#obvs im not a historian

[twofacedm1lkshake]

stupid sleepy monster high (g1) rant

ok so i decided for funzies to try to design what period accurate monster high dolls would look like (like draculara as how she would have been when she first became a vampire, etc.) and it just hit me just how loose Mattel seems to play with history because this is ridiculous

ok so first with draculara, her wiki states that she is approximately 1600 years old (idk if she counts human years or not, so i’ll be kinda loosey goosey with that)

that sets her birth year approximately at 410 ad aka the fall of the roman empire. ok that's kinda weird since her dad is a roman soldier and dracula is a roman soldier in G1lore. kinda neat that they do acknowledge the fact that she and her mother got ill, as that was one of the factors to why, along with that at the time Romania would be a colony (or possibly ex colony). That’s cool, i love how they included that for kids learning more about history as a way to kinda connect the story with real life historical events! One thing though,

WHY THE FUCK IS CLEO 5800 PLUS YEARS OLD??!!!

This puts her birth year at about 3800 BCE if my (admitedly poor) search skills are correct the stone age ended about 5000 years ago, bitch is older than the bronze age, older than the first dynasty of eygpt!! She was born smack dab in the middle of the indus valley civilization!

she is approximatly 1000 years older than the pyramids themselves!

the most annoying thing is that she is based off of Cleopatra,  who was around closer to draculara’s time than Cleo’s! its not like the Ptolomys are low on cleopatras to base her on, just shove her in there. It makes no sense to have her be that old, its insane!

I get that its for kids and its 100000% not actually that deep but when trying to find a reference for that shit? Awful do not recommend.

[gamer-paramnesia]

happy halloween!! have some fighting headcanons! (characters, obvs)

long-ish post

etoiles!! he is a warrior at heart, honest and loyal

I would think his fighting style is heavy on the footwork and agility + doing the most damage in as little strikes as possible

visually graceful, but almost impossible to follow?

matches pace w his opponents

very much on the offensive majority of the time

heavily trained (common style of fighting, but super fucking good at it so that it seems extremely unique)

soo so unserious tho

fights for the thrill!! the only time he actually got serious was the battle against the 3 codes (where he fought code!pomme… n where he died…)

incapcitates, then kills

honorable fighter! will not play dirty

tanks

large bladed weapons are his go to (swords, scythes, etc)

phil!!! survivalist extraordinaire

picks his fights! knows when he cant win

also very movement based,, uses his wings as a counterbalance more often than not (therefore making a lot of moves that are physically impossible to normal humans)

defensive fighter, fights to incapacitate?

more unique style, as he learned from mostly himself n he refined it

efficient but an honorable fighter as well

fast. like, scary fast

keeps his emotions in check (funnels his emotions into his swings)

doesnt like fighting much (lie)

will play dirty if desperate!

tanks!

best with scythes n axes

fit!!!!!!! 2b2t historian, did you know that 2b2t is the oldest-

also picks his fights (very carefully!)

hard hitter, more on the barrage type instead of the strike n wait

on the offensive, prone to switching to the defensive tho

generally unpredictable movements (hes batshit insane)

sporadic, hard to pin down style

not the most serious fighter. taunts a lot, goes quiet when focused (first i lol'd, but then i serioused >:0)

dirty fighter!! all those years of 2b2t taught him that :D

goes for the kill when stakes are high

will play honorably IF he respects his opponent/considers his opponent a good person, but even then he'll use every trick up his sleeve to win!

although,,, he will back out of a fight he knows he cant win (and even if he could win, he'd weigh the pros n cons)

kinda,, support,,,

he makes me think of a scavenger tbh

prefers smaller, more handy weapons (axes, explosives, knives, etc)

bad!!!! totally-not-a-demon demon

im gonna say it again (its that he picks his fights)

goes for the confusion tactics (feints n tricks n misleads n misdirects etc)

similar to fit in the taunts n unseriousness n the silent focus

enjoys the hunt

falls in step w his opponents when the stakes are low

refined fighting style (had a lot of time to work on it and boy did he)

when the stakes are high,,,, his fighting seems frantic yet somehow practiced, every move is deliberate

a shadowed blur on the battlefield

goes for the jugular lolz

when he has the upperhand.. he plays with his food tbh

bites off more than he can chew sometimes

prefers the defensive

also a barrage of attacks instead of wait n strike (death by a thousand cuts kinda)

plays SO dirty its not even funny (it is a little funny..)

