#I equate the social media politician with

[bardicious]

A good example of modern day ignorance is two weeks back when I received a pamphlet to "Stop the war in Ukraine". Fascinating because

1. The pamphlet wasn't addressing Putin himself (at least this would have made some fucking sense)

2. The person spreading the pamphlets wasn't pro-Russia either (I don't think it was telling Ukraine to be conquered LMAO)

3. A petition for "peace" to stop the fighting, addressed to maybe the US government(???). Made by a presumably left leaning individual who obviously didn't know shit about the conflict but thought that their sweet little sentiments were morally relevant. uwu.

And this is exactly what it's like being on any social media site. Bunch of people ambiguously wanting the "bad things" to stop without actually knowing anything about anything.

[funkopersonal]

Here's your daily reminder that...

Jews are only 0.2% of the worlds population but...

Jews make up 14% of the World Total and 38% of the United States of America total winners for the Nobel Prize for Literature (source).

Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. (source)

Jews make up 14% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 18% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; 53% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction (source).

Jews make up 39% of the total winners of the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play; 54% of the total winners of the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (with 62% of all Composers and 66% of all Lyricists of Best Musical-winning productions being Jewish) (source).

Jews make up 40% of the total winners of the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Original Screenplay; and 34% of the total winners of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (source).

Although Jews constitute only 3% of the U.S. population...

80% of the nation’s professional comedians are Jewish (source).

90% of American comic book creators are jewish (source)

38% of the recipients of the United States National Medal of Science are Jewish (Source).

Jews are very successful, with educational levels higher than all other U.S. ethnic groups with the exception of Asian Americans, and income levels the highest of all groups. Six out of ten Jewish adults have college degrees, and 41% of Jewish families report a household income of $75,000 or more” (source)

Jews are a minority across the globe. We've been historically opressed and hated. But these key figures from history are all Jewish and loved, yet many don't even know they're jewish (or they don't know these people in the first place!):

Stan Lee (birth name: Stanley Martin Lieber) - An American comic book writer and editor, Former executive vice president and publisher of marvel Comics, creator of iron-man, spider-man, and more.

Albert Einstein - a Theoretical physicist, Received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, developed the theory of relativity and the "worlds most famous equation"  (E = mc^2), and more.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, co-authored the initial law school casebook on sex discrimination, co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU in 1972, and more.

Jack Kirby (birth name: Jacob Kurtzberg) - an American comic book artist, co-creator of Captain America, one of the most influential comic book artists

Harry Houdini (birth name: Erich Weisz) - a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts.

Emma Lazarus - An American author remembered for her sonnet "The New Colossus," Inspired by The Statue of Liberty and inscribed on its pedestal as of 1903.

Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise, and Henry Moskowitz - Jewish activists that helped form the NAACP along with W.E.B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell.

Mark Zuckerberg - Founder and CEO of Meta, a businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook, and within four years became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire Harvard alumni.

Joseph Pulitzer - a politician and newspaper publisher, his endowment to the Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917, he founded the Columbia School of Journalism which opened in 1912.

Jacob William Davis - a Latvian tailor who is credited with inventing modern jeans and who worked with Levi Strauss to patent and mass-produce them, died.

Irving Berlin - drafted at age 30 to write morale-boosting songs for military revues (including “God Bless America”). Many Berlin songs remained popular for decades, including “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better),” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and two celebrating Christian holidays: “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - received his doctorate in Berlin. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1938, moved to the U.S. in 1940, and became an influential figure in the 1960s, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and speaking out against the Vietnam War.

Elie Wiesel - Romanian-American writer and professor, holocaust survivor, nobel laureate, political activist. Authored 57 books including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps

Bob Dylan - an icon of folk, rock and protest music, won the Nobel Prize in literature for his complex and poetic lyrics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer - ran the Manhattan Project, considered the "father of the atomic Bomb," presented with the Enrico Fermi Award by President Lyndon Johnson.

Betty Friedan - co-founded the National Organization of Women and became its first president, wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963) and helped spark the second wave of feminism.

Gloria Steinem - one of the most prominent feminists of all time, launched Ms. Magazine and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers.

Sergey Brin - an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page, president of Alphabet Inc.

Judith Heumann - a founder of the disability rights movement, led a 26-day sit-in at a federal building in San Francisco. The protest spurred implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Larry Kramer - co-founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis in response to the AIDS epidemic but was soon ousted over his confrontational activism. He went on to help launch a more strident group, ACT UP, and wrote a critically acclaimed play, The Normal Heart, about the early AIDS years in New York City.

Steven Spielberg - released his critically acclaimed epic film Schindler’s List, based on the true story of a German industrialist who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The movie won seven Oscars and led Spielberg to launch the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California, which filmed interviews with 52,000 survivors of the Holocaust and genocides in Nanjing and Rwanda.

Calvin Klein - made designer jeans and the infamous ad starring Brooke Shields revolutionized the fashion industry, sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen (now PVH) for $430 million. Klein was the first designer to win three consecutive Coty Awards for womenswear.

Daveed Diggs - an American actor, rapper, and singer-songwriter. he originated the dual roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton, for which he won a 2016 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Along with the main cast of Hamilton, he was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year.

And so much more. (a pretty decent list is available here)

Not only that, but the following are all Jewish inventions...

The Teddy Bear - made by Morris and Rose Michtom in honor of Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.

The Ballpoint Pen - *the first commercially sucessfull ballpoint pen was made by Lazlo Biro, a Hungarian-Jew, and his brother.

Mobile Phones - made by Martin Cooper, nicknamed the "father of the cellphone", and was born in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.

The Barbie - made by Ruth Marianna Handler, born to Polish-Jewish immigrants.

Power Rangers - made by Haim Saban, a Jewish-Egyptian

Video Games - made by Ralph Baer, a German-Jew

Peeps - made by Sam Born, a Russian-Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in 1909.

Cards Against Humanity - created by a group of Jewish boys from the same high school

Many Superheroes including Superman, Ironman, spider-man, batman, and more!

and more! (an illustrated list available here.)

Conclusion: If you're Jewish, be proud. You come from a long line of successful people. No matter what happened to them, Jews persevered, and they strived for sucess. Be proud of your culture, your history, these are your people. You're Jewish.

(feel free to reblog and add more, or just comment and i'll add it!)

Last Updated: June 25, 1:35 AM EST

[esyra]

These days, I have long debated what to write regarding Palestine-Israel, and questioned why I should write anything at all. The idea that celebrities and the loudest chronically online people you've ever met, blessed in their ignorance and indifferent to livehoods different than theirs, feel the need to opinate on social and geopolitical issues is absolutely insane. Most of the time, they do more harm than good—spreading misinformation like wildfire. Such opinions are what convinced me to ultimately talk about it.

Rest assured I'm not particularly qualified to talk about any of this, then again no one seems (or tries) to be. This is not a statement, simply questions about selected nuance. Full disclosure: I am of Palestinian descent. And I tried my hardest to be all-encompassing and empathetic; if I fail at any moment, my sincerest apologies.

All around social media I've seen only two kinds of posts regarding Palestine and Israel; they're either completely favorable to Israel and dehumanize Palestine or they treat Palestines as a footnote, in which it's made to assure its author doesn't endorse murder but also to point out that Palestine "deserve what's coming." There's a certain nuance required to support Palestine that's not asked when supporting Israel.

I've seen Jamie Lee Curtis reposting a picture of Palestinian children watching Israelis air strikes as if they were of Israeli children. There's no doubt it was a malicious-intended post considering she credited the photographer while deleting the original caption which explicitly explained who the ones pictured were. After being severely corrected in the comments, she simply deleted and made no mention of it. Guess children don't matter if they're Palestinian. I've seen way too many celebrities responding to the conflict with worries about how they might be affected by it, as self-centered and selfish as you can imagine.

I've seen a journalist claim that 40 Israeli babies were beheaded and multiple newspapers (many of them British, because what else can you expect from them?) and public figures reposting as a fact, only for the same journalist to later claim she actually "never said that" (she absolutely did). Also the IDF explaining they have no information confirming the allegations that 'Hamas beheaded babies'. I've seen people using statements from Sabra and Shatila massacre survivors and trying to rewrite Palestine, which were the victims of said crime, as the perpetrators. I've seen people using videos of Russian attacks as Palestinian ones. I've seen a British journalist fabricating a harmful statement from a Palestinian Ambassador to help dehumanize Palestine, and being proud of such. I've seen BBC using the nuances of language to their liking, reporting how Israelis were 'killed' while Palestinians 'died'. Always heard journalists avoid adjectives in favor of being unbiased. Again, guess that's unimportant when it comes to Palestine. Most of all, I've seen people equate supporting Palestine to anti-semitism.

If that belief steams that Palestine and Hamas are one-and-the-same, and the latter is a anti-semitism organization, then that's another concern I'd like to add the recently appraised 'nuance'.

Hamas first appeared during the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 marked the end of the uprising—an agreement between Israel and Palestine meant to lay the groundwork for the formation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Instead, it has erased Palestine's recognition as a State. In its history, Hamas have equate the liberation of Palestinians with the destruction of Israel, likely the reason they're a highly divisive organization that has often been at oddens with more mainstream Palestinian politicians. However, Hamas backtracked on its aims in a 2017 proclamation, making it clear that what it wants is to end a “racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project.” In its 16th topic, they state "Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine."

The description of the Israeli occupation as fascist most likely comes from the similarities of Palestine to an "open air prison". They have no control of their own borders (IDF controls who and what enters or leaves) and are deemed stateless. "In defiance of international law, Israel considers all Palestinians inhabitants of the occupied Palestinian territory as non-citizens and foreign residents." Meaning if they leave their territory, they won't be allowed back in. Their rights in the Arab World are uncertain, particularly in Lebanon and Egypt where they are denied rights to secure residency, employment, property, communal interaction and family unification. Procedures to allow non-residents to apply for naturalisation in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia do not apply to stateless Palestinians. So while those asking for Palestinians to be evacuated for their safety certainly have noble intentions, I ask of you: where they will go? Can you imagine walking away from home knowing you're heading into nothing? What's the difference between living in the rumbles of their homes and being homeless in another country?

The ones who decide to stay (and the ones unable to leave) are likely not making it for much longer. According to the United Nations, roughly 6,400 Palestinians and 300 Israelis have been killed in the ongoing conflict since 2008, not counting the recent fatalities. Is it truly a war if one side is so overpowering in its resources and retaliations? I feel the need to point out these stats to question why the notion that "violence is never the answer" is only used now. When it has been the only response until now.

Then again, Hamas remains a polarizing force in Palestinian society. They're an organization that's slaughtering families and less than a third of Palestinians think the group deserves to represent them. There has not been an opportunity, however, for elections to change their representatives. Palestinians living in Gaza must endure an unstable political reality with an unrepresentative government implementing repressive policies against LGBTQ people and abusive policies against detainees. Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu purposefully propped up Hamas and there has been speculation that Iran has supported them. I've seen many post as if it's a fact, so I'd like to reinforce that it's speculation. In essence, Hamas is a terrorist group with questionable history and even more questionable allies. None of which has the Palestine's best interests at heart.

This has been overly long, and I still haven't touched on all topics I wished to address. Some I probably couldn't express properly since it's such a complex geopolitical issue. Then again, no one seems to try while all seem very comfortable in being as biased as they wish to be. So I thought I add my compassionate two cents in favor of Palestine and all the years of oppresion they've endured. I still hope you'll read this to the end, and extended to Palestine the same sympathetic hand you've rightfully extended to Israeli citizens.

My heart aches for the innocent people murdered, Palestinian and Israeli. Settlers aren’t innocent, but people who were born there didn't really choose to be one. Jewish people following matters of faith don't deserve to die. No one has (or should have) the right to take someone's life away. People at the Gaza Strip that are either just trying to survive or attempting to protect their homes also don't deserve to die, as flawed as their logic and actions might be, and many are missing that nuance. The denial of food, water, and medical aid, violates the Geneva convention. And it's a kind of retaliation that Palestine in its entirety will never be able to match.

Currently, the Israeli government is preparing a ground invasion of Gaza. An anonymous Israeli official said they would turn Gaza into “a city of tents.” A parliamentarian said that Israel should not concern itself with the safety of any Gazans who “chose” to stay in the Gaza Strip, as if every crossing hasn't been blocked.

Soon, the 'war' will end. And when it does, I can assure you Palestine won't be the last one standing. They've never had a real chance. I'd like to remember everyone that, despite Netanyahu's claims that they are "human animals", Palestinians are human beings. People. All of which deserve to live, deserve compassion and deserve protection. They also deserve to be remembered.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

So let's talk about rape, and porn, and why porn isn't rape.

By now, I've seen more than a few people talking about that OnlyFans chick who fucked 100 guys in a single day and ended up crying afterwards. Let's just say this up front: That's incredibly sad. It's not unique, because there have been a lot of pornstars over the years who have had gangbangs with hundreds of guys before, but it is sad. She obviously wasn't mentally prepared for what she did, and it obviously affected her in ways she wasn't expecting. I feel bad for her, and I hope she ends up learning a lesson from this about the emotional impact of casual sex and treating her body like a commodity to be sold to strangers.

But I've also seen way too many people equating what she did to being raped, and the men who had sex with her to rapists. And that's just not even remotely true. Regret is not rape. She chose to have sex with those men. She chose to keep going with every new guy that showed up. At any point she could have said "Okay, this isn't good, I want to stop now". But that never happened.

Now, I know some people will read that and say that all porn is a form of rape, because paying a woman to have sex is taking her agency away or "forcing" her or "coercing" her. Those people are wrong. Unless someone is actually being forced to do porn, porn is voluntary. Porn stars and OF people and camgirls/guys all choose to have sex in front of a camera for money.

"But the money!" some of you are saying. "The money makes it coercive!"

Well, okay. Let's look at that argument. So, what does coercion mean? It means, according to the dictionary

the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats

Note the last three words. Force or threats. I think we can all agree that threatening or forcing someone to have sex is wrong. But accepting money to perform a job, even if that job is having sex, is not coercion. It's never coercion. It's a voluntary pact between buyer and seller. Even if the person doing the selling is dirt poor.

"But," some others may say, "what if she wanted to stop but some of the guys talked her into continuing?"

To that I say, "So what?"

Convincing someone to do something is not coercion. Even if you're convincing someone to do something they don't want to do. Even if that person really wants to say no, but ends up saying yes. Unless there's force or a threat, it's not coercion. Making bad decisions is not equal to being raped. Talking someone into making a bad decision is not equal to being a rapist. We can't just throw around the most emotionally charged terms we can think of whenever we want to make a point about something that upset you. That's what the left does, and it's the reason why words that should mean very specific things have become watered down. It's why words that used to elicit horror and revulsion now barely get a shrug. Nazi, racist, rapist, fascist, abuser, war criminal. All these words have specific meanings. All these words are used everyday on social media to talk about exes or parents or politicians or friends or celebrities or strangers. Think of how many times you've heard someone use those words. Now think of how many times you actually took the arguments of the person using them seriously after they used them. I'm guessing that first number is pretty high. And I'm guessing that last number is low, if it isn't actually zero.

Don't turn yourselves into the leftists who presided over the biggest electoral shellacking in a generation. Don't adopt the language and tactics of the people who have turned nearly every demographic against them by doing exactly this same shit. If you want to hate porn, go ahead. If you want to advocate against it, go ahead. If you want to get angry at the way sex is treated these days, go right the fuck ahead. But when you do, really think about why you're doing it, and articulate those reasons without trying to get people to respond emotionally by using the worst, most incendiary language you can think of. That's not how you're going to get anything done.

[cerastes]

The thing that kills me here is... Why have the same information on both sides of the screen? What purpose does this fulfill? Ignore Biden. You’d think this means they’d do away with the right side of the interface so the website finally becomes the sinking ship that people, escaping from the other sinking ship, arrived to.

“Why do this at all?” This is the easy part of the equation: Investor money. You tell investors “well, SEE, with these new changes that we’re rolling out, we’ll be more similar to The Big Website that has everyone in the world in it ranging from politicians to TheCybersmith, this means we’ll likely replicate their success!” which is all you need for investors, because investors don’t know a damn thing about internet social media, they outright do not know nor do they care to learn, you tell the average investor, “hey this is Similar To Successful Product” and they’ll give you unimaginable head and six figures in funding.

“Why the hell did they make a Frankenstein’s of the Twitter interface and the remnants of Tumblr interface?” Man, I don’t have a crystal ball. I think a lot of people would chalk it up to incompetence or just a complete bankruptcy of fucks left in the coffers, but I think it’s something more enigmatic, and likely, sinister (incompetence AND a complete bankruptcy of fucks left in the coffers).

[afterredlights]

This is a rant after I stupidly doom-scrolled Twitter and saw all those "Don't blame him!" posts. Mind the tags, and read at your own risk.

Just to be clear, even I could smile and shake hands with people I would love to hit with my car. It's called playing nice, being civil. But that doesn't mean I'll break bread with them. That doesn't mean I'll still smile and praise them, that's way beyond playing nice.

That is as close to ass-licking, in my opinion.

In what fucking way, Lando, did Donald fucking Trump is someone you have to have respect for in many ways?!

Tell me. Tell me!

As a sportsman, dear social media users, playing nice with a politician does not equate to whatever the fuck that Lando did! That's too much. Too much.

We feel that Lando lacks awareness because of his comments in regards to Trump not because he should have spit on Trump's face, it's because Lando could've just said:

"Yeah, I only met him after the race. Didn't think he'd be here watching the race." Or something!

You know, when dealing with politicians you should just stay clear of them. Especially when you're not in your own country, and you have influence over people (no matter the fact that he is, first and foremost, a sportsman). He either has zero awareness, he is just that apathetic towards whatever is happening, or he lacks media training.

I mean, who the fuck wouldn't put a red flag on Donald Trump? He should have gotten some notes before walking into the presscon. It's a disaster.

Also, to every single one of you who insist that Lando couldn't have done anything else- fuck you. There are a lot of ways he could've handled it.

[warsamongthestars]

I was in a rush when I did the first CX post, rage demanded I have no patience and must post (and I'm not sorry about that), but I wanted to expound on it more, probably with less spacer-swearing.

So.

I haven't seen arguments or stories about the CX clones beyond the Tech theory, and that's telling about how impactful they actually were on their own... which is, they weren't impactful at all. Their job on screen boiled down to "Look Pretty, Die to Hero", which is a waste of the potential that was being built.

They contributed little to nothing to the story and themes. (And I would argue that TBB has no themes beyond gift wrapping paper). There is nothing they did that can't be filled by the "Imperial Commandos" (All the RCs we kept seeing), the Elite Stormtroopers (going back to Season1), or even just, Stormtroopers but with a bit of spraypaint on.

And anything that they did bank on, particularly CX-02 (theorized to be Tech), didn't pay out, so it wasn't bank.

Let me break it down properly.

They're introduced as a threat as far back as Season 2, with one CX clone that commits suicide via electrocution (which is... a lot more awful way to go than the Spy Film James Bond Agent arsenic-in-tooth poisoning, lemme tell you). Then it was a bait-n-switch because were semi-lead to believe that the CX was Crosshair in those episodes.

And it wasn't.

Then we get introduced to CX-2 who had a trailer, a spooky voice (Not gonna lie, I did love that voice), a couple episodes of being the direct antagonist... and still didn't lead up to anything with his own death in battle. There were more CX clones that each had a unique body type, unique armor, and unique equipment, and yet... they didn't amount to anything save to be your Name-Your-RPG-Game-ENemies to be defeated.

Reasonable and easy story-telling says that CX-02, specifically is Tech. CX-02 did not turn out to be Tech.

If the idea was that it was a bait-n-switch like the first CX, let me assure you, its not. Anyone who claims otherwise is talking out their shebs, and should be boo'd off stage, preferably with fresh tomatoes.

Bait-n-Switch requires in-story build up, from direct and obvious scenes shown to the audience, to characters talking about it or having wishful thinking, and then paying it off by tricking them and or the audience by showing that our assumptions were wrong.

You have to show that you've planned for it. Stories that plan that sort of thing have beats you can follow. There are no beats to follow in TBB, because it insists on contradicting itself too much and never dedicating itself.

So by Character Standards, the CXs have already failed as a narrative tool. They were semi-teased on social media, set up in story, as soon as season 2, as a potential player among characters--only to fall horribly short when the time came to show-no-tell.

( This is not the fault of the concept, but the fault of the handlers. )

CX clones as a concept for Star Wars, are meant to equate to the clone assassins found in the Republic Commando books and encountered in the Comics, as well as the early 2000s Prequel Star Wars games. They hunt down those who won't go to war for the true sith masters.

CX Clones as a concept for the TBB story, are Clone Experiments (Because X as an acronym means Experiment) that are sent out to assassinate or disrupt non-imperial politicians, dissidents, and more; serving as direct antagonist to Rex's Rebels, with a vague CF99 flaire.

It starts with the implication that these are clones that believe in the Empire policies (... because the story at this point decided that the chip was non-existant and that clones are loyal to orders enough to commit slaughter and genocide on a flip of a credit chip... but that's an issue for a different discussion).

