#it's like. at least post-1870s for me

[shoujoegg]

my biggest gripe abt s&b is that everything feels so cartoony and just painfully highlights how orientalist leigh bardugo’s world imaginary is... all of the liberties they took w/ the book characters would have been fine to me if they were just properly enfleshed in the histories bardugo obliquely references w/ this national mythos drama.

[idiopathicsmile]

I've been thinking about American diner lingo lately.

Like, relaying an order for poached eggs on toast as “Adam and Eve on a raft.” Or “shingles with a shimmy and shake” for buttered toast with jam.

(I personally learned about this phenomenon as a very young child because we had a picture book where a bear and an elephant are roommates and temp workers and they get a job at a diner for a while. Couldn't tell you why this streamed back into my brain like a week ago, but here we are.)

I'm not sure I can articulate this but there is something so beautiful to me about it. We as a culture know so little about its origins—maybe the 1870s, maybe the 1880s—or even really why it exists.

Wikipedia (yes I wikipedia'd this, yes I feel actual embarrassment about the lack of academic rigor in this aimless tumblr post but also there is also just not a ton of information on the topic) suggests that some diner lingo might've been mnemonic devices for short order cooks to remember specific dishes but honestly scroll through any list and you'll find it mostly isn't that. What it reads like is bored food service workers, mostly in the 1920s through 1970s, looking for a way to amuse or at least entertain themselves.

Milk is “moo juice.” Jell-o becomes “nervous pudding.” Black coffee is “a mug of murk.”

Western history loves its individual heroes, but my guess is the practice arose organically at multiple luncheon spots across the US. We don't know the names of the servers and cooks who came up with the terms but a few of the terms have survived, in a fashion—as wider used slang (“Joe” for coffee), as a vintage-y affectation in quirky restaurants of the present, and in compendiums of self-consciously useless factoids (oysters wrapped in bacon are transmuted into “angels on horseback”). It's something about the ordinary people of the world of the past, the tiny fossils we leave behind without even knowing it. One unknown day in history, someone then working as a diner employee thought to call a tall stack of pancakes “Jayne Mansfield” because for some reason it made their day a little better, and this somehow caught on to the point where I can, without doing much work, still find multiple written sources insisting it happened. It wasn't a marketer or a CEO somewhere, it was just a bunch service workers passing the time and leaving the slightest little linguistic footprints behind.

I don't know. Imagine if one of your inside jokes from work was still being spread by offbeat trivia lovers a hundred years from now.

[llyfrenfys]

In which I try not to be That Guy TM when it comes to Irish ancestors: An exploration of ancestry, diaspora and culture

Because of The Horrors TM in my life atm I've been looking into my biological family tree. I'm adopted but estranged from my adoptive family and I never met my biological family since I was adopted just short of my 2nd birthday. I've been tracing my ancestry for about 3 years now and it's genuinely quite stress relieving to me. It's also fun and challenging from a research standpoint - putting together my own family tree gave me the skills to write articles like this one I wrote in 2022 about historical Welsh queer people, for example.

Lately, I've been finding out more about my Irish ancestors while an adoptee (and thus not knowing any of my biological family) - but also doing this as a Celticist and tired of people doing the 'my sister's friend's cousin's father's mother was Irish' thing. This has created an almost unbearable tension between curiosity at my own ancestry while trying not to be That Guy who finds out about one (1) Irish ancestor hundreds of years ago and is weird about it.

Especially since mine are quite distant ancestors - my great, great, great grandparents were born in Dublin and in a tiny village in County Down called Dunnaman (near Kilkeel). However, they were Irish Catholics and emigrated to Liverpool in the 1870s - all of their subsequent children and grandchildren were born in Liverpool and all of the above + great grandchildren were raised Catholic - including my grandmother (who died before I was born). So there was an obvious attempt to maintain that heritage. There's even evidence my great, great, great grandmother at least spoke Irish (which, as she was born in County Down, would have been Ulster Irish).

The problems with uncritically throwing oneself at an ancestor's nationality:

Now, not all North Americans of Irish (or Welsh, Scottish, Italian, Scandinavian, German etc.) descent do this - but there's a very vocal set of North Americans of Irish descent who find awe and interest in their ancestry - which is actually quite a positive thing! - however, due to either temporal or cultural disconnect, they may end up doing or saying things (and not necessarily with bad intentions) which can have a negative impact on the Irish and the Irish language (or [nationality] and [language(s) associated with that nationality].

I'm reminded of the time an American commented on a Welsh language rights post I made in support of Welsh speakers, but they accidentally ended up using a white nationalist slogan by mistake. It can be a minefield - and with regards to Ireland specifically, mistakes like that can be so much worse. To literally give my own (mild) example, today I decided to relearn Irish (since I haven't spoken any in years since being taught basics at undergrad) and picked up a blank notebook I bought at Tesco the other week, while completely forgetting the inside cover of the notebook was orange. I was planning on decorating the notebook anyway and painted it a different colour. While I know that nobody would really hold it against me if I didn't change the colour, I just know that walking around with an orange notebook filled with Irish I'm relearning because of interest in my Catholic ancestors could be a confusing set of messages, at the very least. If you don't understand why this is, look up the meanings of the colours on the flag of Ireland.

Which is to say, even those of us in Northern Europe who have significantly greater physical proximity to Ireland than North America (and therefore should know better) still can and do get things wrong. And not just benignly wrong like in my case.

The tendency for some North Americans of Irish descent (Canada isn't exempt from this) to conflate Irish ancestry with a contemporary connection to the modern countries located on the island of Ireland as a whole can have results ranging from 'a bit weird' to 'jesus fucking christ'. As a Celticist, I've seen far, far too many Americans of Irish descent try to weigh in on modern Irish politics without any background knowledge or tact at all - and naturally they stake their claim on modern Irish politics entirely on the premise of having distant Irish ancestors. Or, even worse, things start to get all phrenological.