avid scythe user!! (likes comically oversized weapons tho, like his warhammer)

roier! idk that much abt him but ive heard that hes a great fighter as well so im gonna throw in my guesses as to how he fights

gets underestimated a lot? works on his side tho bc he is a ruthless fighter

a very emotional fighter, but uses it to his advantage

on the defense a lot, brutal on the offense??

surprisingly graceful

incapacitates

not the most refined style, but very efficient

sword guy!! but like a perfectly weighted sword? (very particular about his weapons?)

jaiden!!! havent seen her pvp much but these are headcanons so-

learned from the best! (roier)

hard hitter, zones into an enemy and doesnt let up

stays in one location, pivoting is key (stands her ground)

uses her wings to gain extra speed if she had to change locations

not super experienced, but a quick learner

very defensive

channels emotions into swings (kinda wears her heart on her sleeves tho)

goes for the kill for opponents she has grudges against?

another scythe enjoyer!!

pac! also idk that much about him but he seems ergonomic

VERY graceful fighter

underestimates himself?

footwork is very particular and careful, almost like a dance

defensive fighter

either quiet, focused fighting or screaming, crying throwing up fighting, no in between LMAO

kinda a dirty fighter as well? not super on purpose but learned it from prison times

he seems like a rapier kinda guy (swords!!!)

feel free to add on!!! esp if u have disagreements w my hcs hehe

[newlabournewromantics]

okay so i'm not british (i'm just a teenage girl hungry for knowledge 😔✊) but i watched one video and as a result i've been consuming an insane amount of new labour media for the past week even though i've never been interested in uk politics besides keeping up with global news LMAO i genuinely wanna know more so where do you think i should start with books films etc 😭

hiii!! excellent question id be more than happy to help! this will be sort of an overview with general recs for newlab beginners (why am I treating this like its a profession omg) so just lmk if you want more specific recs + I've highlighted my favs

books (from the outside)

(by from the outside I mean written by people not directly involved in newlab, so historians/journalists etc)

the two classic newlab texts are servants of the people and the end of the party, both by andrew rawnsley from the observer. provide nice, extensive but not overly fussy histories of newlab from opposition to 2010. good balance of gossip and actual information!

my personal favourite is rivals by james naughtie (bbc reporter), I find the prose in it far more compelling than any other book on this list.

brown's britain (robert peston) is also very good!

you've mentioned that you're not from the UK, so I really really really would recommend reading a book/a few articles on the broader history of the British Labour Party, just so you can understand why newlab was so revolutionary. I quite like keeping the red flag flying

autobiographies/diaries/books from ppl directly involved:

(these will inevitably be more biased)

the new machiavelli by jonathan powell is my absolute favourite self-written newlab book - and you might learn some stuff ant machiavelli whilst ur at it so this is an essential imo

my life our times by gordon brown is another one I really enjoyed, although it's less gossipy than some of the other books on this list. admittedly I do agree with basically everything gordon brown has ever said so this is a very biased review, but I would give it a go!

obviously alastair campbell wrote a load of diaries. I would be careful with which volumes you choose to get - go for the ones published 2010 and onwards bc he made the choice to omit stuff from the first few volumes he published so that it wouldn't' hurt gordon's premiership. also, they're really long and really extensive, so pick which volumes you want to read based on which specific period of newlab you find yourself drawn to!

as a comms/polling fan (boo) I really liked unfinished revolution by philip gould, but this might not be the best book to start with.

damian mcbride's power trip (more diaries) is also interesting

big fan of point of departure by robin cook asw!