They are later, by showing us, found to be placed in cryostorage, and awoken ("Activated") to perform missions. This suggests a severe dehumanization; brainwashing, unethical medical treatments--what our TCWs fandom would call "reconditioning". They are treated as the very droids they once fought against, both in battle and in treatment of themselves. They are the clone trooper at the lowest possible point.

This places, by the show's very own set up implications, that CX clones are tragic figures who lost their humanity in the face of an unfeeling Galaxy, a dehumanizing and demoralizing Empire, and potentially, were being made during the Republic (Giving how many there are).

The TBB show follows, it outright shows what the CXs are about.

And then, it pays off its showing, by killing them all enmass, without conversation or consideration, without character's discussing or story revolving.

I don't know bout anyone else, but uh, I'm pretty sure most shows, that do the whole "my friend / family / lover was brainwashed-Possessed-Apart-Of-The-Hivemind, I must save them" bit... usually go for the "Save them / Fail to Save them" option, and not the "Mow them down and let the Force sort them out".

This isn't the first time this behavior by the narrative has happened--it treated Crosshair the same way; by making him the enemy for a season (because as the "Jerk" character, he is "obviously evil" and will "devolve into evil ways" the first chance he gets), for a reason that they outright show is why he turned, but then attempted to blame him for his choices (as if the show hadn't already shown us that, on Episode 1, they GREW THE TUMOR IN HIS BRAIN BY 3 SIZES LIKES ITS THE HEART OF THE GRINCH, and then never ever showed it was ever removed) [ Social Media posts don't count--if its not in-story, its not there, and if the TBB writers don't like it, tough shit], and then when the line came, the show decided to abandon him to the otherside whilst his brothers ran, in an awful attempt to keep "status quo".

CX clones are semi-intended by narrative to be a contrast to Crosshair, but the problem is, is that they're not by context. They're a replacement to him so that the show can maintain the shit status quo it caused by poor choices and disrupted for a bout of victim blaming to show some... lesson about guilt apparently.

They're not the Bad Batch's foils, nor their parallels, they're the antagonist to a group we only see a few times (Rex's Clone Rebellion), and they're meant to replace Crosshair as the Imperial Enemy / Rival Character.

... And that's not interesting, because once again, the TBB trips up with "Enemy of another story". Once again, the "true story" is elsewhere and we get the nonsense scraps.

What would've made the CX clones work, is if they were there since the begining. Instead of the stormtrooper Elites, it was CX clones that worked with a brainwashed-mindcontrolled Crosshair, to show a darker half of the Republic (which leads into how it became the Empire so fast), and actually give the Bad Batch a set of contrasts-foils.

If we intended to follow the Donut Steel as a legit story, then having the CX-Clones as Team Rocket to the Bad Batch's Pokemon Heroes, would've done a world of good for the story. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would keep to the intention of "Family", and we just top it off with the CX Clones with Crosshair, leaving their position to heal from their trauma away from Wars and Empires and giving a "fuller family" to Omega by the end.

This would've allowed exploration of clone life post-Republic, how both Republic and Empire treated the clones, as well as a lead into exploration of trauma, PTSD, analogs to non-consenting situations, shifts of government in to a darker state of leadership and policy, as well as how you survive such situations... and that's with those who have stuck with you thick and thin as "brothers".

But no. They're a wasted opportunity, wasted characters, and only serve as some bonus bosses. They are not allowed to contribute anything, because that would mean the writer's would have to explore them... and the writers can't even explore their own main characters.

Worse, because the Ending "The Calvary Has Arrived" was written before all 3 seasons were released, the CXs were doomed to die as shallow what-ifs, without history or impact.

Like its a fucking early 2000s fanfic on ff dot net.

[the1975attheirverybest]

Matty’s “speech” in FL

Okay, so someone asked for an explanation of Matty’s speech before IAWD(S). Here it is.

First, I should note that it’s not Matty’s original words. It’s an excerpt from an essay about sincerity and the aesthetization of politics in our current culture, written by art critic Boris Groys. You can read it here (it appears as one among many that he published in a collection as journal entries).

A few things to note about the essay:

It shares a lot of common themes with S/ATVB in that it talks about the conception of mass media, the effect it has on culture and one own self-image, the way we’ve turned politics into a form of media to consume, etc. so that’s the context in which it’s operating.

It discusses “self-design” (i.e. the curating of a specific version of yourself to present to the public) in a similar way that matty thinks about his stage persona.

The essay is trying to address the issue of arts relationship to politics today. Groys argues that, with the proliferation of mass media and social media platforms, these modes have replaced the artists (re)presentation of politics. The vast production of images of news, war, etc take the place of the artist.

even more to the point, the artist is now depicted and presented to us via media as well. So, the artist becomes the artwork instead of being the one who produces it.

this, Groys suggests, causes a certain kind of anxiety for artists because their job is to make stuff, and now, they’re in a position where the world is making them.

In the age of social media, with everyone sort of turning themselves and each other into “artworks” by curating and presenting specific versions of themselves online/ in public, Groys says that making something into art or aesthetizing it has become a way to cause suspicion. Like, we all have this awareness that social media “isn’t real life” that these images are edited and present a skewed and fabricated version of reality.

so, the way we encounter artwork (including public version of each other) is with suspicion. We get this feeling that if something looks aesthetic on social media, then the aesthetizing of it must be to hide the fact that it’s ugly/ bad/ unimpressive in reality. Instead of making something aesthetic being a glamorizing or celebratory act, it’s a doubt-inducing act.

Because everyone is so aware of the artificial-ness all the time, we have, in turn started to try to design our public image to be about sincerity and authenticity. In order to connect with others who view us publicly and establish trust with them.

Because the aesthetic is suspicious to us, we start to equate sincerity with shitty / bad/ugly stuff. We are suspicious of people who seem genuinely kind and sweet and pretty etc. but when we see someone behaving like a dickhead, we believe they’re being sincere.

Now, to the passage that Matty read onstage,

summarized, the passage says:

The only way to show authenticity and sincerity is to reveal nastiness. So, the nastiest celebrities and politicians are often the most famous and the most recognized for their truthfulness. if this is getting confusing, think about Trump for example: where everyone is all about being kind or woke or politically correct, his dickhead gets in front of a camera and says “grab them by the pussy” or “immigrants are bringing us gangs” or “Hilary is ugly and that’s why Bill cheated on her” or whatever. That’s the nastiest shit ever. But people think “well, say whatever you want about the guy, at least he’s honest and doesn’t lie like politicians do.” Does that make sense?

the problem with this is, though, that when you are being sincere by revealing your own ugliness in public you’re not really breaking the cycle. It’s simply a “symbolic sacrifice” that feeds into the idea that good/ pretty/ aesthetic things are fake and nasty/ bad/ ugly things are true. So you’re just sticking to the system and profiting off of it confirming people’s suspicion.

why did Matty read this passage onstage?

this is the part that is my own opinion and not the essay. Obviously, im not inside of Matty’s mind, so I can only guess and speculate. in my opinion, it’s because (as I’ve talked about in my reviews of SAYVB) so much of the show is about his relationship to social media, how the public perceives him, etc. and within the largest context of the ethos of the band, Matty has always been curious about what it means to be sincere in the age of irony (sincerity is scary). he’s thinking about how the world perceived him as a public figure, artist, and celebrity and what, to the public eye, counts as real sincerity.

The other day he commented on how people called his Malaysia protest “performative.” The idea that he’s a shit person doing it because of a white savior complex, or just to perform wokeness and stuff is easier and makes more sense to people than the fact that he genuinely gives a fuck. Even though he’s been consistently speaking up for LGBTQ+ communities since day 1. But it’s cuz our culture is so cynical, the only honesty we believe is bad intention and we equate the bad with the real thinking that any public good is suspicious and designed to cover up the bad.

This is also just true more generally of how people view matty. We’ve all seen the headlines. It’s not JUST about the Mayalsia thing. People are so quick to see all his good attributes as fake and all his bad ones as “real.” Which, as he has pointed out many times before, is basically a symptom of the current state of leftist politics. We think that calling each other out or “exposing” the shit truth behind the aesthetic is what being real and being virtuous is about and we don’t actually do much else.

all of this is to say that this passage is commentary on the themes that SATVB, and the 1975 have always been thinking about.

[jessicalprice]

Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (1. Preface)

I often tell people that there's a book they should read on the subject of a particular discourse, but I doubt they do--after all, I rarely follow through when random people on the internet tell me to read a particular book.

So I'm going to break down and summarize Denise Kimber Buell's Why This New Race?: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity, because I think it's a really important read in understanding Christian hegemony, Christianity's relationship to whiteness, and antisemitism in Christianity throughout its history.

But before I talk about Buell's book, I have a few prefatory remarks of my own.

Sorry, but the Book of Context is quite a tome.

"Fake" Christianity and the fall from grace

In particular, Buell challenges the narrative lurking behind so many contemporary discussions of Christian hegemony, white nationalism, Christian racism, etc. that there was some sort of original, "pure" Christianity and that modern Christianity's issues are due to corruption from this prelapsarian ideal.

Or put another way, Christianity doesn't just posit a human fall from grace. The meta-narrative offered--when Christians don't deny that Christians are doing horrible things--is that those people are following a distorted form of Christianity that has fallen away from its original benevolent form.

This is the reactive form of a long-standing trope in Christian culture (that is, basically the entire West) that equates Christianity with goodness. If you read American or British books prior to about 1990, they are replete with people saying things like, "it's the Christian thing to do," to reference performing some basic act of human decency.

"More Christian than most Christians"

It was also popular for some time--although thankfully, it seems to be fading (at least on social media, as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and other members of non-Christian cultures push back) to state that a Jew or other non-Christian who'd performed some sort of exemplary act of compassion or said something wise was "more Christian than most Christians."

This accolade, while almost certainly well-intentioned, is actually deeply insulting. The implication is that this Jew, unlike almost all others of their kind, has managed to catch up to Christians in compassion, that the universal standard of compassion is Christianity, and that it is surprising and unusual that this non-Christian has managed to overcome the moral inferiority of their people to meet or even exceed the Christian standard.

These assertions of Christianity (or at least "true" Christianity) as the moral standard for humankind largely go unquestioned, as do basic antisemitic tropes like the idea that the problem with Christians behaving cruelly is that they're getting too much of their Christianity from the Old Testament and not enough from the New.

Quite to the contrary, people who are purportedly not (or no longer) Christian are usually the first in line to denounce whichever Republican politician is proposing starving children in the name of Jesus as a "fake Christian." Progressive Christians, still more invested in protecting Christianity's brand than actually cleaning their own house, are often just as loud.

This No True Scotsman-ing is preservation of Christian supremacy and hegemony, and deeply intertwined with the idea that there is a single, pure, original Christianity that was unquestionably benevolent.

There is no One True Christianity

But the truth of the matter is that it is impossible to wring any sort of single, consistent moral philosophy from the New Testament without ignoring parts of it.

Christians that most of us might perceive as wielding their Christianity in cruel or unjust ways usually aren't more ignorant of the text or history than Christians (or ex-Christians) who see "real" Christianity as simply "love your neighbor" and understand Jesus as a beatific, gentle pacifist.

Both of those groups have to ignore large swaths of the New Testament to get to their ideology, and interpret the same passages differently (a Christian attempting to use the law to relegate non-Christians to second-class citizen status or refuse aid to non-Christians can interpret passages commanding kindness as applying to people within the Christian community only with as much textual support as one insisting they apply to all humankind).

Christians you don't like aren't "fake." You just disagree with them about what Christianity should be.

But in the west, Christianity generally holds the unique status of demanding that it be judged only on what it states its ideal form is, and not on what it actually is.

No such largesse for non-Christian cultures

Jews generally don't try to claim that other Jews who engage in bad behavior aren't Jewish. Much as we might wish Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller weren't members of the tribe, and much as we might say that they are bad Jews, their bad behavior didn't trigger a flood of opinion pieces about how they're "fake" Jews. (Ivanka is a special case, but that's about anti-convert sentiment within some Jewish communities.)

Neither was there a flood of articles about how the 9/11 attackers were "fake" Muslims. The meta-debate in the US and much of Western Europe after 9/11, in fact, was about whether all Muslims were terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, as Michael Hobbes recently noted on an episode of Cancel Me, Daddy. He went back and did a survey of journalism in the wake of 9/11, and almost all the coverage, on the opinion page and in purportedly objective journalism (where it was generally presented in question form, or as simply "reporting" on a national debate) was about whether only some Muslims were bad, or whether it was the entire culture.

When there was pushback, it was almost always in terms of the views of the terrorists are not representative of what most Muslims think or feel, not they aren't actually Muslim.

The myth of Christian innocence

As my Twitter friend Chrissy Stroop continually hammers home, the "fake Christian" framing upholds "the myth of Christian innocence" and is harmful to everyone except practicing Christians. It gaslights both members of non-Christian cultures who have experienced centuries-long structural and institutional (as well as individual) harm at the hands of Christians, and former Christians who experienced individual abuse in their families and/or communities of origin.

To tell queer people who grew up in authoritarian Christianity, or Jews who are missing entire sections of their family trees due to Christian genocide, or Indigenous people taken from their families as children and abused in the name of Jesus, that they have not been harmed by Christianity, that it was a few bad actors and not the religion itself, that it was all a misunderstanding, is to be more interested in protecting Christianity's reputation than facing real human pain.

As Chrissy Stroop often says, Christianity is what Christians do. It does not deserve special status among human cultures in which it is judged only by its imagined ideal form, and not by its actual effects upon actual living humans.

How does this relate to this book?

All of this is context for what Buell does in her book, which shouldn't be radical, but unfortunately--due to the habit of taking Christianity at its word about what it is and what it was originally--is unusual at best.

Buell decides to investigate how early Christians understood their own identity, and not to simply accept the prevailing Christian understanding that "ethnicity and race were irrelevant to early Christians—an argument that has been used to accomplish important modern antiracist work yet relies on and perpetuates anti-Judaism in the process."

Scholarly work on Christianity, especially early Christianity, is a trip. Most of it, obviously, has been done by Christians, which--when it comes to studying antisemitism and other harms in Christian history and how they might come from Christianity itself--is leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse.

(This is a subject for a different post, but Christian academics often say the most deranged things about how first-century Judaism functioned and the relationship between first-century Jews and Christians. They cite sources, of course, but if you look up those sources, you find that they're citing other sources, and if you trace it back to the original source, it's usually some Victorian preacher just... making up something to fit his parable exegesis.)

If you challenge some of this Accepted Scholarly Consensus, you are often met with spluttering indignation and insistence that any challenge to it is a "fringe viewpoint" and not accepted by any "real" NT scholars. It's always fascinating how often "fringe" usually means "written by people who weren't Christian."

So anyway, Buell decided to do something that, if you're not invested in Christianity, seems pretty basic and non-controversial: she decides to look at how early Christians understood their own identity.

I revisit scholarship and early Christian texts that destabilize the prevailing view that Christian universalism can be understood as mutually exclusive with “particularity”—a split that is often correlated with the nonethnic/ ethnic binary... To understand the elusive but entrenched presence of race in contemporary scholarly models, we need to cultivate a prismatic vision that can reimagine the relevance of race and ethnicity to ancient articulations of Christianness in light of the continued political, social, ideological, and theological challenges posed by modern racism and anti-Judaism.

Prismatic vision

I want to dig into that concept of "prismatic vision" for a moment, because it's a beautiful metaphor.

To aim for diffraction in how one sees—to see prismatically—is to value the production of patterns of difference and to resist the “false choice between realism and relativism.”

One of the things I often struggle to get people from Christian backgrounds to understand about Judaism is that, in having a culture without centralized authority, in having a relationship to the text in which authority lies in the discussion itself and not in any one voice, Jews usually don't privilege the idea of some Objective Truth the way Christians do.

I'd say most of us probably believe there is objective truth out there, but we also understand that we can only perceive and understand it subjectively.

We might all be looking at the same star, but we're all standing in slightly different places on the planet.

"Moral relativism" was a big bogeyman for Christians in political discourse from about 10-20 years ago.

In the most basic sense, they have a point when it comes to constructing rules for a society. We do need some basic, agreed-upon rules to live together. (I don't think we need nearly as many as Christians seem to think we do, but I am absolutely in favor of having systems for addressing harm, for ensuring that people can get their basic needs met and have their personhood acknowledged and respected, etc.) In service of not having to negotiate absolutely everything about every single interaction we have with other humans, both rules and accepted norms are a useful shorthand and safeguard (which is a statement of general principle--obviously individual rules and norms can be bad or misused, entire systems can be corrupt or badly designed in the first place, etc.).

Every moment is infinite

But when it comes to understanding the reality of something as fuzzy-edged and ambient as culture and viewpoint, there is no such thing as one objective truth that any of us can understand.

I was thinking about this as I paused for a moment on a corner during a walk yesterday. The intersection was in a quiet residential area, and I stood there and fell into a soft gaze, looking at the square of sidewalk I was standing on.

The air was chilly and damp, holding the scent of wet leaves, of the grass next to me, of someone smoking pot somewhere, of dog waste on someone's lawn, of a faint chemical sweetness that I think came from the school they were building about a half mile away, of the tar patching cracks in the street, of the laundry soap I use lingering between the fibers of my sweater, of the coffee smell from the coffee shop I'd been at clinging faintly to me, of the pile of fallen cedar needles across the street, of someone cooking onions somewhere, of the silly brave daffodil opening a blossom far too early in the lawn beside me, of the cut grass on that lawn, of the sap in the broken pine branch on the tree next to me and the wet bark of that tree, of... of... of...

And that was only the scents I noticed. That is only about what I could perceive of reality with a single sense.

I don't often fully open any of my senses that way--I have trouble ignoring stimuli as it is, and being overwhelmed by sensory input triggers my migraines. I spend most of my life doing my best to block out things. But every so often, when I'm somewhere relatively quiet, I drop that constant effort and just absorb. Not for long--while I was standing there, passively attentive rather than focused, the plane on the horizon became painfully loud--but just to stretch.

And then I closed all that up and pulled back into myself and thought about the things I couldn't perceive with my senses.

I did not know exactly when the houses that were around me were built, what the social and economic forces that willed them into being were. I don't know what the people inside them were doing at that moment, let alone all the social and personal context shaping their behavior and feelings and thoughts and thought-feelings.

I didn't know the billion-year history of each molecule of water creeping out in a dark aureole from the decaying leaf-litter on the edge of the sidewalk, or what the life of each leaf had been (some trees are functionally immortal, did you know? they call it phoenix regeneration). I didn't know the story of any of the pebbles embedded in the cement, what rock they had come from or where it had formed or through where it had traveled or how long it had been small. I didn't know when or by whom this square of sidewalk had been installed, how it had affected the area and the people who lived in it to have a sidewalk there, if there had been a street there before there was a sidewalk, if this was the original or a replacement.

Even if I narrowed my focus just to the square of sidewalk on which I stood, the truth of it was infinite. Merely what I could perceive with my own senses standing in that one spot and what background knowledge I have of things like the area the corner was in and how cement gets made and what streets do was too much to hold and synthesize. How much bigger, everything I didn't know and couldn't perceive?

We say there are as many Judaisms as there are Jews. But there are as many Christianities as there have been Christians and people who have ever interacted with Christians.

If there is any objective truth about it, it is made up of all the subjective experiences of it, and is beyond anyone's ability to comprehensively understand.

Which is why I find Buell's metaphor of "prismatic vision" so compelling: the idea of looking at a thing and seeing components of it and also knowing that there are parts of the spectrum that you can't see.

resist the “false choice between realism and relativism.”

Realism isn't the opposite of relativism, in these things--it's the sum total of all the relativisms. It's a point that may or may not exist, that we can only, hopefully, use as a direction to head in.

On to the Introduction.

[amphtaminedreams]

Sitting Front Row at my Big 10 of the Decade (Still on a Budget, Obviously): Lookbook No.21

HiIiIi,

If you are reading, thank you for continuing to have a mild passing interest in my nonsense in 2024!!

I want to start this post off by stating that it’s been 7 months since Israel’s genocide of Palestinians began. This isn’t to say what followed October 7th is a new phenomenon/that Israel began this offensive without having perpetrated violence against Palestinians in the past. I am talking about this unprecedentedly aggressive and relentless campaign specifically following the incident on 7/10. The Palestinian death toll at the time of writing is upwards of 30,000, though this figure only pertains to confirmed deaths. There is not one single hospital in Gaza still standing. The real number is likely even higher when we take this into account.

I know this is completely unrelated to the post my title suggests, and I know that this isn’t the only humanitarian crisis going on in the world, but this genocide is something that our government here in the UK and many other Western countries have played a clear-cut, active role in accelerating. With that being said, until we see the commencement of some meaningful intervention, I'll start every post this way. I’m sure 99% of people who come across my posts will scroll right on past but they might read the first few sentences before they do and this is something we can’t lose sight of.