'Irish blood' and the nonexistence thereof:

'Irish blood' is continually evoked by some to validate their sense of 'Irishness' and the obsession with '[insert nationality] blood' is a distinctly North American phenomenon- likely related to or an offshoot of the concept of 'blood quantum', in which enrolment into some Native American nations and tribes is determined by how much 'Native blood' a person has. Notably, many people who would ostensibly have been described under this system as 'full blood' were registered by the US as 'half blood'. This is a method of genocide intended to wipe out tribes and nations by imposing strict measures of who does or does not qualify to enrol into a tribe or nation. This concept seems to have been extrapolated over time (in a North American context at least) into the idea of descent from other nationalities' being measured in a similar or adjacent way. This is how you end up with some North Americans declaring they are '1/8 Italian and 1/4 Irish' on their dad's side etc. While in Europe (where these nationalities hail from, crucially) this practice is seen as a really weird way to describe your ancestry. In general, it's simply 'my 4 times grandfather came from Spain' or 'my great great grandfather on my dad's side came from Finland' etc. if it comes up at all. For various political reasons, many Europeans with descent from multiple other European nationalities may choose to omit to mention descent from certain nationalities, especially if in recent history there has been conflict between their birth nation and an ancestor's nation. The most famous example of this is literally the British royal family changing their surname from the German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more 'British sounding' Windsor in 1917 due to the onset of the First World War.

Where it gets really weird (and also very offensive and rude) is when cultural stereotypes get invoked alongside the whole 'blood' thing in usually quite damaging and/or disparaging ways. I've seen way too many North Americans of Irish descent claim they're alcoholics because they have 'Irish blood' or even worse, claim it's normal to domestically abuse their spouses because of it!! (Genuine thing I have seen btw). Same goes for claiming to be a naturally good chef because of 'Italian blood' and so on. As a general rule, people from the place where your ancestors were from don't generally like to be inherently be considered drunks or prone to violence due to their nationality. Or have weird and inaccurate idealisms projected onto their language or cuisine.

Aren't there any positives?

It wouldn't be fair to make a post like this without mentioning some of the positives that can come from interest in an Irish ancestor. Like I mentioned at the start of this post, I myself felt inspired to relearn Irish because of my own Irish ancestors. I was taught the Connacht dialect at undergrad, however, since my ancestor was from County Down, I'm going to try and learn Ulster Irish instead. One doesn't need Irish ancestors to learn Irish of course - when I learned I wasn't aware I had any Irish ancestors. But being inspired to learn Irish because of an ancestor can't hurt and directly increases the number of Irish speakers in the world (provided you keep at it). This is a net positive for the language as a whole.

Similarly, people who have educated themselves on Irish politics because of their ancestry and genuinely learned something are also a positive thing to come out of discovering Irish ancestors. In my experience, these people are the kind of people I enjoy talking to about being a Celticist because they actively want to learn and respect the cultures being talked about. Which is huge to me!

Conclusion:

As a Welsh speaker whose national identity is more-or-less Jan Morris-esque, my Irish ancestry is an interesting facet of my ancestry I simply didn't know about before. And being an adopted person, I can sympathise with the general sentiment of a lot of white North Americans of feeling disconnected or alienated from any ancestral heritage. The conditions which create That Guy TM as described above rely on that sense of alienation to propagate a very ineffective, tactless and often very insensitive approach to Irish and other European cultures. But the important thing is that that approach can be challenged by people genuinely interested in their ancestry who are also conscientious of the living versions of the cultures their ancestors hailed from.

For me, that means learning Irish in a dialect my ancestors are likely to have spoken. I also visited the library today to check out some books on the Irish emigration to England and the sociopolitical reasons behind that emigration. I know the broad strokes, but the details are desirable to know to get a better idea of the why and how the country of my birth had a hand in creating the conditions which led my ancestors to emigrate in the first place. I think the world would be a better place if people took the time to understand the history and politics of ancestors which don't share their nationality.

As always, reblogs and thoughts are welcomed and encouraged!

Thank you for reading to the end - and if you'd like to support me, please see my pinned post. Diolch!

[cringeborg-moved]

Florence 1870s Evening Gown

Info and download under the cut.

BGC

24 swatches, 14 of which have color combinations snatched directly from 1870s fashion plates

Display index 1870

Vertices: 5618

Polygons: 9035

For once I can actually say I don't think it has any real issues, at least nothing you can't see just from the previews in this post. Like all trains in this game, the train might be underground in some positions and hovering slightly above the ground in others.

Contact me if you encounter any issues!

Download (SFS)

Alt Download (Mediafire)

[telekinetictrait]

"I will dip my pen in my own blood if I choose!" (Vendetta; or, the Story of One Forgotten – Marie Corelli, 1886)

i'm not going to lie to you all. this is my least favorite decade of the 1800s... lets get this over with.

also, yes, i know that i used @vintagesimstress's 1799 winter wear, but it reminded me a lot of this tea dress dated from the 1880s, and i wanted to use it! also also, yeah this is the second post today. i haven't burned out on this project yet but lord knows.

so, the 1880s. you see bustles a lot in this decade, as well as a lot of hats over updos. hair was typically pulled into an updo due to the prevalence of high necklines. not fun fact: many bird species became endangered in the 1880s and 1890s due to the demand for feathers for hats. sleeves stayed close to the arms, but would begin to puff as the decade went on. the bustle hit it's peak in the middle of the decade, much like hoops did in the 1860s. as the bustle shrunk, the hemline of the skirt began to widen into the bell shape that is most associated with the late victorian years.

