#Jewish papercutting

[koenji]

Yehudit Shadur (Israeli, 1928 - 2011), Deft Hands That Devise Skillful Works, Papercut, 40 × 33 in.

Exodus 35:35

They have been given the wisdom of heart to work all manner of crafts, of the designer and the weaver and the embroiderers in colors, in blue, in purple, in scarlet, and in fine twined linen, even of them of deft hands that do any workmanship and of those that devise skillful works

In an effort to gather works of beauty for the Tabernacle, the artisans, such as Bezalel, that G-d had endowed with “divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge of craft” were summoned to contribute their crafts in the presence of the Lord, as Moses had commanded.

This mural papercut was made for the former Fiber Art Center in Amherst, MA as a way to honor all manner of crafts. x

[emmarandallartist]

It reads "Judaism is more than Zionism"

Papercut, 9 x 12, 2024

by Emma Randall

[writer-at-the-table]

HukkatArtist/Maker:Sheila WeinbergPlace Made:Michigan, United StatesDate:1984Medium:Cut-out paper. The Hebrew inscription reads: "And bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at evening" (Numbers 19:19)

[mintytrifecta]

Hello! I saw you commented on the Jewish academia post. My friend is really interested in reading about this; do you have any book recommendations?

Ooooh yee!! These are some of the books I've got :] I haven't read through all of them fully but I'd still recommend them either way.

Your Guide To The Jewish Holidays is exactly what it sounds like fndjjdjdkd it's a good reference point for which holidays celebrate what and why and how. It's very fun and lighthearted when the holiday calls for it and is just a really good place to go to for holidays specifically. I mean just look at this page on purim

Sjjdjdjejejei

Next up is A Guide To The Jewish Seasons!! Which is also pretty much what it sounds like!!!

Though it's more thorough then the previous one, this one does go through all the holidays and explains the mitzvah (good deed that you're commanded to perform, there's usually multiple) for the holiday and some of the history with it!! It also explains the structure of the Jewish calendar and full yearly cycle as it's very much different from the gregorian calendar (if that wasn't clear from us being in the five thousands instead of two thousands fjdjdkkdke)

Next up Is Where Pride Dwells

This one's a little different. It's a book of Jewish prayers either newly written or rewritten for queer Jewish folks to use. It's also just a very LGBT Jewish book with study on how being queer affects you in Jewish culture and some of the ways to rework it to include us.

Just to give you an idea of what that book has cndjskks.

These are just the ones I've got with me atm but there's a ton more books strewn around near me with these topics fndjjdjdkd honestly aside from this I'd recommend reading about different sects of Judaism (ie orthodox, secular, reform, humanistic etc) to get a good idea of the different perspectives there are to be found :] for fun as well I'd say dip your toes in some Jewish folklore!! Learn about the Golem specifically because I love the golem and it deserves the world (pspsps watch jacob gellers video "the golem and the Jewish superhero" on youtube go do it) and for some art history visit the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art!! Jewish people are Everywhere and we have so many varies styles and subcultures and there's no way I alone would be able to show you everything, but hopefully this'll give you some sort of idea of where you can start :]

If you want me to expand on a certain topic do let me know!! I'd never pass up a chance to talk lolll

[freakpit]

very funny to see what my dad’s genetics brought to the playing field considering how my sister and i look next to all our blue eyed, button nosed & blonde maternal cousins

[kittynugg]

stan and ford highELEMENTARY school thoughts (highschool edition)

-They were raised Jewish so I think it'd be funny if they went around telling kids Santa wasn't real not knowing the childhoods they ruined.

-Actually stole pies from windowsills. Their favorite target was their teacher Ms. Crampelter, she always made the best pies.

-So idk if you've read Lost Legends whomever is looking at this post but they do have a cat. This cat didn't have a name, they just called him whatever felt right in the moment. (Usually "Kitty", but Stan always tried to make Ford laugh by giving him the most absurd name he could think of at the moment. My favorite example is "Beef Stroganoff".)

-Stan literally ate dirt. He drew the line at sand, though. He's not a fucking animal.