Israel has purposely targeted journalists (in itself proof that if it was just Hamas operatives the IDF wanted to take out, they could have done that rather than indiscriminately bombing civilians for almost 6 months) so there seems to be fewer updates on the situation on social media, but it would be misguided to think the kind of atrocities we first saw circulating when the IDF began this particular campaign have slowed down. Many of the individuals who were exposing the horrific things that have been happening in Gaza and the West Bank are dead, and that is the awful reality. These independent journalists were our only window to the truth about what is happening, and in their absence, the mainstream media seem determined to maintain a kind of ambiguity which avoids directly attributing the mass murder to Zionist ideology. It is no surprise that the worldwide elite are so devoid of empathy as to condone Israel’s actions but I don’t think anyone thought it would stretch to them pushing the narrative that “a government murdering thousands of people is morally wrong” is a controversial, bigoted statement.

Yet here we are, being gaslit by the Western media and Israeli propaganda into believing that this mass slaughter of Palestinians is just part and parcel of “war”, a necessity in response to a great chaotic evil that represents a threat to Western society at large. The Hamas attack at a festival in Tel Aviv, Israel tell the world, was an unprecedented, inexplicable, unexpected attack by a group motivated purely by extremist ideology and hatred of Jewish people, who are barbaric for the sake of being barbaric, and that Palestinian people harbour these terrorists because they share the same hatred-fuelled beliefs. We’ve seen major media outlets worldwide spend the last 7 months bombarding us with this version of events, politicians with no explicit ties (their entirely predictable undeclared financial ones notwithstanding of course) to the region go out of their way to state criticism of Israel’s actions equates to resenting the defence of Jewish people’s safety; the absurdity of this rhetoric is that, much like the IDF’s bombing of the sites they suspect hostages are being held at, it does the exact opposite of what it claims to do. Promoting the idea that just by being Jewish one must have a stake in Israel’s existence, and the brutality over Palestinians this necessitates, points the finger at innocent Jewish people who have no ties to Netanyahu’s agenda and falsely asserts their complicity, fuelling antisemitism.

The media, owned and controlled by the elite group of individuals whose money undermines every part of our democracy, is not purporting Israel's narrative to uphold principles of truth or justice. If this were true, if mainstream journalism and politicians were interested in holding anyone to account, why in the years preceding this have major media outlets neglected to cover the oppressive tactics and violence used by the Israeli government in the 50 years leading up to 7/10? If they had been reporting on the kinds of human rights atrocities the state of Israel depends on, people would be much quicker to grasp the reality of the current situation.

The average person would quickly see through the claims that the Israeli government’s conduct since October 2023 has been an unavoidable, begrudged response to a terrifying and unexpected level of threat. They’d see this situation as it truly is: a long-awaited, and entirely predictable, press-ready justification to accelerate what is at best, a campaign of displacement of native Palestinians, and at worst, a prolonged Holocaust. The lack of context when our politicians discuss the issue is completely intentional, because if they were to acknowledge the events preceding the 7/10 attacks, the parallels to what happened to Jewish people during the Second World War would be crystal clear, and the hypocrisy would speak for itself. Any calls for a ceasefire only now that several European aid workers have been targeted would be seen as the nails in their coffins at the next election(s), representative of their disregard for those whose lives do not affect their political careers; if it had not already been made blindingly obvious by their domestic policies, the self-absorption, lack of integrity and empathy, insincerity and callousness of all but a handful of British politicians, has been laid bare for all to see. The same can be said of a staggering number of politicians across the “developed” world. 

If we unilaterally came to this understanding, and furthermore, had some kind of collective awakening to the fact that mainstream media is only an extension of self-aggrandising, self-serving narratives built on lies of omission and deceptive framing which are purported by the same morally corrupt 1% monopolising big business and democracy, perhaps the figureheads of these institutions wouldn’t be so bold as to confidently justify their support of Israel’s actions. It is shit that you have to wade full of a river of crap to find anything resembling a factual, contextualised account of the truth, but this is the world we live in, and it is intentionally structured this way so the 1% can keep preserving their own interests regardless of the suffering it inflicts on others.

Here in the UK, if we weren’t so accustomed to lies, the rhetoric surrounding peaceful protestors which labels them as “antisemitic” would be laughable, rather than something the Prime Minister could stand on a podium outside 12 Downing Street and repeat with a straight face. But it is, of course, in his and many of his peers’ interest that we don’t take issue with their complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing. However much the continued shows of institutional deference towards the George Bushes and Tony Blairs of the world points to the life of a retired war criminal being a relatively cushy one, Biden, Sunak, Trudea, Starmer and many other morally abhorrent “public servants” don’t seem to want to abandon their ego trips just yet and clearly depend on public approval to maintain their leadership positions, hence their dedication to the Israeli government’s “self-defence” narrative. If we want to see them withdraw their support, we have to decisively, disruptively, consistently dismantle their lies. We have to make it known that our ego-stroking can quite easily be transferred to someone else who is, whilst probably equally undeserving of it, willing to push to stop Israel’s terrorisation of Palestinians. After all, the recent historically Labour voting constituents of Rochdale unexpectedly elected an independent candidate, a vocal critic of Keir Starmer’s pro-Israel stance.

The following is the fact-based truth which in this confusing af world is the very least we can extend to one another. Western leaders who fail to meaningfully fight for Palestine refuse to speak that language because it would undermine their regurgitation of the Israeli government’s simplistic, deceitful narrative to justify their support.

Israel’s attack of Gaza and the West Bank are illegal under international law. There’s a reason Keir Starmer, whose past career as a human rights lawyer would make him fully aware of that, chooses not to elaborate on the reasons for his pro-Israel stance. He, and other intelligent people like him, avoid accusations of hypocrisy by ignoring these simple facts. Whilst they purport the lie that Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the West Bank were ever permissible because they’ve been in “self-defence” in response to the Hamas attack of 07/10, this right to “self-defence” is negated by their obligation as the occupying force in Palestinian territory to uphold the safety of the civilians living there. Bombing Palestinians’ homes, schools, hospitals, their entire neighbourhoods, clearly violates this clause.

It also violates international law forbidding collective punishment, I.E the actions of Hamas, regardless of whether they democratically represent Palestinians, can never be responded to by way of violence against the demographic group the hostile force is associated with, even if they reside amongst them. 

Though Israel’s attack on Gaza is predominantly referred to as a “war”, this is not a legitimate characterisation of events, acting only to suggest those Palestinian casualties voluntarily put themselves at risk. None of the criteria for Oppenheim’s definition of war are met; this decrees war as being a conflict between two forces intended for one force to impose their version of peace over the other. Not only do Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank lack their own independent wing of armed forces akin to the IDF, but they are also already living under the conditions Israel have imposed upon them. If the argument to be made is that the Hamas attack was a disturbance of the peace in Israeli territory, then appropriate conduct suggests the IDF deal with the threat inside their territory, not to attack Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. Whilst support for Hamas amongst Palestinians is understandable, based on their demands for liberation from oppressive Israeli occupation, it still does not constitute affiliation or responsibility for their actions. Targeting civilians in the absence of concrete evidence of involvement in Hamas perceived “act of war”, based on shared ethnicity with the group responsible, amounts to ethnic cleansing. Their deaths cannot be classed as “casualties of war”. The only disruptions of peace in the West Bank and Gaza are those incited by the unnecessary brutality of the IDF themselves, resulting from the reasonable fatigue of living under an oppressive regime.

All our support and arming of Israel has done is aid them in their violation of international law, which is to rid the Israel-Palestine region of the native Arab population, a far from elusive goal of theirs which began with the Nakba over 50 years ago. Israel’s conduct since October 2023 and the Western World’s complicity is far from a break with tradition. 

From the state of Israel’s earliest inception, British war time mandate has been used to permit wealthy predominantly European settlers of Jewish descent to confiscate Palestinian property and belongings. Unsurprisingly, the British government were also heavily involved in the fragmentation of what is now the Israel-Palestine region. This fragmentation not only prevented Palestinian refugees returning to their land after the war, but also forced 750,000 of the Palestinian population who remained out of their communities, as 78% of the entire Palestine region was allocated to the growing Jewish settler population. Of the entire region which previously comprised of 90% privately-owned Palestinian property, the native Palestinian population were forced into the remaining 22% of land within the region, split between the two opposing shoreline zones of Gaza and the West Bank. They were forbidden from returning to their former homes, and from leaving their zone or the region altogether by military checkpoints. Whilst 900 new exclusively Jewish communities have been developed since Israel’s inception, not one new build community has been developed for native Palestinians, many of whom Israel still classify as “stateless” refugees. They are legally forbidden from returning to their ancestral homes, and physically confined to small enclaves where structural disadvantages, inevitable overcrowding and purposeful lack of access to natural recourses have created inevitable, inescapable pockets of poverty.

Though the Israeli government formerly suspended military rule in 1966, approximately 1,800 of laws that came under the mandate remain, and IDF forces remain even in the significantly smaller regions where Palestinians are permitted to reside in. Despite comprising 30% of the population, of all public land, 3% is now controlled by Palestinian authorities. Even in these Palestinian regions, even though it violates rulings of the Geneva Convention, Israelis are still free to develop their own communities.

To be clear: if any state can claim self-defence, it is not Israel. Over the last half century, they have stolen land, businesses, recourses, goods, and infrastructure from Palestinians. They have forcibly confined them into overcrowded, intentionally undeveloped townships where they use military powers to prevent them from leaving. They have responded to Palestinian dissent with brutal violence; water cannons, grenades, and tasers are all commonly used against peaceful protestors. They use indefinite confinement on childrenfor “crimes” as minimal as throwing stones, and refuse to abide by the internationally recognised proceedings necessary to ensure detainees a fair trial.

Unlike Israelis, Palestinians cannot leave their designated enclaves without (rarely granted) permission from Israeli forces. They cannot even leave the country without permission from Israeli forces. They cannot marry outside their zone without permission from Israeli forces. Acquire business permits. Obtain land. Move goods in or out of their designated zone. Those who stayed in Jewish territory when the new regional borders were drawn out, who had not fled during the war, were effectively forced into ghettos, and denied citizenship. Across the region, Palestinians are robbed of their self-determination, freedom and of basic human rights to recourses as basic as drinking water; Jewish farmers in the Jordan Valley, which takes up only 30% of the West Bank, are allocated 18 times the amount of water made available to Palestinian citizens across the entire West Bank.

In context, there are no “two sides”, no state of events where what is unfolding can be seen as a mutually agreed upon conflict between two free agents. Israel chooses to eliminate Palestinians, and all they are doing is attempting to survive. Their systematic oppression has left them disempowered to the extent that I am sure they would be aware of the amount of destruction Israel would inflict upon them if they did ever collectively declare their hostility. 

Upwards of 30,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered in less than 7 months, and this is probably what they have always feared. What they likely did not expect was that something so horrific could ever be globally perceived as an event they are active participants in, or are reaping some benefit from.

We cannot possibly assume that every one of the thousands of Palestinians murdered by Israel, funded by American politicians, with weapons we have produced in this country and which our politicians have willingly provided, played any role in Hamas attacks. Even without context, the statistics do not reflect the typical pattern of casualties of war.  Israel claims 10,000 fatalities, though they cannot produce any evidence of these numbers. By their own admittance, the fatalities they can confirm are predominately those of IDF soldiers. The story in Gaza is wildly different; 70% of the deceased are women and children. These are not fighters. They are predominantly mothers and children, the latter too young to what it even means to align themselves with a "terrorist" group. And even if they did. When peaceful resistance is repeatedly met with violence, resistance becomes violent. The formation of groups like Hamas are not novel phenomena, they are an inevitability of a population grown sick of being stepped on.

Hamas don’t claim to stand for gratuitous violence or the erasure of the entire Jewish population worldwide as the Israeli propaganda machine claim. There are many Israeli hostages who initially stated they were treated decently by Hamas operatives before criticism of Israel’s actions required a perpetuation of Hamas brutality, so as not to have Israel’s attacks deemed “disproportionate”. But regardless, let’s say the worst is all true. For a second, we ignore the context which makes Hamas existence entirely predictable. It still does not justify the violence of the Israeli government. Support for a fringe political group, however unreasonable their principles supposedly are, does not justify the group’s supporters’ murder. 

Palestinians have been forced into ghettos, structurally bound poverty, robbed of their history and possessions, and now killed and starved en masse. The Israeli government is full of fervent Zionists who have always wanted the country to be rid of the native Arab population, and voted for by wealthy Israelis who, when polled, consistently express the view that Palestinians are inferior and unwelcome in their country (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/3/10/poll-half-of-israeli-jews-want-palestinians-expelled). This isn’t about “rescuing hostages”, the Israeli PM has refused Hamas offer to return them time and time again where a ceasefire has been a condition of the agreement. Some of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest political associates have spoken of “burning Gaza to the ground”. Already, they are advertising flattened Palestinian communities as available space for new Israeli property developments. This isn’t about “eliminating Hamas”, nor is there the evidence Israeli operatives believe this is a “kill or be killed” situation; the IDF have shown that they are perfectly capable of singling out and targeting specific individuals, but instead predominantly opted to bomb civilian safe zones, hospitals even, en masse. Whilst almost all civilians in Gaza have been forced to flee their homes for safe zones only to become victims of IDF attacks there too, and drone footage shows the area they fled has been all but flattened, Israeli civilians, free to leave the country at any time, choose to remain, with many young Israelis broadcasting the continuation of their normal, comfortable lives in candid social media posts, mocking the death of Palestinians while they’re at it. The narrative around 7/10 which the Israeli government use as justification for their actions, initially parroted by politicians in Western nations too, is riddled with conflicting evidence. Stories of beheaded babies and widespread sexual violence, which have since been questioned based on the lack of accompanying evidence and the questionable journalistic integrity of the original sources, play into the worst nightmares of Islamophobes worldwide, stitched together to position Hamas as an inexplicable, medieval force of evil whose existences threatens the entire Western world and way of life. What there is evidence for is Palestinian civilians being shot with their hands tied behind their backs then buried in mass graves, little girls and boys' bodies ripped to shreds by IDF attacks, and doctors executed whilst trying to save the lives of newborn babies and children.

We have to keep repeating the facts, which we actually have, you know, the evidence! for: the illegality of what Israel are doing, the murder of children, the circumstances under which a group like Hamas would emerge, the way recent events fit into a bigger long documented picture of the Israeli government’s expulsion, oppression and dehumanisation of the native Palestinian population. 

We can’t stop challenging the idea that this is a “war”, that anything goes, that we can only shrug our shoulders at Israeli citizen’s makeshift blockade of aid into Gaza as if the famine occurring isn’t just as much a part of Netanyahu’s plan as the bombing campaign is. We have to make our representative's aware that we see exactly what Israel is doing, and that we won’t allow politicians in this country to continue their careers whilst they champion Israel’s campaign of deceit.

WE NEED TO KEEP BOYCOTTING, TALKING ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING, ATTENDING PROTESTS WHERE WE CAN, LET OUR REPRESENTATIVES KNOW THEY WILL FEEL OUR ANGER TOWARDS THEIR INDIFFERENCE AND/OR SUPPORT AT THE POLLS THIS YEAR!

There are more and more examples of these boycotts and protests working every day as an increasing number of world leaders come out in condemnation of Israel.

I know it’s going to be really jarring for me to just go into fashion chat after this but I just don’t want to waste any opportunity to repeat the truth which so many Palestinians have lost their lives for trying to get out there. For reference, here is the 2022 Amnesty report I referred to for guidance when writing this section, which offers an in depth account of Israel’s development of an apartheid state: 

It’s a really helpful and comprehensive article. But there are undoubtedly people who break down the issue far better than I can. I’m going to try and find a post I can reblog with all the best sources of information to follow this up with as soon as possible.

Onto the far less important bit. If you don’t care about fashion and have 0 interest in a stranger’s online rambles, nor want to be distracted from what I am fully aware are some immeasurably more significant issues going on in the world rn feel free to stop reading here because that makes complete sense! If you, like myself, are trying to appreciate the life we are fortunate enough to have by indulging in our silly little passions, and one of them IS fashion, hi:-)

Keep reading??? I guess?? If you fancy it??

Despite all the horrible stuff going on in the world rn I feel optimistic about being 25 in 2024, and along with the rest of us seasonally depressed lot, summer approaching. This new year, which coincided within a week of my 25th (idk why I phrased that like my birthday isn’t on the same day every year tehe), gave me the sense of a fresh start I needed to throw myself fully into eating disorder recovery and practice what I’ve learned in treatment for anorexia, which I am so lucky to have had access to through the NHS. Not sure why but the significance of 25 years as a quarter of a century and it being a year that ends in an even number feels correct. The even years always feel better (ignoring the shitstorm of a year that was 2020 ofc, lmao), or is that just me? Like 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018? Come on now. I can’t even remember the others nor do I want to tbh, lol.

I decided my goals for this year are to be less rigid with counting calories, on guard for unnecessary self-shaming about my body and eating habits, & ultimately, to be intentional in prioritising my creative drive over the tediously bitchy little disordered eating voice in my brain:) only by practising mindfulness towards how I distribute my attention have the first 2 goals become possible. Most importantly, only once I became physically healthy was my brain capable of that mindfulness, which is something that has obviously necessitates weight gain! I say this in case someone who stumbles across this post needs to hear that because I know there’s a lot of people who want to recover from anorexia who are held back by the belief they can do this without putting on weight, or ever “giving in” to extreme hunger. To be brutally honest, it can’t be done, but that stage of fear and shame and feeling out of control does end. It’s been 8 months of extreme hunger and a year of therapy but I’m here! I’ve got normal hunger signals back! Yay! And I can trust that they come from a place of my body wanting to keep itself healthy. That safety within myself is a nice feeling. I’m going totally off topic here which I said I wouldn’t do but again, these thoughts feel like something I don’t want to waste the opportunity to say, just in case it does make someone reconsider things. It feels appropriate to put here:

-trigger warning: this post contains images which may be uncomfortable for those struggling with an ED-

Please DM me if you are reading this and feel this is a subject you need to vent to someone about, I promise I wont try and force advice on anyone, I just know how lonely an eating disorder is and want to listen if that helps:)

Going back to the post, it’s come from being in the right headspace to dedicate to things that are way more fulfilling than anything to do with body image satisfaction or binge eating. I won’t go on about it any more but I will I do an update dedicated to recovery in a recap of the second half of 2023 soon. What I’ve said about recovery is oversimplified here because I just wanted to drop a bit of context. It’s important because physically recovering from anorexia is what allowed me to get enthusiastic about things again, and when you’re in that danger zone, you forget about all the other things you find purpose in doing.

Because I’ve been struggling with body image I haven’t been making the effort to put outfits together like I used to. Being “into” fashion was probably the one thing I didn’t lose in AN because honestly, an online shopping spree and successive outfit planning was an immediate, low-effort mood boost. It was not good for my bank account, the climate, or my conscience, lmao. Definitely not glorifying it. It was just all I had to delude myself into thinking starvation was worth it at the time. When my body changed, I lost interest in trying to put outfits together, and whilst this was good for curbing impulse purchasing, the revolving line up of trackies, pyjamas, and work clothes I have become somewhat dependent on does my confidence 0 favours either. For that reason, I’ve been forcing myself to make the effort now and again to plan something to wear outside the house, but with a renewed focus on sustainable shopping habits and the prioritisation of comfort in my outfits, which means reflecting on whether my feeling “safe” in a piece of clothing is dependent on the state of my body image. Like if there’s a skirt that I think “shit, I can’t wear that when I’m bloated”, I’m gonna leave that one in the basket or the Vinted Favourites for the time being. Instead I’ve been slowly building up second hand basics in bigger sizes which have the versatility to go with anything.

This has kinda necessitated me reconfiguring my personal style. That, and feeling a lil creative, is what brought me back to this lookbook I started in April last year. 2nd year uni struggle, AN brain and shitty life stuff relegated it to the drafts, but here it is, a WHOLE FUCKING YEARRR later:D

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I should be returning to it at all because I was in the very early days of treatment when I took the photos and I don’t want it to be a promotion of this being a normal, sustainable way to look. At the end of the day, however, this is something I have suffered with on and off for 10+ years of my life and there havebeen times where I looked unhealthy at both ends of the spectrum-I’m not going to erase any proof of my existence during those times. What I just want to reiterate is that mentally and physically I had to feel like shit to be this weight and I don’t think for 99.9% of the population there’s any way of being this weight without this shit experience alongside it. This is why I get so het up about the majority of runway models being severely underweight but that’s a whole other post. The fashion industry & body image have an utterly fucked relationship but things are changing, even if the pace of that change is frustratingly slow!

