searches for a man all across Japan, just to find my samurai" and featuring some non-lyric vocalizations that I genuinely hope weren't supposed to sound like Chinese tonals because they really sound like someone botching Chinese tonals (and, you know, assuming All Asian Nations Are Japan). Pikachu was on the front of Time magazine, most of the weekday afternoon programming block on Cartoon Network was anime, kimono-style tops (although usually facing the wrong way) were a huge trend, and for those who still wanted tees or regular shirts with long sleeves, well...
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Do I have any idea what that says? None. Did I own one of these? I did not--I owned three of them. All three of mine looked like lacquer boxes with koi or traditional flower designs. I found out later the writing on at least one of mine was complete gibberish. The designer just picked some kanji they thought looked cool. And yes, basically every top I owned that wasn't one of these was a kimono-style. Wearing chopsticks in your hair became A Whole Thing if you weren't flatironing your hair (and yes, people used actual chopsticks, not hair sticks--I'm not even sure hair sticks were really a thing in American fashion until this point). On the internet side of things, 2channel was possibly getting shut down and 2chan sprang up, and quickly got so popular in the western hemisphere that we got--yep--4chan, the same year Avenue Q debuted. 4chan is weeb culture, or at least, that's how it started. (In fact I think it's also where "weeaboo" was coined.) A couple of years later, MCR would include Japanese verses in a song just...because. Because that's what we were like at that point in time. 1998-2005 (or so) was when America had its own taste of Japonisme. And into all of this you get Christmas Eve. Who's loud, and brash, and assertive--not at all a docile me-love-you-long-time weeb fantasy. Her English is a little broken, but she's not stupid--in fact as far as we can tell she's the most educated person on Avenue Q (Kate and Princeton both have BAs and Rod probably has a master's in business, but Christmas Eve has two separate master's degrees, which she earned in her secondary language). Her accent is thick, but there's literally a song ("Everyone's A Little Bit Racist") where some of the characters get called out on laughing at her for it. And--crucially--the white man she marries is so far removed from anything related to pan-Asian culture in America he doesn't know he shouldn't call her Oriental. Is this absolutely terrible given he's marrying a Japanese woman? Yes. Is it kind of baffling that another character immediately says "the term is Asian-American," since Christmas Eve refers to herself as Japanese? Also yes. Is it weird that a guy who (according to the timeline) was born in 1970 would be using Oriental? Extremely. Is it a dig at the exoticizing that was going on at the time? Absofuckinglutely. (And that's why that anachronism is there. It's very much pointing out that society was treating Japanese pop culture the same way our Victorian forebears treated Japan in general in the Meiji era.) And like. I'm not saying Christmas Eve is some kind of unproblematic depiction here by any means. Even in 2003 her accent was...icky, and now it's downright unacceptable. And there's the question of whether they fell into one stereotype ("Asians are so smart!") while trying to mock another ("if you can't speak English you must be stupid"), and whether that's an acceptable trade-off. I'm not even going to get into her name being a Christmas cake joke because....look, I could sit here and explain all the puns in the names but that's a whole other post and it's literally easier to say "Brian, Kate, and Nicky are the only characters whose names aren't jokes."
But there's a huge nuance to why she was written as this bizarre stereotype-but-not-but-yes-but-not-but-yes-but-maybe mashup, and I think there's a big possibility you literally just had to be there to understand. It really truly genuinely is a product of 2003. You could not write Christmas Eve in 1983 and have her make any damn sense. You could not write her in 2023 and have her come across as anything but wildly racist. Like. Maybe that phrase isn't just don't-be-mean-to-your-elders bullshit. (At least, not all of the time.)
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I was never into the American Doll toys cus they weren't popular in my country, but I've always had the feeling that the XX century dolls all look like they are wearing adult's outfits. And tbh I don't think it's that bad cus some of the most iconic dresses of their respective eras weren't standard styles for children. I saw someone commenting that the styles on the 90's doll look like tv characters, and I think that's accurate for dolls from other decades as well, maybe it just irks us millenials cus that's an era we were closer to living so it doesn't feel natural.
It depends on the character, as far as I can tell! Going down the decades:
Samantha definitely looks like a little girl from 1904 (see: the dropped waists and short skirts on her dresses- adult ladies in that era wore gowns at their natural waists, with long skirts, and their hair pinned up).
