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fancoloredglasses · 2 months ago

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[RERUN] Crisis on Infinite Earths (The Second DC Reboot), introduction

[All images are owned by DC Comics. Please don’t sue me]

(Except the image above and unless otherwise stated, all images are courtesy of DC Database)

I’ve mentioned Crisis quite a few times when discussing the various media based on characters created/acquired by National Publications (which became DC Comics in the 70s), but haven’t really gone in-depth as to what it is. That’s because…it’s complicated.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was to comics in the 80s what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is to movies: a massive undertaking that redefined what creative teams could do with the media if the stars aligned (and subsequent attempts showed what would happen if they didn’t)

First, a bit of history, dating back to the 50s. While Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were still in publication after World War II, the rest of the heroes of the “Golden Age” faded into obscurity as people stopped caring about them after the war. In 1956, National decided to “test the waters” by bringing back the Flash…

…but updated for “modern” times (forensic scientist Barry Allen instead of college student Jay Garrick) When that succeeded, they introduced more. Then they “updated” the origins of the “Big Three” to suit the times (obviously they couldn’t have been active since the war!) This was the first “reboot” (as we now call them) to what is now known as the “Silver Age” of comics. The Golden Age had nothing to do with the current direction National was going.

That changed a few years later when the Flash of the Silver Age met the Flash of the Golden Age, and they determined that the Golden Age heroes were part of another universe (dubbed Earth-2, since OF COURSE the Silver Age Earth, which started after the Golden Age, would be Earth-1). And thus was born the Multiverse. As writers got ideas on stories that wouldn’t fit on Earth-1, more universes were created:

Earth-3 was a world where the Earth-1 heroes were villains (collectively known as the Crime Syndicate of America) who ruled the Earth, and Lex Luthor was the sole hero trying to end their tyranny.

(Thanks again to Wikipedia)

Earth-C (for “cartoon”) was home to Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew (think Superfriends meets Looney Toons)

Earth-S (for “SHAZAM!”) was home to the characters National licensed from Fawcett Comics in 1973. (nice to see they were given a home after National sued them out of existence…)

Earth-4 was home to the characters DC acquired after buying Charlton Comics in 1983. Alan Moore wanted to use them for a story, but since that would involve killing characters DC just spent a fortune for, he tweaked names and attitudes a bit and created Watchmen.

Earth-X was home to a number of the characters National acquired after buying Quality Comics in the 50s (the rest wound up on Earth-Q), Earth-X differed from most of the other Earths in that World War II didn’t end in 1945, but continued through to the time of Crisis.

…and so on. It started to get a bit confusing keeping everyone straight, so in the early 80s, as part of their 50th anniversary celebration, DC started two projects. In 1986, DC published The History of the DC Universe. A tale of the events in the DC Universe from the Dawn of Time through the Legion of Super Heroes in the 30th century

Wait, how does that work with DC being a multiverse? Well, that was why the other project started the year prior, a streamlining and rebooting of the entire DC line from the Golden Age onward into one (more or less) cohesive narrative. Characters and universes rewritten, if not outright removed, to suit the new narrative (sorry, Captain Carrot) It was all explained in a 12-issue series that expanded and crossed over into nearly every DC title called Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I’ll be doing an issue-by-issue narrative (interspersed with my usual humor and opinions) of the events of the main series (and ONLY the main series, because most of the crossovers had little impact on the main story and were mainly to (a) explain how Crisis was affecting your favorite heroes and (2) to generate sales, since DC was saying every Crisis crossover was a “must read” story), as well as the series’ impact on DC.

If you would like to read the series, it has been collected in graphic novel form and is available (or can be ordered) at your favorite comic shop, bookstore, or online retailer…or on Read Comic Online.

Watch for the Issue 1 episode review soon!

#dc comics #crisis on infinite earths #dc multiverse #fan colored glasses #i hate reruns

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brillmind · 10 months ago

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How much should it cost to hire an app developer?

U.S. dollars in 2019-2027 and complete income is supposed to show a yearly development rate (CAGR 2022-2027) of 11.28%. Isn't it awestruck? The app store report by business of apps reveals that there are millions of apps on the app store. Obviously, a couple of out of 1,000,000 get by, as they will generally stand apart among the other applications. While fostering a mobile application, the principal question that springs up in the psyche of any business person and entrepreneur is the cost of developing a mobile application. It’s crucial to focus on estimating the Elearning App Development Cost In India which includes, the cost to hire an app developer, UI UX designer, project manager, and launch. With the goal that you can consistently disperse the financial plan for hiring the app developer, promoting, marking, and group obtaining.

We know it's critical to zero in on fostering an intelligent and natural Mobile application to stand apart from the market and lift income. The average cost of hiring an app developer starts from $50 and can go up to $110.

Does this infer that a $110 developer is best for you? Or should we perhaps go with hiring in between, that is, $70 per hour.

There’s no straight answer to this question. It entirely depends on the company’s requirements and budget. Prior to hiring vetted remote developers, it is crucial to have relevant market data for better comprehension.

Also Read More: best mobile app development companies in bangalore

What sum does it cost to make an application

There are lots of elements that influence the expense of fostering an application functionality and purpose, integration points, mobile platforms, types of features and technology, integration of visual objects, maintenance plan, and many more.

Nonetheless, by and large, the expense of application improvement for straightforward applications begins at $40,000 and can reach out up to $70,000 or more. For developing a medium-complex app, it starts from $70,000 and can extend up to $1,3000; for a complex app, it starts from $1,3000 and can go beyond.

Factors influencing the cost of hiring an application designer?

Qualifications

The cost can be affected by a developer's qualifications and abilities. It’s quite obvious to say that the higher the qualifications and skills, the higher the cost. On the off chance that you're hoping to enlist a full-stack designer, the odds are higher that the expense may be impacted. Also, if you have a tight budget, you might need to hire accordingly.

Experience

Hiring an experienced developer will always result in a higher hourly rate than hiring novice or inexperienced developers. It will ultimately essentially affect the expense of recruiting.

Geographical Location

Among different variables impacting the expense of recruiting, area is one of the great elements. Different geographical locations have different standards of living and labor market saturation.

For example, employing an application designer with 5 to 8 years of involvement with the USA, Europe, UK is definitely more costly than in different nations like India, China, Sri Lanka, and others.

Elevated requirements of living, less accessibility of assets, and a few different reasons influence the expense of employing designers in the USA.

Technology

Another critical variable that influences the expense is the technology stack. The IT market is immense and offers different programming dialects and structures, making it more costly.

The assessed cost of hiring a freelancer, hiring agency, and staff augmentation company

Freelancer

If you’re tight on budget and are looking for affordable options to hire app developers, then hiring a freelancer is the best option.

The expense of recruiting independent engineers in India begins at $15 and can reach out up to $30.

Hiring or Recruiting agency

Hiring a recruiting agency is the safe bet when it comes to saving resources and time. When hiring a recruiting agency, you don’t have to do any leg work so you can easily devote time to other important tasks.

The enrollment organization will do all that from recruiting the best competitors from the pool of groups to participating in application development.

Also Read More: Mobile Game development companies in Bangalore

Staff augmentation company

This model works well when you need services such as hiring and technical assistance. On the off chance that you have a fair financial plan, you can without much of a stretch recruit a staff expansion organization to facilitate your work and give bother free administrations.

When you delegate the administrations to a solid staff augmentation company, you won't need to place in any mind or accomplish any leg function as you will get both technical assistance and a successful quest for developers.

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sassy-ahsoka-tano · 2 years ago

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I loved that in your Austin!Elvis NSFW alphabet you did 50s, 60s and 70s separately. Do you think you could do something like that when it comes to jealousy? Like what kind of jealous man was he throughout the years as he got more famous? Thank you!

oooh yes i love this

50s Elvis is fairly jealous. He wants to have you to himself, but he doesn't yet have that need for other people to know that you're taken. Obviously, he'll beat some ass if any man tries to flirt with you, but he hasn't realized that he can claim you publicly yet. He just prefers to hold hands and gift you some of his clothes and/or jewelry to wear. But like I said, if any other man so much as looks at you the wrong way, he's gonna kick some serious ass. He's not one to shy away from a fight, especially if it's your honor at stake.

60s Elvis is already more jealous but at the same time less jealous. Earlier 60s Elvis doesn't have the confidence to be jealous. He isn't quite sure who he is or what he's about, so he just doesn't feel worthy enough of being jealous. He wonders if maybe you deserve someone better. Post 68 Comeback, he grows more jealous by the minute. At this point, he starts to remember that he's sexy and talented. He knows what he can do to women and he takes that confidence seriously. He knows that he deserves someone as perfect as you, and he'll make sure to defend that relationship for anything. He's less likely to fight a bitch and more likely to just wreck them with the truth. Like that one anon sent in that TikTok where the kid was asking if the girl wanted to fuck and the dad straight said "she doesn't want you. she wants daddy" 🥵 that's 60s Elvis.

70s Elvis is sooo fucking jealous. He has the utmost confidence at this point. He knows his power and how iconic he is and he also now wants everyone else to know that he owns you. He sees you as the most perfect being on the planet and wants to be able to publicly claim you and show everyone else just how much you belong to him. We've discussed SDE with the collar and the rings, but even if he's not a sugar daddy, I still see Elvis wanting you to wear a TCB ring or one of his scarves or something like that to show the entire world that you're his and his alone. If you accidentally flirt (or another man flirts with you) with someone other than him, you'll recognize your mistake in the bedroom later. He will fuck you up (literally) so hard. He's spanking, choking, biting, maybe even dishing out a little light slap to the face. Bondage, edging, etc.

tl;dr: you're gonna know just how badly you fucked up

#answered #milas thirsty thursday #dirty deeds #milasthings #milaselviscontent #milasheadcanons #milaselvisheadcanons

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mysewingadventures · 4 years ago

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How To Tell Victorian Clothing Apart By Decades

First and foremost, Karolina Żebrowska made a video about this quite some time ago explaing everything in detail, but I just wanted to make my own little checklist and mention some things that I’ve noticed for myself. Of course, this list won’t be foolproof as I’m only going to talk about the most popular styles at the time and people technically could have made a regency gown in 1900, but... that’s not the point. For the sake of being able to show everything with pictures, I’m going to leave the Regency period out as I’ve already made a separate post about it.

The Victorian era is commonly packed into the visual of a brown bustle dress and/or the typical wide dresses of the Civil War, but the Victorian era actually spans over 64 years and many, many different styles.

Queen Victoria was crowned in 1837, so let’s start in the 1830s.

The 30s were wild, and that’s one word to describe it, but that mostly goes for the first half of the decade. Huge sleeves and full skirts were the thing, often in patterns inspired by wallpaper. That’s right - stripes, florals and anything that stood out was the hit. The off-the-shoulder look is just as important though, that’s what creates the round shoulder shape, together with the puff sleeves. The waistline sat a little higher than the natural waistline and was usually adorned with a belt. In the second half of the decade the sleeves started to "travel downwards", as in they started smocking or gathering the top part of the sleeve and just leave the pouf at the bottom.

The 40s left the puff sleeves and bright patterns behind, leaving high necklines, tighter sleeves and lowered the waistline to its natural position. Something very popular was the gathered front of a bodice and that trend even lasted into the early 50s. Skirts grew a little wider, requiring more support from layers upon layers of petticoats.

With the 50s here, ruffles came into fashion. If you see a wide, ruffled skirt, it’s probably from the 1850s. Some bodices extended over the hips now and almost looked like coats. Another important aspect: the pagoda sleeve. And obviously it’s important to note that the crinoline was finally patented in 1856. No more layers upon layers of corded petticoats! But this meant that dresses could be even wider than before. However, keep in mind that in the 50s, the crinoline had a round shape whereas in the 60s it started to become oval and extended further towards the back.