My point is that although I was unhealthy, (and so I’ll reiterate here: trigger warning for eating disorders), I really was super happy with the way the outfits came out, as well as the end result of all the fun I had editing on photoshop, lol. I’m in my “Kate Middleton”/Kensington Palace PR intern era, you could say. So ultimately, I’ve decided over the past couple of months to go ahead and finish the bloody post! It’s a second edition of the “Sitting in the Front Row at…” post I did a couple of years ago (original here: https://amphtaminedreams.tumblr.com/post/649892714333257728/sitting-front-row-aton-a-budget-obvs), which I cannot take any credit for coming up with the idea for. Yes, I admit it, there are some good things to come out of TikTok! And this look-book format was one of them, which was picking up traction on that platform at the time of my first post. This time round, however, rather than picking brands that have the most clear-cut and recognisable aesthetic which is kinda what I did before, these 10 outfits were inspired by brands which have/had had the biggest influence on my personal style. Like I said, it’s been helpful to go back to as I try to remind myself that I can still enjoy putting a cute outfit together. I do not need to be runway model malnourished for that shit:-) With all that exposition out of the way, I’m gonna go ahead and get on with it! Let me unleash my shitty collages onto the world! I had fun doing them:D

Rokh

So I’ve actually done a post dedicated to Rokh before (link here: https://amphtaminedreams.tumblr.com/post/666281480350203904/currently-obsessing-over-debrief-no1-rokh-yes) which is why I won’t include many photos of their collections in this little bit.

But what I will do is express my love for them all over again!

You know when you’ve been having a conversation about something and then a related ad pops up on Facebook or Instagram or whatever and you’re like…hang on, Apple…were you..listening in? You want to be mad about the potential surveillance but you see the clothes you're being recommended and infuriatingly, the overwhelming thought is, shit…they got me good. I just wish whilst they’re at it, harvesting my preferences etc., they’d take account of my complaints about their piece of shit phones becoming increasingly redundant every time they push a software update for the new iPhone model, and give me some of that sweet settlement money to shut me up. Some of us can’t afford that yearly purchase x

Anyway, I set up that example because I’m starting to feel the exact same way about Rok Hwang. The brand’s Korean-born designer is so consistent in his ability to bring my dream wardrobe to life, if I were to develop severe enough a case of main character syndrome, I’d probably start to wonder if been in my head this whole time note-taking, ears pricking up for the mental commentary which ensues when I open up Vogue Runway, X/Y/Z celebrity’s street style dedicated fan Instagram, costume design analysis YouTuber’s video essay etc. If it were possible to develop an algorithm which amalgamates every clothing-related thought that enters a person’s brain to create their perfect fashion designer, this genius of a man would pop out at the end for me.

Hwang represents just one of the many East Asian fashion designers who are consistently ahead of the curve. Along with designers like ShuShu/Tong and Susan Fang, which are two of my newly discovered favourite brands, and Sandy Liang, he has helped repopularise the celebration of cute, kitsch, and girlhood in fashion; that designers of such heritage would excel in engineering the meeting of cute with high fashion makes sense given the region sits at the epicentre of the aesthetic’s commercialisation. Where Hwang and the others reimagining of the aesthetic cues inextricably linked to stereotypical feminine youth (school playground plaid, blouses and blazers, as well as bows, ribbons & ruffles, to name a few) have trickled down, been filtered through the lens of social media, and then encompassed by the Western World’s need to label and market EVERYTHINGGG, I would argue that many of the “aesthetics” which solidified the popularity of this new approach to discussing fashion, owe a lot to these designers' output on the runway. “Coquette”, “balletcore”, “dark academia”, we’d recognise touches of them all throughout Rokh’s last few collections, but most noticeable of all is the harmony with which he brings so many contrasting “aesthetics” together to create Rokh's distinctive look.

-top to bottom, clockwise L-R: RTW S/S23, F/W23, S/S24, F/W22, pre-fall 2022-

This Rokh look is one which caters perfectly to the niche of my personal style which I hope to bring to life through my outfit on my best days:-) that is to say, I want to wear something that embodies the soft, daydreaming, girly-girl in me but does so with reference to the darker, harsher, more provocative cultural movements and media that inspire me too. That sounds really really pretentious, don’t worry, I’m fully aware! I suppose these days the term “fairy grunge” encapsulates what I mean but being the special little snowflake I am I don’t warm to the term, probably because I associate the whole micro trend labelling system with bringing about yet another acceleration in the pace of the fast fashion cycle. Outfits which I see defined by that name usually do hit my sweet spot, they always have, it’s just unfortunate that I feel compelled to go all “iT’s nOt a phAsE, mOM!” after saying that because TikTok has ruined it for me!

That’s not to say Rok Hwang’s collections are really “fairy grunge”. They’re a bit darker, witchier, but equally more streamlined and “put together” than that, which is more tailored towards a runway than an Instagram reel. What they have in common is that Hwang’s collections and the aesthetic label are top tier examples of the girly/grungy balancing act. He does what I love, in taking something dainty or preppy looking, potentially grannyish, and then sprinkling in something a bit tougher so it doesn’t feel like I’m totally infantilising myself, basically working the kinds of things we felt pretty in as little girls into the wardrobe of a grown woman who just wants to be left alone to get on with life! I am a princess at heart, yes, but I also know the way the world is and I have the spirit of the wannabe riotgrrrl in me too, lol.

In terms of the specifics of a Rokh outfit, though, and how Rok Hwang actually achieves that look, there’s a few key elements of the blueprint that came to mind when I was going over the clothes I have in my own wardrobe. Longline coats, trench coats especially, pleats, plaid, metal hardware, and lace are all recurring details throughout his work and are something I’ve always considered staples in my own wardrobe, so that makes his styling feel much more accessible to me. There is a hint of Burberry in his work (obvs only the brand at its very best considering how hit-or-miss it's been of late) but where Daniel Roseberry takes his collections down a more androgynous route, Rokh to me, although dark, is a distinctly feminine, and ultimately really elegant take on that workwear to street wear vibe.

So, yes, I of course included a trench coat! This one, off the top of my head (I know I have referenced it another post at some point) is I think from a charity shop? And then the cut-out blazer is custom made from @Numb&Dumb on Depop. The tartan skirt was part of one of my biannual fast fashion shops, from Urban Renewal @ Urban Outfitters, and the lace bralet from ASOS. Finally, this adorable fluffy white bag was a 2022 Christmas present also from ASOS and the patent boots I’ve had for years now, I think bought from Missguided (again, I have defo confirmed whether this is correct in past look books because I know they have been a go-to in these things for ages). As always, I’m just specifying these things because although it’s unlikely they’re still sold on the original site, you might be able to find them second hand! I once managed to find something I saw in the Brighton Urban Outfitters, and regretted not buying at the time, on Depop 2 years later so if you’ve got that kind of commitment to the fit, you might have the same luck, lol.

Blumarine

The first Blumarine collection since Nicola Brognano’s departure, debuted at Milan Fashion Week, BROKE MY HEART. Completely unrecognisable from the brand Nicola has done the most incredible job in establishing over the past few years. His work has had an undeniable hold on me from the get-go. I never thought I’d see the day I became partial to revisiting the 2000s, as I always had that in mind mind as a dark, dark period for fashion, lmao, but he did that. I can quite confidently say Nicola Brognano did for Y2K, Miu Miu did for prissy academia, and it’s him we owe credit to for the era’s resurgence in popularity.

Browsing through one of his Blumarine collections appealed to both my current self and my inner child in the most fabulous way. That’s to say that somehow, he managed to translate the wardrobes of the animated Bratz Rock Angelz intro irl outfits, and in recent years brought this mystical quality to his collections too, which elevated the brand even further. He took the fun, less offensive elements of Y2K fashion which were present in Blumarine founder Anna Molinari’s work, and revived them for a new era of fashion. Whilst making Blumarine a lot cooler and “grown up”, Nicola still managed to maintain Molinari’s hyper feminine aesthetic, incorporating subtle nods to her original designs. The tendency to close her runway presentations with dresses featuring ethereal, flowing silhouettes, as well her inclusion of youthful, coquettish motifs throughout her work, the reoccurring focus on butterflies and florals to cite the obvious examples, are all staples of early Blumarine that Nicola built upon as creative director. Whilst he developed a version of the brand which was at a glance, wildly different, it was still full to the brim with subtle references to Blumarine’s beginnings.

He didn’t lose these elements, he just made them a lot more interesting. Under Nicola Brognano’s direction, Anna Molinari’s Y2K Barbie girls went all Monster High, with a bit of Paris Hilton/Nicole Richie style post-party, late night sleaze. You could see this as the flip side of the prom Disney pop girl era which Molinari’s collections leaned into at the time. In that sense, Nicola gave brand continuity, but catered to the modern woman, who is trying her best despite the lingering hostility of older generations to embrace and express a wilder, uninhibited side without shame. Blumarine under Nicola championed revealing the inner siren rather than playing demure about it and letting it out on cue in accordance with patriarchal expectations. The tiered chiffon, oft ruffled, mini skirts, for example, which were a reoccurring feature in Molinari’s Blumarine collections, evolved into the ultra low rise pleated micro mini under Nicola. Whilst the colour palette and fit and flare silhouette remained, the ripples were sharpened to become harsh pleats sitting below the more tapered top half of the skirt. To play into the Y2K party girl vibe, Nicola’s skirts pushed the limits of what we’ll call the pre-third wave feminism purity threshold, likely the governing force behind the amount of leg Molinari’s skirts ever revealed, with her minis, whilst typically sitting above the knee, only ever teasing at being “indecent”.

-1st row, l-r: RTW F/W13, S/S13, F/W15, S/S15, 2nd row: RTW S/S16, F/W14, S/S14, F/W16, row 3 to 5, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S17, S/S18, F/W18, F/W17, F/W19, resort 2019-

Then there’s the ditsy, delicate details and prints, a definitive staple of the early collections, which under the helm of Nicola Brognano’s direction evolved into blueprints for the silhouettes of his garments, accessories in particular, or were splashed across barely-there mesh in a way that reads more like lightly tattooed skin on wearers than overpowering, chintzy fabrics. Rather than draping clothes in the materials which constituted the entirety of the garment back in Molinari’s day, Nicola got aggressive with all that lace and chiffon, often using them torn or frayed, wrapping these ribbon-like strips around his models’ glowing skin in a way which highlighted and complimented the stripped back female form rather than as a means of obscuring it. You could believe that once upon a time the women Nicola styled for his runway presentations were dressed a bit like the early Blumarine girls, sure, but only in the context that they’d worn those same clothes throughout an entire decade of non-stop partying, mosh pitting, and watching too many reruns of the Simple Life in the interim, forced a la Drag Race sewing challenge to make something new from the leftovers for Nicola’s show. Seeing the end result, i think most of us are in agreement that if this were the case, every look on that runaway would be worthy of a challenge win. Not a hot glue gun in sight. Pure cunt.

If it weren’t for Nicola’s direction of Blumarine, I don’t know if we’d see brands like Diesel or LoveShackFancy getting the kind of hype they’re getting right now, so I have to thank him not just for his own work but these gifts too. I didn’t think any designer would be able to make me reconsider my vehement hatred for Y2K fashion but he did it. Next on the list of fashion eras in need of a complete reimagining is 80s fashion. Though my heart is BROKEN! Seeing what they’ve done to Blumarine since Nicola Brognano has stepped down as the brands creative director, this could be a huge opportunity for him to start his own label and keep on doing what he’s doing, reinventing revolting fashion trends and making them fucking gorgeoussss. If I were capable of planting thoughts in other people’s minds I’d be giving him an 80s fixation as we speak.

When it came to putting an outfit influenced by Nicola Brognano’s Blumarine together, this grey to khaki fade ultra mini skirt from Minga London was the obvious choice. It was, however, also something I needed to work out how I’d be comfortable wearing; although the style is adorable, my underwear collection isn’t the cute coordinated kind that would make flashing everyone in the vicinity feel like a fun, cheeky thing to do on a night out. If you, unlike myself, are the kind of person that so sufficiently has their shit together they wear pretty matching sets, you won’t have this dilemma, however, trousers under skirts is another 2000s trend I’m surprisingly into as of late. Who would’ve thought we’d bring back the combination we spent several years bashing Ashley Tisdsle for when she did it on the HSM red carpet, smh.

-row 1 to 3, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S20, resort 2022, RTW F/W21, pre-fall 2022, RTW S/S22, 4th row clockwise l-r: RTW F/W22, F/W23, pre-fall 2023, pre-fall 2024, resort 2024, RTW S/S24, resort 2023, RTW S/S23-

For that reason, and also to stay in theme with the somewhat arcane motifs peppered throughout Nicola’s recent collections (his use of crucifixes, the windswept, mermaid-like hair, and the decorative angel wings all being good examples), I chose to wear a pair of celestial/tarot print flared mesh trousers I brought from Urban Outfitters a couple of years ago underneath the skirt. I went for a velvet wrap around detail cropped top which I bought from ASOS in early 2023, in a khaki green that Nicola used a lot over the last few years. IDK whether to put that creative choice down to him referencing the popularity of camouflage print in the 2000s or to signalling that Blumarine, under his direction, would be tougher, more nomadic and free spirited than flirtatious and elegant as it had been under Molinari, but regardless. I’m just happy for a green moment, anything that might reverse the effects of Michelle Visage’s green hate campaign, because it’s such an underrated colour for clothes imo!

Gucci

It will be a surprise to absolutely no one who’s ever read more than one fashion post of mine (if such a person exists, lol) that I will repeat my first “In the Front Row at…” post and include a Gucci inspired outfit again, because I never miss a chance to yap on about how much I adore Alessandro Michele’s work. Don’t get me wrong, Gucci F/W24 this Milan Fashion Week was a big improvement from S/S24 but it’s still not a patch on any of the frequently groundbreaking work Michele showcased whilst he was creative director. Whilst he doesn’t seem the natural choice to take over Valentino from Pierpaolo Piccioli, I am just so excited to be seeing his work on the runway again. Don’t get me wrong, I can admit there were times when his styling was a bit much, like charity shop mannequin dressed in the dark levels of discord going on, but 70% of the time, the outfits we saw on the runway were examples of creative brilliance. A particular stand out is his RTW F/W20 collection, which on god, changed my life, or personal style trajectory at the very least. BDSM style harnesses, structuring plucked right out of the French rococo period, and Wes Anderson-esque co-ords. Who tf would’ve thought that would work? Before anything else, Alessandro’s time as Gucci’s creative director showcased his explorative spirit, which separated him from the many designers playing safe and adhering to the typical formulas of the fashion world, knowing that their stuff will sell based on the reputation of the label alone. We don’t see as much appreciation for the art of curating a unique outfit as in past decades when fashion had to be revolutionary in some way to be taken seriously, and that is why Alessandro’s work was so mesmerising. I’m sure there are many who disagree but it never felt like he was quirky for the sake of being quirky. The mish-mash always seemed purposeful, as though intended to translate the evolution of some sharp dressing, well-travelled, particularly eccentric individual’s wardrobe into a collection of wearable snapshots.

I say this in the sense that Michele made weaving together various periods of fashion history in seem effortless, the styling consistent in painting a picture of the kind of person who would pick out the pieces, in love with glamour and opulence but also drawn to the disruptive and discomforting, craving a bit of dramatic flair and misadventure in their life. His unique eye for complementary prints, shapes and colours made his vision for Gucci consistently shine through the various eras featured, and it went from your run-of-the-mill predictable prestige fashion house (I’m thinking Chanel, YSL, dare I say it Prada…like can we please stop pretending a lot of their collections of late are not completely interchangeable) to one that was always unexpected, exciting and inventive.

When it comes to the fashion climate over the last 10 years (have your internal monologue prepare to impersonate Aquaria here), the word eclectic has not define Gucci, rather Gucci has defined eclectic. Alessandro Michele gave the impression of a determined contrarian, dedicated to proving you can take two wildly different, seemingly clashing trends or period pieces, and bring them together into one singular visual symbiosis, like they were an intuitive match all along; whilst the rest of us were understandably losing our minds during the pandemic, he successfully combined Old Hollywood style cocktail dresses with equestrian gear like it was nbd. I’ll say something along these lines a million times in this post, and I’m sure I have on several occasions already, but he does that thing I love where he adds just the right amount of edge to a piece that’s otherwise paper doll delicate so as to have you believing it would never looked finished or lived in any other way. Alessandro never appeared scared of his Gucci collections being “too” extravagant or costume-y, so I don’t think he’d know the rule of “take one thing off before you leave the house” if it hit him in the face. Instead, he displayed a niche for storytelling, his method of styling his collections in fitting with those of the owner of a bottomless trunk of vintage pieces built up over several decades. We’re talking a person influenced by every subculture and encounter with luxury they’ve had in their lifetime, who couldn’t care less what piece came from where and if some specific fusion of past and present trend made “sense", just that once all dressed up, the contrasting aesthetics were in balance. In my very biased eyes, his constant aversion towards the fashion industry’s boxes established Alessandro Michele as a champion of modern punk on the runway.

-row 1 & 2, clockwise l-r: RTW F/W15, pre-fall 2013, RTW F/W21, F/W22, resort 2023, RTW F/W23, S/S15, S/S14, F/W13, row 3 to 4, clockwise l-r: resort 2021, RTW F/W20, F/W19, S/S20, resort 2020, row 5 to 8, clockwise L-R: resort 2019, pre-fall 2019, pre-fall 2018, RTW S/S18, F/W18, S/S19-

SO, how do you even begin to try and replicate that? I felt that since I did my last Gucci inspired outfit, the range of Michele’s references had extended even further. The theming of the Love Parade collection went all the way from cowboy to cabaret, lol. Sooo, I went back to the basics and focussed on my favourite recurrent features defining his time at Gucci: fur, latex, lace, bold colours, cyberpunk influences, bohemian silhouettes, and (deep breath) the spiritual motifs, which I know is a little vague but by which I mean his use of religious iconography and mysticism as jumping off points for the details he employs in his work, crucifixes and celestial prints being quite prominent ones to give a couple of examples. Fur was a convenient starting point because I had this NastyGal coat I bought from Vinted sitting around waiting to be worn, which I was aware back in April 2023 when I took these photos would otherwise be shoved into the back of my wardrobe until at least mid-February 2024. I overshot a bit because we went to Paris for 2 days at the beginning of January and the -2 degree weather made this wearable yeti acceptable much earlier than planned, but it was right choice for a Gucci inspired outfit in the meantime.

Falling into the same category of things this lookbook gave me an excuse to wear that I otherwise wouldn’t have dare to leave the house in was the faux leather star shaped harness. Why I ever bought this from one of those festival girlie Depop shops as if I would ever be bold enough to actually take it to a festival, idk, but what I did know was that it ticked 3 of my Alessandro Michele Gucci staple boxes: close enough to latex, resting on the threshold between cyberpunk tech-wear and dominatrix (I am sincerely hoping the fact I wore it over something else gets across that I know I would be entirely unsuited to that kind of work), and celestial, in the most literal sense of the word, lol! You can’t do an Alessandro Michele inspired outfit and not have some layering going on, which gave me a reason beyond “I feel…silly:(“ to wear the harness OVER the rest of my outfit rather than just on its own. The rest of the outfit was a very cool lightweight maxi skirt from Collusion covered in some kind of renaissance era biblical scene, which felt right as a way of incorporating Alessandro’s reverence for traditional religious art and symbology. Honestly, coming back to the photos I took in this outfit was also a helpful reminder that I need to budget a sewing machine into my next paycheck too, before I lose all the confidence I developed from a beginner’s lesson I had in January, at any rate. This skirt is one of a handful of unique and treasured items of clothing I don’t wanna let go of since growing out of them and really wanna try and alter instead:(

But anyway, with that noted, just a generic white laced corset, pink fedora (which offsets the cream coat and cool toned skirt in a way I think Alessandro would approve of if I do say so myself) and lace dress over the top remain. If you’re looking to scour Vinted/Depop for either of them, both the hat and skirt were brought from ASOS in early 2023. The dress is Reclaimed Vintage & the hat I’m 99% sure is ASOS Design. I think the dress is still on ASOS but I still have it’s and it’s not gonna fit me anytime soon so if you’re interested, feel free to PM me. If I can make the bad shopping choices I made to try and fill the void left by all the foods I was craving into a victory for sustainable fashion instead...yeah, that would certainly lift my guilt a little-_-

-clockwise l-r: resort 2018, RTW F/W17, pre-fall 2017, RTW F/W16, pre-fall 2016, resort 2016, RTW S/S17, F/W14, S/S16, resort 2017-

Lastly, I chucked on a potentially tacky rhinestone crucifix choker and earrings because there has been a lot of sparkly shit sprinkled throughout the last few Gucci shows. I know the way I’ve phrased it makes it seem as though I’m not a fan of this resurgence in magpie-baiting. I 1000% am. The sequin loving 7 year old within me is still here! I’m just saying that because I am clueless in distinguishing those kind of things. Swarovski crystals, girl? Perhaps. Actual diamonds? Maybe. I really don’t know what the difference is. But Alessandro was throwing sparkles out left right and centre in his last couple of years at Gucci and these 4+ year old pieces of costume jewellery from Dolls Kill, whilst unfortunately being completely incomparable in terms of their price, are an ode to this. I hope he keeps throwing those crystals in alllll the way to the fashion history books where I think it should be duly noted that he deserves a page. Their presence certainly won’t be frowned upon at Valentino so here’s hoping!