1800-1809 / 1810-1819 / 1820-1829 / 1830-1839 / 1840-1849 / 1850-1859 / 1860-1869 / 1870-1879

cc links under the cut!

see my resources page for genetics

ianthe : linzlu's fancy bonnet / sylvanes' satin and lace bustle dress (tsr download)

ibis : stephanine-sims' sapphire hair / marysims' ida blouse / simverses' aas bustle skirt conversion / zouyou's parasol

idalia : simverses' lily hat conversion / buzzardly28's 1880s hair #2 / lollaleeloosstuff's bustle dress / dancemachinetrait's lavinia gloves

ihintza : the-melancholy-maiden's middle part 19th century snood / chere-indolente's la cueillette des pommes blouse + skirt

ilse : vintagesimstress's 1799 winter wear / dancemachinetrait's lavinia gloves

imogen : kismet-sims' oh cecilia updo / elfdor's patricia ballgown + gloves

irene : elfdor's lady hat v2 (simsfinds download) / hiddenmoonsims4things' victorian town dress

isidore : chere-indolente's la cueillette des pommes cap / saurusness's ruby hair / linzlu's 1880s dress (download here)

ivette : blogsimplesimmer's maria updo / chere-indolente's la mousme blouse + skirt

izolda : the-melancholy-maiden's late victorian hair + hat / emythegamer's charlotte dress

thank you to @linzlu @stephanine-sims @ms-marysims @simverses @buzzardly28 @dancemachinetrait @the-melancholy-maiden @chere-indolente @vintagesimstress @kismet-sims @elfdor @hiddenmoonsims4things @saurusness @blogsimplesimmer and @emy-the-gamer

[marzipanandminutiae]

Your post about the Victorians’ attitudes towards the Regency is so interesting!! Do we have any examples of them satirizing or otherwise lambasting the attire of other eras? My teacher once said they hated the Georgians but I’ve also read that was a big 1870s influence so unsure if that’s right.

I think this is where it helps to remember that the Victorian EraTM was a 60-year span of time, and the Georgian era similarly expansive. Parts of it were in and out of favor during parts of the former, so it's not quite correct to say "the Victorians hated the Georgians."

(Also, for fellow non-Brits who were confused by the Georgian/Regency distinction like I first was: the Regency was part of the Georgian era. So were most of the 1820s and 1830s. Georgian does not just refer to the panniers/powdered wigs period. The more you know!)

There was a massive late 17th/early-mid 18th-century influence on fashion in the 1870s and 80s, yes! It's why I get annoyed when people claim that bustles are based on the- very real -exploitation and fetishization of Sarah Baartman (c. 1789-1815). They became popular nearly 60 years after her death, and took inspiration from clothing that went out of style decades before she was born.

(La Comtesse de Mailly, 1698)

(1720s dress, National Museum, Norway.)

(Gown from the Met Museum's collection, c. 1872. Note the ruffled 3/4 sleeves, skirt back fullness, and appearance of an underskirt/overskirt arrangement. Low-ish, square necklines were also popular at the time, though not universal.)

As for satirizing other eras of fashion, I'm sure it happened in abundance; what interests me more, however, is the spreading of outright misinformation about how their ancestors dressed. One of the best-known examples is their take on the "iron corset" of the Medieval and Renaissance periods:

(Illustration from The Corset and the Crinoline, published 1868. One 1871 writer from the London Times dismissed the notion that such garments were orthopedic devices as "superficial falsehood," despite the fact that we now know- and clearly at least some people did back then, too! -that primary sources identify them exactly that way.)

While real examples of iron support garments do exist- as do extant accounts identifying them as medical aids -a roaring reproduction trade sprung up during the Victorian era. At least partially for fetish reasons, it is now believed, echoing the anonymous tightlacing erotica found in such publications as the misleadingly-named Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine.

And that's just one example. The more things change, the more we remain convinced that our ancestors were complete idiots who had no idea how to dress themselves sensibly.

[briartime]

Hello, and welcome to Briars In Time.

Once upon a time, back in 2017, I began the Decades Challenge. I finished it in 2019, my first completed legacy ever! The story is still up and readable on Wordpress, In The Rose Garden.

This challenge meant so much to me and I’ve ached to do it again over the years; I have finally given in to that longing, and so here we are.

Briars In Time will differ from In The Rose Garden in a few ways.

1. I will be loosely following the March of Time variation which has us begin in 1850.

2. I will be focusing on a more American-themed setting versus the European setting of my first challenge.

3. I will primarily be posting here on Tumblr, but will also post on Wordpress, combining multiple posts from tumblr into a chapter over there.

4. And finally... as of right now, I will be incorporating less planned plot and letting the game guide the way. This will likely change every so often as ideas come to me.

This blog is still a WIP, but I hope you enjoy taking this journey with me!

divider credit

Regarding Historical Accuracy/Disclaimer: (b/c i had a few comments about this on my first challenge)

I fully respect Simmers who focus on making their stories and challenges as historically accurate as possible, and it is definitely something I strove to do in my first run of this challenge. However, I am allowing myself to be more loose with accuracy this go around, particularly when it comes to clothing and CC. I plan to use whatever I can get my hands on, especially in the beginning (you will see styles ranging from 1830s-1870's until we get to around 1880). So no, you cannot expect historical accuracy from this legacy, least of all from the clothing. If anything, I’d prefer we consider this more along the lines of historical fantasy. It’s the Sims, after-all, and I will already be omitting certain historical events that took place in real world America from my Sims game and legacy.

That being said, any commentary regarding my Sims, story, etc., being inaccurate for the time period will go ignored. Because, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

[gogandmagog]

so what are your favorite books/authors besides lm montgomery...I maybe just maybe am tailoring my goodreads tbr for next year 👀

“I love a book that makes me cry.”

– Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables

And apparently me too??? I’m just over here adding this grossly popular quote right at the top of this list after having wrote it up, because when I look back over these all-star books that rushed to be highlighted, I realise that… every last one of these moved me to tears.

But I’ve read them all half-a-dozen of times, at least! 🥺 So, here we go, here we go!

Beloved by Toni Morrison. This one knocked me out, good and proper. It’s such a masterpiece. It starts in the 1870’s of Ohio and follows a former slave and her daughter. It’s got a strong Haunted House vibe (there is a ghost), and it opens up with both something quite Maud-would-appreciate-this-ish and quite chilling; "124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims." Mind, some people haaate this book, and feel quite strongly about it — but I like prosey books (this is the top complaint as far as I can tell), and this one is certainly that. Some very harrowing descriptions of the abuse of slaves, to be sure, but I personally have never been one to turn away from that ugliness, because remembering and understanding its weight feels important.