-Ford took the top bunk of their bunk bed, not just because Stan's afraid of heights but because he was afraid of the dark and liked having the vantage point. This wasn't usually necessary since Stan stayed up until he fell asleep to ensure his safety.

-^ Adding onto this one, the thought of Stan and Ford snuggling together whenever they were scared at night makes my heart fucking melt. So I'm saying they do. Yes I said "do" they still do. (platonically, don't fucking tag this as ship.)

-Stan swore, nothing crazy but "What the Hell!?" or "Crap!" were fairly common phrases for him.

-Ford wasn't really considered a "freak" until he tried to hold hands with Cathy Crenshaw (school crush according to the journal but fuck you he's aroace I thought I had crushes in school and I'm aroace so silence) and freaked her out with his extra finger. He never really understood why everyone around him changed until he was faced with the cruelness of reality this poor baby.

-Stan's first instinct when he got a cut was to lick it. Ford always thought it was gross but if he burns his finger or gets a papercut he has to consciously fight the urge to stick it in his mouth.

-Ford loved vegetables, he'd always eat them first at dinner and go back for seconds before he even touched the actual food. It got to a point where they stopped letting them have any until he finished the main part of the meal.

-When it snowed, Stan and Ford would either immediately go out to play in it or watch it out the window in Stan's bunk together if they couldn't go outside.

[arthistoryanimalia]

Happy 1st night of #Hanukkah for those who celebrate! 🕎

Here is an equisite paper-cut mizrah featuring a menagerie of wild, domestic, and mythical animals:

Mizrah

Israel Dov Rosenbaum

1877 (date of inscription)

Podkamen (Pidkamin, Ukraine)

Paint, ink, graphite on cut-out paper

30 1/2 × 21 in. (77.5 × 53.3 cm)

The Jewish Museum, NYC, USA

“Included here are lions, deer, eagles, and what appears to be a pair of small leopards atop the dome of the central building. These four animals usually appear in Jewish papercuts to illustrate the saying "Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion, to do the will of your Father who is in Heaven" (Ethics of the Fathers 5:23). The doubled-headed eagle is often interpreted as a political symbol associated with the Russian Empire.”

[A number of other wild, domestic, and mythical animals can be found througout the composition, including various birds, deer, squirrel, unicorn, leviathan, etc]

[bobemajses]

Jewish amulet against Lilith from Eastern Europe, 19th century

The amulet was made in the traditional Ashkenazi papercut form and would be hung by the bed of the child or in the room where the mother would give birth. The animals on it are meant to symbolize the "ideal" human qualities, the three words on the bottom are the names of the three angles who captured and killed Lilith. According to ancient Jewish mythology, Lilith—known as the first wife of the first man, Adam—fled from her husband, and when she refused to return to him, 100 of her children died. Consequently, she seeks to steal the children of others. In Ashkenazi folklore, Lilith wanders at night in search for babies and their mothers, and especially during the first 8 days after the birth of a son, or 20 days following the birth of a daughter. Often the fear was that Lilith would snatch the newborn, leaving a straw doll in its place.

[mxescargot]

Chinastuck: the beta kids

tl;dr for the uninitiated: what if all homestuck characters were chinese people

John Egbert: 光勇 (Guang Yong). Lives in Beijing (im sorry /j). Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry.

egbert means "bright edge" and guang means "bright" and also sounds a little like john even if its the surname. john means god is gracious, which is not really a type of name chinese people give their kids so i just went with a common masculine name that sounds good with guang: yong, which means "brave" which i thought was fitting. i think dad egbert definitely calls them by the diminutive yongyong.

June Egbert might choose the name 小玉 (Xiaoyu), meaning "little jade", in reference to her sister.

Rose Lalonde: 刘秀兰 (Liu Xiulan). Lives somewhere in Jiangsu, probably Shanghai. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry.

i literally just went with a random common surname that vaguely sounded like lalonde here. xiulan means elegant orchid, so it's a flower name like rose and i think it fits her vibes. she shares the character xiu with roxy's name, tianxiu.

transmasc rose probably steals his name from a book character.

rose is very similar to canon i think, except she lives in a penthouse in central shanghai. i want to say initially she feels her heritage doesn't matter to her but later in life she tries to reconnect with not being "100% han".