With the 60s, ruffles went out of fashion and synthetic dyes were invented, this meant brighter colors for a wider population! Actually, synthetic dyes were already invented in 56, but just like everything it took a while to make all the colors and really catch on so I’m counting it towards the 60s, because that’s when brightly colored dresses really took off. I find that especially evening dresses look very similar to 50s evening dresses so for me the best way to tell them apart is to look at the shape of the crinoline. Not to mention that a lot of people certainly continued to wear or slighly altered their 50s dresses but with a new crinoline.

Now we’re in the bustle era - the shape of the crinoline became slimmer but extended further towards the back, creating the bustle. I still find myself struggling telling mid 70s styles apart from the 80s, but there are some things I look at.

Firstly, the shape of the bustle. Early 70s style bustles are still pretty wide compared to the later silhouettes. Generally, you can say that in the 1870s, the profile of the bustle has a more gentle curve, the curve is not as steep. Also, a lot of 70s day dresses have trains. Many people actually started recycling old 18th century gowns into 1870s dresses so you can see a lot of inspiration and similarity in the shapes and how the dress is put together. The collars often mimick those of 18th century gowns and the back is draped like it was on a Robe à la Polonaise. Towards the very end of the 70s, bustles went out of style and women wore their dresses without a bustle.

Now on to the 1880s. Like I mentioned, the style was very similar but the bustle came back into fashion and became steeper. The necklines on day dresses were high and the collars weren’t square anymore. The draping of the overskirt still stuck, but the skirts became overall a little less wide. Very popular in the mid 1880s was draping the overskirt asymmetrically. That is the best giveaway if you’re unsure. Trains on day dresses still existed but weren’t as common as in the 70s. And once again, towards the very end of the decade the bustle went out of fashion, this time for good.

The 90s - certainly my favorite decade in the 19th century. Big sleeves were back! But no off-shoulder day dresses and the waistline was at its natural position. Pretty much all skirts were now straight in the front and gathered in the back - a very popular look. The size of the sleeves and the width of the dress reached its peak in 1895 and after that it all decreased in size again until the puff sleeve went out of fashion in 1898-99. Bodices had a slightly looser fit than in the decade before but were still tight-ish.

Now, the Victorian era only lasted up until 1901, but I’ve decided to add the 1900s to this list just because I really like that decade as well and think the clothes are really pretty.

So, in the 1900s the silhouette changed once again. Now, loose lace blouses were all the rage and the so-called pigeon breast silhouette was created with the help of an s-bend corset and a lot of stategical padding, a frilly corset cover and a loose gathered bodice. At the waist, you’d usually find a silk belt called a sash that matched the dress. The straight front skirts stayed but changed their shape slightly to be bell-shaped and flare out at the bottom. A lot of lace was used for gowns as well as frills and dainty details. But on the other side, a working woman would usually just wear a light colored blouse with a usually dark skirt and wear a belt to tie the outfit together.

So this was my way to tell the decades apart! I specifically love 19th century fashion because every decade is so different from the one before and it’s so fascinating how quickly styles changed back then.

#victorian #fashion #fashion history #historical fashion #victorian fashion #victorian dress #historical dress #edwardian #edwardian fashion #victorian clothing

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audreydoeskaren · 4 years ago

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History of Chinese standing collars (part 3: post republican era)

Quick recap: I was debating with myself whether “Mandarin collar” should be a thing because standing collars throughout Chinese history looked different. I went through the Ming and Qing dynasties in part 1 and the republican era in part 2, now I’ll look at what comes after that. I numbered the styles in parts 1 and 2 but they’re only guidelines so you don’t have to remember anything.

So in this post we’ve kind of reached the end of the era where fashion consisted of a single silhouette in any given year and all hell ran loose. I’m having a lot of difficulties classifying things as Chinese or Western because the distinction is really blurred, and I also ran into problems explaining why certain historical European things looked so similar to Chinese ones so there will also be a lot of confusion.

1950s & 60s Chinese application

Summary of 1950s fashion, mainland and others.

Because of the communist victory in the Civil War, fashion in the mainland was different to other (capitalist) areas populated by the Chinese diaspora such as Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan etc.. Let’s look at capitalist area fashion first; I’ll be referring to Hong Kong because Hong Kong was the center of cheongsam making at the time.

Collars on 50s Hong Kong cheongsam grew taller on the basis of collar style 10 but retained the rounded, tapering edge, resulting in a v shape gap down the middle that weirdly recalls collar style 6 from part 1 and part 2. It’s basically completely identical to collar style 6 but stiffened and extremely form fitting. It’s usually closed with one pankou at the base but because of westernization, 50s cheongsam often had no visible pankou----everything is closed with snap buttons, zippers or hooks and eyes/bars. An important aspect of collars of 50s and 60s Hong Kong cheongsam is that they left out the binding around the neck. All cheongsam prior to this point were bound around the exterior edge, the side closure, the slits and the collar seam (on the bodice not the collar), 50s cheongsam collars purposefully neglected the binding at the collar seam for some reasons. This makes the collar look like it’s one continuous piece of fabric with the bodice, which it isn’t. A lot of modern representation of cheongsam or any Chinese inspired clothing (in video games, books and anime etc.) do this, even if the character is from before the 1950s. It REALLY bugs me. If you are an artist or writer and designing costumes for Chinese characters prior to the 50s, please include binding/trimmings on all three seams, it’s an easy way to bump up historical accuracy. With that said, completely plain collars without any binding or trim was actually the most common. Let’s call this collar style 13.

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1954 photograph of Li Lihua and Clark Gable. Collar style 13 with stiffening and no collar seam binding. You can see how firm and neck hugging the collar is, contrary to a lot of modern cheongsam collars which are saggy and loose.

The popularity of collar style 13 continued into the 60s. When the cheongsam fell out of popularity, it ceased to exist as well.

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60s cheongsam with collar style 13. I’m really not a fan of the nude/light lipstick trend of the 60s, like, as a person with no lip color definition it makes me look like a potato.

Now moving on to mainland collars. In the 1950s, cheongsam with the 40s collar style 12 were still occasionally seen, but the fashionable collar shape also became taller and was similar to the Hong Kong collar style 13. Interestingly, some 50s mainland cheongsam retained the binding around the collar seam, making them look more “traditional” in a sense. However, collars both with and without collar seam binding existed and it was just a matter of personal preference.

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1950s photograph of a mainland lady in cheongsam. The collar is taller and closes with one button, much like Hong Kong collars of the era, but the neck binding is present.

Aoku robe collars from the 1940s onward mostly had the 40s style low collar, although in the 50s and 60s they rose in height very slightly.

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1964 poster showing a girl in aoku, the robe has a low, rounded collar.

However, garments with a standing collar became worn a lot less frequently in the 50s and 60s in both mainland and non-mainland areas, since a lot of people adopted Western fashion.

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1950s photograph of a group of mainland people wearing jackets of Western construction. Some of them seem to be wearing informal military jackets, commonly known as “Mao suit” or “Zhongshan suit” nowadays, with folded collars.

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1950s photograph of some women in Malaysia, some in cheongsam and some in Western New Look dresses.

Western application

I think it’s also quite important to discuss how Chinese standing collars were perceived by Western designers, because the Western fashion industry does hold a lot more power globally and also reverse influenced Chinese collar designs in the post 1960s era. So, in the 1950s and 60s Western designers thought cheongsam was really cool and produced a lot of affordable sewing patterns for their versions of cheongsam. I think this is also because pre-1950s cheongsam didn’t use the Western construction method and patterns needed to be individually drafted so it was difficult to make mass produced sewing patterns. From all the sewing patterns I have seen personally, the super tall standing collar popular in Hong Kong was not really appreciated by Western designers at all?? Western cheongsam sewing patterns all had the very low 1940s style collar, combined with an hourglass silhouette New Look bodice and skirt, looking rather anachronistic. These collars also didn’t have binding/trim around the collar seam, in line with fashionable Hong Kong cheongsam of the day.

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1950s Advance sewing pattern for cheongsam. The collar is low and has rectangular edges, something about a decade out of fashion in Hong Kong and Shanghai. No collar seam binding.

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1950s Simplicity sewing pattern for cheongsam. Likewise with super low 1940s collars. Collarless cheongsam died in China in the mid 1920s, yet it lives on in the imagination of Western designers. By the way, the frog closures with a quatrefoil shape are not Chinese, I’m gonna write another post about this. I love the look in the middle it’s very glam.

1970s and later

The post 1960s era is what ultimately created the confusion around standing collars nowadays. Around this time Western and Chinese fashions started to merge and become one, and garments made completely in the historical Chinese method were more and more difficult to come by; Western construction techniques reigned supreme.

From the 70s onward, most “Chinese collars” had the 40s rounded edge shape but were either medium low or medium height. The lack of collar seam binding persisted into the current day, which is something I kind of lament because without this binding collars easily read as Renaissance doublet... (more on that later)

I usually avoid calling any standing collars from the 1970s onward Chinese/Mandarin because 1) standing collars were never a uniquely Chinese thing to begin with 2) since cheongsam was no longer fashionable among actual Chinese people, designers who made cheongsam pulled all kinds of shenanigans without any historical precedent whatsoever. Also, since clothes with structured/stiffened standing collars stopped being a staple in the average Western person’s wardrobe, white people started calling everything with the most remote hint of a standing collar Chinese to further stir the pot, emboldened by the cultural appropriation craze of the 60s and 70s. Ok that’s very loaded, but it’s true that in the 60s and 70s there was a lot of Western clothing designs that took inspiration from other cultures without permission. Westerners could totally design and wear Chinese style clothing given that the intention is respectful and they know about the garment in question, but a lot of times the accuracy of the designs leaves much to be desired. There was also a lot of Orientalist inspiration in the 10s and 20s but the borrowing back then wasn’t so... literal. When I look at so called cheongsam sewing patterns from the 70s onward, I sometimes seriously have trouble identifying if something is meant to be Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Polynesian or any other region/culture...

I’ll just find pictures of Chinese inspired clothing from the 70s onward with a “Mandarin collar” label and point out their source of inspiration.

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1972 Simplicity sewing pattern for cheongsam. It’s the same Western collar from the 50s and 60s just slightly taller. Oh and the closures used on the two designs in the middle are again likely not pankou. After the 60s, this neck design with a oval shape keyhole cutout became quite common and that persisted to the current day. Don’t know what the purpose of that was, just because you show 5 square centimeters more skin doesn’t mean your cheongsam is sexier?

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The description of this 70s Simplicity pattern says “Mandarin collar” but the source of inspiration is obviously Japanese military/school uniforms, AGAIN. The collar’s height and rectangular edges, combined with the placement of buttons above the waist on the bodice, everything about this reads as Japanese. The frog closures on the left are once again European and not Chinese pankou (sheesh I really need to make this other post). The original designer probably meant for it to be Japanese but the seller mistakenly labelled it a Mandarin collar design.

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70s Teresa Teng (rest in power legend) in a theatrical cheongsam with a similar collar, either a stretched version of the 40s collar or a shrunk version of the 50s/60s one.

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Google search result for “Mandarin collar dress”. Same Western low collar from the 70s. A new problem with modern mass produced cheongsam is that the collar oftentimes doesn’t fit the wearer and appears too baggy. Or maybe it’s not mass production, just that people nowadays are very unaccustomed to wearing tight fitting standing collars so they assume there needs to be some extra space? As someone who wears stiff standing collars on a regular basis I have to say it actually isn’t uncomfortable at all and elongates your neck a lot better. This is what most cheongsam collars nowadays look like, even the self proclaimed “traditional” ones, they literally originated from 1950s/60s Western sewing pattern companies’ interpretation of contemporary Chinese cheongsam collars.