I found tony's books excruciating to read but that's bc im crazy and think I know the inside of his mind like its my own so they might be good for you. his new book is FASCINATING but only in the sense of it exposing how big his messiah complex is. don't read any of his books if you're not down to hear about sex and/or technology.

oh a note: mandelson has written books but I don't like him so im not going to recommend them <3

tv/film

tony and gordon aren't really all that into big heartfelt chats about newlab, esp not together, but a few good docs have been made

blair and brown: the new labour revolution (bbc, 2021) - this is a classic, it's where I got my newlab start as a tender sixteen year old politics student u can't beat it! watch this one first

the blair years (bbc 2007)

out of the shadows and we are the treasury (here and here)

blair's thousand days (1 2)

if you're into tbgb, please please please watch the deal. I don't like much of the michael sheen as blair content, but the deal (2003) is so good.

if you want me to rec bits of tv from the newlab years that I think r cool and worth watching then send another ask and ill tell u! but obv theyre not much use if you're just getting into newlab :)

alastair did interviews with tony and ed miliband 6/7 years ago. not all about newlab, but very interesting to watch and observe the dynamics!

podcasts

matt forde of the political party has done interviews with a lot of newlab figures, from tony all the way to the more junior spads. I especially like the joint one he did with ed balls and alastair campbell, and the first tony one. these r less good for actually learning facts about newlab but really like listening to them as a way to sort of get into these ppls heads and observe them in a more casual setting. also a gordon interview asw !

if you can bear listening to george osborne talk (I can but others r more sensible) then political currency is also a good place to get lil tidbits of newlab gossip, bc ed balls is one of the hosts and he's super messy he loves chatting abt gordon.

ideology/boring stuff etc!

ok u can ignore this section if you want but these r some books about the ideology that underpinned newlab - I think it's fascinating!

the third way by giddens (literally the newlab bible and I think the only theory that blair took seriously)

crosland’s the future of socialism!! influenced gb and caused so much internal labour drama so evidently its excellent

if you want a really interesting essay on Iraq I recommend this

podcast on centrism that touches a lot on clinton/newlab/blair etc

oh and just for fun!!!!! here's a playlist of all the songs written canonically actually irl about tony blair.

lmk if you want any other recs!!!!!

[sonny-d]

im going into historical studies but im not nearly as knowledgeable ab early britain as i am ab other stuff so i have been doing my research

so for sure he would speak at least a few of the old brittonic languages and definitely latin for sure i totally forgot ab that one but that would open up so many new modern languages bc theyre latin based so imagine this arthur with historian merlin bc obv arthur wants to know what happened while he was gone so he might also go into history and id imagine he would have a more specific field than merlin who knows everything bc he was there so maybe he would go into medieval studies or maybe he would learn ab that then find smth else more interesting

omg or maybe he would go into medieval studies but specifically the native cultures so he would be learning shit ab druids and shit cuz i can imagine that he would kinda feel bad

i hope u enjoyed my yammering u sparked many thoughts🙏

ok but if u think ab it arthur comes back and hes from over a thousand years ago so obv he doesnt speak the modern language he speaks brythonic and maybe probably old english bc kings used to speak a lot of different languages for their ppl in the east so im gonna say that that probably carried west but either way both brythonic and old english are so extremely dissimilar to welsh and modern english

the point tho is that merlin would like have to teach him a new language and also he would speak it with a very heavy accent that no one has ever heard bc accents change fucking a LOT over 1500 years especially coming from an ancient language

this is one of the greatest fic ideas i think ive had so far guys im excited

[swamp-king1827]

I feel like white historians team up to play a game called ‘who can be most hostile to people of color’

[zillyeh]

i thiiink i might soft reset castel like i did with beadle tbh?? he’s from that point where i would just shove Too Much into one character. he needs less stuff

[edwad]

Think you're short changing Marx here tbh; obvs commodity fetishism grew out of his interaction with Hegel and Feuerbach but I don't think it's just like a new coat applied to an old car, there's a specificity and a nuance to it in Capital which meaningfully distinguishes it from Hegel/ Feuerbach and the early writings on alienation as a much more general and transhistorical character. Generally I like the idea of separating communism from Marx and marxism but I think doing it at the cost of denigrating Marx as some sort of hack who isn't that important to communism is a regression

definitely not trying to do that tbh, but i am trying to put him in his context so we don't overstate his function. if anything, my challenge to marxists is for them to really locate what's unique about marx and why he's worth instrumentalizing.