Ditto Rebecca. Similar age rules to Samantha's era, all well-followed. No notes there.
Claudie...was made recently and therefore her collection is peak Mattel-tastic hot nonsense, painful as that is given how amazing her story could have been. Her Meet outfit isn't too bad? Like it's believable for a 1920s girl? But everything else looks awful, from a quick Google search. Not even Adult 1920s Fashion; just bad stereotypes.
Kit seems pretty on-brand for 1930s little girls' clothing, though we're getting further from my eras of expertise. The original collection, not the BeForever BS.
Molly is, again, getting way out of my wheelhouse, but she's definitely not wearing 1940s adult fashions. It's interesting to see the same era done with Nanea considerably later in the company's timeline, because it seems much more like their later "distilled" approach to the historical characters. Less researched, less detailed, less of the period and more Generic Vintage. Also, it's the 1940s and she has NO casual dresses? Really? I get that she lives in a tropical climate, but, again. 1940s. Little girls generally wore skirts most of the time, in any place where western fashion predominated.
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(Class photo, Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, Waikiki. 1942.)
Maryellen is very...Intensely 1950s, but based on what I've seen, she's not Overly Mature in her attire per se. I feel like they're leaning too hard on the big fluffy skirts- didn't girls often wear a slimmer silhouette for school, out of practicality? -but it's not too old for her. I don't think. and of course, this is well post-Mattel takeover, as with Claudie's collection
I feel like they're trying really hard to differentiate Melody from Maryellen, but based on photos of my mother as a kid in the early 1960s, there was a lot more bleed-over between the two decades than people realize? this is another Mattel Made It Costume-y one for me, I think. it's not too mature exactly, but it's. Off, somehow
I kind of see Julie as the beginnng of the end, in terms of research quality in the company's history. It's not WRONG, but yeah, it's only one specific aspect of the era's clothing and it's more something popularized by adults. Kids did wear the hippie look in the 1970s, but it's definitely not what you think of when you consider a child's play-clothes or school-clothes back then.
Courtney is just. Okay, while she was considerably younger, my sister was an '80s kid, and she did not dress like Madonna or a Jazzercise dancer 24/7. Serious question- is AG allergic to jeans on historical character dolls from eras wherein jeans existed?
And now we have. Clueless and The Disney Channel Exploded, coming soon to an overpriced mall store near you!
This has been an unnecessarily long walkthrough of AG thoughts with Marzi! Thanks for giving me an excuse, and I'm so sorry.
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coredrill · 18 days
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perhaps my most insane collection of brvn thots yet
do we think lulu is from the moon. i think this for three reasons. one: when she told superbia she was going to ride him the moon was quite large and prominent in the shot. symbolism. two: when she got her fancy hairdo, she had two little buns that looked like moons. three: “lulu” could come from “luna” the same way it could come from the first syllable of smith’s name. why would she become spanish? don’t worry abt it. also if she’s from there then maybe the “final battle” which obari allegedly said would take place in an unexpected location will indeed be on the moon (pls dont ask for a source on this bc i don’t think i could find it again but it was one of the like. EARLY early interviews iirc. or it was just a rumor. this part of the post is a joke anyways LMAO). however this IS a super robot show so i feel like the moon in general is actually a more expected location for me than like. idk. cleveland
everyone pointing out the animation differences maybe indicating different timelines is so funny to me cause like. if it’s NOT intentional, the fans are putting together a list of fixes to make for the bluray on a silver platter LMAO. also god i hope we get a western bluray release, i honestly am considering getting the jp one if it somehow winds up w eng subs though just cause i know it’s such a long shot for CRUNCHYROLL of all motherfuckers to put one together 🥲 discotek ur our only hope………………
i keep thinking abt the like. pacing of the previous fight scenes being reused in ep9 in such a smart way…………like with smith/lulu v superbia - isami/bravern v cupiridas AND with smith/lulu v knuth - isami/bravern v pessimism/vanitas they kept doing the quick jumps between each of the two fights in a way that made it clear that isami and smith were in conversation even if they were doing completely different shit, and then bringing that completely to the forefront this ep while isami is asking smith why he died and at the same time smith is refusing to die bc of his promise with isami. BLEW MY FUCKIN MIND to see the pattern reused like that, i swear to GOD everyone talks about how fun and hype this show is but it’s so damn GOOD too 😭😭 and then after that the fuckin. symmetrical docking ass cut and then later the gattai which has been held off for SO long bc they are no longer separate conversations. JESUS