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Baidu search result for “Mandarin collar suit”. This, is, literally, almost a replica Japanese uniform. The seller is also using the tag Zhongshan suit lmao (I’ve explained in my 1950s mainland post what a Zhongshan suit is not supposed to look like), delusion is not a fragrance I guess. Why is it so hard to let Japan be Japan and China be China??

Conclusion & afterthought

Another thing I need to mention is that standing collars are by no means unique to Chinese historical dress; they were also widely used in European historical fashion, long before standing collars became worn with uniforms of “Mandarins” or Chinese officials, which further proves my point that “Mandarin collar” is not a valid term. Also, standing collars in Europe have always been stiffened/structured, whereas Chinese collars only started to become stiffened around the 1890s, possibly due to European influence as well. For example, the 1950s collar with rounded edges and no collar seam binding reads as European Renaissance doublet very easily. To be fair though, a lot of the collar shapes seen in early 20th century Chinese womenswear had been done before in European Renaissance fashion and during that time period in China only the OG Ming Dynasty collar mentioned in part 1 was used sooooooo

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1630-40 English doublet. The collar looks mighty similar to 1930s Chinese women’s ones. I know next to nothing about Renaissance fashion so I’m not sure how it’s constructed, but it proves the point that collars like these were not a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

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Meanwhile the Mandarins in China. He’s wearing a crossover collar robe underneath a round collar robe, no standing collar here.

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1780s French men’s coat with a standing collar.

Standing collars were also commonly used in Victorian and Edwardian women’s everyday fashion without any connection to China whatsoever.

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1860s fashion plate for a gown with a low standing shirt collar peeking underneath.

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1887 fashion plate from the Journal des Demoiselles. Bustle gowns with standing collars.

Bonus rant

I have come to the actual point of this series of posts, to answer the question: should “Mandarin collar” be a thing? In which case I’m gonna have to go with no. In the three posts I made on the topic I categorized a total of 13 collar styles, each distinct from each other and some being inspired by Western clothing, and showed that the use of the term “Mandarin collar” nowadays is very vague and ambiguous. I don’t understand why people in the fashion industry give my ancestors all the credits for a design feature as basic and common as a standing collar... Maybe it’s a marketing gimmick like how Sternhalma (a German board game) is advertised in the US as “Chinese checkers”?? Or maybe it shows that a lot of fashion designers lack a basic understanding of historical fashion? Either way it makes no sense. I think the concept is also slightly offensive since it simply ignores the diversity of actual historical Chinese standing collar designs, kind of reinforcing the racist stereotype that non-white fashion histories are static and never changing.

If I do have to pick a most traditional/iconic style of Chinese standing collar, I would go with either the original Ming Dynasty soft collar with metal buttons or the 1940s short collar with collar seam binding used on aoku, cheongsam, changshan and magua. In the mainland Chinese countryside, the 1940s style collar was preserved and actually still made today, but in the post-Mao era it became increasingly seen by the mainland population as 土 (a derogatory term for Chinese folk stuff meaning tacky or cringy) compared to the exciting new Western fashions being imported at the time. As a result, more traditional items of clothing like aoku for women, changshan and magua for men were neglected in favor of more westernized cheongsam designs, leading to some cursed contraptions.

Maybe this is a hot take, I personally really don’t vibe with the concept of 土 because it’s very loaded and usually the gateway drug to massive internalized racism. I’ve heard so many people bash aoku and magua constructed in the historical method and put post-60s Western inspired cheongsam on a pedestal even though the former is grounded in history and the latter is an Orientalist mess. There is nothing wrong with making aoqun, aoku, magua, changshan, cheongsam or any other historical item of clothing in the historically accurate method, they’re charming in their own ways and don’t need to be “modified”. In my opinion, the puckering under the armpits caused by the lack of a shoulder seam and the rounded shoulders are what makes historical Chinese clothing beautiful to begin with :3 I think there’s something inherently modern and authentic in the pedantic, antiquarian pursuit of historical clothing, like you know how whenever a revival happens it actually brings something new to the table? It’s not problematic to wear modern cheongsam designs per se, it’s just important to keep in mind that it doesn’t have much to do with actual Chinese history and represents more of the status quo of Chinese fashion nowadays.

Ok I’m going off the collar track but it’s time to finish this post. Thank you for reading, and as I mentioned, the next post will be about Chinese pankou. I’m almost finished with that one as well and I’m really excited with what I have planned next :D

#historic fashion #chinese fashion #cheongsam #vintage fashion #chinese history #1950s #1960s #1970s

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midnightactual · 4 years ago

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Yoruichi, Kūkaku, Kisuke and the Soul Society Arc

The relationship between Yoruichi, Kūkaku, and Kisuke isn’t explored much at all in canon, despite the fact we’re expected to take away that they’re friends (if not best friends). However, I think this relationship explains a lot of what happens within the early Soul Society arc. We know from chapter 175 that:

Aizen states he knew the Ryoka would be coming from West Rukongai. Why? Well, the only reasonable answer is Kūkaku. While it seems extremely evident that Yoruichi can enter Soul Society undetected in her cat form, using the Senkaimon, and has done so to remodel the Study Chamber’s annex, her going back and forth constantly is likely undesirable, and also probably didn’t happen, as chapter 78 indicates:

Kūkaku’s repeated emphasis of it having been a long time since she and Yoruichi have met suggests they haven’t done so since she went into exile. This is corroborated by the implication that Yoruichi does not know Ganju:

Her reaction to him introducing himself is the same as everyone else’s. You might say this is just a comedy moment, but think about it. How many people are there in Rukongai named Ganju? How many of them know some kind of strange earth magic? Yoruichi did not attach any importance to Ganju’s appearance in chapter 76 and 77, regarding him as a waste of time... when she’d literally just determined to find Kūkaku. If she knew Ganju was a Shiba and they already wanted to find Kūkaku, the sensible thing would’ve been to demand Ganju take them to her, not wander around using a map the next day. We also know from chapter 83 that:

Ganju was just a child when Kaien died, which happened sometime after 1952. (We know Hisana died “50 years ago” in 1951, Byakuya found Rukia the next year and brought her into the Gotei 13, and Rukia presumably spent at least a few years with Kaien.) This makes it likely (though by no means guaranteed, given the example of Nanao, but Ganju describes himself as “just a child” which Nanao likely wouldn’t have) that he was born after Yoruichi’s departure in 1901. They are likely to have never met before. (This also implies that Kaien, Kūkaku, and Ganju’s parents were alive until very recently, or may still be!)

So we can say 1. Yoruichi has been back to Soul Society and set up the the Study Chamber as a supply depot, and 2. she has likely not interacted with Kūkaku since leaving initially. Why the second? Well, pretty obviously, because meeting with Kūkaku would put her at risk and make things rather obvious. So, what does this have to do with Aizen? Well, that touches on another mystery: how does Kisuke get products from Soul Society?

We know from chapter 70 that Kisuke cannot go through his own Senkaimon. It follows that the same is true of Tessai. We know Yoruichi can as a cat, but likely can’t in her proper form. (Since she also comes back from Soul Society as a cat too, which is her last canonical use of the form.) We also know Kisuke’s Senkaimon can only stay open for four minutes:

We also know that transit through the Senkaimon is perilous. So, does it make much sense that Yoruichi run through the Dangai as a cat, hauling potentially heavy cargo which might get snared in the restrictive current and lost? Nope, especially when it’s likely that Yoruichi is not often at the Shōten (as Ururu and Jinta don’t know her and they’ve likely grown like normal humans). So what is the solution then?

Kisuke opens his Senkaimon above Kūkaku’s Flower Crane Cannon and she fires cargo shells through it containing his required items. Aizen noticed this and deduced how they were operating.

Kisuke’s Senkaimon opens in the air for some reason, almost as though to accommodate the height of the cannon:

Kūkaku launches crew with Method Two and the jolt isn’t so bad. (What’s Method One for then?)

The projectiles can also make sharp turns and accelerate after launch with no visible propulsion:

So, this presents a very obvious method of safely and securely getting cargo through the Dangai without risk to anyone. It is, however, conspicuous, and it also requires a method of communication.

Kūkaku moves around a lot, but appears to stick to West Rukongai. There may be some association between the Shiba and West Rukongai (as CFYOW tells us the Shiba lived in Rukongai even when they were a Great Noble Clan) which results in Kūkaku having an association with Jidanbō, which lets her easily enter the Seireitei even when she shouldn’t be able to (per CFYOW), or maybe she stays in West Rukongai for easy access to the Seireitei through him. Maybe both.

(We never hear what Yoruichi’s original plan for infiltrating the Seireitei was, but it appears to not have involved Kūkaku. My personal bet is that the canals under the Seireitei that 4th Division use empty out somewhere, as the water has to go someplace, and Hanatarō is wrong that only 4th Division knows them: it would make perfect sense that the Onmitsukidō know them too. But that’s a different piece of meta.)

It’s also very evident that Ichigo’s use of the Spirit Core in chapter 81 is what tips off Aizen that they’re coming. His use of it is extremely obvious, with Kūkaku noticing his reiatsu from the surface:

This flare is probably similar in output to the one he emits in chapter 116, which Jūshirō says could “only belong to a Captain”, making it likely readily obvious to Aizen’s surveillance (and Kūkaku also seems very surprised at the magnitude of it). Right after Ichigo stops using the Spirit Core, an intruder alert interrupts the meeting Yamamoto is holding to discuss Gin’s punishment, and all the Shinigami are kept up all night patrolling even though the Ryoka will not actually arrive until the next morning. This was very clearly orchestrated by Aizen, from within Central 46, in order to tire out and agitate the Gotei 13 so the Ryoka would be more successful at evading capture.

(This also means that the Aizen who attended the meeting, who Tōshirō saw exchange words with Gin, was not actually Aizen. That Aizen notably sweatdrops beforehand and behaves rather weirdly during the meeting and alert. It’s Substitute-san, nervous that the show’s started, delivering rehearsed lines with Gin. Probably a different guy than the one in TBTP since this once is much better at acting. Whatever happened to him anyway?)

In other words, Aizen observed that Kisuke’s Senkaimon only operated in West Rukongai (although his assertion that it only can operate there seems to be conjecture) and posted surveillance which detected Ichigo’s reiatsu emission, thus cluing him into the Ryoka preparing to move, just as he said.

That this pattern had long ago been made was probably predictable from Kisuke’s end, and he likely deliberately played into it to encourage Aizen’s arrogance, leaving Yoruichi to improvise on the ground.

As for how Yoruichi or Kisuke could communicate with Kūkaku during this time so as to place orders for equipment without visiting her, that’s a little more complicated. It’s obviously impossible to establish a hardline connection, and any kind of emitted signaling could be intercepted. Kisuke can’t run messages through his Senkaimon without sending someone on a perilous journey or building his own launching device. But there is an easy, expedient, covert, and disposable system: couriers.

There are plenty of souls left wandering around by Shinigami on Earth: you simply give them an encoded message and tell them to find Kūkaku once they arrive in Rukongai. While where they’re sent is random, if you do this a fair number of times, one of them should be able to make it to her. (Their reward is that given she always seems to live near the Seireitei, they wind up in a pretty safe district.) As for how Kūkaku would decode such a message, a cipher could’ve been left by Yoruichi as a dead drop during one of her rare visits.