Dave Strider: 赵大伟 (Zhao Dawei). Lives in Chongqing. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry (same as Rose).

zhao has a similar meaning to strider and was also a surname of the emperors so it has a connection to royalty. this works for both the lotr reference and king david. dawei is... a generic chinese boys name thats the name you give your kid if you want their english name to be david. it means "extraordinary".

david means "beloved" and every single chinese name like that is feminine. Dove Strider takes this as inspiration for the name Xinyan, spelled either 心燕 meaning "beloved swallow" or 心焱 meaning "beloved flame" instead of the more conventional 心妍 meaning "beloved beauty".

dave struggles with their cultural heritage more actively than rose does, and thus leans hard into their sichuanese identity. i headcanon them as making fun of chengdu (chongqing's rival in representing the cultural center of sichuan) in addition to making fun of northern chinese culture. SICHUAN RAHH

Jade Harley: 林玉平 (Lin Yuping). Lives in rural Shaanxi. Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry (same as John).

lin has similar meaning to both harley and halley, meaning grove/forest. yuping means "peaceful jade".

Jude Harley might choose the name 洋 (Yang), meaning "ocean" in the sense of expansive, or he might not feel a need to change his name. swapping names with his sibling is also a possibility.

i think her upbringing just translates to the rural northwest well? also i think its kinda cool she'd grow up near a section of the great wall of china. i could see her engaging in cultural traditions like papercutting and folk singing :> also buddhist jade real and true im not projecting trust

thanks for coming to my ted talk be on the lookout for more posts like this ft me struggling with traditional characters and cantonese pronunciations

EDIT: @ask-chinastuck exists :)

[bambi-kinos]

Thank you for your refreshingly honest comments about Yoko Ono. I find people’s sycophancy towards her and refusal to examine her behaviour a bit sickening, to be honest. There’s clearly an unspoken rule that Yoko is off limits, which is very strange, given that no other person or subject is. Anyway, what I would like to ask you is this: to what extent, if any, do you think Yoko was herself a victim? Did she simply find herself surrounded by bad people who manipulated her (the Sams, John Green, Fred Seaman, etc), or did she seek those people out to do her bidding? From what we know of the plan she made at the start with Tony and the fact that Dan Richter (a very unsettling character in the whole sordid tale) was an old friend who she brought in as part of that plan, I think the latter. But most people on here think she’s great and that she couldn’t help being mentally ill, so hey, maybe it’s just me and my cynicism that says she’s every bit as wicked as her ex-employees claim. What do you think?

When it comes to how Yoko is treated, there's genuinely a lot of nasty history there so fans on tumblr try to tread carefully. It's not an exaggeration that Yoko faced a lot of horrible racism when she was with John and there were even moments when John had to shield her from physical harm. And she was a lightning rod of criticism for lots of other reasons. Once John died she was essentially put in the role of "grieving widow" and boy howdy she milked that forever but it also meant that people were suddenly less willing to criticize her because they didn't want to add to her troubles.

Not to mention John and Yoko worked very hard to network with up and comers once they realized old hands like Ray Connelly wasn't going to play ball with them since they were too experienced. They created a lot of journalistic careers by making the right friends in the 1970s. Many media personalities feel indebted to them and would happily throw themselves in front of a car if Mommy Yoko and Daddy John don't suffer even a whiff of a papercut. When you read Eliot Mintz's book you realize that John and Yoko very deliberately targeted emotionally vulnerable people with empty lives and no strong parental figures so that they could become a quasi-family to them. That's what happened to poor Mintz, John would scream racial slurs at him (because Mintz is Jewish) and Mintz would just kind of. Stand there and take it while John screeched and squalled trying to pretend he was still a bigshot and not a drunkard in his 30s abusing his personal assistant. So much of the public bubble you've noticed is a result of John and Yoko's recruiting tactics. Celebrities usually get a level of protection but John and Yoko cynically courted and elevated the right people to wrap themselves in adamantium.