called my shots too early tho w smith not melting ppl’s minds in a kaworu manner where they convolute the story x1000 to try to make him seem straight 😭 congrats white boy, your days are numbered until ppl start saying you love isami like he’s your pet dog……….also in a related fashion the giant naked smith fanarts are taking me out LMAO
you can tell idk shit abt fuck when it comes to time travel fuckery cause i rly am just here like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ atp LMAO, the serious theorizing is GONE. i trust the show to finish out in a satisfying manner and also in a way that my pea brain can understand and i’m rly looking forward to savouring these last 3 episodes :] and then rewatching the whole thing from the beginning once the remaining twists have been revealed and i Know :3 like not to get way too sentimental w 3 whole episodes left but we are so lucky to be following this story in real time you guys 😭 like i’m just gonna put the same post i made back after episode ONE here cause it’s true but times a million with what we’ve seen so far, truly this is such a special experience to have and i’m so glad this show waited until i got into mecha to get made so that i could like. Understand it yknow. anyways good for january 14 2024 version of me, you are so excited andyet still have NO idea the kind of treat you are in for 😭
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“lewis” jumpscare tho omg. i forgot it took me like a week to figure out what the hell was goin on with all the characters first and last names LMAO. anyways everybody go look at sumiisa sekiha love love tenkyouken right now i am no longer asking
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runthepockets · 1 year
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The most acceptable forms of presentation for trans men are "ubermensch body builder who gets all the retweets and reblogs when it comes time to post transition timelines because rigid adherence to masculinity is the only way people can comprehend manhood" or "super skinny twinky androgynous dude who gets all the retweets and reblogs because cis people (and sometimes other trans people) are very fragile and need to project insane fantasies on anyone they can perceieve as a cis woman with a pixie cut", and when you're not dealing with that you also have Juiced Up Hollywood Male Celebs flexing in ads for body wash or flippantly posting their shirtless selfies to their IG stories like they don't adhere rigidly to shaving any and all body hair and have personal trainers, chefs, etc, Andrew Tate types constantly berating and flexing on dudes for having more money and access to all the latest fashion and tech bullshit, and incels who have, for some god forsaken reason, deluded themselves into thinking any human being is too "ugly" to be worthy of love, as if there aren't over 3,000 women right now who have happily been married to an overweight 5' 3" balding dude or like some 5' 7" guy in a flannel with a beer gut who still can't grow a full beard at 27 isn't about to propose to his GF of 10 years tomorrow. It wasn't uncommon to see trans men parroting incel talking points in context of their own dysphoria, either, especially during the pandemic.
This is why being Just Some Guy feels borderline empowering to me. It kinda feels like a massive "fuck you" to everyone on all sides. I don't wanna have body dysmorphia, I don't wanna be another porn category, I refuse to go to the gym more than 3 or 4 days a week and I refuse to let abstract and highly personal / conditional criteria for what's considered attractive under white western patriarchy have a stranglehold on my mind, I refuse to be a weird fantasy or to have my self esteem withered to dust. I'm just some guy who looks like he works at a skate shop and has the same name and interests as your brother or your childhood best friend. Nothing to misconstrute or latch onto here. It's a mindset and presentation that has improved my self esteem more than any other depiction of masculinity and it fits like a fuckin glove to boot.
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officialgleamstar · 9 months
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in my feelings about monsters and mommies au morgan and how i only ever make her deeply depressed, so heres some (genuinely) cute/fun facts about her rather than the constant angst i give her:
though not a musician herself, she practically grew up at concerts and considers music her main interest
related: her dream job is being the owner of her own record store!
at the start of mnmoms au, she is an overnight stocking manager at a grocery store. however, after the timeline jump to the foster timeline - she has her dream job! shes the main breadwinner of their family with her own record/general music store.