If you wanted a darker but more “express” option, you would find someone fairly tough and violent (say, Yakuza enforcers), use a memory replacer to give them a memory of the message (it seems likely that Kisuke has iterated on the standard Gotei 13 Kikanshinki, given Yoruichi mentions a Kikanshinki Deluxe in CFYOW), and then kill them and give them soul burial. Such individuals would be far more likely to survive making it to Kūkaku regardless of where they were sent. (Depending on what they were guilty of, you could encode that into the message too and let her deal with them as she might.)

Anyway, I think it’s very obvious that Kūkaku is Yoruichi and Kisuke’s main point of contact in Soul Society. Jūshirō may also be involved, given his interest in Earth (vis-à-vis Ginjō and the Fullbringers) and how unlikely it is that nobody in the 13th Division ever noticed Kisuke, an infamous criminal (both Isshin and Ikkaku immediately recognized his name), was operating openly in Karakura. Indeed, Jūshirō may be directly involved. When the Ryoka are coming down over the Seireitei, we see that it has a radial design:

The four gates create four quadrants, each of which is divided into three. This makes for twelve slices. We know 1st Division occupies the center, so the most obvious orientation for the divisions’ physical territory is that each is simply a slice. If that’s the case, it is entirely possible that 13th Division is one of the two slices along the road coming from the West Gate, which would make it very easy for Kūkaku or her retainers to reach the Study Chamber at Sōkyoku Hill, gather supplies, and leave, or to augment them directly from 13th Division’s stocks.

#Out Of Character #Long Post #Meta #Headcanons

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alightwhendarknessfell · 3 years ago

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Black Veil Brides VIP Meet and Greets

I just wanted to make a quick post since I've seen a lot of people talking about the VIP/meet and greet tickets for the rescheduled ITM/BVB tour. I know there have been some strong opinions on the COVID restrictions and questions about what will or won't be allowed.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with the band or management and don't speak for them. This is just my opinion/trying to share some helpful tips and information. I’ll give references for what I say, but please take specific questions to the email listed on their website [email protected]

I’ve seen some people criticizing the band for the COVID restrictions in place as if it is solely their decision as to what will be allowed and not allowed. More than likely it was a decision made by management, the team putting on the tour, venues, etc, and made to fit state health guidelines and CDC recommendations. The idea that they will be able to have meet and greets the way they were done prior to 2020 with no restrictions is unrealistic. While COVID cases are declining and around 50% of the United State’s population has been vaccinated the pandemic is not over. There may be another rise in cases this fall and with the tour taking place during flu season it will be hard to tell who is sick with COVID or just the flu/cold. All rules and regulations for both VIP and the shows are done for the safety of the artists AND the fans. Remember that it’s not just because you could get the band sick, they could potentially get you sick too. Therefore care must be taken to make the VIP M&Gs a safe but still fun experience for both parties.

Local venues are all going to have different protocols as to what is and isn’t allowed. This is due to states having different rules as far as distancing, masking, and sanitation regulations. This is completely out of the band’s control and they are obligated to follow the rules for the venue and state they are in. The VIP ticket upgrade is OPTIONAL, you are under no obligation to purchase VIP tickets if you feel it’s not worth the price. You can purchase just the regular ticket to see the show (this is also required for VIP tickets as that ticket ONLY is for the meet and greet). I get that people are upset about the limitations, but I for one, am grateful they’re even offering VIP tickets. They could just as easily have said no meet and greets at all.

Isn’t the band vaccinated? Andy and CC have both said publicly they are vaccinated. Andy's dad has stated the band is fully vaccinated. I’m sure others are as well, along with the crew and the other bands but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to not have safety guidelines in place. Remember, that there is still a question as to whether or not someone who has been vaccinated can harbor the virus and pass it on even though they are unlikely to become ill themselves. It seems that vaccines DO provide good protection against infecting others and becoming ill but none of the vaccinates are 100% effective. The band will be traveling all over the country meeting lots of people each night, therefore obviously precautions are going to be taken to reduce the risk for everyone.

What if I’m vaccinated? That’s wonderful! I would strongly encourage everyone to get their vaccines, especially before attending a concert. Because there’s no way to really check vaccination statuses (unfortunately fake vaccine cards are way too common and easy to make) the rules have to be made with the assumption that some people there WILL be unvaccinated. Theoretically, yes, it would be safe for a vaccinated person to be without a mask on with the band if they are also all vaccinated. Since again, that can’t be guaranteed (and because that would involve different treatment for different people) the best option is to just have rules that EVERYONE will have to follow. There are also variations in the vaccine's effectiveness. Pfizer/Moderna are both 90%+ effective while J&J (one-shot) is about 65-70%.

Hugs? These aren’t allowed at BVB M&Gs anyways, even before COVID. Their websites specifically states hugs will NOT be allowed. Please respect this rule.

Gifts? Andy’s dad (Chris Biersack) spoke about this on Twitter yesterday in response to some fan questions. He says he would discourage fans from bringing gifts. I know a lot of people like to bring them gifts but the best thing you can do is come to the show and sing along and show your love for the band by supporting them. Physical gifts can wait for now, and I think everyone should respect that. Besides, space is limited on tour anyways and when you think about how many people bring them gifts each night, logistically that is hard to accommodate. I do not see anything specifically about gifts on their website so that may be something you would want to email the VIP company about or ask in the BVB Facebook group if you're dead set on bringing something. However, the website DOES state that no "personal autographs" will be permitted, only the poster they are providing.

Photos? The rules on their website state that photos will be taken with 3 feet distance between the fan and the band. Fans may take their masks OFF for the photo, but masks will be required for the M&G and while in line for it (but you get a cool BVB mask!!!!). I know people are upset over this one too but think of all the cool ways you could do this photo. You can stand in front with the band behind you and strike a pose with yourself as the centerpiece! Three feet isn’t that far either, and honestly, that’s about how much room you’d give someone for personal space anyways.

It's so expensive!!: It's the same price as their M&Gs always have been. Yes, $100 is a lot of money for most people but it's the norm for band M&Gs. I am okay with paying that price even with the COVID restrictions because I want to be able to support the band. They haven't been able to tour in over a year and I'm sure that has cost them a lot of revenue. So I have no problem paying to see my favorite band.

TIPS

Read the rules BEFORE buying tickets for the M&G or show. Call the venue to ask for specifics if you want to or check their websites. Make sure you’re okay with the rules and if you purchase a M&G then follow all rules regarding safety and distancing.

Wear a mask/the one they give you during your M&G, please respect your health and the band’s.

While vaccinated individuals according to the CDC are at lower risk while attending concerts, unvaccinated people are still at a high risk of contracting COVID. It’s a very good idea to make sure you are TWO WEEKS out from your LAST shot before your concert date.

Monitor yourself for symptoms, and if you are at ALL feeling sick, coughing, have a fever, vomiting, etc. do NOT come to the show. Missing the show sucks, but you don’t want to run the risk of infecting others.

Personally, I plan to wear my mask while inside the venue even though I am fully vaccinated. If the venue is not requiring masks to be worn inside it is up to individuals to choose to or not but I know I will feel safer with a mask on.

Give people space while in the crowd. Now isn’t the time to be right on top of someone trying to push to the front. Please respect everyone’s personal space and remember that there may be people who are at an increased risk of severe COVID infection present.

If you are in a “high risk” group, talk to your doctor about whether or not it is safe for you to attend an indoor concert.

If you are bringing your vaccination card, get it laminated first or take a photo of it and keep it on your phone. They’re paper and you wouldn’t want it to fall apart because it got wet.

Bring extra disposable masks in case yours gets wet, dirty, or something happens to it.

Wash your hands!!!!!!!!

Don’t share water/drinks/food. I know “pass the water bottle” is popular at shows but let’s skip that for now.

I think it’s important that people keep perspective on this. The world just shut down for over a year and NO concerts took place. The fact that concerts will happen this year at all is a miracle. COVID is a fluid situation and there is no guarantee that things will be better or worse when the tour starts this Fall. This is a virus that has killed millions of people worldwide and hundreds of thousands in the United States. It’s not to be taken lightly, there are serious long-term consequences for some who get COVID. Guidelines are in place for a reason and the band, venues, and management should NOT be criticized for keeping everyone safe. If you don’t like the rules then don’t buy VIP tickets or don’t go to the show, it’s that simple. Following the rules and listening to guidelines is incredibly important. Doing everything you can to ensure your safety, other fan’s safety and the band/crew’s safety should be a top priority. One day there will be “normal” concerts and M&Gs again but for now, we have to still be mindful.

Respect the rules

Respect the health and safety of yourself and others

Have fun and celebrate live music again!

#black veil brides #bvb #andy biersack #andy black #jinxx #christian coma #jake pitts #lonny eagleton #ITM #in this moment #the inbetween tour #concerts #COVID

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southeastasianhistories · 4 years ago

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It was May, 2012. Inside a gloomy, oak panelled courtroom in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, a group of bewigged British and Malaysian lawyers confronted a legal team from the British Foreign and Commonwealth office in front of a panel of judges. Led by John Halford of the Bindmans law firm and Dato Quek Ngee Meng, the legal team was in court to argue the case for a public enquiry into what they called “a grotesque, on-going injustice” committed decades earlier in British Malaya. This was the period of the ‘Emergency’: a war without a name fought in the Malayan jungles against communist insurgents who wanted an immediate end to British rule.

On the other side of the court sat lawyers for the defendants, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In that rather claustrophobic courtroom, British justice was being asked to make a judgement about history and moral responsibility.

For me as an historian and journalist, it was a highly charged moment. As they spoke, the words of the lawyers seemed to evoke the restless spirits of 24 Chinese workers shot dead in December, 1948 by British soldiers on a plantation close to the Malayan village of Batang Kali.

Just one man was left alive. His name was Chong Hong and he was in his 20s at the time. He had fainted in terror and the British soldiers left him for dead. By 2012, Chong Hong was long dead. But a handful of eye-witnesses remained alive. Loh Ah Choy, just seven when the soldiers rampaged through the plantation; Tham Yong, aged 17. In Court 3 that day in 2012, three of the villagers – now in their late 60s and 70s, who had long ago watched the slaughter of their menfolk – sat apprehensive and rather frail beside their lawyers. I talked briefly to Loh Ah Choy during a break in court proceedings. After so many years, there was still pain in her eyes as she talked about the men who had died.

The ‘Batang Kali massacre’ has sometimes – and not entirely accurately – been called ‘Britain’s My Lai’: referring to a Vietnam War atrocity when ‘Charlie Company’, led by Lt. William Calley, murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians on March 16th, 1968.

Since the killings, successive British governments refused to hold a public enquiry into what had taken place and why the men were killed. At the time, it was claimed that the victims were ‘bandits’. This was baseless. No apology was, it seems, considered by the British. For decades, the relatives of the dead men like Tham Yong and Loh Ah Choy kept their silence. They had been left destitute after the killings – and survival had more meaning to them than a search for justice.

In the end, the legal case failed. The lawyers’ arguments were rejected by the UK Supreme Court in 2015 – but for the British establishment, the Court’s judgement made uncomfortable reading. For Lord Kerr, one of the court’s justices said the “overwhelming preponderance of currently available evidence” showed “wholly innocent men were mercilessly murdered and the failure of the authorities of this state to conduct an effective inquiry into their deaths.” The problem for the Court was time. The killings may have been unlawful, Lord Neuberger concluded, but they occurred more than 10 years before the critical date when the right of petition to the Strasbourg court of human rights was recognised by the UK and created a duty to investigate.

The lawyers generated a great deal of new historically valuable information – not only about what happened in Batang Kali, but about how and why a ‘very British cover up’ was maintained for so long.It was thanks to the efforts of the legal teams that we now know what happened on that day in British Malaya. There is now no dispute that on December 11th, 1948 a 14-man patrol from the 7th Platoon, G Company, 2nd Battalion Scots Guards, led by two lance-sergeants, Charles Douglas and Thomas Hughes, entered Batang Kali where they encountered 50 or so unarmed villagers.

