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stellastra-scribbles · 10 days ago

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Finally completed the outfit reference for Jayna Stiles, a half-elven NPC follower from Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

Outfit breakdown (or "outfit onions" as I like to call them lol~)

I really like Jayna Stiles and her backstory + goals of becoming a technological healer. I'm also a sucker for 19th-century fashion and I have an unhealthily large collection of reference books and a bunch of files saved from online museum collections (I've got about 22+ gigabytes of refs downloaded from the Library of Congress alone haha I need more hobbies).

Back on track, I really just wanted to design Jayna an outfit that suited her character more than her in-game sprites while also being practical for travel/adventuring.

More unrestrained detailed design ramblings below the cut~

Individual layers. I pulled most of her colors from her default outfit.

Since Arcanum's starting year is 1885, I usually picture the "modern" sense of fashion in big cities like Tarant and Caladon taking cues from real life 1885-1890s western fashions (to give myself some leeway with references). Smaller towns can be a bit more dated, but I try not to go back further than the 1870s in most cases.

However, for a character like Jayna, who hails from Dernholm, I gave her clothing from references dating back to the 1850-1860s. I did this because Jayna says in her recruitment dialogue that "[her] parents weren't wealthy people, and [she doesn't] make much money here in Dernholm," so I took this to mean that she likely wears clothing to last, wearing hand-me-downs, makes her own clothes, and mending it over the years rather than buying new clothes.

Given that Dernholm (+ the Kingdom of Cumbria in general) isn't in the best state when the game starts, they may be behind the times and the latest fashions take longer to reach Dernholm.

Gar: “Alas, poor Dernholm! Once home to the legendary Dragon Knights, it has fallen on hard times since Praetor became king some 60 odd years ago. He despises all technology, and I think he's recently become sour on magick as well.”

Herkemer Oggdoddler: “For two generations Cumbria languished as an economically abused and technologically impaired backwater in the shadow of Tarant. Its once fine capital, Dernholm, has become a ruin.”

Layer 1 - Chemise + Open Drawers. I deliberately drew the drawers as fairly loose so as to not expose her without having to redraw the pose or resort to "Barbie doll anatomy."

Various resources demonstrated the chemise being tucked into the drawers or worn fully untucked/loose, but I drew it as tucked-in for the sake of reference visibility, so perhaps either one works in practice.

Layer 2 - Corset + Socks/Stockings. I picked a more "contemporary" (1880s) design for the corset as I imagine it would be a more custom-fitted garment. Plus, anyone who has ever worn bras will attest that a bra that properly fits is comparable to a good pair of shoes: never cheap out on it because if you take care of it, it will take care of you. Perhaps that same logic can be applied to corsets in ye olden days and historically-inspired fantasy settings.

For Jayna, despite the simplistic design, it might be one of the few luxuries she can afford for herself given the necessity of the garment for bust support.

Layer 3 - Trousers + Shoes. I was inspired by vivandières and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, who typically wore trousers beneath their skirts. Dr. Walker was a "surgeon, women’s rights advocate, abolitionist, and spy, [and] the first female U.S. Army surgeon during the Civil War." Since Jayna is an aspiring technological healer, I feel like an allusion to Dr. Walker and her practicality was appropriate.

Layer 4 - Petticoat. It's just something to fill out the skirt volume a tad. I considered adding a corset cover in this layer but I did like having the upper outline of the corset somewhat visible in the shirtwaist layer to illustrate her living situation (aka she doesn't have one or just has a poor-quality one). As a modern-age woman, I think this this all already looks like a laundering nightmare to wash by hand.

Layer 5 - Shirtwaist + Outer Skirt. I really like the shape of the 1860s Garibaldi blouse's sleeves (I think these are bishop sleeves? correct me if I'm wrong...) and the stripes allude to some 19th century nurse uniforms. I initially went for a plaid pattern but that was a pain to draw and using a pre-existing plaid brush/pattern just didn't look as good as I wanted it to be.

Layer 6 - Sash + Pistol Holster + Bag. Given Jayna's goals of becoming a tech healer, I took design cues from vivandières, who were 19th-century women attached to military regiments, with a few known vivandières being nurses (like Anna Etheridge).

However, rather than lifting the vivandière look completely, I imagine Jayna would attempt to replicate the silhouette with her own clothes. The bag is a bit of an amalgamation of various 18th-19th century hunting/frontier bags, so I apologize that I don't have a direct reference image.

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Of course, in the end, I did take some liberties with the outfit so it's not completely historically-accurate, but that's okay since Arcanum is a fictional universe.

I guess I should've prefaced that I'm no expert on historical fashion, just a casual enthusiast who thinks "ooh old dress is pretty!"