Stoner by John Williams. This is a little bit like ‘life sucks, and then you die’ — hyper precise about mundanities and is frankly a huge red flag to see sitting on a dudes bookshelf but… I loved it so much. 😅 It’s quiet, but poignant, and in its simplest rendering is about a very bored English Professor falling greatly in love with someone who is not his wife. Keep in mind, I’m hardly a girl who thinks infidelity is either cute or excusable… but this book firmly lodged itself in my heart, anyway.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. I’m a HUGE BIG HUGE BIG HUGE Baldwin fan. And this is the book that started it, for me. Like, this novel will fully pull you apart, and give you a wallowing. I’d say it's even a great atmospheric read for winter, and I also even want to go ahead and say this book is considered a classic, but I could be making that up; maybe it’s just a classic to me. The plot surrounds the struggles of a bisexual man in late 1950’s Paris; he’s just proposed to his girlfriend, but he goes on and has a relationship with a male bartender. There’s race, misogyny, and class issues here too, but this book isn’t so heavy that it becomes cumbersome to read. It’s actually quite beautiful. 

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Another prosey book. Maybe the most prosey book I’ve ever read… you don’t really get a break from it. But it’s so lush, and visceral, and the word play is sometimes so genius that you don’t mind getting fully lost in it (at least, I didn't!). This book could be labeled “tragedy” because it’s sometimes rather bleak – it's about fraternal Indian twins, Kerala history, and the lasting impact of childhood traumas, as well as the exploitation of the weak, really. But, there’s high points too!

Elsewhere if you haven’t read Peter Pan as an adult, I urge and beg of you to. J.M. Barrie (that’s James Matthew Barrie, and I will never stop conspiring that this is intentional of Montgomery and James Matthew Blythe) is right up there with Lucy Maud in the realm of exquisite and sweet storytelling that transcends age.

Of course Shirley Jackson, but you’re already a reader there! Fanny Howe has been an obsession of mine lately, too — I think I’ve posted her twice here and here — despite her being a poet, which is something of a fault that I’m being very charitable about overlooking (only half-joking, I really usually don’t care for poetry [except you Mary Oliver], not even LMM’s or by extension Anne or Walter’s either). Eve Babitz and Joan Didion are close personal friends (okay, it’s one-sided).

Anyone else that I read over and over are so classic that it’s almost white noise/nonsense to list them. I think the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is my all-time never-to-be-defeated, and Lolita (despite its very uncomfortable content) by Vladimir Nabokov is a close second (I once saw Lolita cited as being ‘a love letter to the English language’ and I frankly agreed with my whole chest), and Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (his essays are things of brilliance too) takes bronze. I also obviously throw myself at the feet of the likes of C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Virginia Woolf and Kafka and Sylvia Plath and Charles Dickens and James Joyce, and all of Those Guys too. Genuinely. I also wholly stan Washington Irving. He’s most famous for Sleepy Hallow, which I’ll link right here because if you tap on it and read even a single line, I think you’ll be like, ‘oh right, he is sensational.’ And this quality continues throughout his catalogue!

Signing off with a true and sincere hope that you’ll consider sharing your TBR list with everyone, and maybe some recommendations of your own, too!!! Your opinion means worlds!!!

[quibbs126]

So because I was crazy at 11 pm last night, I actually tried to do the math to figure out what the von Karma family situation would be in Great Ace Attorney times

I know I sound like I’m a broken record about this, and I’m really not that obsessed with the von Karma family, it’s just because of my old OC Engel and me trying to figure out what to do with them again

Anyways, so on to my findings

So the main 3 facts I used were Kazuma’s text about an apprentice of his father’s taking on Karuma’s name as a surname (which I was lucky enough to find an actual screenshot of), Genshin Asogi’s age (which isn’t technically known but I feel like he was most likely the same age as Mikotoba and Jigoku, which the Wiki lists at 43, so that’s what I’m using), and Manfred’s reckoned birth year of around 1951-1952

So what did I gather from all this? Well for starters that the von Karma/Karuma family, at least under that name, isn’t super old, as they likely got the name in the late 1870s to early 1880s. They’re on their 6th generation in current day with Franziska’s niece

Second, due to Genshin being around 26 when he left for Britain, he likely only had apprentices for a few years before then. Also, due to that apprentice being able to change their surname, they were probably on the older side of potential apprentices, and assuming that Genshin’s apprentices weren’t older than him, the best age range I can think of for this first Karuma is being around 5-10 years younger than Genshin, which would make them anywhere between 33-38 at the time of Great Ace Attorney

Third, based on Manfred’s presumed birth year, it’s likely to assume his grandparent would have been alive at this time, however they would not be that old, only a young child at oldest. At least, assuming everyone in this family had kids at a relatively normal age. It’s possible that that’s not the case, but I’m just working off general averages

Based on these two points, the original Karuma family member would likely be the great grandparent of Manfred, and at the time of Great Ace Attorney, they would have a young kid that would later be Manfred’s grandparent

Also, as I’ve been told, the current Karuma family is American in the original Japanese translations. While it’s not impossible for the original Karuma to be a foreigner, I feel like the simplest answer would be that that apprentice of Genshin’s was Japanese. So in Great Ace Attorney times, we’re left with two options: the family is currently Japanese and moves over to America later, likely within the next generation or so, or that first Karuma immigrated to America and that’s where they currently live, with the possibility that the kid of this generation is half American

Edit: so I’ve gotten answers on another post about the topic, and from what it sounds, in the original version, the Karuma family is Japanese, but they lived in America for a while and then came back over to Japan. So for the purposes of this point in the timeline, they’d be Japanese. Switches things up for me but it’s interesting to learn

Also while I kept the genders ambiguous, they’re probably both male, mostly to keep the family name

And now I’m going to tie it into my OC Engel to see where they fit in with all this. If you don’t really care, I’ll just put it under the cut so you don’t have to see

Well for starters, Engel’s name is going to need a change, since I gave them that name while they were supposed to be from Germany, and they aren’t anymore. But I haven’t quite figured out what that new name will be

Second, while I proved that Engel probably isn’t either depicted above Karuma, they could plausibly still exist, and instead be the elder child of that first Karuma. 33-38 is kind of old to be having your first child (though not impossible, Klint was 33), but it sounds to me like it would be even more possible that this is a later kid of his. And I wouldn’t really need to change Engel’s age too much, since a 15 year old kid, while a bit of a stretch, isn’t super unrealistic. Or I could make Engel 13 or 14 to make it even better