The tiny settlement was part of the Sungei Remok rubber estate in the state of Selangor, which at the time was a British protectorate. By the time the platoon left the village the following day, 24 men had been shot dead. The first report of the killings in the Singapore-based Straits Times sounded a shrill note of triumph: ‘Police, Bandits kill 28 [sic] bandits in day … Biggest Success for Forces since Emergency Started’. It would not take long for the official story to unravel. ‘Good news’ like the Batang Kali operation was in short supply at the end of the first year of the Emergency. The roots of the conflict go back to the Japanese occupation of Malaya and Singapore, which began in February 1942. The traumatic loss of Singapore to a grossly underrated Asian foe shamed and humiliated the British and led many Asians to reassess their former masters.

In the first months of the occupation the Japanese slaughtered many thousands of Chinese civilians in Singapore and across Malaya. Japan had been waging a brutal war in mainland China since 1937 and alleged that the Chinese in Malaya were a security risk. Many young Chinese fled into the dense Malayan jungle, where they began to organise guerrilla units to fight back against the Japanese. The Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) was dominated by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and by the end of the war was backed by the British ‘Force 136’, a branch of the Special Operations Executive. After the Japanese surrender in 1945 the British honoured the MPAJA , awarding its future leader Chin Peng an OBE.

As India moved towards independence the chronically indebted postwar British government clung onto Malaya, with its valuable tin and rubber resources. Although the returning colonial power signalled that independence was on the agenda, it seemed to both a new generation of Malay nationalists and the Communists that it was ‘colonial business as usual’.

This was intolerable. The MPAJA now became the vanguard of anti-British resistance, as the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), turning their British-supplied guns on the returned colonial authorities. The MNLA was backed by a secret army of supporters known as the Min Yuen (People’s Movement). MNLA fighters depended on the Min Yuen and Chinese villagers, willing or unwilling, for essential supplies. This was the background to the events that unfolded in December 1948. It explains why, to begin with, the British could claim that shooting Chinese civilians on a rubber plantation was a ‘success’: in the eyes of British troops, any Chinese-Malayan villager might be a ‘bandit’ – and so ‘fair game’.

The ‘successful operation’ story crumbled rapidly. A few of the surviving villagers told their story to Li Chen, the Chinese consul-general, who held a press conference on December 21st. The following day the British owner of the Sungei Remok Estate, Thomas Menzies, who had serious clout in the British estate-owners’ community and was dismayed by the loss of 24 workers, publicly stated that his men had a long record of good conduct. By December 24th the Straits Times was calling for a public enquiry.

At the end of January the British Communist MP Philip Piratin demanded that Arthur Creech-Jones, the colonial secretary, explain the actions of the Scots Guards. Creech-Jones replied that an “enquiry by the civil authorities” had concluded that “had the security forces not opened fire, the suspect Chinese would have made good an escape, which had obviously been pre-arranged”. Creech-Jones’ ‘enquiry’ into a “necessary but nasty operation” quashed the debate about the killing.

But then there was an unexpected turn of events. In December 1969, a former National Serviceman called William Cootes confessed his role in the killings to a journalist from the People, then a British Sunday newspaper. Cootes said he was motivated by the furore unleashed by US journalist Seymour Hersh’s revelations about the My Lai massacre the previous year. The scandal provoked a debate about whether British troops would have been capable of committing such an atrocity. Public opinion resisted such slurs, but Cootes knew better. He had been one of the 14 Scots Guardsmen who had entered Batang Kali.

Cootes claimed that his commanding officer, George Ramsay, had briefed his men that they were going to a village and would “wipe out anybody they found there.” Other former members of the platoon also came forward and backed up Cootes’ allegations. Alan Tuppen testified that: “He [Ramsay] said we were to go out on patrol and that our objective would be to wipe out a particular village and everyone in it because, he said, they were either terrorists themselves or were helping terrorists in that area.”

Tuppen provided shocking new detail about the killings: “Instinctively, we started firing … at the villagers in front of us. The villagers began to fall. One man with bullets in him kept crawling … He was finally killed when a bullet went through his head.” Yet another former guardsman, Victor Remedios, testified that after the platoon returned to base “we were told by a sergeant that if anyone said anything we could get 14 or 15 years in prison.” No one had been shot trying to escape.

In the aftermath of the People story and the media storm that had followed on February 13th, 1970 Denis Healey, the secretary of state for defence, referred the matter to the director of public prosecutions (DPP). At the end of the month, DPP lawyers recommended further enquiries to be conducted by the Metropolitan Police – much to the dismay, as we learnt in court, of the Foreign Office.

All the former members of the Scots Guards platoon who had testified to the People were interviewed again under caution. Plans were made for the British police team to fly to Kuala Lumpur to continue with their enquiries. Then on June 18th, 1970 the Labour government was ousted by the Conservatives – and just weeks later the Batang Kali enquiry was stopped with a view “to uphold the good name of the army.”

The long battle for a public enquiry after determined efforts by the survivors’ legal team collapsed. This legal battle is unlikely to be joined again. Nevertheless, the UK Supreme Court was minded that the killings were unlawful and that “wholly innocent men were mercilessly murdered”. There was another disappointment for historians. When the UK National Archives announced a release of secret colonial papers in 2012, many of us rushed to Kew hoping that some of the reports made just after the killings had survived. There was bad news: it turned out that when the British pulled out of Malaya in 1957, any incriminating evidence about the events of December, 1948 had been destroyed.

For historians of the British Empire and the traumatic process of decolonisation that followed the Second World War, the discovery of new information about the tragedy that unfolded in Batang Kali casts new light on the longest war fought by British troops in the 20th Century, the Malayan Emergency – and the counter- insurgency techniques developed in Southeast Asia that influenced American strategy in Vietnam and impact bitterly contested campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

#british colonisation #malaysia #malaya #batang kali massacre #malayan emergency #1940s

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arcticdementor · 3 years ago

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I’ll be transcribing select podcasts from now on. The one I recently did with Misha Saul had a lot of great insights, so I thought it was a good place to start.

It’s been lightly edited to make it more clear and legible, and sometimes for grammar, while maintaining the general ideas.

…

Richard has hit the spotlight in a big way over the last year – he’s been on Tucker Carlson and is increasingly known for his iconoclastic style. His podcast is excellent, and his essay drawing out the mechanism for how Wokeism grew out of the Civil Rights Act in the US has made waves.

This conversation picks up on a strand that I’ve been thinking a lot about. Diana Fleischman in my conversation with her said: Institutions are increasingly reflecting the values of middle-aged women. Tyler Cowen often writes about the feminization of society at Marginal Revolution. No one, as far as I’m aware, has really buttoned down what that means and what it looks like.

I don’t think that’s quite what we do here.

It’s a pretty free-flowing exploratory conversation about what we might call the feminization of society. What do we mean when we talk about it? Where can we see it? What are its benefits and derangements? We have a crack at the subject, anyway. Think of this as an experiment in chatting through some observations, live.

…

Richard: Sure. This is going to be a very American-centric analysis because it goes back to American history and American law but a lot of Americans don’t actually know this story. A lot of liberals have this idea of the Civil Rights Act… there used to be racism, they still think there is racism, but there used to be official state-sanctioned racism, Jim Crow, private businesses would discriminate against blacks and women to a lesser extent, or the same extent in some people’s minds. Then you pass the law of the Civil Rights Act and things got better. And a lot of Republican politicians, those doing the most superficial kind of analysis, don’t have much of a different story than that. They just think that “whatever, now the wokeness has come and now maybe it’s something a different and that’s a problem.” And they’ll throw in “oh and by the way, those who opposed the civil rights were Democrats." They try and claim the mantle for the civil rights movement for the Republicans, which is nonsense because a lot of those people left and became Republicans specifically over that issue, and a lot of their voters left the party. So it’s really a nonsense narrative they try and throw back at them.

It says you can’t discriminate in government and you can’t discriminate in private business. And most people at the time thought that basically meant you couldn’t put up a sign that says no black people. Even the gender thing they say was added as a joke actually. Somebody was trying to kill the bill, they didn’t want the racial equality parts. They said, “it would be so absurd to have a society where you didn’t discriminate based on sex” so they put sex in there hoping to kill the bill. And it ended up passing. I’m not 100% sure, I was told this by a law professor at the University of Chicago, so it’s not like I read it on Twitter somewhere. It’s credible though I haven’t looked into it.

Misha: American politics is basically a rerun of the producers, like hilarious accidents that keep escalating forever.

Richard: Right. So what does not discriminating mean? It wasn’t long after that that the phrase affirmative action comes along. It comes along in a series of executive orders. Government contractors first under Kennedy and then LBJ in the 1960s. Under Nixon for the entire federal government. Basically it said that the government would have to keep racial and gender statistics and make sure there weren’t any disparities between groups. You also had development of these other legal doctrines developed from the Civil Rights Act which includes a hostile work environment, sexual harassment law, stuff like that.

And lots of people have raised questions about free speech: If I think men and women are different and I’m in a private business and I want to say that, that’s of questionable legality… mainstream conservative views on things. They went after a lot of companies for this. There were some major corporations, I think Mitsubishi was one, they ended up paying a lot of money to the government, that made examples out of certain places.

Another doctrine, which was invented by a combination of the courts and executive agencies, is disparate impact. So if you give standardized tests, Grigg vs. Duke Power Company, this was a case early after the Civil Rights Act. It said if you give an IQ test and it has a disparate impact between groups… you can still use it but it’s a little complicated, it has to be related to the work, but it becomes harder. Everything you do that has a racial disparate impact, and by the way everything in the world has a racial disparate impact, if you find something that doesn’t I’ll be surprised, they can come after you for it either through the government directly coming after you or through people suing you.

So what happened? What happened starting in the 1960s is you see the growth of this human resources industry. You can just look at the chart of the number of human resource workers in the US going through the roof. Now if you had just said quotas, hire this many blacks, this many women, that would have been simple. You wouldn’t need a full-time bureaucracy to do that. The fact that it was vague and there were potentially substantial penalties sort of put business on edge. You needed a full-time bureaucratic class to interpret the laws and what was going on.

So the DEI industry is derived off of the rise of human resources. So you know, the way people see woke institutions today, “well they’re just deciding to be woke, there’s just a class of people deciding to take the leftwing issue on anything related to race and gender,” and some of that is obviously right. But you’re ignoring that basically legally you’re only allowed to be on one side of the culture wars. You’re not really allowed to say… if you’re a government contractor you can’t say “I don’t want to count my employees by race or gender. I don’t want to collect that data. I don’t want to take affirmative action to help black people or women out, I believe in a colorblind policy.” Mainstream conservative views, conservatives believe this stuff, it’s not legal. Conservatism is illegal for a lot of institutions. Not everything is covered but huge portions: the federal government, government contractors, subcontractors, it covers a huge portion of the private and public sectors.

And then it filters down, you have these big corporations and other people sort of follow them. And then you have these norms that apply to everyone. Courts will look at best practices, saying “Oh, discrimination is wrong, what are the best practices in the industry? What are people doing to fight discrimination?” And if that’s Robin DiAngelo at one point in time, you start to worry if you don’t have Robin DiAngelo coming to give speeches you might get in trouble. Not specifically Robin DiAngelo, but you get the idea. You have these intellectual fads that come and go and everyone’s jumping on the same train because it’s necessary.