she/they not necessarily in a non-binary way, but not quite a cis way either. she's always had a pretty loose grasp on gender, and after nick comes out as trans, she realizes that she doesn't really care about being seen as strictly a woman. she just also doesn't care enough to think deeper on it LOL
she is the ONLY MOM to know who the omega daddies are at first. this doesn't sound like a fun fact, but it is actually pretty funny for morgan and bill to be pointing at each other like "why are YOU here?!" while the other moms are like "...? morgan who are these strange men who kidnapped our kids?"
since she loves the color blue, nick (and nicholas in the foster timeline!) buys her any blue jewelry and clothing he finds and can afford. because of this, morgan has a generally younger fashion style than the other moms, because she likes wearing the clothes her son buys her/points out to her in stores
as the AU season 1 goes on, morgan loosens up a lot and the other moms learn that she is actually capable of being pretty silly. she likes dancing a lot, she sings off-key to any song that she knows, she's a big fan of stupid puns and disney jokes. shocker shocker, local woman is capable of being a normal human being when given the chance!
her favorite holiday is new years, tied between western new years and chinese new year! she just likes the idea of fresh starts, being with family, and the bright celebrations
she met glenn at a casual music competition held at a local bar, where he won against her boyfriend at the time. when she tells this story, people always ask, "oh, and he impressed you so you broke up with your boyfriend?" and she cheerfully responds with, "no, i tried to break his nose to defend my boyfriend's honor! we ended up dating later on."
she has a weird hate crush on erin o'neil, where she's utterly head-over-heels for her but can only express it by pissing erin off. everyone hates it except for morgan, but after hearing the glenn story, it makes a lot more sense
post-season 1, she gets really into messing with jodie. she finds the way he gets riled up funny and also kind of adorable.
(she's utterly unaware of it, and jodie would never say it, but jodie's original morgan was the same way so he finds it comforting whenever he snaps at her and she just starts laughing at him. he always found it genuinely annoying with his morgan, and it was definitely a splinter in their relationship, but he struggles more with finding offense with it now that she's gone. (whoops sorry i said these weren't gonna be sad))
post-timeline jump, nicholas is the absolute center of morgan's world. he's her favorite person to be around, she will drop everything if he needs her or just wants to hear her voice, and while his high anxiety can set her own anxiety off, she never finds it hard to reassure him. and luckily for morgan, he's a total mama's boy and clings to her just as hard, even if the sudden shift in his mom's personality confuses him
shes pretty close with the other kiddads, especially sparrow and grant since theyre close friends with nicholas post-season 1. shes perpetually confused by why, but the kids all think shes the coolest mom on earth and are very happy to tell her so (its because she's been to jail.)
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pixelgrotto · 6 months
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Karate History & Box Art Redemption
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About a year and a half ago, I mentioned Jordan Mechner's seminal 1984 game Karateka in a post about Sifu, a newly-released beat ‘em up with a similar martial arts theme and tough-as-nails difficulty level. Sifu's a good game that garnered a certain amount of scrutiny from people who pointed out that it was an interactive experience steeped in Chinese culture but developed by a predominantly white team. This is not inherently a bad thing (Sifu’s devs did a respectful job), but considering Western media’s track record of misrepresenting Asia as an exotic place full of Fu Manchu-mustachioed bad guys and subservient women, it’s always worthwhile to be cautious. At any rate, Sifu reminded me a lot of Karateka, another game by a non-Asian creator that owed its lifeblood to Asian culture...and even featured the main protagonist and his love interest as white on the box art, despite the fact that the game clearly takes place in medieval Japan.
The Making of Karateka, a just-released interactive documentary by Digital Eclipse, explains the logic behind this decision via extensive notes that detail every step of the game's creation. From what I can discern, the box art design doesn’t appear to have been Jordan Mechner’s call. (Though the playable Karateka beta included in this package reveals that Mechner had some wacky non-Japanese names in mind for the game’s villain and damsel in distress... Akuma and Mariko were once dubbed “Kratang” and “Tiger Lily.” Yikes!) Rather, publisher Brøderbund’s marketing team seems to have been the division that assigned artist Thomas Blackshear II to paint the cover, instructing him that the titular Karateka was supposed to look like "a young Chuck Norris" or "Luke Skywalker" while Mariko should resemble an "American blonde." Meanwhile, only Akuma was specified as "Japanese."