And Engel still could keep the title of “first prosecutor of the Karuma family”, they just wouldn’t be the direct ancestor of the current day ones, that would instead be their brother. And it isn’t impossible that their brother followed in their footsteps, and that’s what got the prosecuting ball really rolling in the family

Also since Engel no longer has to have descendants, it means that I could continue their gender mystery, since they don’t need to have kids or get married to prove one or the other. Or I could make Engel a girl, which is something I’ve been toying with recently (the gender mystery started simply because I couldn’t figure out which one I wanted to do)

It does mean I’d have to axe Engel’s older sibling I recently gave them though, since there’s no place for a 20 something year old in this family timeline right now. And that Engel will likely be a solo act now, since their brother would still be very young and probably not much of a character. But oh well, I can work with that

[godfrey-the-chaos-duck]

Ok so I wasn't gonna say anything till I had at least the first chapter done but screw it

I HAVE A TITLE FOR MY VILLAIN SCROOGE AU FIC

It is a LONG-ASS TITLE HERE WE GO

Spilt Blood, Ancient Gold, Solemn Secrets Never Told, Something Lost, Never Found, Beware the Heir of Dismal Downs

As I said a while back, me and a friend of mine had been discussing ideas for a villain arc for Scrooge, and I guess this is gonna be the result

I have all the chapter titles, the year each chapter takes place in, and a vague plan for where each chapter goes (titles and years under the cut, and you can all feel free to ask me or speculate if you wanna know more)

Part 1 - Past

The Cold Heart of Clan McDuck (1870s)

The Dark Angel of the Klondike (1880s-90s)

Any Means Necessary (1890s)

Desperate Times, And So Forth (1930s, Great Depression)

“Note To Self: Never Trust Anybody” (1942)

Making Connections In Unexpected Places (1964)

And Fate Turns On A Dime Once Again… (1966)

“You Didn’t Fire Me, I Quit!” (1978)

You Don’t Know Me, But I Know You (1987)

Two Little Angels (1993) Part 2 - Present

Ground Control To Della Duck (2007)

Exodus (2007)

Slipping, Fading, Falling, Sir, and Nothing Left To Say (2009)

Fortune Favours The Wicked (2010)

Anything For Company (2017)

A Slip Of This Respectable Façade, Perhaps (2018)

Flames Old And New Ignited (2018)

We Meet Again, Agent 22 (2019)

Not Quite Healing (2019)

We Run This City (2019) Part 3 - Future

What’s A Little Emotional Trauma Between Old Friends? (2019)

The Trickster Of Glomgold Industries (2019)

Making A Name For Himself (2019)

A New Challenger Approaches! (2019)

Dark Moon Rising (2019)

The Old Gods Return (2019)

F.O.W.L. Play (2019)

Unconventional Alliances (2019)

“Everybody Hates Me, And I Hate Everybody” (2019)

The Second Burning Of Alexandria (2019)

Tale’s End? (2019, mayyyybe 2020)

Note that up until "Fortune Favours The Wicked", anything and everything I talk about is either part of Scrooge's 2017-canon backstory, or is a part of that history that's never filled in in the show (so it COULD'VE happened but probably not). The fic diverges more and more from 2017 canon as it progresses, as we see what things would be like if just a few things changed, here and there...

Also the story starts moving SUPER FAST after "Flames Old And New Ignited", that's intentional.

Also also I split it into three parts and named them after the Christmas ghosts because, y'know, Scrooge, and also that his life in the show really does have three distinct phases - from his youth up till when Della left, his Post-Spear Depression, and his reconciliation with the fam. But of course, in this AU, things don't go according to plan all the time...

But yeah if anyone wants to know more PLEASE ask, I would love to infodump about this, it'll probably be the longest thing I've EVER written when it's done.

[cottagecrowe]

Ok I finally have words for some shit that's been bothering me SO BADLY, lol

So whenever some movies snuck in modern day feminism into things like Anne with an E, or the newest Little Women, etc., It always felt badly written, out of place, awkward, and just came off as cringe-y, and I had no idea why.

For something like Tauriel being slapped into The Hobbit, it was obvious. She was there specifically and only to give more "strong female representation", and the team even fully admits that... It just makes you wanna wrinkle your nose cause for one thing we do...? Have strong women in TLOTR??

I could go on a whole separate post just rehashing the problems with the existing material with women in it that other people have already talked about for sure, but for at least one kind of portrayal of strong women, it IS there.

I also think some of the eps in TROP gives us that in a bit of a more eloquent way, too. You know, in a way that just feels natural and part of the story and was written in well? Not like a separate modern day speech just copy pasted into a fantasy movie/period drama/classical book made into show/movie?

But it being inserted like that into recently made period dramas and/or classical books like Jane Austen and Little Women is REALLY rubbing me the wrong way.

1. I feel like even if they didn't write it that way and you go back and realize as much, you remember the lil speech they gave in your head using modern day language/terms when they like...are in fucking 1870 or something and would absolutely not be talking like that, lol.

2. Again, it just feels like it's copy-paste inserted into the moment they felt would work most to put it. If it's an original show, this just feels...forced? And if it's off of a book, it feels forced and inserted because that's exactly what it is, lol.

3. It's...always MODERN DAY feminism. Believe me I have absolutely no issue with feminism being in a movie/show, even if it's integrated to be more highlighted in a newer version of a book or something, like Emma, or Little Women~.

I will always and forever die on this hill, but I think one of the movies that has always done it the best in both a historical, AND fairytale/fantasy manner, was Ever After A Cinderella Story. Seriously, everyone go give that movie some more love. Jane Eyre, in general, also does.

BUT. Modern day feminism slapped into...historical fantasy/period drama...? What?? Lol, it feels so much more natural if you ya know...have it be verbage of the state of growth that feminism was...at the time in history your media is centered around..? From the way they talk, to the way they expressed their frustrations, to their mannerisms big and small, to HOW you insert it as naturally as possible and not just to have a big obvious speech moment like you think your audience is fucking stupid and not going to understand unless you have that kind of moment in it.

Personally, I always loved watching Jane Austen movies made in the 90's, and then going off with my immense love for them, and taking my own initiative to learn and do research behind the feminism of the times more.