Fans try too hard to handle her lightly as a result of all the heat she took after marrying John, especially since a bit more is now known about her life and how she grew up and how her dad didn't treat her very well. I also think that there's an element of disbelief, like Yoko's crimes are insane and outlandish, no one wants to believe that they are true. And I know from personal experience that if you try to bring outlandish but true things to someone's attention about their favorite celebrity, you immediately get screaming and hysterics. Cult think is strong.

I don't think Beatle fans on tumblr necessarily buy in to excuses about mental illness and trauma but I do think that they're scared of being criticized or being accused of racism if they're too hard on Yoko. Tumblr users are uniquely vulnerable to that sort of thing because of this website's history and demographics so they take the easy route. I don't really blame them tbh, you never know when something is going to blow up in your face and who wants to court that trouble? There's no benefit to talking about Yoko's problems and abuse of John and Sean in depth since most people are just here for the fanart.

But to move on to your question: I think Yoko was an experienced con artist and manipulator with a genuine artistic vision but I also think she got in way over her head. Yoko's thing appears to have been that she and Tony would scam John with art pieces and that's why they did insane shit like making a contract to split the earnings they got from John 50/50. Get him to buy some plastic crap (that was quite literally all the rage in the 60s "zomg plastic!!!!") and then take the money and run. But I think Yoko sensed early that John was an easy mark and that he was someone she could pump and dump. I think that Yoko started seeing dollar signs and pursued John to get a bigger and bigger payday, she was chasing that dragon.

When it comes to the people Yoko was surrounded by, it's another case of her walking in with her eyes wide open but not realizing how completely in over her head she was. She very deliberately surrounded herself with con artists just like her because she thought it would be easier to control John and fortify her power over him. There were outliers like John Green/Charlie Swan where she believed his bullshit (the man is a masterful con artist) but she was convinced that she was much smarter and savvier than she really was and that she would see through any scams. She was blinded by her pride and never realized just how many rides she was taken for. Like IIRC Charlie Swan helped someone fence a fake painting to her that she paid millions for lol. They realized that she was an easy mark specifically because of her conviction that she was a worldly and experience player. Reader, she is not.

You can see this mindset during her life with John, they were hiring people off the street to work for them and never noticed they were being robbed blind. Like she and John were hoarders to the Nth degree, they bought all those extra condos in the Dakota specifically so that had storage units for all the useless shit they bought. Hundreds maybe thousands of shirts, pants, dresses, coats, scarves, jewelry, never worn and never catalogued, never looked after. Paintings and ancient artifacts stolen from Egypt on the black market, Yoko may have purchased as many as two different Egyptian mummies. Those people that they brought in from the street learned quickly that they could steal whatever they wanted and John and Yoko would never notice. A few of them were caught but there was one case where someone lifted 5 Hermès scarves from Yoko and she didn't notice for over a month and then dragged her heels on filing the police report. Because the Hermès scarves were not actually important since she had dozens of them in the storage apartments. I imagine the staff that stayed on learned quickly that they could steal freely so long as they were smart about it. God knows that's what I would do lmao.

But the point is that Yoko knowingly took in people who were willing to steal from her because she thought she could outsmart or control them, she had no idea how to defend against complicated tactics like "I'll put this in my bag and walk out with it at the end of my shift." I have the feeling John took the theft a lot more seriously than she did. Not that he was willing to do his bit and look after their collection of high end junk, I can't imagine what all their expensive clothes looked like after 10 years in that storage unit since neither of them protected them from pests.

Yoko willingly took these people on and invited them into her home. She and John thought they could use the likes of Charlie Swan and Fred Seaman and the Sams the same way they used journalists like Jann Wenner. What John and Yoko did not realize is that journalism is Hollywood for ugly people, that journalists are uniquely deficient in character or backbone and that journalists are always on the look out for a new Daddy and Mommy to pat them on the head and say "good job son!" Journalists and Hollywood actors are the same, they have holes in their chests were Mom's love and Dad's pride should be.