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Brøderbund’s promotional strategy followed the typical American metality of the era: it's okay to portray a bad guy as a foreign race, but leading men and ladies should be white and ideally blonde. It didn't have to be this way, since Bruce Lee had dominated cinemas with Enter the Dragon only a decade earlier and proved that audiences could accept an Asian hero. But Brøderbund decided to go the safe route, despite the fact that Thomas Blackshear is a person of color renowned for his Black and American Indian paintings. (He also portrayed a decidedly unblonde and possibly Asian main character in his early cover sketches.)
My intention here is not to hate on Karateka or any of the individuals involved. The original Karateka game for the Apple II did, after all, feature white hair for its leading man's sprite that could easily be interpreted as blonde (though that was likely due to hardware color limitations more than anything else), and Brøderbund justified their decision by claiming they were inspired by the multicolored hair of Japanese manga characters. (Eh, sure.) Also, if we're being honest about it, Blackshear's final art is a beautiful composition even with the questionable racial depictions.
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Rather, I'm fascinated with Karateka's box as an example of mildly problematic '80s promotion, and I love how we gain insight into its development thanks to Digital Eclipse' painstaking efforts with what they call the first in their "Gold Master Series" of playable documentaries. Aside from these marketing details, The Making of Karateka delves into Jordan Mechner's early life in precise timeline fashion, letting us explore planning documents, early rotoscoping footage and prototypes of not only Karateka, but the games that preceded it, including Mechner's take on Asteroids and a shooter he was trying to develop called Deathbounce. There's even glimpses at the bones of a platforming puzzle game that started out as Karateka II and would later evolve into Prince of Persia.
Just about every review of The Making of Karateka stresses how this package sets a new standard for preservation in the video game industry, a business that is terrible at chronicling its own past. I won't repeat these arguments too much other than to say that I fullheartedly agree. Behind the scenes featurettes used to be a thing when it came to games — as a kid, I remember being utterly absorbed with the "Making of King's Quest VI" footage that came included on the CD-ROM — but these days you're unlikely to see too many of them, especially for titles that were released decades ago. In a world where Nintendo has yet to localize Mother 3 and customers need to rely on emulation and all types of hacks to revisit old games, Digital Eclipse's commitment to curating digital museums dedicated to works like Karateka is an incredible worthy goal — possibly one of the most important goals that a video game company has ever embarked upon. I can't wait to see more volumes in the Gold Master Series, and can think of many potential entries off the top of my head. Pitfall! Ultima! Doom! Maybe even one day...Sifu? (Likely a stretch, but stranger things have happened.)
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But going back to the discusson of art for a moment, one of the most monumental things that The Making of Karateka does is offer a "remastered" version of its title game, complete with impressive graphical flairs, a more managable difficulty level, and even...revised box art. While Thomas Blackshear's original Karateka painting is still displayed prominently throughout the package, when you go to select Karateka Remastered under the list of playable games, you'll see a new mockup box. No longer is Akuma a dehumanized Japanese baddie, no longer is Mariko an all-American girl, no longer is the titular Karateka Luke Skywalker. All three characters are Asian...and get this, the central Karateka is not only Asian, but blonde too.
In one swift stroke, The Making of Karateka not only captures history and chronicles its mistakes, but also revises them for a bright future. Take that, 1984 marketing.
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Update: An earlier version of this article stated that the new mockup cover art was illustrated by Digital Eclipse in-house artist Mae Livingston. Mike Mika, the president of Digital Eclipse, reached out to me on Twitter to explain that while Mae was responsible for Karateka Remastered's in-game artwork, the actual box image was made via Midjourney, and the characters were tweaked multiple times to look more culturally appropriate. He added that this methodology was an experiment that Digital Eclipse does not intend to rely on in the future.
I have very mixed opinions on AI art, and I do wish this box had been created by a human. I don't know if I would've written this piece if I'd known that the artwork was made by Midjourney, frankly. Nevertheless, I appreciate Mike actually reaching out to me, and the ultimate message of this article still stands. I hope Digital Eclipse considers the power that an image like this holds — especially for multiracial people like myself — and chooses human artists in the future.