Fuck, that's how I also ended up learning so much LGBT+ history, too, tbh, which helped to lead me to question the teachings I was raised on, and follow down a better path. And I still have so much more to learn of both.

I also love to SHARE that knowledge with other people, and part of me just feels like when it's more lazy like this, just any chance for more people to learn cool facts about our history, is sort of taking away a potential opportunity to look back on people of the past and understand the struggles of their time. To stop looking at them as inferior just because they lived a long time ago, and instead hear their voices and stories, and let them continue to be remembered.

Idk, I want more feminism in more media, but whenever I think about that fucking speech Joe gave to Laurie about marriage, or Anne gave her class about periods, while I have no doubt/am gladdened by the fact I'm sure it will help a lot more girls speak up and continue to do so...it just feels so ick, lol.

It's like I can feel the "ugh we just wanna capitalize off this, so get it out of the way and move on, whatever" energy that's with it. Sort of like how they kept building up the power rangers movie for having a lesbian, and we got the saddest and smallest little thing out of that ever, while everyone was making a huge deal about it, lol. Yes, baby steps are progress too, but idk. I feel there is still good cause in annoyance and anger over the stupid parts surrounding it, too, lol.

Honestly, we shouldn't HAVE to have baby steps towards any kind of progress like this. We shouldn't HAVE to fight tooth and nail for our voices to be heard and our trauma and bodies to be valued and shown respect.

Capitalism is the biggest con and conspiracy we could've ever done to ourselves, tbh.

Anyway, this went in many directions but if anyone related or understood what I was trying to put down and stuck out reading this, ily and thank you~

I do also understand this type of media may just Not Be Made For Me, and that's cool too~! But something about it just leaves an icky taste in my mouth, lol.

If nothing else, even if you enjoy these movies and shows, I beg of you to search for some way to watch the 90's/80's ones (yes, even the Pride and Prejudice bc you can dislike it all you want, if nothing else they filmed that thing beautifully and I'll die on that hill lol), and the og Anne of Green Gables, and take any love you grow for any of them as an excuse to learn more about women in all sorts of times and cultures, to better listen to their voices and merge them with your own. At the end of the day, that's all that's the most important, and even if the newer versions of these accomplish that for some people, I'll be a little happier, lol~

[akallabeth-joie]

Les Mis 1.2.2

Following up from Pilf’s post, because clothing is the topic I have stuff to say about. [Also the rest of the action feels very natural follow ups from the previous 15 chapters: the people and house we met in 1.1.1-14 are about to encounter the guy having an awful day in 1.2.1, and this is Hugo’s set up for that.]

Caveat: my main research area is the mid-19th century (right around the time Hugo was finishing Les Mis, not the years it is set), and my working language is English. The US in 1860 is not France in 1815-1832, but I think some elements here do transfer over, or at least offer insight into how Hugo’s readers might have interpreted the text.

Main observations re: Baptistine Myriel’s clothing:

9 years is a very long time for a dress in active use. Washing and non-washing dresses will have different trajectories, but in contemporary non-fiction, making a silk dress last 7 years is a feat of clever planning and care. Five years is noteworthy. One to two years is more typical, and 3 months isn’t necessarily a frivolous waste (wearing a silk dress only once would be). Much like with the soup thing, the Myriel household is taking ‘practicing good economy’ to an extreme, almost absurd degree.

Also, the fact that Mlle Baptistine is still wearing her silk dress “in the style of 1806″ in 1815 is notably weird. Fiction and non-fiction sources of the 1850s/60s show economically-minded women remodeling their silks every season in order to keep up to date. Magazine articles give instructions for turning last year’s flounced skirts into gored ones, or adding puffed overskirts to update narrow gored skirts. Advice books recommend getting an extra yard or two of fabric so that you can update the sleeves of your dress when it’s taken apart for washing. Trousseaus should have some of the dresses left “unmade” (as lengths of fabrics) in case fashions change over the year. A missionary woman writing from not-yet-Seattle in the mid-1850s opines that the dresses she made for her wedding less than a year earlier are too “rusty” to be worn at home (in New York) but are sufficient for living in the woods.

So my impression of Baptistine is that she’s meant to be The Superlatively Economical gentlewoman, and also Not At All Vain About Clothes. She’s not spending her time or money on fashion, but the fact that she is still bothering to wear a silk gown for dinner is signalling that she’s still performing (her class’s) respectability. From this, and her letter about re-doing her room, I expect that her whole wardrobe and all the house’s domestic interiors are scrupulously clean and mended, but also old and likely inharmonious. The two women will do the work to live respectably, but will not spend any unnecessary money on their own comfort or aesthetics.

Hugo taking the trouble to describe Baptistine’s dress (”short waist, a narrow, sheath-like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps and buttons”) just reminds me of how much crinoline-era Victorians do not like the Neoclassical look. All of these specific elements are basically the opposite of early 1860s fashion--waists are worn just at/above the natural waist, skirts are about as wide as they can get, more fitted coat sleeves are replacing the wide-open sleeves of the late 1850s. It’s a bit different from how most modern folks seem to view the 1810s style (Austen! Romance! Bridgerton?): I’ll need to dig through my notes, but there’s at least one 1850/60s cartoon and one article I recall which amount to ‘yikes, the fashions of 50 years ago were awful’, and another article from the late 1860s which holds that the crinoline is a great improvement on the raised-waistline silhouette. I think we all prefer to ignore the weirdness of the c.1865-9 Second Empire style, but there were absolutely pairing high waistlines with fitted sleeves and trained skirts over elliptical or half-hoops (transitioning from the rounder cages of the late 1850s and early 1860s into the bustles of the early 1870s).

[sushisocks]

i need help for something im making so just a quick question what do you think darraghs age range was when sean was a toddler? your just the peak expert on them both tbh😭

ohhh boy let me think, here. FYI im gonna be referencing/working off of the ask you sent a while ago where i went into some of the confirmed history regarding darragh & sean lolol

My working theory is that Darragh was in his mid-to-late 30s when Sean was born. This is MOSTLY based in the timeline we know about Darragh -- he was very 'politically active' if you wanna call it that lol, in the 1860's, setting Galway on fire and traveling to and fro America of all places. I've long believed Sean's birth to be in the mid-late 1870's, so-- Like, follow me on this thought-path, okay?