I just wanted to see how far I could go before I had to make some concessions, such as:

Jayna's hair is short and worn loose while irl Victorian women typically had long hair and wore them up (there were documented exceptions of course). Many portraits for both female player characters and female NPCs across all in-game races show short hair and loose long hair, so let's just assume that 19th-century Arcanum has more relaxed feminine hair standards compared to the real-life 19th century western world. Also, irl 19th-century rural women did sell their hair for money, so maybe there's something to apply to the world of Arcanum with that. Or maybe the short-hair craze just hit Arcanum a few decades early *shrug*.

I initially planned to give her gloves, but many resources show vivandières not really wearing them, preferring to go barehanded.

The clothing colors may be a bit too saturated for the era I took inspiration from, but I wanted to stay somewhat faithful to Jayna's original sprite colors.

I did simplify some garments down for the sake of me having to draw enough layers as it is lol. Sorry if the lace wasn't fancy enough or that she doesn't have headwear. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sometimes you just wanna finish a project and be done with it.

hoo boy, that was a lot

Thank You For Coming to My TED Talk :)

Now go play Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura~

#stellastra's art #Arcanum #arcanum of steamworks and magick obscura #arcanum: of steamworks and magick obscura #Jayna Stiles #half elf #historical fashion #steampunk fantasy #character design #victorian fashion #19th century fashion #unashamedly tagging this bc this game doesn't get enough love #to the like 10 or so Arcanum fans here on tumblr - this is for you!

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giulolosblackmail · 3 months ago

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shout out to the most difficult thing to translate in the entire 6th anniversary event, the dress 塔兰图拉, this translates directly to 'Tarantula' which is strange because every other piece in this set references classical music or musical composition, and searching classical music on chinese websites using '塔兰图拉' is getting me nowhere

so i go back to the spider classifications, turns out, there's a legend in southern europe, primarily southern italy, that says the tarantula is a highly venomous spider and after being bit by one, you have to sweat the toxins out by dancing, the genre of fast paced folk dances and music originating from southern italy during this time later became known as tarantella, after the spider in question

the species of wolfspider in the legend is actually non venomous, but the tarantism, or dancing fever, was very real and looking back at the records we have about which people were largely afflicted, it was mostly woman in bad situations: abuse victims, bad marriages, widows, etc.

viewing this phenomena again through the lens of marginalized women seeking the catharsis of release and the social support of a community that would otherwise turn a blind eye, it makes perfect sense, we all have days where screaming and stomping around, playing music at full blast and getting comforted is the difference between handling it and having a full on public breakdown

anyways it should have been called 塔朗泰拉 (tarantella in chinese)

#helix waltz #kinda crazy how hard it is to translate the sets referencing non chinese culturally specific things just because #i'm working through three layers of obfuscation and at least two layers of cultural bias #for example the eye of horus mistranslation born of a modern chinese reinterpretation of egyption mythology #that does not exist in the english cultural consciousness

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pretentious-art-love · 1 month ago

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Alternative Versions of Frances the Mute and the Tracklist Iceberg Explained!

The Incorrect Tracklists

You know, Frances the Mute is like the bible, there are so many versions now that it is hard to tell which one is the real one. First, there is the fact that in Spotify and a lot of YouTube videos, the movements of Frances are split wrong. First the label split Cassandra in 8 parts instead of the right 5 movements.

Sometimes you will see Pour Another Icepick or Pisacis or Con Safo on Cassandra, when Cassandra has none of those movements, all those are movements of Miranda. You can notice an example of this because Con Safo is heard first at the end of Cygnus and it has its reprise on Miranda, it cannot be heard in Cassandra at all, Pour Another Icepick is the second ballad of the album, the one with the trumpets on Miranda.

If you want to know the correct order, Wikipedia has it listed as "Original track listing", or well, the supposed correct order, because there is no source regarding that section, and you can split Cassandra in several ways based on the 5 movements. The only proof we have is that the original CD tracklist with the 8 splits fit with the 5 movements if you add them up. I swear, nobody knows what the real division is, but for the sake of simplicity, let's go with Wikipedia's version for this discussion.

It goes more or less like this:

-Cygnus….Vismund Cygnus

Sarcophagi (0:44)

Umbilical Syllables (2:34)

Facilis Descensus Averni (5:26)

Con Safo (4:18)

-The Widow

The Widow (5:51)

-L'Via L'Viaquez

L'Via L'Viaquez (12:21)

-Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore

Vade Me Cum (4:17)

Pour Another Icepick (4:38)

Pisacis, Phra-Men-Ma (2:42)

Con Safo (1:32)

-Cassandra Gemini

Tarantism (0:39)

Plant a Nail in the Navel Stream (4:06)

Faminepulse (16:27)

Multiple Spouse Wounds (10:25)

Sarcophagi (0:55)

If digesting the album in each track is hard for you, perhaps contextualizing the songs in each one of its more smaller sized movements will help you understand more about which one is trying to do and pick the ones you like more easily as well as let separate your favorites from the ones you don't like. You will have to edit it yourself, though.