Versace

When I say I think Donatella Versace’s interpretation of her brother’s aesthetic is the definition of the term“power dressing”, I know the implication. I see what the dreaded…#girlboss…has become and let it be known, I am not here to slander the good Donatella name like that. I do not see Versace as the uniform of the Facebook MLM Yummy Mummies or as emblematic of the soulless late-stage capitalists disguised as tortured poets (on god, if it’s been 6 months without any signs of life, send help, because fans of the second category probably got me) it wouldn’t be in this post. What I mean is that a Versace outfit has...big dick energy? Do we still say that? Spice. Sophistication. Smarts. More S words I can’t think of. Wanna say sexy secretary without implying the Versace woman is anything other than the CEO. Or using the word “core”. I’ll stop now.

What I think I’m getting at is that Donatella reimagines power dressing for outside of the stereotypical corporate workplace environment. For the splashy, extravagant parties implicitly designed for “networking” but taken as an opportunity by the wearer to have fun dressing to the nines and test the limits of what might constitute a company scandal, for example. Essentially, we’re talking someone who would fit right in if said corporate environment was the HQ of a fashion magazine, but get fired for an unapologetic violation of the dress code at a Forbes 500 company. A woman I’m sure many of us want to be, but cannot, because we are broke, and so instead will allow our workplaces to completely strip us of our dignity and tolerate flagrant disregard for employee rights before we do something that might risk our paycheck. I say “us” but maybe that’s just me. I can’t afford a HR issue and am far too much of a compulsive people pleaser to risk pissing off my boss, tehe! Lovin’ life! xo

Like her brother before her, Donatella exceeds at taking everything that's boring from elite society's understanding of how a "sophisticated woman" should dress and turning it on its head, without completely losing the elegance immediately (and sometimes unjustifiably, if anyone’s seen a Dior collection recently) associated with luxury clothing. Not afraid to include elements that may be viewed as audacious or "new money", Donatella designs for the post-high school prom queen who thrives on every look of disapproval that comes their way when they enter a room of generational wealth, fully aware that for every head shake there’s another modestly dressed onlooker suppressing their desire to similarly indulge their curiosity in provocative, forward-looking, pop culture influenced fashion too.

All that being said, there few scenarios we would expect to see a rich girl that Donatella hasn’t covered. A winter at boarding school, a day on the tennis courts, a week in St.Tropez, out on fucking safari!!! A scenario relatable to the masses, ofc!!!! But that last one is a great example of how Donatella is also comfortable leaning into camp. RTW S/S21 for example, started with what felt like a 80s Miami Beach street style parade and ended in the vein of the mermaid edition of a Victoria’s Secret show. If there’s one designer who is great at using styling to recreate the effortless sex appeal that '90s supermodels like Claudia Schiffer, Gisele Bundchen, Elle Mcphearson etc. brought to the runway, it’s Donatella, who honours her brother’s legacy to this day. Regardless of the model or the theme, the finished product of a Versace runway has you feeling like you’re watching a conveyor belt of Barbie-Bratz doll hybrids, unattainable and aspirational, even if up close you see a few uneven hems. Just do a DW and pretend you cannot see it, lol, and you’ll enjoy yourself. I think it’s doing a disservice, however, to make Versace sound confined to cookie-cutter traditional feminine ideals. Versace wouldn’t be Versace without a hint of sexual intrigue. At the beginning, Gianni’s ability to design garments that removed the male gaze from the equation of what makes a woman “sexy”, instead finally centring what made the actual women around him feel confident and powerful in his translation of concept to clothing, is one of the things that set him apart. This means from the offset, neither Gianni nor Donatella have been boxed in by what’s socially acceptable or “pretty”. Donatella has named Vivienne Westwood as an inspiration, so when I say she does know how to embrace a bit of rock and roll, go down the bad girl route, I’m not speculating, I am just the messenger! I know Versace is far from anti-establishment, but this hasn’t stopped Donatella from being influenced by those aesthetics over the years, cheeky little winks carefully placed in amongst the head-turning sleekness the brand is known for.

-row 1 & 2, clockwise l-r: Atelier Versace haute couture F/W16, S/S16, F/W15, S/S17, F/W17, row 3 to 4, clockwise l-r: Versace RTW F/W17, F/W15, pre-fall 2019, RTW S/S19, resort 2019, RTW F/W18, S/S18, S/S16, row 5 to 6, top to bottom: RTW F/W19, S/S21-

So, when we’re talking about what makes an outfit Versace inspired, what is the answer? Because I’d say that despite the varying muses Donatella seems to have had, it’s pretty recognisable and cohesive as a brand. You see the same silhouettes and materials and accessories popping up over the years which I guess explains a lot of it, but is not any kind of dig at her designs being repetitive (though I was a bit bored by the FW24 collection, truth be told) because she otherwise mixes it up, and a lot of these elements are often justifiable nods to Gianni. I tried to include a few of these in my outfit.

This old Boohoo blouse was a good minimal base to go underneath my favourite part of the outfit which is this faux leather snake print corset, bought from ASOS in early 2023; the corset immediately came to mind as ticking several of the checkboxes I’d mentally include on a list of Versace's aesthetic cues. Bold print, faux leather, emphasised silhouette…I’ll tentatively link the significance of the corset structure back to Gianni’s tongue in cheek exploration of that S&M, dominatrix kind of look which has made similarly fitting garments a recurring feature throughout the brand’s history. I say tentatively, because I don’t want to convey the idea I can really pull that vibe off myself, lmao, but I think that’s why I threw the more professional shirt on underneath. I feel like, conveniently, it worked out pretty well because the combination has what I’ll call the private school princess vibe which appears to be a popular choice when it comes to Donatella's way of stying her designs; just see the latest F/W24 collection and, one of my all time favourites for casual outfit inspiration, the Resort 2019 look book for reference. To bring together the slightly collegiate vibe the blouse under the corset creates, in contrast to these sheer stockings I had lying around, I referred back to that same resort collection where berets were used as a finishing touch for the preppier looking outfits. An old faux leather one I bought from Ebay (I think?) felt more in line with the essence of the brand than a felt/wool blend version of the style.

Just like Gianni did in the early years, Donatella uses classical tailoring and opulent fabrics as a jumping off point to infuse raunchier details more representative of the hyper-glamorous Miami party scene the brand found its footing in. Over the years, we’ve seen sartorial choices likely once controversial to the luxury buyer help solidify Versace’s cultural status. PVC and leather bases, shocks of colour splashed across typically restrained fabrics (such as vinyl and fur, often seen as inherently “statement” aspects of a garment), attention-grabbing prints are all brand signatures, but only in conjunction with the simple, flattering details which made existing high price mark garments aspirational in the early days of runway. To channel this part of the brand identity, I added one of the coats I like to think of as the GOAT when it comes to my excessive outerwear collection, this pink PVC coat with equally shocking pink fur trim, bought from Topshop a couple of years ago.

My regret of the outfit is for sure the green metallic platform heels, which I saw last minute at Primark the day before I planned to take the photos. They were £6 on sale, in my head seemed the closest I could get to Versace’s instantly iconic Aevita pumps for the price, but also something I have never worn again thus sincerely regret buying ever since. Firstly, because I try to avoid participating in trade with a shop whose ethical practices are notoriously questionable (despite their recent greenwashing campaign, I doubt the rises in their prices has anything to do with better employment and environmental protocols, lol) where I can, and secondly, because there is a visually displeasing imbalance between the chonk of the heel & garishness of their green reflective plastic wrap with the actual height they add. If you’ve got statement girth and statement colour, I feel like you need statement height too, lol! They are not the Versace inspired platform Mary Janes they resembled on the shelf once on my actual bloody feet. Lesson learned: you will almost always be disappointed by Primark, and by your own purchasing habits, when you “pop in” there.

-clockwise l-r: Versace resort 22, pre-fall 2022, resort 2021, RTW S/S20, resort 2020, pre-fall 2024, RTW F/W20, pre-fall 2021-

There’s quite the list of brand hallmarks that came to mind when picking my outfit beyond what I’ve already mentioned but if I haven’t dropped it in already, metallics make a frequent appearance throughout the Versace archives, stemming from Gianni’s fascination with both Greek mythology and the baroque period; precious metals are centred as a universal, much-desired symbol of luxury throughout both, and so it follows that Gianni could conceive of nothing more magical than to have models walk the runway dripping in the stuff. To this end, he went so far as to invent his own lightweight chainmail fabric called Oroton, which is so ingenious and definitely not spoken about enough because wtf!? I had no idea about this until I wrote this post! Is this not common knowledge or am I just clueless? This internal debate is a frequent if not daily one so I can live with the fact I probably can’t gauge a general consensus in response to that question, fashion students who beat the odds and stumble across this, pls don’t lecture me:( Obviously, I can’t get hands on something like that myself, lol, but I knew I needed something in that arena to finish off the outfit, which left alone would be facilitating my penchant for throwing on a million rings and necklaces running amok. I had to think carefully!! The closest I could get was to pile on the chain necklaces, and include this chainmail rhinestoned belt I got years ago from Brandy Melville, on top of the rest of my outfit. Plus, the inclusion of metallics as a core element of Versace arguably allowed for the exploration and incorporation of the ways metal is featured in other, less glamour focussed ways of dressing, which also factored into the skirt I chose. An example: Gianni’s use of embellishments and his experiment with safety pins as a means of structuring his dresses paved the way for an entire collection inspired by the punk movement of the '90s (RTW S/S94 in particular). In the last decade, Donatella has paid homage to the theme more than once (notably the RTW F/W 2012, F/W13, F/W17, F/W12, pre-fall 2019, and F/W20 collections ), which is no surprise, given her vocal admiration for Vivienne I mentioned earlier. I can’t lie, punk Versace is my absolute favourite, and definitely the biggest influence on my choice of outfit here. Over and above the faux leather and its classic A-line fit, I picked this ASOS skirt I bought early last year for this outfit because of the safety pin detailing which holds it together.

It’s seemingly not just Gianni’s interpretation of punk that influenced Donatella’s designs, and there are a number of face value similarities between her work, Westwood’s, and Gianni’s, that have her exploration of the style feel, and look, both seamless and organic: the shared unashamed emphases on the feminine shape, use of colourful silks and satins to evoke the desirability of historical muses, the boudoir inspired touches from lace and suspenders to lingerie worn as casual wear and barely there slip-dresses dotted throughout, all of which made for bold declarations of encouragement for women wishing to reclaim the innate power of female sensuality. Compare the form fitting Versace dresses to Vivienne’s famous corsets, the ethereal fabrics used to accentuate the body whilst keeping the actual revelation of it to one’s own discretion, for example. The frequent inclusion of leather (both faux and otherwise) and similar looking wet-look, high sheen fabrics in both, along with heavy duty outerwear, is just another clear point of overlap between the Versace look and the tough, armour-like pieces popularised by the boundary-pushing punk movement. Leather jackets, platform heels, and the occasional dip into attention-grabbing, high-contrast colour palettes sprinkled in amongst a deluge of black were perhaps intended in both cases to grab and dominate everyone’s attention.

The bigger take away here though is that it seems Donatella recognises the value of adaptability in the fashion world, and by extension, the application of this principle to the mass market. It would follow that the relative subtlety Donatella has deployed when translating Versace’s central components into its products of late is impressively tactical; I mention “subtlety” not to imply these characteristics have been sparse, but rather to describe the nature of the translation, which sees the brand’s signatures appear in the form of simple, accessible and, most importantly, versatile garments. Frequently generic enough for high street retailers to produce in mass quantities and variations making them both popular with the average consumer, I have to assume this is critical to the continued interest in the brand even amongst those who argue there’s been a stark decline in garment quality under Donatella.

-row 1 to 4, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S13, S/S15, S/S14, F/W13, row 5 & 6, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S23, F/W21, resort 2023, pre-fall 2013, resort 2014-

The Aevita platform pumps are just one of many instances of widely duplicated trends which have first (not very first, before anyone kicks up a fuss and argues I’m trying to claim Donatella created Mary-Janes) appeared on the Versace runway and diffused down to high street stores and back into our collective consciousness. The headscarves we saw models wearing in the F/W21 RTW collection, however, are another good example of a Versace signature (bold coloured/printed silks and satins) being translated to a more accessible, crowd-pleasing product. It’s this widespread appeal perhaps, as well as recent debate about the ethical conduct of certain brands, which makes Versace one of a handful of examples of the established big-name fashion houses left that retains its cultural relevance. It’s debatable whether the statement can be extended to fashion industry experts, since I know a lot of people criticise Donatella too (for the shoddy hemlines in particular, lol) but whilst the general consensus is that Maria Grazia Chiuri and Virginie Viard have ran Dior and Chanel into the ground, it seems there are a crowd of us who still get excited for a Versace collection. It’s definitely got something to do with its popularity amongst current household names like Olivia Rodrigo and Dua Lipa, but imo, it’s because the brand is one of the remaining prominent names in fashion which we rely on to reliably pump out modern takes on the classics. From my perspective, Donatella knows how to appeal to both those familiar with the brand’s archival content, those most enthused by a fresh but recognisable take on the label’s classic look, as well as the mass consumer audience, which ranks it high on my list of anticipated, and influential, shows when fashion week comes around.

Simone Rocha

Simone is another designer with a very clear vision and brand. Similarly to Rokh and Gucci, she is incredible at combining dainty, intricate, youthful feminine pieces that take inspiration from her heritage with edge. The bones of a Simone Rocha look is all precious, doll-like silhouettes, oversized collars, ruffles, and in general, lots of elements which hark back to an era when women were supposed to look pretty and do not much else. But subverting this ideal, Simone combines these features with typically masculine grunge and metal influenced touches, such as oversized bike jackets, platform boots, and harnesses, all of which wouldn’t be out of place at a Blink 182 concert in the 2000s.

When I think of the end result, of head to toe Simone Rocha, I think of a present day retelling of a myth where some goddess is punished for her beauty and grace by a bunch of horny men who think she wronged them, but this Tim round gets to come back and fuck them all up:-) so I’m sure Simone has been commended for creating the uniform of the modern warrior goddess already, but if it hasn’t been mentioned in a while, this is a reminder of what it is she does so brilliantly. She has created a wardrobe for a woman who has not by any measure lost touch with, nor wishes to diminish, the softness associated with femininity. Instead, she continually updates parts of this look for both practical purposes and in order to reflect the inherent strength that leaning into womanhood often requires you to have in the face of constant underestimation by patriarchal society.

-row 1 & 2, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S16, F/W15, F/W17, F/W14, S/S17, S/S15, F/W16, S/S19, row 3 to 8, clockwise l-r: RTW F/W18, S/S18, S/S20, S/S21, F/W20, F/W19-

She loves to layer, and in this way, all the softness of the individual pieces come together to create a bit of bulk, which underlies the disruptive presence a Simone Rocha styled model has on the runway. Naturally, I had to layer, layer, layer too and god knows I love a bit of layering:D SO as a base, I just went with one of my favourite white blouses, which is a slightly chintzy charity shop number. I don’t tend to wear it as is, but more for when I want a white collar to pop over something or to poke out at the end of my sleeves, which it does very well because it’s a few sizes too big for me. TBH, I kind of lean towards going with the most oversized version of a piece of clothing I can find, especially atm, and Simone Rocha’s aesthetic leans firmly in that direction too. A lot of Simone garments look like something you’d see on a vintage China doll, blown up to just about get over the head of a tall man, though really suited to a more petite woman. She tends to drape her signature gossamer babydoll dress over the top of more refined, utilitarian pieces and it’s that combination which modernises the whole look.

In that vein, I had the white shirt, and for the next part of the outfit, I took my time to mentally run through the dresses I already own because as you can probably tell from this post, I acknowledge was not doing well in my goal of shopping sustainably in early 2023. I can’t lie, my head was all over the place pretty much the entirety of last year, I had to defer every single one of my uni deadlines (lol), spent weekends coming home just to work my retail job like a headless chicken for 18 hours straight, and had just started anorexia treatment. Not to yap on about it and make excuses, but impulse purchasing was my unfortunate substitute for comfort eating. I still regret it now, especially since none of that shit I bought will ever fit me again, lol, but we move! I tell myself!

Back to the outfit though! I knew I had a lot of dress which resembled the Simone silhouette already but they were lacking a little character, something along the lines of the abstract floral outlines and embroidery that recur throughout her work. So what did I do? I was a sneaky lil bitch and borrowed an old dress of my mum’s from Coast. The volume of the skirt and the abstract monochromatic floral embroidery felt very in keeping with Simone Rocha’s subdued, stripped back colour palette. She does tend to throw in some light pastels and earthy tones too though, which makes sense, and feels like a means of embracing the delicate sides of nature. For this reason, and the sake of further layering, I wore a semi-sheer pink chiffon smock I got from Vinted, originally from Weekday, over the top. The final touches of a Simone look though, the tougher, rawer elements which aid in creating that look of protective armour around the fragile, doll-like base of the outfit, I knew would be best channelled through footwear and accessories. I love a platform shoe, definitely have way too many of them, but my collection came in useful here, and on top of a pair of sheer thigh high socks I wore these beloved ASOS clomp the house down Mary-Janes which in hindsight, probs would’ve been a better finishing touch to my Versace inspired outfit too. Although I decided on an old (but fake ofc) pearl necklace and headband, I used these harnesses I got from eBay a while back, to toughen the outfit up a bit in the way Simone does so well. I am sooOoo gassed that she's been made the creative director at Jean Paul Gaultier, and her debut haute couture collection for the label was a perfect meeting of her own vision with the brand’s existing iconography.

-clockwise l-r: RTW F/W21, S/S22, F/W22, S/S23-

Alessandra Rich

I’ve always loved Alessandra Rich’s vision, a celebration of the glamour embodied by every rich bitch It Girl of the last century. She channels the fictional: Cher Horowitz, the Heathers, Fallon Carrington, and yes, under appreciated icon Chanel Oberlin (whom I’m sure would be far more appreciated if we could collectively agree to pretend the second season of Scream Queens never happened, lol). But she also nods to the real: Princess Diana, Jackie O, Audrey Hepburn, and my modern day nominee, Julia Hobbs. I may be biased in saying Julia because I want her life, lol, as she doesn’t really apply when it comes to what makes Alessandra’s aesthetic hit the spot for me; I think it’s all about the way she takes these women’s famously revered sense of elegance and polish and reimagines that style in alignment with an agenda to rebel against the prim and proper standards their styles were confined by. I say Julia Hobbs is the exception because she’s already out here living her best life in the kinds of ridiculously mini Miu Miu mini skirts that would’ve got Jackie O forced out of D.C, and you know what? I can only dream of having the nerve to pull that off, lol.

In other words, whilst an Alessandra Rich looks screams “I’m fucking loaded” (can’t relate on that one but can defo be inspired, tehe), it also appeals to the black sheep of that kind of wealthy, established old money family, which makes for a very cool good girl gone bad aesthetic. Think the Posh Totties from St.Trinians. Remember them? I know it might be 15 years too late but I would love a spin off revolving purely around their lives, lol. I truly aspired to be them when I was older, which I maintain the delusional belief could still happen, as I am in some ways mentally stuck at 14.

-clockwise l-r: RTW F/W20, S/S21 pre-fall 2023, RTW F/W17, F/W18, F/W22, S/S22, resort 2022, F/W 21-

Alessandra gives us 90s Chanel-esque co-ords, pearl necklaces, bows, several staple features in keeping with this current coquette craze, but then throws in a bold print, some suspenders, impractically high heels, some contrarian touch that makes an outfit previously wearable to a White House correspondents dinner suddenly way too scandalous. Can I just add here that wearing Alessandra Rich whilst doing so would be the perfect addition to the act of torching that building to the ground after said dinner. A timeless fashion moment, bc LORD! LORDD! I am tired of references to the J-Lo Versace dress. Just saying xx

Though the white lace dress I got from @babi_fus on Depop, originally Urban Outfitters, was a good base for an Alessandra Rich outfit, given white and lace both crop up at some point in almost all of her collections, the halter neck cut didn’t really fit in with the dressy, afternoon tea feel her designs seem to be a twist on. I had to layer. I had to do it! I'll admit I find any excuse to pile it on anyway but in this case it was a must:-)

For that reason, I used this Zara ruffled crop top I bought from Depop to go underneath as a formal touch. Similarly, the argyle pattern of the sheer ASOS knee highs I felt had that St.Trinians vibe Alessandra encapsulates. Unlikely style inspiration, perhaps? I don’t know. I remember being a little bit obsessed with those looks from the get-go. Like I said, even 9 year old me recognised those Posh Totties were the shit.

-clockwise l-r: RTW F/W16, S/S19, F/W19, S/S20, S/S16-

To build on the ‘90s grunge aesthetic Alessandra seems to have been exploring in recent years, I finished things off with my favourite 2000s Avril Lavigne inspired belt (full disclosure, she was another childhood icon, truly wanted to be that woman til I grew up and realised I can’t sing for shit xo) on top of a Tammy Girl sheer lace up cardi from ASOS, and a velvet choker I’ve had for far too long to remember where I bought it from! Probably EBay again, lol! The little chiffon rose is just a hair clip from Amazon I added on top, and finally, the oversized blazer which I have no doubt I’ve relied on in past lookbooks, is from @ccooks on Depop.