The problem for Yoko is that the scam artists she hired were extremely skilled, experienced, and ice cold. I love Charlie Swan's book Dakota Days and I believe every word of it (I can repost my review of it if you like) but especially because he coldly shows how childish and self absorbed John and Yoko really were. While they were faffing around doing rich people shit like flying around to random cities based on one guy's bespoke numerology, Charlie Swan grew up having to work for a living before getting into the astrology business. He knew what it was like to work difficult jobs for little money and even attended university and earned a degree in a time before universities became diploma mills. He was savvy and educated and lived an entire life before meeting John and Yoko, got spiritual fulfillment and assurance from his magickal practice. Charlie Swan did not have a hole in his chest where Mom's love and Dad's pride should be. Which meant he simply could not be manipulated the way a journalist can be manipulated. And Yoko Ono could not comprehend this and could do nothing about it. Nothing she said or did had any power over Charlie. She couldn't do anything to him and he frequently scammed her out of millions all while laughing up his sleeve. She thought she could control him but the truth is he had her completely under his thumb. Kind of amazing actually.

The thing that has always baffled me about Yoko is how easy it is to kick her around and stand up to her. John Lennon too as a matter of fact, I don't understand this handwringing and moaning and fear around his "great wit." I grew up on 4chan, I know people who could turn John inside out with a well placed photoshop. It's genuinely baffling to me that Yoko and John were not savagely and relentlessly bullied. They should have been. It lead John and Yoko to develop inflated egos where they thought they were genuinely intimidating. They never realized how pathetic and easily taken in they were because everyone else found it more useful and lucrative to scam them. It's fascinating that Yoko willingly brought these people into her life with John and never once realized that there was a problem.

[leahbasavraham]

Mizrah by Israel Dov Rosenbaum 1877

Despite the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the dispersion of most Jews, the Land of Israel has remained a primary focus of Jewish identity. A commonly felt, deeply rooted bond to the Land of Israel and the hope of all Jews to return eventually to it have been important unifying factors. One expression of this intense bond is found in the practice of facing toward Jerusalem during prayer. For Jews in the West, this direction is east, and the custom developed of placing a decorative plaque on the eastern walls of homes and synagogues to indicate the direction of worship. Such a sign came to be known as a mizrah, Hebrew for "east." Mizrah is also an acronym composed of the initial letters for the Hebrew phrase "from this side the spirit of life." This inscription appears in the four corners of the central panel of this papercut, indicating that it functions as a mizrah.

In Eastern Europe, mizrah plaques were often made out of cut paper, resembling the carved wood Torah arks of Polish synagogues in the intricacy of their design. As is common in many other extant examples, the composition in this papercut is symmetrical, designed on one half of a sheet of paper, folded vertically, and cut out through both halves, thus creating a mirror image revealed upon unfolding the sheet. Papercuts were usually mounted on a plain or colored paper background to provide a contrasting effect, as seen here. Although architectural features such as columns and arcades often balance the composition of papercuts, the use of an imposing building as the central element, as seen in this example, is rare. Whether the building was based on an existing or imaginary one, Israel Dov Rosenbaum, the creator of this extraordinary papercut, made sure to include a clock at its dome, possibly a hint at his profession as clockmaker to the local count in the small town of Podkamen, Ukraine. A Jewish community existed in Podkamen at least since the seventeenth century, and by the late nineteenth century, the town was home to more than a thousand Jews.

The elaborate design and the repeated use of thin connecting lines make this mizrah an exquisite example of its kind. The creatures, both mythical and real, as well as the vegetal motifs and horror vacuii of this composition, are typical of Eastern European art. Included here are lions, deer, eagles, and what appears to be a pair of small leopards atop the dome of the central building. These four animals usually appear in Jewish papercuts to illustrate the saying "Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion, to do the will of your Father who is in Heaven" (Ethics of the Fathers 5:23). The doubled-headed eagle is often interpreted as a political symbol associated with the Russian Empire. Several Eastern European artifacts in The Jewish Museum collection feature the double-headed eagle, including Torah shields and Hanukkah lamp; as well as a mold for pastries baked for the holiday of Purim.

