smile-for-me-amour

[smile-for-me-amour]

I will punt you into the sun with the same fury that drove me to run Freddy Riley over

when you're trying to have a date but the theater kid keeps photobombing

Bonus: A successful picture and a wedding

[smile-for-me-amour]

how dare you insult my husband

when you're trying to have a date but the theater kid keeps photobombing

Bonus: A successful picture and a wedding

[smile-for-me-amour]

and Joseph had enough of you

when you're trying to have a date but the theater kid keeps photobombing

Bonus: A successful picture and a wedding

[smile-for-me-amour]

This is why we should all appreciate the barmaid from Identity V more

The Beer Witch Post

(or how the stereotypical Wicked Witch is based in part on female brewsters*) 

Some background:

Women have been brewing beer for nearly 10 thousand years! 

That’s right! Beer is traditionally a woman’s drink, in that it was invented, produced, and drunk by women (and children) for all of recorded history. (src)

Beer only recently became associated with men (around the time it was commercialized of course!)  How did this happen?

Like many things, it involved the Church and a Witch Hunt.

(Note: this post is about a western stereotype; the action takes place in Europe.) Around the 11th cent., the Church realized that brewing alcohol was a great way for monasteries to generate revenue. At the time, brewing was the domain of Germanic tribal woman, and was important bc:

there was a huge demand for ale, due to its cheapness and the lack of potable water in most households

it allowed women to generate their own income at home.

That first part smelled like profit to the Church. That second part meant female independence, which they didn’t like at all. The solution was to get women out of brewing, and monasteries in. What better way than a witch hunt?

Of course, to have a good witch hunt, first you have to invent a witch.

Inventing the Wicked Witch

As female brewsters were pushed out of their fields (being denied licenses and guild membership), the Church set up shop. Monasteries & nunneries were sort of the perfect place to manufacture, what with their land & resources & free labor. Women were still the main brewers in many communities, but this would change over the centuries as the Church waged a War of Defamation against alewives & brewesses. 

The association between woman and sin has always been an easy argument to make, biblically. As women, alewives were ridiculously easy to defame. The rhetoric went something along the lines of:

women created sin

women are sinful

women use beer to spread their sinful ways & take money from men

Alewives, who ran alehouses, were cast as treacherous, deceitful women who cheated men by luring them into playgrounds for the devil, ruled by the sins of gluttony and lust.  

Alewives in hell became a popular Church-spread trope:  

“The Church specifically taught that alewives would be the only people left in hell after Christ freed all the damned.“ (src)

Thus, female brewers became easy target to associate with the devil, and with witchcraft. 

Whether or not brewsters were outright accused of consorting with the devil, the implication was there. And later, so was the imagery.

The Church’s centuries-long smear campaign worked too, helped by the fact that as brewing became more lucrative, more men entered the field, and were happy to help push women out. By the 17th century, the (European) brewing industry was male dominated, for the first time in human history. 

Witchcraft & Brewing: Symbology

The lifestyles, clothing, and tools of real women brewers were taken and used as iconography for witchcraft. 

Many of the props associated with the stereotypical Wicked Witch were just common objects alewives used to denote the brewing trade.

CALUDRONS & CATS: The image of a woman standing over a boiling cauldron once had a very different connotation: ale brewing. Cats, of course, were kept around to protect the grain supply.

BROOMSTICKS: these symbols of domestic trade were used as advertisements. A broom hung outside a home or alehouse was an easy-to-recognize sign that ale was available to buy. (Keep in mind that before literacy was common, most signs would be symbolic, not written.)

THOSE BIG, DISTINCTIVE HATS: This was a marketing thing too! Wearing a large hat to stand out in the market crowd was a symbol of a brewster with wares to sell. (src)

An Alewife, in her innocent witchy attire. Simple advertising like these allowed women to sell brews that they were already often making for their families at home.

The more you know! A shoutout to all those ladies brewing throughout history, from priestesses to alewives to homemakers alike. For thousands of years, generation after generation of families were fed & watered & kept healthy by women brewing at home. Thank you ladies, for your service.

if you enjoy my posts, i have a ko-fi! (this post took about 2 hours to research/write. links below)

Keep reading

[smile-for-me-amour]

when you're trying to have a date but the theater kid keeps photobombing

Bonus: A successful picture and a wedding

[smile-for-me-amour]

when you tryna have a date but the theater kid keeps photobombing you

bonus: successful picture, lobby idle animation sync, and wedding

[smile-for-me-amour]

If you can’t reblog this, unfollow me now.

[smile-for-me-amour]

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them

Why I don’t

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

Favorite season/movie

Favorite line

Favorite outfit

OTP

Brotp

Head Canon

Unpopular opinion

A wish

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen

5 words to best describe them

My nickname for them

[smile-for-me-amour]

Holy shit, it's been a while since I've last posted here, but this thing just happened:

I was playing Identity V on my phone, and I open the game chat on the English channel (The only English channel on the asian server), and this person wrote "Need help from abroad" and "Help Thailand".

I sent them a message asking them to tell me what's going on, and this is the chat:

Trigger warning: mentions police violence

(the screenshots were taken with the person's permission)

So if there's any way to help, please do.

[smile-for-me-amour]

Everyone, please rise up to the occasion and do all you can to help the people of Thailand. The government and police have been murdering helpless citizens for wanting democracy. The people of Thailand can do nothing to defend themselves from these attacks and they keep happening. Millions of lives have been lost.

I was provided with these screenshots from a chat in Identity V (with permission) so please read through them so you can understand. None of the people in the screenshots had English as their first language so please be kind to them.

If anybody can provide other information and pass this along, it would help immensely.

Screenshots provided by @the-shipping-machine