Rodarte

Kate and Laura Mulleavy know what the wannabe fashion girls want: an ethereal, other-worldly princess moment but one that still subverts that norm a bit too. Rodarte F/W23, which is the perfect example of this, was the dark fairytale inspired collection which spoke to those of us who have one foot in the past where we, as little girly girls, idolised Disney Princesses, Flower Fairies and prima ballerinas etc etc., but also one foot in the present where we are enthralled by portrayals of dark, gothic femininity and avant-garde fashion. Their dresses are beautiful but underlying their collections are a sense of fun, freedom, and refusal to conform to that quiet, polite, male-gaze focussed respectable princess.

They are designed with women in mind, not necessarily what is considered “sexy” which is what we are always made to feel is the ultimate compliment, but instead drawing from beauty as we see it in the natural world, making floral motifs, flowing silhouettes, and an emphasis on detail key features of the brand. I think these women are as intelligent and thoughtful in their design work as those more abstract names in fashion who are typical commended for these feats. A Rodarte collection never looks rushed, and despite the fairly simple design ethos, manages to remain fresh, interesting, and innovative. Ultimately, in the same vein as is apparent in Simone Rocha’s work, Kate and Laura understand how to convey a sense of both breathtaking elegance and at the same time, strength, power, fierce command of one’s self.

This outfit was comparatively fairly simple. This stunninggg dress was from Urban Outfitters, and I just knew the colour, fit and fabric made it the natural starting point for a Rodarte inspired look. I will say that this dress is one thing I’m finding it hard to part with in recovery, because I never actually ended up wearing it out before it got too small for me, and I felt so magical in it on this occasion when it did still fit-_-

-row 1 & 2, clockwise l-r: pre-fall 2023, RTW F/W14, F/W22, S/S23, F/W19, F/W21, F/W15, F/W13, row 3 to 8, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S19, S/S20, S/S22, F/W16, F/W23, F/W20-

-TW: discussion of eating disorder recovery-

It took me some time to accept that recovery meant I would never fit into most of my clothes again because I’m sure anyone who’s gone through it will agree that AN still feels a part of you for a long time, to the extent that you have rose tinted glasses on, and feel like returning to that weight is the only way you can feel at home again. Accepting that your current body is your home, not some temporary, uncomfortable accommodation you are forced to stay in ‘til you work out how to get back to what you’ve convinced yourself is a kind of “safe place”, is some of the hardest work you have to do. To truly affirm to yourself that you will never feel safe in your body when your worth is contingent on something as volatile as your weight, requires you to let go of anything that suggests changing yourself to become any specific weight, especially one which involves making yourself unhealthy all over again, is a viable solution to any future problems. Like, take it out of your fucking tool kit!

It’s not easy at all. When comparing your body with AN to your body at a healthy weight, it takes a long time to differentiate between “this is how I should look” and “this is how I looked with an illness that I’m fortunate enough to be overcoming” if that makes sense. I definitely still struggle with it, but it has for sure got easier since I started selling and donating clothes which trigger that unhelpful process of mental comparison.

-TW finishes here-

A lot of the stuff I sold or donated I just wasn’t as fond of anymore anyway, or was basic enough that there will always be something similar out there in the future. A lot of it I couldn’t see myself still liking in a few years anyway. Like I can’t see myself being 30 thinking "shit, I wish I still had that neon pink fishnet crop top!" if ya get me.

I have a few really unique things, however, that I hope I’ll be able to up-cycle at some point, once I finally get a sewing machine. This dress is one of them! I mention this here because this is one of the pieces I’m not sure whether I’m being realistic about, lmao.

So, here’s my question for any sewing experts who might see this before I continue: I am being moronic in thinking there’s some way a beginner could alter this dress? The material is somewhere between cheesecloth and chiffon but if any of you are reading this and would be so kind enough to signpost me, a DM would be amazing! IDK how helpful my guess at the fabric is but OFC I can investigate the inner label for specifics. I ask just because it seems it would be too delicate to withstand being taken apart and restitched without tearing in the process. Or if not a beginner, would a tailor do something like that for an affordable price (i.e for less than the £60 I paid for at full price, lol)? Or do I just let the bloody thing go? idk!

-clockwise l-r: RTW S/S17, F/W18, S/S24, S/S21, S/S15, S/S16-

In terms of details for the outfits, anyways (before I go further off topic as I am very aware of my tendency to do that LOL), my aim was to replicate that gothic fairytale vibe Laura and Kate capture in many of their collections. These sheer black gloves, for example, had me feeling a little bit witchy, as did the black flower crown (finally validating my choice to hold onto the bloody thing long after the time any respectable person would wear a flower crown out of the house) and the velvet choker. The choker is the same one from my Alessandra Rich outfit, but I’m pretty sure (and it would make sense, lol) that this flower crown was handmade by someo ne on Etsy. I will do a little bit of browsing of my past orders and add the shop if I can find it but I don’t know if my order history goes as far back as the Vanessa Hudgens Coachella Queen era. Yeah, let that rush of nostalgia hit you like a truck too, join me in my yearning for that simpler time:( If my spluttering at her PR team’s statement addressing the photograph of her gumming white powder from a baggie at the same festival a couple of years later (essentially “Vanessa is diabetic and she needs to micro dose herself with sugar frequently”) didn’t set the stage for my 4 months and counting long obsession with Kensington Palace’s wild attempts to control the KateGate narrative, I don’t know what did.

Speaking of mysterious deaths though (I am joking, I am not that far down the conspiracy hole yet), I didn’t want it to look too much like I was at a funeral. In my mind, I wanted there to just be a couple of points of contrast against the yellow, extremely fairy coded dress. I was going for forest nymph. You know, playful, whimsical, but potentially a bit sinister too, with the black, high society Victorian era widow inspired details my (perhaps questionable) interpretation of this. I mean, given the fact that pretty much anything exclusive to the wealthy was considered “fashion” regardless of how ugly, it is really no surprise that elbow length gloves retained their association with quiet elegance, still making an appearance in haute couture collections, and frequently in Rodarte shows, to this day. Anything theatrically melancholic, anything resembling a garm Queen Victoria might have picked out after her husband died, is always going to have connotations with romantic tragedy, yearning, the discomforting disruption of fantasy by reality, all of which are concepts I think Laura and Kate have embodied through their collections at one point or another. To honour this, I disrupted the perfect Rodarte outfit with the knock-off Versace Primark heels! To my surprise, the end result exceeded my expectations! Woo! Not SUCH a waste of £6 after all. Like I actually think they look better with this outfit. Let’s just call it a plot twist that they worked better for Rodarte than Versace. An unintentional ode to the way Rodarte reimagines the fantasy wardrobes we mentally drafted in girlhood and through a process of refinement, the incorporation of both practical and avant garde elements here and there, makes it relevant to modern fashion. To own something Rodarte is still just as much of a fantasy, don’t get me wrong, but their brand continuity means I can at least produce my own cheap take on their vision.

Mugler

Writing out this post, and trying to explain why I find each of these brands inspiring, I’m noticing a heavily recurring theme, lol; the creative directors I admire the most are those who simultaneously embrace and subvert classical notions of femininity. In other words, whilst silhouettes and fabrics usually associated with fragility, elegance, sensuality, and romanticism, are at the core of the collections, the designers I’ve spoken about do not shy away from references to “masculine” or an androgynous ways of dressing. This explorative approach varies in its manifestation depending on the creative director. Every one I’ve mentioned here possesses a level of talent in doing that I can likely only ever dream of successfully replicating! But all the same I’m inspired by their tactics to the extent that I don’t ever question I'll be satisfied with my attempts at imitation, I.e my subconscious tells me some outfit combination looks a little Gucci inspired, I’m wearing it.

Bottom line, I think my obsessive following of the designers I’ve waffled on about has infiltrated my subconscious; without acknowledging the fact, their blueprints are the guiding force in my striving for a “feminine”/“masculine” balance in my outfit. Whether this is through including details deemed provocative or ostentatious, or, most frequently, experimenting with what patriarchal ideals might deem “ugly” on a woman, the brands I’ve included have definitely given me the confidence to trust my instincts. I have been insulted many a time by little man babies for groovy hats, chunky shoes, and oversized trousers, and honestly, it’s probably only through following the create directors I’ve mentioned over the years that I feel unfazed by their unsolicited opinions, lol! Unless I respect their sense of style first, I’m happy to say I couldn’t give less of a fuck what their take is and when it comes to self-expression, I think that’s the best way to be.

The collections that have been released by Mugler over the years are a masterclass in this balancing act. Though the burlesque inspired designs, at first glance, appear geared towards highlighting what may be traditionally thought of as a woman’s sex appeal, they go beyond the simple sexualisation of the female body. Over the years, Mugler’s various creative directors have followed the lead of Thierry who drew his inspiration from a wide range of gender neutral references, all the way from science fiction characters, comic book heroes and villains, to mythical warriors and biker gangs. Over and above perpetuating the idea that a woman’s body must fit into some rigid hourglass shape, Mugler designs transform in accordance with all kinds of women’s body types, taking the lines and curves female worth has historically been judged on and through his tailoring, morphing the wearer’s form into a powerful structure upon and around which an entire outfit can be created. Some kind of boning or contrast stitching embedded into a garment, typically running parallel to the edges of the body is one of Mugler’s defining aesthetic cues, and the reason why I felt like the ASOS faux leather co-ord was the right choice for the centre point of a Mugler inspired outfit! When I said in my Rodarte section about things I had to let go of, I’d place this in the love-it-right-now-but-would-probs-rather-walk-on-hot-coals-then-wear-it-publicly-in-five-years-time category. Like… I think…it’s a serve? It is in my eyes anyway! That being said, I also think outside of a night out in London, you’re going to get asked if you’re going to a Totally Spies costume party. But look, in the outfit Venn diagram, memorable fashion moment and things that would make you the subject of public ridicule in my hometown are certainly not mutually exclusive categories:-)

-clockwise l-r: RTW F/W21, F/W19, resort 2021, RTW S/S19, S/S24, pre-fall 2024, RTW S/S22, F/W20-

Mugler’s designs, for me, have highlighted the power of tailoring (I acknowledge that sounds an incredibly fancy word to describe the skin tight fit of an ASOS purchase, but pls be aware I use this in the context of its similarities to Mugler pieces in general lol!) which showcases and uplifts the duality of the feminine, which tips the hat towards an orientation to detail, appreciation for beauty, and interest in an object’s visual appeal that for wayyyy! too! fucking! long! has been conflated with being “shallow”, but does so with the practicalities of the modern world in mind; Mugler designs aren’t made for sitting around and looking pretty, they are made for movement and longevity, which goes hand in hand with the frequent use of leather in the brand’s collections. Like something is not “skin tight” for the sake of male fantasy, but instead fits to the skin to highlight the grace and fluidity inherent to the maneuverer of the body, constructed from sleek fabric armour which dips and flows in contrast to the natural hue of the brand’s eternally glowing runway models.

Fabrics and silhouettes aren’t the be-all and end-all of the Mugler “look” however. For as much as the pieces we see transform the body into semi-robotic works of art, this has never translated to the typical “futuristic” colour palette. Whilst white, grey, black and metallics are definitely heavily featured in Mugler’s work, colour is just as essential, especially for David Koma’s (whom I have to say, whilst I have this chance, is so so so underrated!) incarnation of the brand. I know minimalism, and the resulting tilt towards muted colour palettes, has dominated luxury fashion over the past decade, but from the start, Mugler’s tendency to take inspiration from comic books, pop art, and cabaret have set the standard for his successive creative directors to avoid the confines of a monochromatic palette. In his eyes, leaning into womanhood should never obligate us to hiding demurely in the corner, and there are few better ways to assert one’s presence than by blinding everyone in the room with a neon. Well, not necessarily neon, nobody wants to replicate the wardrobe of an '80s aerobics fanatic, but just bold, bright colours in general. You get me!

There’s nothing wrong with restricting yourself to blacks, whites, greys, neutrals; they epitomise the concept of the “staple” piece after all, and I know I’d personally be pretty fucked if I didn’t have so many go-to black pieces, since they go with almost everything! That being said, I could just never get on board with a brand lacking in colour. Colour is fun! I think we are soOoo lucky to be able to witness their natural harmony in nature! They are central to some of the things I marvel at in the world. Like think about it: magnificent sunsets, gorgeously arranged bouquet of flowers, the combination of a person’s skin tone, hair, and eye colour that every so often stops you in your tracks and has you thinking how stunning they are! Sorry to be cheesy, but why not! I feel like we should appreciate nature as much as me can while we can, because soon enough we’ll have destroyed the planet anyway at this rate-_- For all these years I’ve felt like a basic bitch for not being able to sit through old movies but now…is this my justification? The lack of colour?

I get that for a lot of revered designers, e.g. Yohji Yamamoto, Ann Demeulemeester, the muted tones are key to the brand’s identity, and I’m not shitting on them, but I suppose I am just like a little hyperactive child in that I my eyes are drawn to whatever is most visually stimulating, lol. For that reason, I’m a huge fan of the colour blocking, shocking pinks, blues, and reds, and futuristic, oil-spill like blending of complementary shades dotted throughout a Mugler collection, and the way they are used sporadically to demand my attention.

-top to bottom: RTW S/S21, S/S20, F/W22-

This is something I really wanted to incorporate, and hopefully semi-successfully did by way of the sheer tie-dye Topshop top I wore underneath a vintage black blazer. I think the inbuilt shoulder pads were why I went with that; the slightly exaggerated, angular nature of the sleeves the shoulder pads create made meant this jacket felt the closest I could get to the kind of sharp, crisply defined outerwear Mugler has rolled out over the years. My other option was a black PVC trench coat I’ve whipped out for many a past lookbook, and it does have a bit of a Matrix/Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia/potential school shooter vibe (whichever of those you pick probably depends on how you feel about the coats lmao), the first of which would make it appropriate for a Mugler look. I decided against it though, in the end, because with the faux leather co-ord I did feel like it’d be a little bit overkill, too far in the direction of a Russian spy or a sci-fi villain, ya know. The black high sheen heeled boots (an old pair from Missguided, definitely specified in a previous post!) and the black gloves (EBay!) tied it all together well enough that the colours truly did feel like a pop rather than the focus of the outfit, without being overpowering. Gloves are a big thing in Mugler collections, so I couldn’t not include them in my outfit, especially because they were having their moment when I did this lookbook anyway. Where is the inspiration coming from there? Burlesque? Comic book heroes/villains? IDK. But like I said, they’ve been popular on and off for long enough that now I feel they’ll always belong to the realm of the fashion world.

Kim Shui

When I was thinking of designers to do outfits inspired by, Kim Shui immediately came to mind. I’ve loved her collections since I first saw the details from one of them posted on HF Twitter a few years ago and have since eagerly awaited her shows every NYFW. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me why her brand would come to mind along with the likes of Gucci and Rokh, for example, who have been a lot more consistent in terms of their spots in my fashion week top 10s, but the more I thought about it, the more I recognised that as much as the brands that had come to mind already were my favourites, they also had an aesthetic which I was subconsciously linking to distinct items in my wardrobe. In that way, I realised that this isn’t so much a set of outfits inspired by my all time top 10 brands, but more a set of outfits encapsulating the range of brands which have had the most significant influence in my personal style over the last decade. I guess this post is kinda like a little tribute to the designers whose work I think of as the most significant embodiment of each individual component I could single out if I were to dissect the mishmash of inspirational forces in my version of what we call “personal style”. Like I could include Zimmerman and Cavalli, two brands I really love, but the clear intersection they have with Etro as the ruling force behind my gravitational pull towards anything I can conceive of as being worn by Stevie Nicks in her heyday would’ve resulted in this lookbook containing 3 very similar outfits. Etro is the one I remember first being enthralled by, and the one which continues to have the strongest association with the compartment in my brain where all the images of ‘70s bohemian disco and decadence, of Cher, Bianca Jagger, and Diana Ross, are stored, which is why I chose to do what I’m sure you’re thinking is “that old chestnut” again.

Similarly, Kim Shui is probably the first brand I saw on the runway that explicitly blended East Asian culture with Western high fashion paradigms. I don’t know the extent to which her popularity encouraged appreciation for other East Asian owned brands, or contributed to the deserved increase in acknowledgement of Shanghai Fashion Week, for example, but there’s got to be at least a little bit of a link there.

I should note, I’m not claiming for one second this blending of cultures hasn’t been done by other Asian designers before Kim Shui or that cheap takes on traditional Asian styles haven't been co-opted by European brands since the dawn of time. I’m just noting that Kim Shui was the first designer I personally became aware of to authentically embrace her heritage as a core element of her brand’s aesthetic (rather than as a fleeting trend) in such a bold, subversive way, so as to leave a lasting impact on my personal style.

-row 1 & 2, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S20, S/S23, F/W21, S/S21, S/S19, row 3 to 6, clockwise l-r: RTW F/W20, F/W22, F/W23, S/S24, S/S22-

Like I mentioned, designers of East Asian heritage, whilst under recognised given the frequent, unacknowledged diffusion of their work into that of western designers, are not totally absent from the high fashion scene I’m familiar with (the typical New York, London, Milan and Paris Fashion week biannual cycle which dominates fashion discourse). What caught my eye about Kim’s work, however, was the way she blended her heritage with a handful of other, less traditionally “conservative” Western ways of dressing, which she recalls being influenced by whilst living in Italy and New York.

Recognisable influences on her work include the decadence and brashness of what she refers to as “Eurotrash”, a controversial term referring to wealthy European socialites in American cities (particularly New York), and their unapologetically extravagant, often provocative way of dressing. Typically popular amongst this group were high fashion brands of Southern European origin like Versace, Dolce & Gabanna but also the Parisian atelier Jean Paul Gaultier, and the adoption of obnoxiously loud print, rich and varied colour palettes, luxurious fabrics, and more often than not, minimal coverage, lol. That is to say, teeny tiny skin tight dresses, plunging necklines, and the incorporation of the boudoir influenced “underwear as outerwear” trend, were all as much a part of the Eurotrash stereotype as bleach blonde hair, late night partying, and fondness for German techno (and accordingly, the daring, futuristic, liberal displays of sexuality associated with the clothing worn in the underground rave scene). Essentially, the prototypical “Eurotrash” woman was the scandalous, more “exotic” version of hyper-feminine, Barbie-esque Y2K It girls like Paris, Britney, and Nicole, who by the same standards could be characterised as somewhat subdued. Though its influence on Kim’s work has arguably lessened since her earliest collections, the urban street wear trends she would’ve been exposed to during her time in New York, such as relaxed, laid back silhouettes and experimentation with graphic print, seemingly influenced by the personalised, custom look associated with the branding of '80s and '90s hip-hop icons, also appear to have informed her work.

The genius comes from the way she cancels out the arguably “tacky” or overly casual elements of such styles through the incorporation of her heritage and love of abstract art, producing designs which act as a collage of the places and people she has encountered throughout her lifetime. Kim embraces statement prints, overt glamour, micro minis and vivid colours, just to name a few examples, evoking the nostalgia associated with Eurotrash and the famous Y2K socialite scene, and capturing the flirtatious, magnetic energy of the headline grabbing wild child in the process. Simultaneously, however, she brings a more intricate, ornate kind of maximalism to the table. Logomania becomes detailed prints referencing traditional Chinese artwork and artists like Kandinsky, hem and necklines are not simply short and deep but points of interest inspired by classic cultural tailoring, and colours, whilst remaining rich and varied in tone, have a thoughtful, ethereal quality to them which bear semblance to mythological illustrations and showcase her admiration for the purposeful selection of complementary hues by pioneers of modern art. Though they’re not exactly Kandisky, these Weekday trousers I chose for the bottom half of the outfit seemed like the kind of nod to his work Kim would approve of; I’d wager a guess that his use of watercolours might have played a role in the prominence of tie dye in earlier Kim Shui collections. Conveniently, the blended pastel tones of the trousers were also the perfect match with this lilac ASOS butterfly hem halter-neck, which had just the right amount of glitter to pay my due respects to the iconic Y2K princesses and ditsy girlish pieces they typically paired with all that Cartier. I say Cartier, but wtf do I know about expensive jewellery. Those who are knowledgeable see my reference to it as a way of saying flashy high-value necklaces, earrings, and bracelets of unknown but likely prestigious origin, lol!

My equivalent was just some silver, grungier (or at the very least, grimier, as far as the discrepancy between my costume jewellery and real precious metal based accessories are concerned) details.