What makes sense to me is that Darragh was rather young when he started doing the things he did, think late teens; both because that IS the age a lot of kids not only start thinking about the world they live in but also feel moved and empowered to try to DO something about it. Angry at the political sphere + stupid teenage bravery + a couple drinks DOES sound like a fair recipe for setting some houses on fire, doesn't it?

So let's say he was about 17 in 1860. That would put him at about 35 when Sean was born, which I've put at 1878 here to be consistent with the linked post. Meaning he'd be in the 37-40 range when Sean was in his toddler years!

I hope that made sense! It's at least what makes sense to me 🤓 You can definitely adjust some of these numbers a little up or down, since we're working from very few specifics and a LOT of theorizing, but the ages I ended at made sense to me!!

[stealtharchaeologist]

If it would be fun, can you please tell me some Bakura things I wouldn’t know if I haven’t paid any attention to YGO since the end of the original manga?

His favorite food is roast pork and his least favorite food is... uh... chickpea paste or something that's basically hummus. Which is blasphemy in my opinion and a bit odd considering that he literally eats raw garlic in the manga. Also did hummus exist in ancient Egypt? Idfk.

By the by, pork was considered an unclean food in ancient Egypt and you only ate it if A, you were super poor and couldn't afford anything else, or B, didn't give a fuck about the gods. So, you know. Struggling orphaned child giving a middle finger to the gods who abandoned him.

If you haven't seen me already post about this, he is shorter than Ryou and as a gemshipper I find that fucking adorable. Smol king!

Kul Elna is based on Deir el-Medina, a real-world village of ancient Egyptian tomb builders who became tomb robbers because they weren't making enough money to survive. However, there is also a modern village in Egypt named Kurna/Qurna/Gurneh that is also known for its tomb robbers - there was a famous family called the abd-er Rassul brothers who had an "uncanny ability" to find tombs. They discovered the famous royal cache of mummies in Deir el-Bahri in the 1870s and were ratted out by other Kurnans to local Egyptologists in the 1880s, which is how we know about the cache. Anyhow. Kul Elna - or how it's written in Japanese, Kurueruna - sounds a lot like Kurna and I think that's very interesting.

By the by, one of the ways the abd-er Rassul brothers found tombs was by watching the way water ran through the Valley on the rare occasions it rained. So I think Bakura would have enjoyed the rain. I also feel like he'd thrive in the chaotic and obscuring environment of a desert storm.

I had more typed up but was veering more and more into headcanon, so I'll stop here. I could go on forever, lol. Thank you!

[ryutarotakedown]

day 1: archival assistants/canon divergence, or day 7: free day @tma-girls-week

[a/n: hiiiiii magnus archives i missed you. sorry if this is out of character i did go back to read through the 158–160 transcripts (and 119 + 061 + 091 for funsies) to refresh my memory, but]

Summary: Post-159, Basira finds a weird statement in the midst of what she's about to send to Jon. Or rather, she doesn't find one? It's hard to explain.

-

It probably says something about Basira that she hasn't cried.

Well, not yet. But it has been two weeks already, and it still doesn't feel real. She can see Daisy whenever she closes her eyes — Daisy staring forward at the old man and his friend, reality beginning to ripple around her skin, honing her into something sharp. A missile with a locked target. Hunter, hunted.

She can hear Daisy say out of the corner of her mouth, promise me.

…It's not that Basira hadn't seen this coming from ten miles away. The face-stealing monster might have been a surprise, but the first time Basira read about "silent compulsion powers; assigned investigator: Alice Tonner; assigned location: Epping Forest," she knew exactly what Daisy was, and exactly how this would end…

She just wishes Daisy had at least looked her in the eye.

No. This is no time for stupid — sentimentality or softness or whatever; she can almost feel the disapproval radiating from her late father. That was how she'd gotten into this mess in the first place. No more thinking about Daisy or Melanie or Jon than necessary. Head up, back straight —

Right. Statements. That was what she'd been after. The police had finally cleared out this afternoon, so she doesn’t need to face any more questions about Jonah Magnus's corpse ("definitely a corpse") or the tunnels ("no, officer, I don't know of any maps for the place") or why she looked so familiar ("are you sure you're not imagining things?"). Instead she has the whole evening off to gather statements so her coworker (friend) (coworker) doesn't snap and start traumatizing random Scottish grocery store employees.

Oh, the joy.

Near the end of everything they had all stopped pretending that being an archival assistant was for actually organizing an archive, but now Basira thinks about it, she does recall Jon saying that he'd started from the most recent filing cabinets. So if she starts from oldest, she's most likely to find the statements he hasn't eaten yet. Yes, that makes sense.

She picks herself up, dusts herself off, and heads towards the back of the archives.

1870s, 1860s, 1850s, early 1800s. Here. Basira reaches into the back of the shelf — oh, cobweb, eurgh — and pulls out a pile of manila folders. As she shakes them in the air to get the dust away, one sheet of paper snags in the wind and falls out; then another, and another. She sighs and sets the whole pile down on the floor, dropping to her knees to gather the loose papers. Jon stopped telling them to staple documents together after Melanie said it was bad for archival purposes, but honestly, Basira could understand why…

Wait. When had she made it out of the archives?

She blinks down at herself. She's standing at the top of the staircase, the one that leads from the Magnus Institute lobby down to the archival basement. The statements are arranged neatly in her hands, free of the dust.

…She doesn't remember getting up here.

(In a universe just to the left of this one: Basira sighs to herself. She hasn't had an episode like this since right after the wax museum, when she felt like she was blinking in and out of existence as she picked up a payphone outside and managed to tell the police the address before hanging up — she hadn't trusted her hands to stay steady on any steering wheel, so afterwards she'd walked the whole way back to the Institute.