Among the mythical beasts featured in this papercut are the leviathan (portrayed as a curled fish) and the wild ox-the legendary food of the righteous in the world to come (Leviticus Rabbah 13:3, 22:10)-depicted in the lower register, and the unicorn, seen in the outer frame. The interiors of wooden synagogues were often filled with elaborate animal and plant designs, many having symbolic meaning. Animals are also found in carved Jewish tombstones in Eastern Europe. Likely more portable or readily available sources were printed books such as Hebrew primers featuring a depiction of an animal for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet or illustrated copies of the Meshal ha-Kadmoni, a collection of animal fables written in 1281 by the Spanish Hebrew author Isaac ibn Sahula. First printed in Brescia, about 1491, the work soon gained popularity and was reprinted many times, including nine known Yiddish editions. Many of the extant copies are embellished with illustrations, mostly portraying the disputing animals, who "converse" in biblical Hebrew and are all well versed in Jewish learning: the rooster is a Bible scholar, and the deer an expert in the Talmud. Two pairs of roosters appear on the upper margin of the mizrah, flanked by a pair of birds. In one of the illustrations for the Meshal ha-Kadmoni, the rooster and a similar quail-like bird (though referred to as a hawk) are paired in "conversation."

[koenji]

Yehudit Shadur (יהודית שדור, Israeli, 1928 - 2011), Jewish paper cut Mizrah / מזרח. Colored cut paper over a painted background. x

[emmarandallartist]

[goldheartedsky]

Ceremonial

Papercut art is one of my favorite forms of traditional Jewish art and there's nothing that comes close to the magic of a papercut Ketubah, so that was what I drew inspiration from for @theartguard's bimonthly theme: Ceremonies and Rituals

I put a LOT of little details in this and their meanings are listed under the cut:

Dandelions: symbolizes strength and resilience. Hard to kill. Very fitting for these two immortals

'I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine': very famous quote from Song of Songs and commonly seen in regards to Jewish weddings

Horseshoes: seen as a lucky symbol in many cultures. When hung upright, the horseshoe is supposed to "catch" good luck.

Books: seen as a collection of knowledge throughout the world and I thought about how much Andy has learned in her centuries (and fitting for Booker's name, obvs)

Poppies: symbolizes peace and death. Also native to Eurasia

Lavender wreath: symbolizes unending devotion. Also native to Provence, France

Pair of Shrikes: commonly known as "butcher birds", shrikes impale their prey on thorns and spikes

Magnolia boutonniere: Magnolia flowers are some of the oldest flowers in the world, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. Also symbolizes nobility

Tallit: a tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl and many Jewish weddings involve the groom taking the bride under his tallit or wrapping it around her as well

Scythian flower motif: commonly seen in Scythian art and jewelry

Scythian deer: based on a tattoo found on an ancient Scythian woman. The Scythians believed that, though the deer was an earthly animal, it stood apart from the other animals with its symbolic ability to both fly and guide the dead to the underworld

Ginkgo tree: ginkgo trees are able to live for thousands of years and, because of its longevity, have long since been a symbol of hope and resiliance.

[jesncin]

I love your jl works! Particularly your take on Superman and Lois. It is pretty much exactly what I want from a modern superman story!! And I love that you make Clark explicitly jewish. Do you have any thoughts on what it was like for Clark to grow up Jewish in a small town in Kansas? (I think Kansas is part of the Bible belt? And small towns usually have less Jews)

Aaw thank you so much!! :> making the Superman story I want to see in the world!

I'm back and forth currently about how tolerant/accepting Smallville would be to Jewish Kents. Since I like the idea of the Kents being beloved townspeople and Clark having a largely idyllic childhood (occasional personal alien immigrant angst sure, but generally I like him having a happy childhood compared to, say, Bats). I'll probably go for something down the middle, where Smallville is generally tolerant but the Kents go through microaggressions every now and then.

One hc I have is that Clark gets into Jewish papercut after meeting with Jimmy in college (they did a group project together and were tight friends since).