Alone, I wouldn’t necessarily associate a halter top with Kim Shui; Y2K was everywhere in 2023, after all, and to be honest, it’s not the defining feature of her work. My impulse purchasing habit, exhaustion, and general mental chaos last year meant I had far too many of these kinds of tops become sacrificial lambs by way of my inability to follow through on plans to go “out-out”. “Anorexia will end up isolating you!” the therapist I saw a few years ago said, “couldn’t be me!” I thought, channelling the same silly energy of Mr.Birling when he calls the Titanic “unsinkable” in An Inspector Calls for all my fellow British 20-somethings who did that play in GCSE English, lmao. But anyway, the point is, I had a lot of these glitzy little things to choose from-_- This one stood out because I knew in the back of my mind that this lilac spandex crop top from Urban Outfitters in exactly the same colour with a mandarin collar and keyhole cut out was lurking somewhere in my wardrobe. Its inclusion was an obvious choice for this outfit, given a typical Kim Shui collection would be incomplete without one of these necklines, prominent throughout traditional Chinese garments. As a final detail, I wore these pastel pink PVC platform boots from ASOS, which again, I knew deep down I would probably be incapable of mustering the strength to wear outside the house, but was constantly searching for a reason to wear so I could indulge in my ABBA fantasy for just a minute. IDK if go-go boots are necessarily associated with the Eurotrash aesthetic, but they (and platform knee/thigh high boots in general) are heavily featured throughout Kim’s work, so I seized the opportunity to get these bad girls out. I’m not going to research whether that link exists, btw. The least European settlers could do is bring their appreciation for 70s ABBA over to the US with them. Considering the last commodity they imported along with themselves was smallpox and genocidal intentions, a Swiss Euro pop band is a major improvement so…look, I know ABBA was popular there already. I just wanted to make a dig at Western Imperialism. You know, poke tiny little holes in biased historical narratives where I can. It’s the history drop-out in me.

Etro

Is she including Etro again? Though the odds of someone reading both this and my original In the Front Row lookbook are close to non-existent, if you’re out there, I’m sure was your first thought. But yes, don’t say I didn’t prepare you for it! Of course I’m including Etro again. I’ll repeat it: this brand used to be my everything, lol.

Whilst I’ve branched out a bit, and tbh, so has the brand’s creative designers of late, there will still always be a place in my heart for the earthy bohemian feel Etro excelled at. Just as much as I feel drawn to the 90s kinderwhore (I think that term is seen as misogynistic now because it was thought to be “undermining” female grunge enthusiasts at the time but in hindsight I feel that aesthetic is thought of as a legitimate subtype of grunge…so essentially I’m arguing we reclaim it?) movement as exemplified by figures like Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland, I also love the bohemian style associated with 70s psychedelic and folk rock, to which icons like Stevie Nicks, Janis Joplin, and attendees to Woodstock 1969 were quintessential in time stamping to the decade that followed. Similarly, I’m totally enamoured with the way bohemian fashion evolved during the 70s, culminating in its influence on the disco trend in the latter half of the decade, epitomised by fashion icons like Diana Ross, Bianca Jagger, and Cher, in attendance at the infamous Studio 54. At this time, bohemian silhouettes, colours and materials were just a starting point which evolved to become glitzier, raunchier, and more expensive looking. If the traditional bohemian style craze had an other worldly feel to it, by the time disco came around, the women at the pinnacle of the trend were practically goddesses.

Etro, over the years, has covered all that ground, early bohemian, disco, even the bohemian renaissance of the 2000s, and modernised it, communicating the free spirited essence of that period in a practical, more subtle way, catered towards the more minimalistic, functional mode of dressing we see now. Veronica retains the dreamy patterns, billowing shapes, decorative embroidery and stitching, and rich mixing of textures that defined the bohemian movement. At the same time, she does this in a measured, careful way, that is mindful of the preference for stripped back, androgynous, scandi-influenced fashion by many who have adapted to this new, fast-paced way of life. Yay, rampant late stage capitalism:D I type this fully aware that against my better judgement I was a fervent consumer of fast fashion this time last year and I let myself get very sloppy, lol. But, like I said, I shall declare my errors because by this time, you could probably find them on Vinted/Depop!

-row 1 & 2, clockwise l-r: RTW S/S19, F/W19, S/S21, F/W16, S/S22, pre-fall 2021, RTW F/W18, F/W21, row 3 & 4, l-r: RTW S/S20, resort 2023, row 5 to 6, clockwise l-r: RTW F/W20, S/S17, S/S18, S/S16, pre-fall 2024-

I’ve seen a tonne of listings for the cream Urban Outfitters Afghan coat I chose for this outfit, for example, in all different shades and for decent prices too. I can’t speak for Depop because I can’t sell SHIT on it these days so I barely use it, but yeah, Vinted is your best friend. So is this coat! I do have it in green as well, because it is so comfy and versatile, but the cream felt like the right shade for the UO Paisley print playsuit. The chiffon, faux suede, and fur, and the combination of the bright, spring appropriate tones of the playsuit with the neutral colour of the coat made these two pieces slot perfectly into Etro’s outfit formula. To finish it off, I went with a chunky Regal Rose choker, a pair of faux snake skin knee high boots, and this teal wide brim hat, both of which I brought from EBay, and all of which contribute to the nomadic feel of the look, seeming to borrow from nature in some way. Whilst the floral detail of the choker fill that second brief, I also feel like the weight and sand toned shade of (fake, ofc) gold of the jewellery gives it a slightly antique look, like the very disappointing buried treasure one might stumble across in the middle of a desert. Imagine they also found a shedded snake to turn a pair of sick boots. And brought with them the hat to shield their eyes from the sun. That’s the Etro girl. Flower power Lara Croft, lol. Copywriting that x

-clockwise l-r: RTW F/W23, pre-fall 2023, RTW S/S23, F/W22, resort 2024-

Brands like Etro are a breath of fresh air in amongst this endless parade of branded neutrals we find ourselves in, where donning a basic logo on a beige knitted jumper is considered sufficient to crown someone as being at the top of their fashion game. Boo to Kanye West and his fashion line for this, which I am loath to say pales amongst all the other questionable things he’s done. Imagine. You say so much fucking stupid shit that sucking the fun out of fashion in the 2010s is your most minor offence, lol. Anyway, I have definitely noticed Etro leaning more into branding the past couple of years, and their collections haven’t necessarily been my standouts, especially over the past year. The FW24 collection debuted at the most recent Milan Fashion Week, however, has reassured me that I am totally right in saying Etro is criminally underrated, and holding it dear to my heart.

So, in summary! Thank you for reading/viewing if you got to this part. I’m gonna keep it short, because I don’t have much to say other than that writing this was one of my small distractions each day for the past couple of weeks, and if it was anybody else’s to read that’s fab:)

But on the matter of something important and much more worth your time, I want to end the post with a few links to pages set up by those leading the way in aiding and amplifying the voices of citizens in Gaza. I know the switch back and forth, going from me chatting shit about clothes to discussing horrific real world events, is jarring but it’s like that. Rounding up this post, suddenly everything I’ve talked about seems sick and shallow when we consider the mass murders occurring every day. I’ve been sitting with the fact that we think of the worst kind of evil as some abstract thing that we can’t know the depths of but there cannot possibly be anything more evil occurring in the world right now than this. When you break down the individual suffering, and then multiply it by tens of thousands, and then think we are expected to sit here and dismiss it and all those lives just to preserve an economic relationship, it is the sickest and most depraved humans can get. We’re existing at the same time as it happens and I don’t know if acknowledging it in a completely unrelated post like this in depth is the right or wrong thing to do. There is no way to go on with things, both in real life but especially online, as normal when that level of evil is being perpetrated and government and regulatory bodies are using their power to shut even acknowledgement of it down. So I definitely don’t want to waste any moment of anyone’s attention without signposting towards sources which keep us informed on the issue. Before I include the links below I wanna say thanks again, my DMS are always open, and all the best:) Lauren x

Website for Decolonize Palestine, an online collection of recourses including introductory articles explaining the history of Israel’s oppression of Palestinian people and debunking myths perpetrated about the crisis by the Israeli government: https://decolonizepalestine.com/

Recourse for locating nearby demonstrations against Israel’s attack on Palestine: https://palestinecampaign.org/events/

Website of International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, an organisation founded by a group of lawyers, politicians and academics, who recently presented evidence of Israeli war crimes to the MET: https://www.icjpalestine.com/

Twitter thread by @noor_noorash of emergency gofundme campaigns set up to facilitate the provision of aid and recourses for evacuation to Palestinians: https://twitter.com/noor_noorash/status/1783838318100439403

Instagram post by @adventuresofchefleila which tags the accounts of several groups working directly in Palestine to ensure food and basic needs are accessible: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6KDactrzSR/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D

Webpage set up by UNICEF to facilitate donations to their preexisting team in Gaza: https://www.unicef.org.uk/donate/children-in-gaza-crisis-appeal/?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9Zak76fghQMVSZJQBh1b0gVcEAAYASAAEgLxW_D_BwE

Website of the Click for Palestine campaign, where a click can be made once a day to make a small donation: https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/#google_vignette

Website for eSims for Gaza, a campaign set up to direct individuals in purchasing an eSim which can be used by the recipient in Gaza to get internet access: https://gazaesims.com/

Website for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions organisation (BDS) which, amongst other ways to get involved, lists the companies where consumer boycotts will place the most pressure on the Israeli government: https://bdsmovement.net/

[mmoxie]

Part 11 - Bumper Sticker

Seebs sat on Craig's kitchen table, pawing lazily at an empty Captain's Wafers wrapper. There was still some "grilled cheese"-flavored dust inside, and by god, it was his.

Dani opened her second pack of crackers and leaned back in the booth seat that wrapped around the folding dinner table. It had been a week since Globe Rock, and she was still reeling. It was enough to make her break into little bouts of miserable laughter, whenever she had an idle moment and realized that despite all that, she still had to go into work.

Something was different about her, now. She wasn't any smarter or suddenly at peace with herself, but the fear of the unknown was gone. She knew the hell out of what was going on. Immersed in Craig's world of "cocaine engineering," she spent her free time listening to him -snif- and report back with his crusty-looking Skype buddies. When they said things like "unconscious equations" and "Fresno compass" and "Erba channel," she could find the edges of those puzzle pieces and stick them together.

These weird old men were using decades-old computing technology to- as she understood it- find pits, warps, and holes in the fabric of three-dimensional space. Soft sites, "liminal spaces," in the parlance of the multi-hour Youtube documentaries she had taken to watching, were as good as it got on Earth for gaining access to the fourth and fifth dimensions.

Those were new- fourth, time, that was easy enough to visualize. You're a cube- three sides, solid object, moving linearly in one direction- forward, same direction as time.

But the fifth- they called it a lot of things, but it seemed to her to be a tensor that acted on the flow of time, some force or shape that agitated it to flow in a certain direction. She heard Craig call it "the wheel," sometimes, and at others "the threading" or "Hoyle pressure."

She tried not to think about whatever project all that jargon was supposed to serve. They were having a "walk" at Turtlebees on Sunday, and the produce section had to be just right. So she thought about that, ways to get ahead of some halfway-up-the-ladder hyperventilator-for-hire who was going to walk through with a clipboard and run a white glove across the artichokes.

Oh, man. Do I really care about that?

She ate another cracker and fished the remote out of the bullshit basket in the middle of the table. No amount of Judge Joe Brown was going to take her mind off of this.

QVC? No, didn't need to buy a commemorative 9/11 coin.

Cartoon Network? Down the tubes ever since they stopped playing an hour of Looney Tunes at noon.

TNN? They called it Spike now. Spike was good when MXC was on, but that was- god, nearly twenty years ago.

I'm so old...

She flipped reflexively past The Weather Channel- they didn't play the jazz anymore- and gave up after landing on one of the thirty or so news channels Craig piped in on his hijacked satellite signal.

"...Out of New Mexico this morning, an update on Mayor Sean, the local politician who went missing a few months ago. Eureka County investigators say that they've identified a tooth belonging to the young social media star, and are zeroing in on a suspect. Based on the condition of the tooth, they say they are expecting to link the evidence to recent cases of arson. When asked for comment, Eureka County Sheriff Bill Kirby said the following-"

Dani slapped at Craig's arm and pointed at the 13" television sitting on the kitchen counter. He looked up from his wheezing laptop at her, frowning under his mustache. She gave him an urgent shake of the head, her mouth full of crackers.

"-We're still optimistic that this was a kidnapping, but given the condition of the evidence, we have reason to suspect that Mr. Knelson may have been harmed. We are advising that, in the event of contact with the victim or his captor, any individual should exercise extreme caution. At this time we are unable to identify a weapon, and-" The sheriff paused to let out a bitter chuckle. He was a thin man, not unlike Craig, but with serious rosacea and a put-on Texan accent. "-The unpredictability alone is reason enough to keep your distance."

Craig and Dani looked at each other for a long time. The old engineer was hard to read behind the glare of his square bifocals, but his mustache twitched, and he drew in a deep, steadying -snif-.

"Alright." He said, and stood. Dani watched as he opened a nearby cabinet and retrieved a sticker-covered suitcase. He popped the little brass latches and retrieved a mass of thick, colorful wool, tightly folded into a square. He tossed it on the table in front of Dani, startling Seebs away from his quest for cheese dust. --For a moment, anyway.

"My wife's aguayo. Don't get it dirty. You wear it around your shoulders, and you can wrap it in such a way that it's -snif- more or less a backpack."

"Craig, we're not going to Peru. Come on."

"You come on. You turned up out of nowhere and put me back to work, at the very least I should get to pick the venue."

"Craig, I've got a walk on Sunday, I can't just disappear from work."

"What the hell is a walk? --People quit their jobs all the time, you should do it more often, it's fun. I'm tempted to quit this one."

Dani groaned and distracted herself by petting Seebs, who automatically rolled onto his back. She buried her fingertips in the fluff of his belly and listened to the old boy purr while weighing her options.

"We flying?" She eventually asked.

"No way. We dump the cars, let 'em go to hock. I've got an old conversion van in Indian Springs. We get that far and swap. Drive to La Libertad, get on a boat. Boat takes us as far as -snif- Chamanga, and then we get another ride and keep driving 'til we hit Ocumal."

"You really have done this before."

"Not this one. Last time I was on the other side of Panama, dropped down from Louisiana and cut through -snif- Honduras and Columbia, then took the Rio Napo southeast into Mazán. Made my way to the coast over the next few months. Had to -snif- keep IBM guessing. This route we're on, that was my Plan B, way back when. But I'm guessing Turtlebees' won't send goons after you."

The urgent, fluent way that Craig Palmer navigated the apparent map in his mind was enough to make Dani really give this whole Peru prospect some thought. And then she thought about her mom, and about Chevette, and about what it would be like to have a little stability in her life.

If I didn't give that up when I barbecued one guy, I definitely did when I barbecued the other.

Well, it's not like I have anything against the place...

But she did have something against leaving, and damn it, Craig needed to hear it. He was elbow-deep in the suitcase and still talking about waterways and boat travel when she got up from the table and set a hand on the vented cabinet door, leaning in close to his face.

"I killed Mark LaGrange."

"Who?"

"Jesus, Craig- the first guy. The one who isn't turning up in the news. All he did was ask me the wrong question at the wrong time, and I scoured him off the face of the Earth."

"Alright, alright. -snif- Sure, I remember. Wilson Titlee. So what about him?"

"I- I don't know. I owe him something. I owe his family, I guess. Before I think about going anywhere, I've got to try and make that right."

"It's manslaughter, Dani, you don't make it right. You can self-flagellate, pay your debt to society, try to make good with his family, but you can't un-kill the sorry bastard."

"Well, I've gotta do something!" She thought she would catch fire from the frustration, but she didn't. She eyed the celestial nametag across the room, pinned to her friendly green apron.

Craig drew himself up and set his hands on his hips. In boat shoes and khaki shorts he wasn't precisely intimidating, but the mustache did a lot of heavy lifting as he barked-

"You've GOTTA get your ass to Peru! I'm not gonna say it again- and your mother would never forgive me if I let it slide- you wanna live? You stay out of jail. You wanna stay out of jail? You go to Peru. You put on your aguayo and you learn some Spanish and a sprinkle of Quechua, and you eat picarones until you're too fat to look like trouble anymore."

His squarish Roosevelt teeth were grit hard, and his eyes were wide with a mixture of urgency and fear. He -snif-fed wetly, and Dani realized that to him, the running had never stopped. This wasn't about how she'd survive. On some level, this was about IBM. She saw herself reflected in his bifocals and realized that if she didn't choose something different, she'd be on the run well into her seventies, just like him.

The houseboat rocked, and they were silent a while, just staring, each waiting for the other, playing psychic chicken and each secretly hoping they'd lose.

But the TV was still on, and it spoke first.

"-We now go to live aerial footage from our Eye-In-The-Sky weather chopper. Handing it over now to our Guy-In-The-Sky, Chief Meteorologist Buddy Chandrasekhar. Buddy!"

"-That's right, Lenora, and I'm here above Yosemite, about four miles north of Paoha Island, you can see Mt. Biedeman passing by just there- but the reason we're reporting in is because of a sudden and unseasonable outbreak of wildfire. As you know we're a few months out from what we'd unfortunately call the 'right season,' but you can actually see the smoke from here- it's actually pouring over the mountain range, we can see it coming east now from Twin Peaks and rolling over Bridgeport, just a wall of smoke. The National Weather Service is issuing an order to evacuate, they'll be sending that to local stations and radio shortly if they haven't already."

"Dani, what the hell is this?" Craig spun away from the cabinet and crossed his arms, frowning at the television.

"Don't look at me! I've been here the whole time!"

They watched as the chopper bore west toward the smoke. Suddenly Craig gripped Dani's shoulder and gave her a shake, pointing at the fuzzy top-right corner of the screen. Something was hovering above the inferno, nearly out of frame. A foo fighter, a Marfa light, fire in the sky- and it suddenly pivoted, throwing itself toward the ground, cutting diagonal across the camera and carving a blaze of angry gray-white light above the low fields of Bridgeport.

Buddy Chandrasekhar wasn't about to let that go. He was the Guy in the Sky. The cockpit pivoted, and the view onscreen with it.

"-Could be a number of things, Lenora. Possibly a micro heat dome from the local bodies of water, agitating particles in the air- might be producing ball lightning, or even a sundog effect on the flames at the core of the outbreak here-"

Craig shook his head and swung himself into the kitchen booth, leaning over the old laptop. His Skype call was still open- but there was a woman onscreen for once, instead of one of his sniffling old colleagues.

"Any ripples, Andi?"

"You're asking me? I'm numb, remember?"

"But you put out the call, right? Anyone get you back?"

"Ugh, everyone's on vacation. There's a SLAPP cell in Tahoe, that's the closest I could get on short notice. And you know Dale sucks."

"Yes, I know Dale sucks. But tell him to put on channel 40."

Dani leaned over Craig's shoulder, looking between the video call and the breaking news. Through several layers of arbitration- first over the phone into this "Andi" person's house, and then out of the speaker, into her microphone, and out of Craig's crackly speakers, came a third voice.

"Private domicile of sovereign citizen Dale Montag, office of diplomatic relations. To whom am I speaking?"

Jesus, thought Dani. And Craig, actually.

"Dale, it's Andi. I'm on the line with Craig. He wants you to put the news on. Channel forty, he says."

"Forty? Ain't that MTV? I don't watch that crap."

Craig loomed over the laptop's pinhole microphone and spoke. "Just put it on Fox or something, Dale. You're looking for a forest fire in Yosemite."

"Already there. You ever buy one of those pillows I told you about?"

The old engineer grit his teeth. "...Not yet, Dale. I need you to go for a walk on my behalf. They reporting on the light in Bridgeport?"

"Something in Bridgeport," Dale replied. He was loud, and tended to put a little extra emphasis on his 'b' sounds. Dani watched Andi onscreen, who regarded her phone with vague displeasure.

"Hoh! Ha, check it out! Look who it is!"

"That's not a good sign," Craig muttered to Dani. "Dale... doesn't exactly root for the underdog. He's a rich get richer type."

"Yeah, I'm between lanes right now. There's- haha, wow, this place has changed since the seventies. Wouldn't expect a square like that kid to turn up here, but..."

Suddenly Dani realized something terrible, and leaned on the table to listen closer.

"It's Mayor Sean! I found him! Oh man, they're gonna give me a medal!"

Whatever Dale was doing, it made Dani's ears tingle. She knew it before he said it.

There was more to Sean Gracie- more to everyone- than the body she had incinerated. She had just made peace with her own rampant shadow, of course she wasn't the single special human being who had one! She might have burned away the physical, three-dimensional body of Mayor Sean, but...

"Holy crap, that's him. I thought he was tripping, but he's just... here. Not a projection, not his consciousness- he left Earth! No wonder the cops are having a hard time finding him, ha!"

"He didn't leave," Dani said, turning away from Craig.

"That's all that's left," he translated for her. "Alright, thanks, Dale, we'll uh- we'll catch up sometime." He rolled his wrist at Andi, encouraging her to go ahead and hang up.

"Yeah, alright, buddy, you know where to find me. Dalesdale has a robust tourism progra-" click.

"This is bad, Craig. I know that little fascist, he's all over my grandkids' youtubes. If he's just sliding along the fourth axle willy-nilly, he can do whatever he wants. Go into dreams, go into places- he's completely unshackled from his body! We've got to put him back!"

"...There is no body," Dani said, holding a bottle of Inca Cola in a shaking hand. She drank before continuing. "I... I made sure of that."