The missing song

But still, it doesn't end there, you see, there is a hidden title track, a track that was not released with the album.

It is said the label didn't trust them enough to make a double album, since it would make it more expensive, really, so the title track got cut (don't ask Omar, he said it was cut due to an artistic decision, and I bet he would never able to accept he had to give in to the requirements of the label), so it was later released as a single.

The title track has movements as well and they go as it goes ahead.

-Frances the Mute

In Thirteen Seconds (7:22)

Nineteen Sank, While Six Could Swim (3:34)

Five Would Grow and One Was Dead (3:40)

Normally, people add this track to the beginning since the last movements has the riffs of Sarcophagi on repeat, connecting it with Cygnus. Some people like to put it at the end after Multiple Spouse Wounds and then add the Sarcophagi reprise of Cassandra afterwards to keep Cygnus intact as the opener.

My favorite version is keeping the title track as the opener. For the people who say Cygnus is the ultimate opener, maybe it will kick you into action faster, but with the title track, the whole album becomes symmetrical. Consider it a double album, one disc has 9 songs with 45 minutes of music, and the other has 10 songs with 48 minutes of music. So everything is around the same length.

-Frances the Mute

In Thirteen Seconds (7:22)

Nineteen Sank, While Six Could Swim (3:34)

Five Would Grow and One Was Dead (3:40)

-Cygnus….Vismund Cygnus

Sarcophagi (0:44)

Umbilical Syllables (2:34)

Facilis Descensus Averni (5:26)

Con Safo (4:18)

-The Widow

The Widow (5:51)

-L'Via L'Viaquez

L'Via L'Viaquez (12:21)

Second Disc

-Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore

Vade Me Cum (4:17)

Pour Another Icepick (4:38)

Pisacis, Phra-Men-Ma (2:42)

Con Safo (1:32)

-Cassandra Gemini

Tarantism (0:39)

Plant a Nail in the Navel Stream (4:06)

Faminepulse (16:27)

Multiple Spouse Wounds (10:25)

Sarcophagi (0:55)

Even more, miranda works as a brand new introduction to the second disc just as the first movement of the title track does, one is industrial drone, other is dark ambient, both are non music type of tracks that give a creepy aura to each one of the sides of the album.

Overall, whatever version you make as long you have the title track, Frances the Mute becomes the double album it was originally intended to be…. or does it?

The restored ending

It doesn't end there. Because, you see, in my opinion, cutting the title track messed up not just the flow of the beginning of the album but also the coda of Cassandra. Some people think Cygnus is the ultimate opener, and true, it kicks and gets you into action right away, as it stands, it is stronger than the title track, but I would argue it doesn't give you the best idea of what the album is going to be, because there are interludes and ambient passages, with Frances as the first track the listener is forced to open up to weird sounds from the first second, and then get a reward after that for their patience in exploring the most abstract moments of the record, besides, there is a very crucial detail that changed everything and the reason I think the album in its released state is not the best experience.

First, the album goes in a time loop, right? It starts with Sarcophagi and it ends with Sarcophagi, right? It is a reprise of the beginning that ties everything together. And it sounds kinda neat at first… but the thing is that the transition from Multiple Spouse Wounds to Sarcophagi is super jarring and completely abrupt. And not just that, it doesn't let Cassandra properly explode, it is as if you ended the song in its bridge rather than the last final chorus reprise. All of these years I have known Frances the Mute I never quite got Cassandra Gemini ending and I considered Frances the Mute not my favorite because the pay off for half of the album, Cassandra, it is absolutely chopped off. Personally, I hate it, I hate how it ends, it just ruins the build up.

Let's go back a bit, we said that the album references the first song of the album at the beginning, right? Sarcophagi, from Cygnus, but wait, that is all wrong, the first song of the album is not Sarcophagi, or Cygnus in general, it is the Frances the Mute title track, right? So the reprise should not be Sarcophagi, but of the title track! See? It's all a conspiracy!!

Try this out, split Cassandra into its right movements, but instead of adding Sarcophagi at the end, add the last movement of the title track Frances the Mute, around the 11:11 mark, or 1:15 if you did split it. Since we do not have the stems, you will have to sync the final scream of Cedric with the drop of the title track, the way the guitar goes from major notes to minor notes will give a tape slowing down effect and the album will go back full circle from Cassandra to the climax of the first track, Frances the Mute, doing the time loop and connecting the whole album altogether exactly when Cedric sings "THIS NEVER HAPPENED".