[pumpkinsy0]

OMG HI!!! I’ve been reading ur blog for the past hour and I’m absolutely thrilled to see it lol. I’ve always been a big papercut shipper and seeing other people ship them is a dream come true for my 13 year old self. I wanted to dump some of my headcanons for the outsiders/S.E Hinton Verse mostly because it’s so rare to find people who also like it

I personally see most of the greasers as white. Mostly because of what type of greaser culture the book describes, it’s leant towards white kids back then in the 60s rather than kids of color. But I’ve never seen the Shepards as white. It’s just never something I’ve seen. I grew on a block where everyone raised eachothers kids, as we grew older we joked we were one big mixed family. Ive always see the shepards as that Mexican-American family that I spent my after schools with while my parents were busy.  But that could totally be me projecting Idk

for Johnny I’ve always pictured him as mixed. Probably African American-Italian. He’s described with features that look like people of that heritage look and in my opinion it’s probably one of the main reasons he was targeted. 

For Two-bit I’ve always seen him as a super pasty, always sun-burnt white boy who is super into his European heritage. Like this man can’t deal with school but he’ll do deep dives on Scottish mythology and Vikings any day of the week.

Steve definitely has always looked like he does in the movie to me. He’s definitely a hillbilly, I have cousins who act exactly like him and it’s absolutely hilarious because the deep southern accent just makes them not understandable. I’ve personally viewed Steve having that deep accent and also having a lisp (wowza I’m just projecting on him lol) so no one understands him besides from Soda and the older women who come to the DX.

I’ve always viewed Dally as Italian also but he is the type that can not tan to save his life. His nearly white blonde hair is not just from the bleach he puts on it but from running around in the sun all day every day. There is this one artist that draws him like a gremlin that I love I’m pretty sure their @ is something among the lines of crow1121? I can’t find rn and it’s killing me lol. But the other artist is @/ nutsackx and I absolutely love their interpretation of the gang 

Honestly with the Curtis’s I love ur interpretation of them being Arab-American but my little projecting heart (wow I do that a lot) always have viewed them as a German-Jewish and Romani as that’s what my family is and they lived very similar lives back in the 60s. It’s a small little head cannon I’ve always had and I’ve always held onto for the Curtis family. I can’t ever view them as non-immigrants tho. 

Sorry this is so long sweetie. I just got super caught up in rambling and your blog really inspired me 🫶

HELLLOOOOO!!! glad u found this blog!!! we r all here for funsies and just doing whatever, glad to have u onboard<333

OKOK NOW LOOK☝🏽☝🏽i knooowwww SE Hinton wrote the outsiders w everyone but johnny being white in mind, but honestly i think what makes me change them some of em into poc instead is just bc i want to and its fun to me!!!! tbh, i like having different ideas on characters than others, plus part of it is just inspired by the ppl around me!!! at the very least tho, i do tryyyyyy to make it more historically accurate so its not like i just SHOVED them in there and i dont get 100% attacked by the “this isnt historically accurate grrrr” brigade, for example my haitian shepards, at the end of the day its mostly a self projection but i do have lore for them as to y theyre even in oklahoma, yknow??? doing things like that is fun to me!!!

WHEN IT COMES TO THE SHEPARDS, i will say, whenever i would see white shepards im like “oh i thought we all saw that they were poc guys</333” EVEN W THE MOVIE i was surprised tim wasnt a poc but whateverrrr we move onnnnn

BUT I DO LIKE UR ETHNICITY IDEAS!!!!, once again ANOTHER version of the characters put into my little multiverse right there w arab curtis family<3333

personally i hc dally to b italian, but considering the demographics of brooklyn back then, yea it is 100% possible he couldve been italian, and w johnny to me hes mexican/bengali, so i think its pretty cool that u see them as both being italian, im def rockin w it, it gives them something they can connect over a bit!!

and im happy to say we both see the curtis’ as being jewish, to me theyre ethnically jewish, i based the curtis’ off my gf im ngl

BUT ANYWAYS NO WORRIES!!! i love answering long asks and so happy my blog inspired u to share ur thoughts<333