"Well, great talk, Andi! Catch you later, thanks for the help!" Ba-dum.

Craig slammed the laptop shut and set his elbow on it, leaning and looking up at Dani with a deeply exhausted expression.

"So, you haven't been killing people. That's... well, it's not gonna hold up in court, but it's true."

Dani just drank. Her head was spinning. The flaming, vengeful specter of Mayor Sean had followed her across state lines and started a wildfire to flush her out of hiding, that's what it looked like. And that... was bad.

"It slows down our trip, too. We've gotta put this Sean thing to bed before we can hit the road, or he'll set Peru on fire, too." He paused, then gestured for Dani to grab him a drink as well, before continuing.

"America, I could deal with. But not Peru. You killed every part of him that... to be frank, doesn't matter in the long run. All that's left is bad ideas and a bad attitude- and whatever he can find to express himself, in the higher dimensions."

"What do we do?"

Dani looked at her nametag, dangling from her apron beneath that pin she'd claimed from Mark LaGrange's ashes.

Have you Had It lately?

Yeah, Mark. I sure have. And now...

"Oh, you know. Just your typical political assassination. I'll call the CIA, they're great at these," Craig joked, bitterly. He muttered as he reopened the laptop and looked through his contact list. "Would you look at that, nobody from Langley in my rolodex. I guess now that I've bucked them completely, it's the perfect time to get them on my ass again."

Dani pet Seebs and shook her head. "Sorry, Craig. --Look, I made him like this, maybe I can fix it. And- and after it's all said and done, sure, fine, I'll go to Peru with you. For good, if that's what it takes."

It was a long moment before Craig replied, and when he did, he took off his glasses and rubbed his wrinkled forehead.

"I've let you into my home, looked after your cat- he farts, by the way, you didn't mention that- and I really thought that would be the end of it. I thought I'd snuck my way onto easy street thirty years ago."

He picked her cigarettes up off the table and pat the bottom of the pack, then helped himself to one, standing up briefly to light it on the gas stove's pilot light.

"He's gonna be coming for you. What we did at Globe Rock probably put him on your trail. Between now and the next time, we've got to be ready to square off with him. We know we can set up a lure, but once we've got him, we need to know what to do with him."

"Any ideas?"

"You're the one who killed him, Dani. That one's on you. Pack your bags and give it some real, hard thought. Once we get this started, I don't think we're coming back to Fish Camp."

Dani nodded- and then realized she was going to be late for her shift at Turtlebees, catching the time in the corner of the TV screen.

Almost apologetically- though to whom, she was no longer sure- she pulled on her apron and set off for work.

<-Prev Next->

[sacrilegiious]

hi, my loves ! 4am but we're finally here, intro almost posted. i'm daisy ( she/her ) and this is my bby dawn. i've been playing her for a while now and i'm so excited to get to it again and see how she will interact with all of your lovely muses. dawn is my headstrong, always down to fight, antisocial girl - genuinely an all round asshole but with her heart in the right place i think ? i guess that judgment is yours to make. def looking forward to plotting w all of u okay byyyee ! &lt;;33

꒰⠀⠀⠀⠀shin ryujin.   twenty-one.   cis woman.   she/her.⠀⠀⠀⠀꒱        hold your f*** horses !   ’dawn'  soojin jeong   has just been spotted walking into revolution headquarters. they are best known for being the   drummer   in   rad   and have been signed with the label for   six months.   they share a lot of interesting things about life in the music industry on their social media, so make sure you don’t forget to follow them at   @fuckoffjake.  fans know them for being   ruthless   but i swear they’ve got a   protective   side as well. maybe that explains why they’re always associated with   sleepless nights spent under neon lights, fingers impatiently drumming on a desk, dark eyes that refuse to look away first.   stan twitter even voted them most likely to   overthrow the government.   we’ll see how they live up to that reputation.

basics.

name:  soojin “dawn” jeong.

nicknames:  u can try i guess.

gender:  cis woman

pronouns:  she/her.

age:  21.

date of birth:  march 23rd 2001.

astrological sign: aries

place of birth: seoul, sk

nationality: korean-american

ethnicity: korean

occupation:  drummer at rad / architecture student.

sexual & romantic orientation:  bisexual, biromatic.

longest relationship: like a month probs.

appearance.

height:  1.64m / 5′4″  (as i’m being told)

weight:  50kg / 110lbs.

hair colour:  naturally black (does like dying it though).

hair style:  rn short-ish, almost reaching her shoulders.

eye colour: brown.

clothing style:  tomboy meets goth witch. almost exclusively black.

tattoos:  has several. a little D and a moon on her left hand, a rythmic score on her right ribs, a little black cat on her hip.

piercings:  ear lobes & left ear helix.

defining features:  whisker dimples, mole under left eyebrow.

character.

positive traits:  ambitious, charismatic, intelligent, self-reliant, daring, witty.

negative traits:  controlling, haughty, choleric, abrasive, impatient, judgy.

likes:  rock music, cats, the city at dawn, cool architecture, hot chocolate, asmr.

dislikes:  people (especially cis men), planes, haunted houses, brussels sprouts.

skills & languages.

notable skills: drumming, drawing, good memory, pen / drum stick spinning.

secret talents: lock picking, horseback riding.

languages spoken: Korean, English, Japanese & a bit of French.

biography.

tw: v minor mention of violence

born as jeong soojin in seoul, her life has always been predetermined by her last name, her family. she was the first child of her rather prominent parents, alongside her twin brother and both of them grew up surrounded by wealth, learning a second language by the age they were four and a third one from age nine. generally, their parents tried their best to give them everything you were supposed to give a child in order for it to develop promisingly. if raising a child were similar to a math equation that is. the only thing that they were missing, that no money or good intentions could afford them, was privacy. being one of the children of the ceo of a successful real estate company and a prominent politician meant they were always somewhat in the eye of the public. not enough to constantly be of relevance to the media but enough for any missteps to find an audience. 

making mistakes was never an option. failure not in her vocabulary as she grew up and became the over-achiever her parents had always hoped for. she was on top of her class ever since starting school and later on became not only student body president in her high school but also picked up all the right hobbies. playing the violin, horseback riding, fencing - excelling in apparently everything she touched. all the success came with a price though, the rigorous self-discipline, the complete disregard of her actual nature. inside all she felt was emptiness and that emptiness was only replaced by burning, raging anger. when she was thirteen, her blood absolutely boiling with unbridled rage, she became violent towards a classmate of hers. an incident that didn’t cause a big scandal solely because once she got home, bloody fists and all, her parents immediately paid off both the parents of said classmate as well as the members of the press who had heard of the story. everything was kept under tight wraps but it was clear there was an issue, a problem, with the golden child. therefore, she was brought to therapy, diagnosed with anger management issues and recommended to pick up a hobby that might help her with her situation. among the provided examples was drumming, something soojin would have never been allowed previously but that soon became her favorite thing to do. 

in the end, graduating with stellar results was no issue, if one thing came relatively easy to her it was academic success. still, however, she felt empty inside. felt caged in this life she had never picked yet never really tried to fight either. that was until now, when she could finally convince her parents to let her study abroad. embellishing her arguments with how impressive it would look on her CV and how it would help both her cultural and language education, she was allowed to leave the country and therefore also her parents’ and the press’ watchful eyes. she started her bachelors in architecture at ucla, actually quite passionate about the subject but she also didn’t lose sight of another thing she felt passionate about: drumming. ever since she got to the us, she changed her name to dawn, affording herself further anonymity and has finally become her own person. style, chaotic flatshare, political views and all. together with, what would soon become her two closest friends, she created the band r.a.d. about three years ago.

for a long time they were a small underground group, playing feminist punk rock was after all not truly what would catapult you into a life of stardom, or at least that is what they thought. however, after over two years of playing a lot of dingey bars, one of their songs gained some notoriety on tik tok, becoming what you might call a feminine rage hymn. with that hit song under their belt, they were approached by several record labels. dawn never felt inclined to sign, for her life was easier this way. nobody to tell them what direction to take with their music, absolute freedom. she would simply bankroll them herself. but when revolution records approached them and considering her existence of living in between the two worlds might come with an expiry date, rad agreed to sign. it gave them a sense of financial security, while also preserving their artistic freedom. for revolution, they moved across the country where now dawn is finishing up her bachelors degree mostly online.  

headcanons.

character wise she quite controlling and reckless, which can be difficult for social interactions, especially since she is absolutely unwilling to compromise in her ideals or to admit defeat. has absolutely no issue with telling people just how wrong she thinks they are. on the other hand, she has quite the dry sense of humor, can be incredibly charming if she wishes so.

is having the time of her life ever since she joined rad, she is now dressing completely different than she used to at home.  she has also started expressing her own thoughts and opinions a lot... most would say too much.

very much a destroy the patriarchy, anti-capitalistic, eat the rich, acab kind of babe.

AH YES R.A.D. dawn is the youngest member of the band and their drummer. just like at uni, she’s known exclusively as dawn in this context bc she’s still kinda trying to avoid people back at home finding out eek (hello ms hannah montana lol) - esp since r.a.d.’s specialty is angry feminist punk rock.

studies architecture and actually rlly loves it? like she will def geek out about architecture if you give her the chance.

dawn of justice was funnily enough the name of her first horse back home, so do with that info as you will.

she has the kind of personality that makes her a natural leader even though? she is an introvert? so yeah, she does prefer her solitude most of the time but don’t expect her to keep her mouth shut in social situations.

she sleeps very very little, which only adds to her high-strung personality. most of those sleepless nights are either spent performing with the band or studying.

when speaking she does have a slight korean accent.

wanted connections (wip).

i do have this sort of fun ideak that idek what to call but basically your muse and dawn got into a loud argument outside the building and somebody took pictures or videos and posted them to twitter saying they were having a lover spat. actually, they probably don’t get along great and have been trying to vehemently deny it on their social media, both losing some not so nice words about the other but it was simply interpreted by the netizens as them lovingly teasing each other soo.... that’s where we’re at basically. 

enemies / antagonists   — basically, dawn does tend to be a rude lil dickish so she’d def have quite some people who dislike her. for example that could be somebody she made fun off bc she didn’t like their music (probably called it something like mushy fluff or whatever skdfjsdf).

former hook up   —   this was definitely just casual, especially on her part. clean, no strings attached fun. well, unless maybe it wasn’t for your muse ?!  that could be a fun option as well. open for all genders.

the rare friends   —   this is the exclusive group of people she likes to be friends with asdfahd. it just be like that but ya def hmu and give my antisocial gal some friendss. maybe somebody who she actually connected with through music, or perhaps architecture.

[everything-is-crab]

Your reblog of malewifebeater's post would have been way easier and faster if you had just said "I hate black people" instead. If you get accused of being anti-black maybe there's a reason. The fact that you typed out all those paragraphs and never once thought "hmm this might be deeply offensive and racist toward black Americans that are literally killed for existing, jailed more and for longer periods of time, etc" is WILD. And equating black Americans to white Americans as if they hold the same amount of power is unbelievably intellectually dishonest and ridiculous. And holy shit having ONE black president and ONE black female vice president equates to the hundreds of white presidents that committed horrible acts? Of course both are wrong but you're gross for acting like omg black people are on the same level as power and social standing as white Americans. Maybe black people in the United States are too busy focusing on racism in our own country where there are still sundown towns and black people being shot and killed for jogging down the street to worry about other countries and you want to act like we should be concerned about Mexico? Mexicans and every other race on this Earth HATES black people, so we're focusing on ourselves right now and trying to stay alive in a country that hates us. So instead of typing out paragraphs of racist shit telling black people they don't care about people in other countries, you might want to use your critical thinking skills first holy shit. You really should be ashamed of yourself for that racist ass reblog.

Instead of typing this whole essay that I just skimmed through because I have seen this argument a dozen times maybe you should have just said "I am American which by default makes me very ignorant to the world outside and therefore here are 10 of my ridiculous claims about the person I'm arguing with :"

No one has forced black people in the US to talk about imperialism. No one has forced any Americans to talk about imperialism (and we don't expect you to anyways).

I will never force people from any marginalized demographic to focus on the activism of any other group that isn't them. You could be a white lesbian advocating only for lesbians and I will be cool with it.

Where did I equate black Americans to white Americans in terms of power? 🤨Did I ever say it was easy for you all or that there are no obstacles in your course to attain the same power as white people? Point out where and how I implied that.

No but how did you get from "Pointing out American imperialism isn't racist" to "You must hate black people"? (Because I depicted how being black doesn't automatically exempt you from falling for imperialist misinformation and propaganda?)

"Only 1 black president and one black female president"

This is what I am talking about. You think there's been just those two? Do you think it's just been politicians as well? You might want to hear the accusations levied against Rihanna from the NGOs in my country and maybe that will allow you to learn more about how neocolonialism works. And if you think the deaths of thousands of people and ruined lives of billions is something less tragic than what white people have done then it's your problem that you don't consider it an issue big enough to be taken seriously or at least not be dismissed the way you're currently doing.

Does me talking about the deaths of third worlders and their hazardous living conditions really offend you that much that from now I am not allowed to call it "American" imperialism anymore? Because I have been accused as a racist simply for calling it American imperialism because it's racist to assume America is more imperialist than Europe (??). Which is why I made that reply because it has been a long time when even though no one even mentioned black people, simply talking about US imperialism and poc from third world countries has gotten us accusations of racism and demands to stop acting like America is the worst imperialist country when the truth is it IS the worst imperialist country and the Internet is free to enlighten you about that.

Your whole anon is full of misinterpretation and you don't even know the full context. I don't want you to talk about other countries ignoring you own issues and I am not implying you don't experience the things you listed or that you have anywhere the same privilege as white people.

My reblog wasn't made to show any of that but you have purposefully twisted what I said so you could make it seem like I hate black people because I implied living in an imperialist country and culture can affect your own views on those topics regardless of your race. I specifically mentioned in that reblog how it's not accusing all Americans to be war criminals so how could I imply you have committed the same atrocities as white people when I didn't accuse the average white American either for the same?

Insane how you're pulling Mexicans being racist to black people as an excuse to ignore the effects of US imperialism even though black people in the global south have been horribly affected by it too-

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/what-u-s-imperialism-is-up-to-in-africa-while-no-ones-watching/

https://www.leftvoice.org/u-s-military-in-africa-fuels-political-violence-across-the-continent/

Every point of criticism against Americans but specifically white Americans is accused to be racist but do you think those people on the positivity post aren't all white Americans and aren't racist? Do you think there was no racist intention behind that post that you felt the need to talk over us and defend those white Americans and then turn around and call us racist?

You didn't address any of the other points I made. When all leftists had been crying about how shitty their country is and mocking Southerners now there's suddenly pride in being American and especially Southern American?

Saying shit like how the American culture makes America "the greatest country" isn't racist or imperialist in any way when this culture is shoved down our throats all the time?

I come from a nation that has a dominant nationalist movement growing every day and they talk about their religion the same way these Americans do.

Yk damn well that post came up because people who are not American and primarily from the global south have talked about US ignorance online.

What has anti blackness got to do with that? Do you really think those white Americans had anti blackness of Mexicans in mind when they mocked Latina radfems after the latter talked about US imperialism and how the average American can choose to not contribute to it by simply not doing illegal drugs like marijuana?

Funny thing is I made an entire post (which wasn't even a response to any accusation of racism the way this was) about only Indian Americans partaking in similar behavior and ig that must make me racist against my own race now too huh?

I think you're the same anon and I think you should feel ashamed defending white people from your own country and letting them get away with their racism solely because they're American.

What made you call us racist? Because we think it's cringe to play the victim as white Americans after third worldists started speaking up for themselves?

Anyways, America has no positive cultural values. Hope that helps 👍

[kmp78]

“his lack of etiquette doesn't equate him not caring about his country…” You mean having good ethics, personal values and being free of prejudice and misogyny isn’t necessary to be a trustworthy and fair bipartisan leader and a role model for leaders of the rest of the world?. DT absolutely cares nothing about his country but what the country can do for his wallet and media ratings.

“I witnessed all the good he did….” What “good” did you see exactly? Please specify based on reality, not Trump sponsored news outlets.

…”the media lied about him cause there are dozens other things they accused him of that he didn't do.”AND DOZENS OF HORRENDOUS, ILLEGAL, FOUL or UNETHICAL THINGS HE DID DO!

“how he went against the deep state”WTF “deep state” are you referencing here ? He did nothing but make shit up and keep repeating it so ignorant fools, blatant gun-toting blowhard rednecks and the meek and unthinking followers would believe his baseless propaganda. His accusations have never been proven to be true and there was certainly no election conspiracy which has been proven over and over again. He has lied and stolen from his own country by devaluing his income and properties, cheating on and withholding his taxes. (proven fact for which he will face legal charges)

“and the big heads and exposed many many shady stuff. “ Like who would that be and specifically what “shady stuff “ did he uncover? The people he fired, and that was many, were people HE hired and surrounded himself with to do his bidding.

And of course, don’t even mention how many thousands of lives could have been saved if DT had acted swiftly and responsibly in the face of a world health crisis. Instead of causing the loss of thousands upon thousands of lives, “ Trump suppressed scientific data, delayed testing, (arrogantly) mocked and blocked mask-wearing, and convened mass (political) gatherings where social distancing was impossible. Despite the mounting threats of COVID-19 and global warming, he pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. He installed industry insiders in regulatory posts tasked with protecting Americans from environmental and occupational hazards; their regulatory rollbacks resulted in 22,000 excess deaths from such hazards in 2019 alone. He pushed through a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, creating a budget hole that he then used to justify cutting food and housing assistance for the needy. He tried, but failed, to repeal the ACA, then bent every effort to undermine it, pushing up the number of uninsured Americans by 2.3 million.”- Source: Scientific American (An apolitical long-standing well known scientific journal based on facts not propaganda and political rhetoric).

And the man cannot put together a full sentence in his native language! Smfh; but he doesn’t even know to be embarrassed. Great “presidential” material.

So Trump loving Anon, if you really do aspire to be any sort of politician, learn to gather brilliant minds to fill in what you do not know and not yes you to death, not bumbling fools and assorted ill qualified relatives to cow tow to your manipulative strategies for personal gain. Vet your news sources and advisors throughly, check your facts, learn behavioral cues to spot liars and fakes, think before you speak and make sure you surround yourselves with those successfully experienced in leading and governing, not in failed business or reality TV.

Trump used the extremely strong retard gene among the Republicans and the rest is infamous history. 💯

The level of brainwashing was not far off from what went on in Germany 100 years ago - and as we saw during the Congress debacle, the end results might have easily led to a similar outcome. 👀

[doberbutts]

Anyone who is actually genuinely interested to learn exactly how Nazis happened should absolutely read this article written by the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, which sums up exactly what I said on the post that anon is accusing me of 'defending Nazis' on.

After WWI, Germany's economy was in shambles and its people were desperate. Hitler was able to rise to power by promising a solution for their desperation, and leaned into pre-existing bigotries already held by a significant portion of the population. From there his policies became more and more extreme until effectively the entire country was radicalized [Nazis] or contained [in ghettos and camps] as were several surrounding countries.

Understanding how desperation due to social and structural problems within a country can quickly lead to radicalization, especially if pre-existing bias is present and especially especially if it's worsening, is key to understanding the progression of what happened in Europe during WWII but also of how we can recognize the signs of radicalization and how to stop it in its tracks. Point being if either the desperation or the bigotry was missing in this equation, likely it would not have happened to this extreme. Hitler was not initially popular as a politician and it was only as the country continued to fall apart that fascism started to look appealing. Hitler did not start with "mass-exterminate the Jews" because most people would have gone "okay that's a bit much".

I am not defending anyone. I am saying that you have to, you HAVE to understand how radicalization happens, because none of these people were born Nazis. They became radicalized through a very clear process that continues to radicalize people to this day. And the only way we can stop this process from happening is if we understand how and why it happens so that we can step in before it's too late again.

If you think that's "defending Nazis" I strongly urge you to go learn history from the actual accounts of what happened instead of whatever soundbites you've heard on social media.

Thank you for defending Nazis. They're just little guys. Just misunderstood, with genuine grievances. I noticed you accidentally forgot to defend child rapists. Dumb commies like you are all the same 🙄

Piss on the poor! Also I'm not a commie and never claimed to be one.

[baileymillerasu]

Politics in Social Media

This weeks topics were very eye opening and very relevant to the members of this class. Especially when talking about the intersection between social media and politics. The 2020 election showed how social media has the power to start revolutions and turn majority of the country to voting for a certain politician. Now in this election, it feels like there is a talent show going on and whoever gets the most cheers wins. After reviewing the official campaign accounts of both parties, there is a lot of making fun of or bashing on the opponent. While I understand how this is a normal thing to do in all elections, when it takes away from explaining your policies and how they will better the country, I have more of an issue with it. I think it is also interesting the amount of pressure we put on celebrities to endorse one side or the other. For example, Chappell Roan got obliterated online because she said she wouldn't endorse Kamala, but is still voting for her. Why do we equate being famous with being educated enough to speak on politics? Definitely something I try to keep in mind.