It gets better though, you might be a bit sad having Sarcophagi reprise getting cut, right? But the truth is that it is not getting cut, at least not entirely. Since Frances the Mute was released as a single, the final 2 minutes where it sounds as if Sarcophagi repeats on the radio are left in there, but you could leave them at the end of Cassandra instead, the spooky sounds and electronics help match the ending of the album and the repeating riffs of Sarcophagi will end up referring Cygnus at the end, even if Cedric is not there. For a better transition, you could cut those last 2 minutes from the first time the title track sounds, and just fade out into Sarcophagi from Cygnus, around 12:21 if you have the full track, or 1:22 if you did split it into its third movement like I told you.

It might not sound perfect because that part has the electronics already added, and you know, we have no stems, but it will let you transition more smoothly into Cygnus/Sarcophagi as well leaving the Sarcophagi reprise for the end of the album, when everything has ended.

Isn't it oddly fitting the album loops back to the moment we are told this never happened? As if the whole record had been an illusion we just woke up from?....

As far as it goes, and with the edits I made, this is the final track list I got.

-Frances the Mute

In Thirteen Seconds (7:22)

Nineteen Sank, While Six Could Swim (3:34)

Five Would Grow and One Was Dead (1:31)

-Cygnus….Vismund Cygnus

Sarcophagi (0:44)

Umbilical Syllables (2:34)

Facilis Descensus Averni (5:26)

Con Safo (4:18)

-The Widow

The Widow (5:51)

-L'Via L'Viaquez

L'Via L'Viaquez (12:21)

-Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore

Vade Me Cum (4:17)

Pour Another Icepick (4:38)

Pisacis, Phra-Men-Ma (2:42)

Con Safo (1:32)

-Cassandra Gemini

Tarantism (0:39)

Plant a Nail in the Navel Stream (4:06)

Faminepulse (16:27)

Multiple Spouse Wounds (10:25)

Five Would Grow and One Was Dead (3:21)

Some people might have gotten used to Sarcophagi as a coda, some people, like myself, never did, so if you are one of those, I recommend you to give this track-list edit a try. In my humble experience I can't believe how better this makes the album is, it is like from earth to heaven levels of difference. It just not makes the pay off for the whole Cassandra pay off well, but also connect the album in a cohesive and dramatic, grandiose way. See? Haha! I am not crazy, you are the one that is crazy! Haha! Ha!

Oh and the mirror thing I don't really know, it is in some versions and not in others, oh well. Maybe they thought it looked dumb (it does).

#omar rodriguez lopez #experimental music #album review #cedric bixler zavala #the mars volta #progressive rock #prog rock #post hardcore #2005 #rabbit hole #frances the mute #double album #mystery #conspiracy theories

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coven-of-genesis · 2 years ago

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Italian traditional folk magick

There is a rich history of traditional magic in Italy, some of which dates back centuries.

Here are a few examples:

The Evil Eye: The belief in the evil eye, or "malocchio," is prevalent in Italian culture. It is said to be caused by someone looking at you with envy or ill will, and can bring about bad luck or misfortune. To protect oneself from the evil eye, some Italians wear red coral jewelry or carry a small horn-shaped charm known as a "cornicello."

Tarantism: Tarantism is a traditional healing ritual that originated in Southern Italy. It involves music, dance, and the use of tarantula venom to cure people who have been bitten by the spider or who are suffering from a variety of ailments. The dance is said to release the toxic energy from the body and restore balance.

Stregoneria: Stregoneria is a form of Italian witchcraft that has been practiced for centuries. It involves the use of spells, charms, and divination to influence the natural world and bring about desired outcomes. Stregoneria practitioners are said to have a deep connection with the earth and the spirits that inhabit it.

La Befana: La Befana is a traditional Italian figure who brings gifts to children on the night of Epiphany (January 6th). She is often depicted as an old woman riding a broomstick and carrying a sack of toys. Legend has it that she visited the baby Jesus on his birth and has been giving gifts to children ever since.

Cimaruta: The cimaruta is a traditional Italian charm that is said to provide protection against evil forces. It is shaped like a sprig of rue, a plant that has long been associated with protection and purification. The charm often features symbols of the moon, stars, and other celestial bodies, as well as images of animals and other nature spirits.

#italian folk magick #italian magick #italian witchcraft #italian magic #witchblr #witchcore #witchcraft #witchlife #white witch #beginner witch #witch tips #grimoire #book of shadows #spirituality

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