i have my own answers to this (which is why i still spend so much time on him!) but frankly i think too many other people in these circles stick with marx simply because he's the big historical name that won out. this would be fine as a shorthand in some way if all that was lost was just the names of the people coming before him (it'd be sad for historians but not meaningful to a contemporary political movement). my concern is that insofar as the critique of political economy is turned against a discipline -- and even more than that, the kind of social thought typical to modernity which the capital-logic generates -- if we ignore the other thinkers on the ground around him, we don't just do them a disservice in forgetting them, we actually fail to understand a lot of what marx is trying to do. and that has some real political implications in one way or another, completely bracketing the question of whether or not marxs approach to those things was correct or not (which is one of my big Projects rn as im thinking thru this stuff)

so to put it bluntly, it's not about denying marxs role in any of this. in fact it's really the opposite: it's about clarifying it so we have a better grasp on the theoretical material we're working with. the more i dig in this direction, the more issues i have to admit marx had. some of them are probably harmless, but i think others open up some real problems that would need to be resolved. and full disclosure, im hoping that they can be resolved lol. it'd be way easier if the answers were in marx all along! i just don't really think it's the case atm. anyway im being a bit conservative here because this is stuff im actively working on but eventually i'll probably release some sort of long-form justification and get into what i think is at stake.

[carnivigorous]

                              Historically saying if Sedel was in 1800′s London, he’d be an absolute fucking monster just for his height. The average height for men back then in that area was like 5′5′’, like police were supposed to be like 5′10′’ to intimidate. This monster’s at 7 foot in heels, running around eating people in the pitch blackness of Victorian England. He wouldn��t always be walking around in gas light since it was insanely dark in a lot of areas at night, and this giant can see in darkness with no problem. Ja.ck the Rip.per who?

[bondsmagii]

okay everything i know about chris chan i have learned against my will, and it isn’t a lot but i do have to ask, like, from my perspective it seems terrible that she got harassed and trolled and all of that and you obv agree with that.

but i also think like. idk it also seems like engaging with so much of the information available abt her just further contributes to the dehumanization of this person. like its fucking Weird that theres so much information available abt her and that anyone would dedicate time to consume, compile or catalogue all of it tbh (50+h documentary you said??????), that honestly seems like just as much of an invasion of privacy, or at least, not treating her like a human being and more like some sort of zoo animal on display. so im genuinely trying to understand how you can even meaningfully separate yourself from her trolls as some sort of neutral historian? im not saying it’s as bad as some of the shit i’ve heard about like the rl stalking etc. but even just seeking out the information we only have BECAUSE she was stalked seems. ethically questionable af

the way I see it, the information is already out there. that fact cannot be changed by me (or anyone else, for that matter) not looking at it. the documentary I watch is simply a retelling of the facts that are already there, nothing more. Chris is also currently in prison, so it's not like she can be further harassed. she's removed from the equation completely.

there's nothing ethically questionable about educating yourself. I've never interacted with Chris Chan, I've never bullied or harassed her, amd while I've condemned her actions where they need condemning, I've never posted anything derogatory about her, I've never insulted her, and I've always condemned her abusers. I've also dedicated a lot of my time to ascertaining the facts and correcting people who are blindly wishing her harm. as with all things I research, no matter how weird or unconventional, I always adopt the same ethics I use in anything I research: I stick to the facts, I think critically, and I try to keep my personal feelings out of it. any personal insight I do contribute is based on the things I've learned and can back up factually. this is how I manage to remain neutral -- academic neutrality is an absolutely essential skill of you want to learn about anything in-depth.

again, the information is out there. my looking away would only serve to keep me ignorant, and would also have ensured that none of the discussion I've been having on the subject would have happened -- discussions that have led to multiple people telling me they now think differently about Chris's case. if the information is there, I'll use it. my only duty is to use it responsibly.