That whole section of memory is lost to her. All Basira can recall is the rhythm of her boots against the concrete, and then against the carpet of the entrance area, uncertain voices — Melanie grabbing her shoulders and asking questions she couldn't understand — where's Daisy —

The point is, it's not out of character for Basira's recollection events to just… glitch, sometimes. There's no point wondering what happened in between, not when she's the only person she knows left in the archives. She leaves the statements at the postal office and gets back to work.

The world ends two days later.)

But in this universe, Basira pauses:

She isn't thinking about Daisy. Basira is in fact very good at not thinking about things when she feels stable, and it's been two weeks and only one breakdown since everything. Besides, the fog in her brain doesn't usually just cut out her memories that cleanly, so that can't be why she just lost ten minutes of her life.

It reminds her of — yes. Jon. The day he'd come to tell her about how to quit. It had gone something like this:

Basira: You're joking. Archivist: I wish I was. Basira: …………………… Archivist: You're… not going to do it, are you? Basira: What, did you eat a bit of my brain or — Archivist: No; I can actually read faces, Basira. Basira: (exhales) I'll think about it, but…… no, I don't think so. Archivist: Right. [A pause.] Archivist: …Right. Well — Basira: How sure are you? Archivist: What? Basira: I mean, this… tape you found, how'd you get it, anyway? Archivist: Oh. It's hard to explain… I was going through that box of tapes in Peter's office, and I tried to find a, a blind spot. Basira: You tried to find… your own blind spot. Archivist: I told you it was hard to explain! But — yes. There was one that I kept skipping over, like I couldn't see it — I sorted them into "interesting" and "not interesting," and then kept looking through the "not interesting" pile… and after I, after I'd isolated the least interesting one, that was when I actually — saw. It just… I couldn't recall seeing it there before. It was like, like a gap in my memory. Basira: Huh. Archivist: And even after I found it — my hand kept pulling away from it. So it must have been something the Web… It must have wanted to hide it. Basira: Hmm. Like someone trying to touch a stove countertop. Archivist: A stove—? Basira: If the stove countertop could also induce amnesia. Archivist: (doubtful) I suppose when you look at it that way…

Basira frowns now, as she looks down at the pile of statements in her hands. Another Web trick, then? In these statements?

Well. The tape Jon got did help Melanie escape, at least. So if Basira sorts these statements into "interesting" and "not interesting"…

After twenty minutes and several strange looks from employees milling about in the lobby, Basira sits back. One manila folder left in "not interesting." Or rather, left in the category "this doesn't warrant any further examination, go post it to Scotland already."

It takes several tries for her to open it. Several more tries for her to read it.

Statement of Hazel Rutter… That all seems normal. She forces her eyes to focus, go beyond the drab information box and take in every word.

And then: there it is. The hidden amnesiac stove countertop.

Hello, Jon. Apologies for the—

Basira sucks her breath through her teeth. Oh, this is bad. This is very bad. She has to go call Martin, warn him and Jon, scan through all the other statements just in case…

But first order of business: she drops Hazel Rutter's statement into the paper shredder, and watches Jonah Magnus's master plan dissolve into ash.

---

[a/n: i was going to finish this on day 1, but Then I Didn't. thankfully as it is i can just barely sneak it into day 7: free day!

i hope all of you basira enjoyers (and also non-basira-enjoyers) like it! i'm sorry i haven't been more active on discord recently, i swear i'll be back as soon as i get out of this country in like three weeks]

[wibble-wobbegong]

The Canonical Five

Case #1: Mary Ann/Polly Nichols

Date of Death: August 31st 1888

Physical Description: 5’2”, brown eyes, high cheekbones, graying dark brown hair

Family Life

Mary Ann was born to Edward Walker and Caroline Walker, being one of three children. Her brothers were named Edward Walker and Frederick Joseph Walker.

Mary Ann was married to William Nichols at age 18 and they had five children together; Edward (1866), Percy (1868), Alice (1870), Eliza (1877), and Henry (1879). The couple eventually separated due to Mary Ann’s alcoholism and prostitution alongside the suspected cheating William underwent with the nurse who helped deliver Henry.

Death

Being the first victim, Mary Ann was the least practiced. She had no organs removed, something that later becomes an MO of JTR, but she was found with a white handkerchief, a comb, and a piece of a mirror. She was missing five teeth, alongside other slash injuries. She was described as lying lengthwise along the street with her left hand touching a gate.

Mary Ann is particularly interesting in her connections to the lore of the show because, clearly, she’s being represented by Virginia seeing as she has all three of the children; Alice, Edward, and Henry. Seeing as Alice is a child in this woman’s life, it rules out the possibility of her being Mother Alice. She also doesn’t align with what we know Mother Virginia to look like, seeing as she has brown eyes and hair, unlike our blonde-haired blue-eyed devil.

What I think this could suggest is that there is an original timeline in which a different version of Mother Virginia had all three children. To me, this is ringing several Creeler bells. The original description of Mary Ann closely resembles both Joyce and Karen in S1 (though Karen is taller than 5’2”). It could apply to either of them, except Joyce only has two children as far as we know. None of her children hold semblance to the seen Creel children outside of the comparisons made between Henward and Will which are intended to explain Vecna’s fascination and crave for him rather than familial implications.

Now, the Wheeler family doesn’t perfectly match the Creel family. Instead of two sons, Karen has two daughters. Nancy has brown hair rather than blonde. Holly is blonde and blue-eyed, but Henry was a boy. Mike fits the least, but at the same time he would be filling the role of Edward as the outcast of the family in combination with his other isolating traits.

Karen potentially being Daughter Virginia from Edward’s timeline would make the Wheelers a direct parallel to this original timeline Creel family. I could drawl on similarities between Alice and Nancy, Edward and Mike, and Holly and Henry (which I might do another post for), but this is all to say that I believe there was an original timeline before Edward was banished. This delves into speculation, but I find it very intriguing that Mary Ann was found with a piece of mirror in her pocket at her death and Edward’s banishment in the show is surrounded by mirror shards. Almost like parallels. Or something.

I have a whole post here discussing why I am almost completely certain that Edward was Jack the Ripper. This first kill is incredibly important as a kick starter, but I’ll admit I’m still unsure of who removed Edward and how it was done. I’m also trying to keep these short, so it’s not as detailed as usual, sorry!!