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dresshistorynerd · 1 year
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Dress History Corner Navigation
Welcome to the corner of the interned where I nerd about (mostly) Western dress history! This is the post I will update with all my more structured and researched articles. I have the same navigation on my blog, but it's only for the browser so I figured it would be useful to have navigation that work for the app too.
Some basics
An Introductory Timeline Of Western Women's Fashion
How I do my research into dress history
Dress History
Lacing in Western Fashion History
Dress Etiquette Thorough Western History
When Did It Become Acceptable For Western Women To Wear Pants?
When Did Skirts Stop Being Acceptable For Western Men To Wear?
Is Lingerie Going Backwards - A Rebuttal
The history of showing your boobs for fashion
Victorian Era
A summary of different kinds of corsets
Historical Finnish Clothing of Modern Period
Victorian Dress For Every Occasion - 1890s Edition
1890s Day Dresses
American Civil War era (1861-65) ball gown
Regency
Debunking the common narrative about Beau Brummel - The whole modern men's fashion is not the fault of One Guy
Gender non-conforming Regency styles
18th century
The Colonial History of How Cotton Became the Most Important Fabric
Mantua And It's Variants
Northern Italian countryside fashion in late 18th century.
Working Class Clothing In Late 18th Century France
Early Modern Era
Deep Dive into 15th and 16th Century Working Class Fashion in Western Europe
Medieval Era
Late 14th to Early 15th Century Bohemian and German Men's Fashion
Construction of Men's Hose
Codpiece
Construction of the French hood
Iron Age
Viking and Crusader Age Finnish men's dress
Historical Sewing
Sewing Medieval Bathhouse Dress
Historical Costuming
History of the Fantasy Corset
Met Gala 2022 Costume Commentary
Pride and Prejudice 2005 Costume Analysis
Ranking Men's Costumes in Renaissance Period Dramas - Part I: The Bad
Ranking Men's Costumes in Renaissance Period Dramas - Part II: The Good
Textiles
Hemp's properties
Sustainability
How to see through the greenwashing propaganda of the fashion industry - Case study 1: Shein
The Real Cost of the Fashion Industry
Architectural History
History of Sauna and Steam Baths
Historical Queer Figures
Julie d'Aubigny
History
Palestinian History Between Great Powers
European History Is Not White
Tag Navigation
#answers
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Primary sources
#primary sources
#extant garment
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Pinterest Boards
Victorian Fashion
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vetulicolia · 3 months
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Long, unedited WIP passage running down the concept behind the worldbuilding in my art under the cut.
In the period of European national revolutions, the movement in modern-day Croatia was encompassed by the "Illyrian national revival" primarily aiming toward literary reform, linguistic modernization and pan-slavic independence from the Austrian and Hungarian dominated Habsburgs. Of course, there's a lot more nuance to get into here, up until Yugoslavism overtook the charge of Illyrism, but here I'm dealing with an alternate and conceptual history of this movement and nation.
One founded in a world of alternate metaphysics where idealism such as the one emergent in the republican revolutions is a material force and the winds of revolution swept across the world, where the "Illyrian provinces" of the French republic had this emerging identity deliberatelly fostered.
To clearly outline the timeline while avoiding a lore-neurotic puzzlebox narrative, our divergence begins with the success of the montagnard reign of terror and failure of the thermidorian reaction, propelling the jacobin club into the domination of French politics and the beginning of the First Revolutionary War. The details are tertiary here, the events are determined by a fractal of idealistic forces spurring on reality-shaping events, an axiomatic wind of history emanating from humanity. We will get to this much later - right here, what matters is that the old order of Europe is annihilated and a French jacobin hegemony is established up to the retracted Ottoman empire and the far east of the Russian Republic. In the late 1810s, or 20s of the republican calendar, the Illyrian provinces under direct French directorate are given increased autonomy to develop as a nation.
The movement of Ljudevit Gaj, the nascent bourgeoisie class of Ljubljana, Gradec and Belgrade is granted license to fashion fate and impose it on millions of peasants, orthodox tradesmen, sufi clerics, mountain pastoralists and danubian smallholders. This bolder iteration of "Illyrian National Revival" is hallmarked by paradoxical elements. Classicist undertones comparable to Hellenism, a secular adoption of names picked from ancient Illyrian tribes. A deliberate distinction from surrounding European empires, supported by the French cores interest in possessing an oriental frontier at its doorstep. Secular and mystical, revolutionary and despotic. It is, in all senses, the embodiment of "Ruritania".