…

But anyway, let’s get back to the feminization issue. I think this is a discussion that can easily devolve into two cranks kind of sounding conspiratorial and bitter. The one place outside this conversation that’s been steadily beating the drum of this thing has been Tyler Cowen on his blog Marginal Revolution. I think we can generally be quite normatively neutral around this trend, it’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, but if you go to Marginal Revolution and search “feminization,” you notice that it does pop up quite periodically.

For example, one thing that Tyler Cowen recently said, and I’ll quote: “one thing the contemporary world definitely has not come to terms with is how much a highly feminized culture will be rather strongly enforcing new forms of discrimination, albeit cloaked under different and rhetorically emancipatory principles.” I think last year or the year before Tyler Cowen said “the feminization of our culture is for me, trend #1,” noting that basically all the top ten selling books had female protagonists and seven were authored by women. And I think you can go through different professions, education and other institutions, over the past 50 years, and I guess it’s not surprising since the kind of increased participation of women in the workforce and democratic process, you’d kind of expect our cultural and institutions to change. But I guess this is what I wanted to spend today talking about, when you kind of took the piss out of DiAngelo and just said “this is just estrogen and mental illness.” Let’s talk about what has happened in our culture, what does feminization mean?

Richard: Well, I think it means a lot. It’s a broad topic. I think what Cowen is referring to is, you have men and women, and men and women deal with conflict and challenges in different ways. We as a society are leaning more towards doing things in the feminized way rather than a more masculine way. Robin DiAngelo is just a great example of this. I mentioned the human resources industry. I also have a chart in my Substack that shows the changing demographics over time, shows something like 60-70% female. So this idea that you have problems with people and then you talk to them about it and you talk to them not for say, an instrumental purpose, “we’re going to work something out,” but talking is a reward in and of itself. You need something, you need to re-establish the relationship, you need to feel heard, feel validated. This is a very feminine thing.

So you have these protestors at universities, and it’s funny because you look at identity politics in the past, anti-colonization or something. It’s just “we want to get the occupiers out of our country, we want to fight them, we want to have our own society” it’s a kind of masculine idea. And you now have these sort of identity politics where it’s like “hire more diversity counselors and have them talk to the people who are mean to us forever.” It’s a very strange thing compared to what identity politics was 30, 40, 50 years ago. It’s a sort of nationalism, a tribalism, an us vs. them that’s there in every society. But it’s morphed into something different.

So DiAngelo, the rise of human resources, even things like how we understand cost-benefit analysis. I think Safetysim is a more female way of looking at things. Bryan Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voters has a few predictors of thinking more like an economist, and one of them is being male rather than female.

…

Richard: Well, if you go to the places where it’s most purely about consumer preferences, just walk though the girls section in the toy store… now they announce there’s no girls section or boys section, but they’ll have one isle that’s all cars and one isle that's all dolls. I was at Target not long ago just looking at the dolls and the Barbies, now they’re in different colors, black, brown, and they have careers, doctor Barbie, astronaut Barbie. I didn’t see a fat Barbie, I didn’t see a trans Barbie, I didn’t see a bald-headed Barbie, I didn’t see a tattooed Barbie…

Misha: Not now, but every joke becomes a reality.

…

Richard: I think things like anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, these things are higher in women. Neuroticism, I think these things are clearly… everyone sort of understands that. Especially the way we talk about things like mental health. Simone Biles… the idea that she quit right before a match, a meeting? A game? Whatever they call it?

Misha: An Olympics thing? A sports thing? We’re the wrong guys here. And she says she doesn’t want to do it anymore?

Richard: Anyway, there’s some kind of competition which she quit. And it’s not about her specifically, it’s about the media reaction which is that this is more heroic than if she would have won.

Misha: The quote in The New Yorker, I think it is, “her radical courage.” It’s deranged! To your point, even the best have blowups and absolutely no judgment, whatever. It’s the cultural reaction to it that is totally hilarious and idiotic.

Richard: Even stuff like therapy, the rise of mental health discourse. If you watch some normal TV shows, it’s amazing how everyone has a therapist. It’s seen as everyone has these problems they gotta work through, and the idea of it is that everyone is walking around damaged. I’m not going to say that’s normal for males or females. But we are tilting towards… it’s closer to the female norm than the male norm. There’s a minority of women who are very anxious and go through life feeling a lot of pain, and even for all our so-called gender equality, there’s still an idea that it’s much more socially acceptable for women to complain about things; for women to cry about things is much more socially acceptable than men.

So women tend to have these negative emotions at higher rates and it’s more acceptable for them to express negative emotions, so what happens is female concerns are overrepresented in the things we talk about. Not even all female concerns, I mean it’s very specific. Elizabeth Bruenig, this is a Washington Post writer for those who don’t pay attention, I think she just wrote some article that said “I became a mom at a young age and this made me happy,” that was the whole article. And every person on Twitter lost their mind and said it’s white supremacy or something. So it’s not the women like Elizabeth Bruenig, though she is a columnist and has a voice, she’s not representative of her class. It tends to be single, urbanized, less connected to family or marriage or a committed relationship. Those people talk the most and they tend to go into journalism and academia. They tend to have a disproportionate influence. This isn’t just women who have influence, but is true of human beings in general and who ends up mattering and having influence. The prominence we give to mental health and the way we talk about it are both signs of feminization.

…

Richard: To go back to what you said about whether it’s an American thing, I don't have much experience traveling overseas. I did a semester abroad in Russia when I was an undergrad, that was about 10 years ago, around 2008-2009.

Misha: That’s awesome, where did you go in Russia?

Richard: St. Petersburg.

Misha: Cool! How’s your Russian?

Richard: Not very good. I have a minor in it but it’s been 12 years so I barely know anything.

So I was there, and I saw Tyler Cowen say this: the gender dimorphism is very high there. I didn’t see any women with short hair. I didn't see any women with sweatpants or anything like that. I traveled a bit in Europe and I think it’s the same way. ‘Letting yourself go’ as a woman is more of an American thing. I don’t know if it’s an Anglo thing, you can tell me about Australia, but it’s sort of like… some women have gotten in their heads the idea that to appeal to a man is somehow sexist or wrong. But it’s human nature, men want to appeal to women and women want to appeal to men.

Misha: Yeah, but you can have an argument that’s regressive and that’s reflective of traditionalist values, that’s basically behind rather than an alternative. I know they look at the anglosphere and see everyone as totally deranged. I can’t even say it on here but the things they say about this whole dynamic is pretty funny. How do you think about that? Maybe it’s just a function of liberation, that you don’t need to be on parade all the time.

Richard: Why is that liberation? You could say someone being obese is liberation, why do they feel like they have to watch their weight? Not caring about how you look, this is a form of liberation.

Misha: You joke, but the US is way heavier than it was 50 years ago. You are seeing all these big is beautiful schtick kind of everywhere, you know what I mean? I kind of get the everyday person rolls their eye at this, but it seems to be a meaningful…

Richard: Do an experiment. Find a woke woman, tell her “you’ve put on a few pounds recently.” Say it in the nicest way possible, and see if she takes it as an insult. The things we say, “big is beautiful,” but try it sometime. Tell someone “I’m a liberal, I don’t have any judgement on these things.” It doesn’t work. There’s what we’re supposed to say and the reality.

…

Richard: Yeah, that’s some of it, and to go back to civil rights law, some of these things have been forcibly integrated. Some big golf course, something related to the PGA… they had men’s only golf and some big lawsuit. I think that’s right… Harvard within the last few years got rid of single gender fraternities and sororities, I don’t know if they went after the sororities too but they at least went after the fraternities. You think about why you’d need a male only space, or an all female space, and the justification would be “men and women are different, I can speak and talk in a way with other men that I can’t in a room with all women,” and that idea of fundamental differences is verboten, it’s something you’re not allowed to say or think.

You do get some all female spaces. It’s sort of like you could have an all black club but not all white club; because that’s the preference of the protected group, people will justify it somehow. They’ll say “blacks or women face unique challenges” not because they’re biologically different but because they’re facing unique challenges due to sexism or whatever. Sometimes they won’t deny the biological, but basically you don’t have to think too much about it, because they’re the “good people,” women and minorities.

And if you’re a man, now you’re talking about differences. And you’re implying those differences in some way favor the men. It’s funny, Daily Caller is a conservative website and they went to some member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a Democrat, and asked him “why do you think that men are arrested for crimes more than women?” Now the joke is that the Congressional Black Caucus says that it’s racism if blacks are arrested more for crimes than white people. And the Congressional Black Caucus, one of the guys was like “oh of course, because men are more violent.” It was nothing. So they sort of got him. There’s not a consistency. Sometimes you can believe in differences, sometimes you can’t. It’s not about if you believe in differences or not, it’s about if you’re flattering the group that needs to be flattered or insulting the group that needs to be insulted.

…

Misha: Just leave the crusty old dudes alone! There’s like 50 female gyms down the road from that same club and no one cares. But this is literally front-page news. No one can get enough of these crusty old dudes getting together for lunch.

Richard: The thing is men don’t want to do identity politics against women. You do have these guys online, men’s rights activists…

Misha: They’re losers! Who wants to be those guys?

Richard: Right. So there’s got to be a way to pushback, while not falling into the “we’re just like women, we’re going to have a fight on equal terms.” I mean if you do do that, you end up with the Taliban. Men will win, if you fight on equal terms with women… Trust me, it’s not going to be much of a fight. You don’t want to go in that direction.

…

Misha: I meant more, does being an immigrant allow you to speak truth to power? People can’t accuse you of being some rich, boat-shoe wearing fancy-boy who is speaking from a place of power in the US. Do you know what I mean?

Richard: Maybe. Let’s say there was a blond-haired blue eye guy who was just like me.

Misha: And you’re light haired and light eyed by the way!

Richard: I’m light eyed and dark haired. But yeah, I think it would be more difficult. I do think that’s certainly the case. There’s a guy named Madison Cawthorn, a young Republican, he looks like an SS officer. But he’s in a wheelchair, he had an accident, so it’s sort of strange that way. But he’s a typical dumb Republican who says dumb things. The media freaks out at him, it’s the way he looks. The wheelchair thing makes it a little strange. From what I can tell he’s not different from any Republican in Congress, just different in the way he looks.

Misha: So this is one of my favorite things about you. And whoever’s outraged at this point would have switched off or stopped listening already, but you’ll kind of point to the demographics or insane institutions in the US and you have this whole wokeness piece, you’re a pretty loud critic of that. But then you look at the Republicans and go “these idiots are totally worse. These idiots couldn’t organize a root in a brothel.” What’s going on there? To go in a different direction, what is with the state of conservatism in the US?

Richard: This is something I actually want to write about. There’s a narrow problem which is that they have never done the things I recommend they do, which is look at civil rights law and honestly face what’s happening. But then there’s a broader question as to why they think about this stuff and why they never intend to do anything about it. So that’s sort of a broader question.

The liberals are ideologically motivated. You look at which sources of news and information liberals trust more, and it’s usually the written word. The New York Times, Washington Post, it’s these other publications. The base driving the Democratic party and the left in the US is journalism and academia. For the right it’s talk radio and TV. Talk radio and TV is not ideological, it has a short attention span. It likes to fight, it likes the reality TV side of things. Sometimes it can win, it can win over the majority of the public because it’s good at showmanship and fighting.

And you have these groups that are issue focused, the gun people and anti-abortion people. These people do well, they’re organized and get the bills passed that they want. But in general, I think conservatism is more of a reaction to an ideological movement and liberalism is the ideological movement.

#richard hanania #substack #misha saul #transcript #podcast #read the whole thing

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the-necessary-unnecessary · 4 years ago

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hey, can you tell us a bit about racism in Spain? I'm incredibly uneducated about it, and I don't know much about Spanish history especially racism wise so it would be really nice to get an insight from you about it.

this is a big question, since Spain’s relationship with xenophobia dates back centuries and I’m neither the most qualified person to take you through it nor someone who has suffered from Spanish society’s racist tendencies. However I’ll try to piece a bit of something together and maybe other people can add on if there’s other stuff to include. Also, this is mainly Spanish history from a racism perspective, there are many other positive things in other areas that I haven’t included (patriota pero no mucho)

So basically, up until the 15th century, Spain (in its then form) was a relatively harmonious melting pot of different cultures. With the Roman invasion, settlements and a Visigoth takeover (Germanic population) thereafter, Christianity was pretty firmly established in the country/iberian peninsula by the 2nd Century AD. In 711 AD the Moors, who had control over Islamic Africa, invaded the peninsula and established a Caliphate named Al-Andalus which had a particular stronghold in the south: in Andalusia and their Córdoban capital. Rule was stronger or weaker depending on the region but largely Islamic rule was established and Jewish and Catholic people were treated as second class citizens. Córdoba became the wealthiest, largest and most sophisticated city in Europe by the end of the tenth century, with trade and rich intellectual North African traditions forming a unique culture in the region.

There is a strong historical basis that during a lot of this period there was pockets of ‘La Convivencia’ ie. the co-existence of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Like for example, around Toledo where in universities the three backgrounds contributed to tremendous amounts of sharing of knowledge etc.

However, from about the 9th century onwards the Catholics who still held strong points right in the north, begun ‘la Reconquista’, the “reconquest,” where they began chipping away at the Caliphate’s dominance. By the early 11th century they had gained more land than was held by the Muslims and 1492 is where we set our next scene.

This is probably one of the biggest and most path changing years in Spanish history. Most known for being the year when Columbus landed in America, this enabled the start of Spanish imperlism which would extend to almost 5 centuries afterwards, conquering territories in South America, Africa and Asia and subjecting them to imperialistic rule and policies of white totalitarian dominance.

The second important happening in this year was the fall of Granada, the last remaining territory the Caliphate had in Spain, signifying the end of Muslim rule in the country. They were, as expected, thrown out of the country in their droves and many others were forced into hiding being subject to situations that would only get worse with the Inquisition in full swing.

The third, and last, big event in this year was outlined in the Alhambra Decree where the expulsion of all practicing Jews was announced. Now this had already followed the forced conversion tens of thousands of Jews had been subjected to in 1391 and 1415 (ie. crusades and masacres against them). As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and around 160,000 were expelled.

This ended religious diversity in Spain, the Inquisition sealed this fate. If you’ve heard of one thing about all of this I’m sure it’s the spanish inquisition. Primarily set up to identify heretics among those who converted from Judaism and Islam to Catholicism and ensure the establishment of the Catholic monarchy, it became a method of torture, fear and murder for those who were perceived to cause any threat to the Spanish catholic order. The effects of the Inquisition are widely debated, with some saying the death toll and magnitude has been blown up by the Protestants in other European countries at the time and does not show the full picture of the hundreds of thousands of converted jews and muslims who remained and overtime became integrated into Catholic society. Whilst others remaining firm to the devastating measure of these actions and the ‘pure blood’ mentality it created. What’s for certain though, is that by the end of the Inquisition in 1834 very little religious nor ethnic diversity remained in Spain.

Jump forward about 100 years and the Spanish Empire is no more after the 1898 crisis, there’s a weird back and forth period with Republics and Monarchies and dictatorships until the Civil War broke out in 1936. It lasted until 1939 when the Nationalists, led by Franco, took total control of the country and submitted it to a dictatorship that would last until his death in 1975. I don’t even know where to begin with a period that many people see as rosy and many others ignore completely whilst Historians have now gone so far as to call the 1940s and 50s the ‘Spanish Holocaust’. However I’ll break it down to one or two main things that have predominantly spurred on today’s racist attitudes.

During the Civil Rights movements of the 50s and 60s Spain was largely immune to the winds of changes due to their isolationist policies and dictatorial power holds. We didn’t take part in any of the dialogue nor go through any racial reconciliation, at least to much a lesser extent than most other countries. It’s quite a common thing to say that what much of europe did in 70 years we’ve only had time to do in 45, and there’s much of a grain of truth in this.

A famous conservative spanish politician called David Aznar defended these views and can be extrapolated into the sentiment that existed to facilitate the transition to democracy and still remain today: "In the democratic transition there were implicit and explicit agreements. One was that we Spaniards don't want to look to the past. Let's not disturb the graves and hurl bones at one another.” As a society, we hate to think about the past, it’s just not widely done. There’s ONE museum solely dedicated to the Civil War, the Historical Memory Law passed in 2007 to try and increase the rights of victims and their families was met by so much opposition and is devastatingly underfunded etc etc. This still translates to spaniards’ views on racism, saying it just doesn’t exist here and moving on. There’s a refusal to confront this and microagressions are ingrained in the culture.

As I’ve kind of mentioned before, issues of race extend much further than towards just black people which is why the US BLM movement cannot simply be traced onto Spain. People who are originally from Latin America face extreme stereotypes and varying forms of discrimination against them as do Arab populations and other people who have immigrated from MENA countries plus the large Roma communities.

The refugee crisis has further perpetuated the stigma around African immigrants in the past years, whilst the social effects of the 2008 Financial Crisis and beyond also continue to contribute to a xenophobic and nativist perspective where true spaniards should be prioritised with jobs, opportunities etc. For example, the alt-right wing party Vox that’s blatantly racist, anti-immigrants etc posted something with the slogan ‘Spanish Lives Matter’ the other day. They are purposefully incendiary.

Anyways, hope this was a suitable start for you, you can’t summarise millennia worths of history into a few paragraphs but I tried my best. Also there are obviously many who stand for none of these values, politicians who have tried to right these wrongs, activists who keep fighting the fight, people who have broken down barriers and areas where there’s complete coexistance. However the fact remains that these views and ideas are ingrained in people’s minds, theres blatant job discrimination and a lack of equal opportunities despite laws that may have been put in place.

I’m going to point anyone who has got this far to a couple of articles about racism from an Anglo-Saxon perspective below, racist football culture is almost always mentioned. Being a black traveller in Spain; Same Spanish Holocaust link as before but an extremely important book review read; Irish perspective on the Enigma of Spanish Racism; Racism? What Racism? Asks Spain; Opinion: Racism Is Alive and kicking in Spain

#almost a decade of ciencias sociales and cono lessons pulling through #anyways there's a lot here so maybe dont read it all by id recommend having a good skim of it!#i tried ny best to condense almost two centuries worth of histort into one post lol #blm #black lives matter #racism #spain #españa #history #og #the asks #*not two centuries lol two millennia im out here discrediting myself and everything i wrote

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momentofmemory · 4 years ago

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Hi! I just saw your commentary on the post regarding Hans Holbien's The Ambassadors painting. In your breakdown, you provided a picture of the Sistene Chapel's ceiling. I had never seen the full ceiling before and was curious what knowledge you may have regarding the various scenes painted. Thank you!

HOOBOY do I ever have thoughts!!

First, a quick caveat: you have to understand that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is huge. Like, huge huge. Five thousand square feet huge. There’s only nine (9) main frescos running down the center of the area, but there are 47 separate pieces in total—not even counting the 20 ignudi (nude youth), architectural framing, 10 medallions, or various bronze characters—adding up to very nearly three hundred and fifty individual figures.

There’s a reason it took Michelangelo four years is all I’m saying.

OKAY so the ceiling can broken up into roughly four main categories:

The Nine Frescos - aligned directly down the center and meant to be read sequentially (starting when on the altar side of the room, not from the door), these depict prominent scenes from the book of Genesis. They can be grouped further into sections of three: 1-3 depict God creating the world generally, 4-6 depict the creation & fall of man, and 7-9 depict the story of Noah.

The Twelve Prophets - these squared paintings surround the center line, featuring an alternating set of five sibyls (famous historical but non biblical prophetesses) and seven Old Testament prophets. The particular individuals were chosen based on their Messianic prophecies (because even though all the images on the ceiling are from the OT, the point is still to direct the viewer to the Christ of the NT).

The Four Pendentives - triangular in shape and forming the corners of the ceiling, these showcase moments of Israel’s deliverance in the OT, with particular interest in the heroes that were popular at the time: Moses (The Brazen Serpent), Esther (The Punishment of Haman), David (David and Goliath), and Judith (Judith and Holofernes).

The Ancestors of Christ - made up of eight triangular compositions on either side of the length of the ceiling, these are located directly above the lunettes (moon-shaped compositions arched over the windows). These show various figures from the family/ancestral line of Christ.

You can see a visual breakdown in this diagram:

There are additional sections besides those four—the ten medallions (two on every other of the main frescos), which depict more (mostly violent) OT scenes; the twenty ignudi (two nude males on either side of each medallion), which are maybe angels maybe Peak Humans™ maybe who knows; and the lunettes (arched sections above the windows), which at one point portrayed all of Christ’s genealogy as found in Matthew, but two of them were covered over by Michelangelo himself in 1537 to make room for The Last Judgement, making the set incomplete.

Aight now that you have the tl;dr of the layout, you can see that it is A Lot™. Since picking even one section can easily (and has easily!) filled entire theses, I’m actually going to pull back a bit and talk more generally about form and structure, because—in large part due to his background as a sculptor—Michelangelo’s perspective and dimensionality is just masterful.

A quick reminder that the Sistine Chapel ceiling looks like this:

And, for a close-up, like this:

Obviously the figures are gorgeously done, to the point that they could be confused for sculpture rather than paintings (let it never be said that Michelangelo didn’t love himself some muscles), but what really makes me go feral is that that there ceiling?

That ceiling’s flat.

Okay not technically flat in that it’s dome-shaped, but flat in that there are no columns. The original, unpainted Chapel looked something like this:

Which, as you can see, is missing all that lovely architecture dividing up the ceiling.

The columns, structure, and forced perspective were painted, not sculpted, using a technique known as grisaille. The monochrome style was frequently used to call to mind classic Roman architecture (such as the pediment reliefs on the Pantheon and Parthenon), as the Greco Roman aesthetic was generally seen as the height (no pun intended) of artisan culture.

It’s no coincidence that Michelangelo took this route as, up until this point in his career, he wasn’t known for his painting much at all. He’d certainly made a name for himself as a sculptor through pieces like David or The Pieta, but this was to be his first major painting project—one he nearly turned down, because of the enormity of it all. The Pope, however, was quite set on it, so he eventually accepted—with a blank check to paint “whatever he liked.”

So he did—and his background in sculpture uniquely prepared him for creating more “active” bodies, such as in The Libyan Sibyl.

There’s a billion and one essays on her but for now let’s just notice the half-turned position, the musculature of her back (Michelangelo used a male model; do with that what you will), the sweeping lines of fabric, and the way her toe is just barely resting on the ground.

This is a painting that is alive: it gives off the sense that these figures are doing, rather than simply being.

Dynamics & motion were key to the composition Michelangelo wanted to create, partially because it’s that flow of motion that helps pull the viewer from one side of the ceiling, in the first fresco, all the way across the room to the last—and therefore, through the biblical narrative it portrays.

It’s so common it’s arguably kitsch to talk about The Creation of Adam (the fourth fresco), but what I want to point out is, like in the Sibyl painting, the movement of it all.

The bodies are twisted, muscles flexed and coiled; there’s a languidity to Adam’s movements as opposed to the fierce, powerful forward momentum in God’s.