A "Ruritania" is a fictional minor european nation of 19th century fiction, in this case specifically referring to the historical narratives of national development in the balkans. "Ruritania" is the hide of national romanticism draped over a state, tanned in the sun until it appears as an organic emanation of the culture - though in reality, it is a product of megalomaniacal idealism, constructed by the ruling intelligentsia and industrialist class, refracted through western interests, whether it be inventing ancient emnities to entrench division, Habsburg abuse of "exotic" architecture (I heartily recommend reading about the moorish revival in Bosnia!) or victorian fetishism for the "primitive". The discreet national identities existing today are themselves ruritanian, founded on cherrypicked delusions of grandeur from recently shared mythos. Illyria is a concentrated one, built on a different set of foundations.
To return to our timeline, Illyrian national identity, the empire of megalomania, is easily entrenched. Rural areas remain particularist and "regional identities" such as Dalmatian, Moravian or Bosnian persist without shaping into national identity. The core of the Illyrian state lay in the urbanized northern belt, the Kranj, Red (derived from Red Croatia) and Dunav provinces. The industrialization of the state is inequal, almost entirely concentrated in the three provinces, in part exported to the urban cores of the Bosnian province, Dalmatia and Istria. An endless stream of emigrants from the hinterlands changes the face of the nation, industrialized agriculture in the north overshadows the old pastoral ways, and then the process is abruptly halted again.
Toward the end of the first century of the republican calendar, the Second Revolutionary War begins with the toppling of the British Republic by national revanchists, the ensuing crisis dissolving the Jacobin hegemony in France and ushering in a series of intracontinental wars between fractions loyal to jacobinism, those disappointed with the state it brought about and the liberal and national revolutionaries of Europe. Illyria is spared of the carnage - for now - due to its politically unmotivated population and entrenched ruling intelligentsia.
The Second Revolutionary War culminates in the formation of an unified front of reformist and new jacobin forces to halt the encroachment of social-revolutionaries in France, Germany and a number of other European nations. This unified front is the foundation of the reformed pan-european defense pact, the ARC - Axe Republicain Continental. The last bastion of the defeated social-revolutionaries (In Illyria, Eseri, or pejoratively Termitnik movement) is the Hungarian Workers and Soldiers State, encompassing most of the Pannnonian basin and the Carpathians. With a dash of historic paranoia over Hungarian rule and the pragmatic need to safeguard the balance of power from the Eser state, Illyria enters ARC as a core member.
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15-lizards · 6 months
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What’s your general timeline regarding fashion in Westeros, from Aegon’s conquest (or even pre-conquest) to modern times? (E.g dance of the dragons: 1400s renaissance fashion, mid 200AC: Tudor fashion). Is it just a mixing pot?
So glad u asked keep in mind I’m playing fast and loose with all this I will probably come up with a new idea in two days that makes me disregard half the stuff on here (also yes some of it is just a melting pot and years of inspo are not always in order)
1. 20s BC-Early AC years: I get a sense of very early medieval fashion around this time. Think 1100s-1200s. All of it is fairly similar, with small tweaks based on location
2. Aenys-Maegor: this is where i think the “classic” medieval European look begins to take off. So think like the 1300s
3. Jaehaerys: I haven’t strongly defined the first century AC, but I do think I have a melting pot made up of mostly early 1600s (with some typical medieval princess looks thrown in there for the daughters)
4. Viserys I-Aegon IV: to me this is very typical 1600s Western European court fashion for the dance all the way to Aegon the unworthy. The general shape and style of clothes lasts for a long time, but details change over the course of each kings reign
5. Daeron-Maekar: this is much more modest era of fashion and more subdued. It makes me think of Burgundian styles and maybe early 1400s?
6. Egg-Aerys: this is when we start creeping in on typical Renaissance fashion. The Italian renaissance I have in mind particularly for Eggs reign. We also start getting hints of 1500s English fashion
7: Current era: this is mostly 1500s English, but again still a mix of stuff. Y’all have seen my posts I have Northerners in traditional Russian clothing and Dornishmen in Syrian and Saudi outfits most of the kingdoms do not fit into the same irl era
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