Traditionally, the Christian God and other deities were shown in more staid, immobile positions, and while Michelangelo was not the first painter to break from that—that right arguably goes to Giovanni di Paolo—he was rather instrumental in shifting that paradigm, and once again, establishes this set of frescos as one interested in movement.

Finally, it would be hideously neglectful to discuss the form of the Sistine Chapel without mentioning colour, so one last thing.

As you may or may not know, art restoration is... controversial in the art world, to say the least. However, the Sistine Chapel went through a restoration beginning in 1980 and eventually completed in 1994, with the result washing away of several hundred years’ worth of grime and candle smoke, applying an awful lot of glue varnish, and touching up details/mending cracks:

Rather drastic, no?

It sparked a rather intense debate (that has still not eased up and doubtless ever will) about whether or not the conservators removed too much of the grime (for various reasons—the conservation work assumed all the painting was done buon fresco, which meant if Michelangelo had added any touch-ups after the fact those would’ve been removed; some suggest some of the smokey look wasn’t just smoke but actually a deliberate carbon black wash, etc., etc.).

Regardless, it at least allowed for a better look at some of the dynamics Michelangelo incorporated through his shading and highlights, as well as giving his brighter colours a chance in the limelight. This new, brighter version will keep the ceiling intact for many more viewers and critics for years to come.

(...At least until the next person decides to mess with it. It’s also had restorations in 1547, 1625, 1710, and 1935, so, y’know. Wait another 50-70 years and we’ll probably give it yet another go.)

#asks #art history #classic art #sistine chapel #memrants #religion #sgtbarnes107 #long post #there's literally SO MUCH to talk about here #many apologies for everything I had to leave out

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rushingheadlong · 5 years ago

Text

A rundown of Brian’s Red Special back-ups and replicas

Well here it is, another unnecessarily long post about Brian and his guitars :D

(Emphasis on unnecessarily long. There’s a read more on this post because after 5 days of research, 1800 words, 22 pictures, and countless edits it is too much to throw at your dashes all at once. I am so, so sorry if the read more doesn’t work for mobile users but I promise this is well worth the read.)

Anyway, this time let’s talk about his replicas, and the differences between them and the original Red Special. Off we go!

1970s: The Birch Special

The first official replica was dubbed the “Birch Special” because it was made by John Birch (not because it’s made from birch wood - it’s actually maple). It’s most well-known for being the guitar Brian uses in the We Will Rock You and Spread Your Wings music videos. There’s a lot of differences between this guitar and the Red Special but the most obvious one is that it just isn’t red.

So if Brian is playing a red guitar in the 1970s, it’s almost definitely his original Red Special and not a replica. (The exception being if it’s a mimed performance, i.e. Top of the Pops. Then it may be an unofficial commercial replica - more on that later.) Either way, if it’s not red it’s the Birch Special.

The Birch Special’s other claim to fame is that it’s the only guitar Brian has ever destroyed. The Birch Special was known for having major tuning problems and after a particularly frustrating show in 1982 Brian threw it offstage (most likely trying to throw it to his tech, who didn’t catch it).

The Birch Special actually went missing for about twenty years before it was found and shipped back to Brian in 2004, at which point Andrew Guyton repaired it. The guitar isn’t really playable due to the tuning problems caused by the design, but Brian still has it in his private collection.

1980s-90s: Guild Replicas

The next replicas were produced by the Guild Guitar Company in the mid-1980s. These have a lot more in common with the original Red Special, including actually being red, but it’s easy to spot the differences when you look at the finer details.

On the left is the original Red Special, on the right is a Guild replica from 1986. The headstock (circled in red) is black on the replica, and has the Guild logo at the end. The pickups (circled in yellow) and the control knobs (circled in blue), as well as the tuning pegs on the headstock, are all black instead of silver or white. The very end of the whammy bar is also black on the replica, but that’s much harder to spot especially in photos where Brian is playing the guitar.

Ironically, the one piece of black that they didn’t throw in there is a half-moon scratch plate located behind the bridge (circled in white).

Finally, the green circle shows where a patch is located on the original Red Special that is missing on almost every replica.

Brian originally built the Red Special with a distortion circuit, but later decided that he liked the sound of the guitar distorting through his Vox amps better. The circuit was removed and the switch hole was covered with tape. For part of the 70s it was bright red/orange, but later it was grey or black which makes it a bit harder to spot in stage photos.

The patch wouldn’t serve any purpose on the replicas, except decorative, so with one exception (which I’ll mention later) it gets left out.

Some 90s Guild replicas started to look a little more like the original, with red headstocks instead of black and the half-moon scratch plate starting to be added in:

And they started to make replicas in different colors as well:

However all of these still have the Guild logo on the headstock and are missing the patch by the switches. Most of the photos of Brian with Guild replicas seem to be from the mid-80s with more easily-identifiable guitars, although he did occasionally use both 80s and 90s Guild replicas on the Back to the Light tour in 1992-1993 as well.

Late 1990s: Fryer Replicas and the Red Special Restoration

Greg Fryer produced three Red Special replicas in 1997, dubbed John, Paul, and George Burns. The “John” guitar remains Brian’s main Red Special back-up. The “George Burns” guitar is used for the drop-D tuning required for Fat Bottomed Girls. (”Paul” was kept by Greg Fryer.)

The Fryer guitars look a lot more like the original Red Special - the headstock is red, all the other pieces are silver or white rather than black, and they have the half-moon scratch plate. However, the replicas can be identified by Greg Fryer’s logo on the headstock, and they’re missing the patch by the switches.

Greg Fryer also undertook a massive restoration project for the Red Special. (You can read his write-up and see pictures of the process on his blog.) As part of the restoration, the main scratch plate was repaired and the switch hole was properly filled in. At Brian’s request, the patch was replaced with a custom mother-of-pearl inlay of the “May Star” design that Brian uses in his solo projects.

It’s also worth noting that while the Red Special doesn’t have a “logo” on the headstock, it has a Brian May branded sixpence in the same spot. I’m not sure exactly when it was added, but since it says “Brian May: Back to the Light” I would assume it was sometime after the release of his first solo album in 1992.

For those of you who are interested in Brian’s solo work, he actually finished his album “Another World” with the Fryer replicas which were given to him in July 1997, as restoration work on the Red Special began in January 1998 before the album was completed. Greg Fryer even gets thanked in the lyric booklet.

[ID: Greg Fryer - Guitar Surgeon, and creator of 3 new B.M. Guitars, which appear alongside my original Red Special on this album.]

This also means that quite a few of the photos from Brian’s “Another World” tour actually have him playing the replicas instead of the original Red Special. You can see in the photo below that there’s no patch or May Star by the switches, and you can just make out the Fryer logo on the headstock.

2000s: Guyton Variations

In addition to repairing the Birch Special, Andrew Guyton has also created some very limited authorized replicas, including a green version of the Red Special (inspired by the Guild green replica from the 90s). Brian used one for playing Fat Bottomed Girls for several years before apparently switching back to the “George Burns” guitar (at least for the North American “Rhapsody” tour in 2019).

Brian has also commissioned several guitars from Andrew Guyton including my favorite, a semi-acoustic that I believe is the only other guitar to feature any sort of “patch” by the switches:

Yes, the decorative “patch” is a badger head, earning this guitar the nickname of the “Badger Guitar”. Also, as with all replicas, there is Guyton’s logo on the headstocks of all his guitars - though, they’re pretty identifiable even without that!

Andrew Guyton also carried out a much more limited restoration of the Red Special in 2016, but the appearance of the guitar didn’t change.

Commercial Replicas

There have been several unauthorized replicas produced over the years, most of which I’m not going to get into. However, let’s backtrack to my footnote about replicas in the 1970s for a second.

A Japanese guitar company called Greco was the first to produce commercial replicas. These guitars weren’t authorized and according to Brian “didn’t actually sound that nice”, but they did send one to Brian which he used in a few mimed/playback performances. You can actually see it in the Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy performance on Top of the Pops:

It looks a lot more like the original Red Special than the Birch Special did (and, frankly, than the Guild replicas of the 1980s). But you can tell the difference by the prominent bolts along the half-moon scratch plate and, as always, the absence of a patch by the switches.

Guild Guitars released authorized replicas from 1983-1986 and again from about 1993-1995. Burns Guitars mass-produced replicas beginning in 2001, before production was taken over by Brian May Guitars (BMG) in 2004 (which is currently the only company who manufactures authorized Red Special replicas). I don’t believe Brian ever played a Burns replica as a primary back-up guitar, since by that point he already had the Fryer replicas.

I’m not going to go into detail on all the different BMG models available (because there have been a lot over the years across the different companies), but generally you can identify them same way you’d identify the Fryer replicas: absence of a patch and a logo on the headstock.

However, there’s also a wide variety of other color variants now produced by BMG. All still feature the same shape as the original Red Special, including the shape of the main scratch plate and the half-moon scratch plate behind the bridge (which is missing in most Guild and Burns replicas).

Finally, Andrew Guyton also produced a limited run of 50 authorized replicas in 2004, and has released extremely limited numbers of some of his other Red Special variants (for example, he made 5 copies of the Badger Guitar). His replicas also have the half-moon switch plate but obviously are much rarer than the BMG models.

In Summary

If it’s a red guitar in the 1970s, it’s almost certainly the original Red Special. If it’s a mimed performance and the guitar is missing a patch by the switches, it’s an unofficial Greco replica. If it’s a pale golden-brown, it’s the Birch Special.

If it’s a red guitar in the 1980s and it has silver/white knobs, tuning pegs, and pickups and a red headstock and there’s the patch and half-moon scratch plate, it’s the original Red Special. If all those parts are black and there’s no patch or half-moon, it’s a Guild replica.

From 1998 on, if it has the May Star “patch” it’s the original Red Special. If it is missing the May Star and has a logo on the headstock, it’s a replica. (If Brian’s playing it, it’s most likely the “John” replica by Greg Fryer. If someone else is playing it, it’s most likely a BMG replica but may be an older Guild or Burns, or more unlikely a Guyton or unofficial replica.)

And, if it’s a funky color and Brian’s playing it, it’s a Guyton replica. If it’s a funky color and someone else is playing it, it’s most likely a BMG replica.

Finally, just for fun, here’s a photo of the Red Special compared against some of the replicas:

From left to right: Burns replica (without the half-moon switch plate), Fryer replica (probably “John”), green Guyton replica, the original Red Special (you can just make out the May Star and the sixpence on the headstock), a red Guyton replica, and on the floor is a “mini” model produced by Burns (also missing the half-moon switch plate).

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As always, I don’t claim to be an expert so if anything is wrong please let me know so I can correct it! I just fell down another rabbit hole and couldn’t stop until this was all typed out.

Also if anything is unclear let me know that too! Despite what it seems, I cut a fair amount of details out of this so I can always explain something more if I need to.

Photo credits:

1. Spread Your Wings music video screencap 2. Destroyed Birch Special - John Page 3-4. Guitar comparisons - Unknown 5-6. Patch close-ups - Unknown 7. 90s Guild replica - QueenConcerts.com 8-9. Colored 90s Guild replicas - Unknown 10. Fryer Replicas - Greg Fryer 11. May Star close-up - Ralph_PH (flickr) 12. Sixpence close-up - Red Special book 13. 98!Brian - Greg Fryer 14-15. Guyton variations - Andrew Guyton 16. Top of the Pops video screencap 17-21. BMG Guitars - Brian May Guitars 22. Replica comparison - Andrew Guyton

#brian may #queen band #red special #long post //#brian #text #I deserve an award not for writing this out but for resisting the urge to put a photo of One Vision Brian in a tank top in the Guild sectio #also I have spent less time and fewer words on school essays than the effort I put into this post #and frankly that says a lot about me as a person #masterpost

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