[audiodramatist]

wait i want this recorded somewhere. these are like... definitely not correct & will be revised as i finish HtN and read nona but gut assumptions when reading GtN were:

the 'number' of the house was based on the order in which they were terraformed/inhabited by humans

there was some correlation between the roman god associated with the planet & the characteristics of the house

mercury: third house (wealth, charm, honestly i think i just thought the skull with gems in its eyes seemed like a mercury vibe idk man)

venus: seventh (beauty, would have taken longer to make livable due to dangerous temps?? dont know why this logic didnt apply to third)

earth: first house (obvs)

mars: second house (war, next most habitable planet)

jupiter: fourth house (i think this was vibes based. like yeah those kids seem jupiter-ish)

saturn: fifth house (near fourth, saturn as the father of jupiter, neptune, pluto etc fit with magnus & abigail as elders/mentor figures to other houses, something about time and abigail as a historian)

uranus: sixth house (yeah im gonna be real i was going in numerical order at this point)

neptune: eighth house (i feel like theyre like... the most distant of the proper houses. not as weirdo outcast as the ninth but pretty dang close)

pluto: ninth house (also obvs)

[woodsteingirl]

also whats the podcasts and books u rec this might become a shared interest

okay i’ll answer this one first cause the next one might be pretty long so <3 for podcasts obvs history of rome by mike duncan!!!! that was the thing that really got me into it. if you don’t want ti start from episode one, id say the punic wars are an okay intro point as well. i haven’t listened to a lot of other ones since that one is so long and covers like. everything, but i think the partial historians is pretty good? you have to search a little bit to find what you’re looking for but whatever!

for books im going to divide it into secondary and primary sources. for secondary i will always recommend mike duncan’s the storm before the storm. it’s so fun and it retains his silly sense of humor and is written in language you don’t have to be a classicist to understand. then id say rubicon by tom holland, also about the same time period but like. whatever. it goes a little bit more into the later late republic, and the language is a bit harder to understand. i haven’t started reading it but i think Cicero, the life and times, also could be interesting <3

for primary sources i say start small work your way up. chances are you’ll find a niche to fall into era wise, so find some sources from that time and read them in chunks. id also say suetonius is a good place to start, the lives make a good way to section it off and avoid reading about things you don’t care about. then maybe try plutarch or a different author. for poetry um! catullus is your best bet for an introduction. some of them are. eh. but it’s an intro i guess!! i think a lot of this depends on like specifics of what time in the empire or what specific part of the culture you’re into as well. im not going to rec you caesar’s gaulic wars if you’re into philosophy or cicero’s phillipics if all you really care about is the late empire. <33333

[cherryshnapps]

can you elaborate anyways on why the authors research was so poor? idk y but i find it interesting (im not coming for you im just curious)

Well first of all the surnames differ a little bit with males and females, the correct way for the female characters is to add an “a” at the end for Alina it will be Starkóva (adding the correct stress) and for Alexander it will be Morózov

Also kvas is not an alcoholic beverage it’s just fermented bread with some yeast and water, she should’ve used “medovukha” instead

wtf is Sankta anyway, I mean in the universe it means saint but why didn’t she used blessed or “sv’yatoy” it’s literal translation. I think she did it bc we have a town called Sankt-Petersburg (Saint Petersburg) maybe she thought it will be quirky to use it

Also why would you call people with magical abilities “Grisha”, it’s a male name, I find really funny!! I mean I don’t have any good alternatives and it sounds kinda unique, still funny tho. Also when darkling said to Alina “you’re grisha. you’re not alone” It’s stupid but I find it funny

(⚠️DARKLING SPOILER⚠️) I’m a darklina stan (ik I have issues) and his name is Alexander obv, and a lot of Russian names have shortened versions and Alexander is one of it, I would literally k!ll myself if in the end when he asked Alina to call him by his name she should’ve said “Sasha” THAT’S SO INTIMATE

also the name Genya wtf lol, it’s Zhenya

In conclusion Russian culture is very rich and interesting and I would love Leigh bardugo to work with some historians and republish the books, but I don’t think it will happen anytime soon

[vinceaddams]

obvs feel free to keep this private, but I got recommended the UFH channel by a friend of mine, haven't gotten around to watching anything from it. I trust your judgement on the content, but my friend considers it her main resource 🙃 of course, since you only watched a few videos you might not be able to answer this, but was there any specific really bad/unacademic approaches I should keep my eye out for that my friend might have adopted? we work on a historical festival together so im concern

(I was going to answer this privately but then it got really long and turned into a post I want to post.)

Oh dear! Well, It appears that the lady behind that channel only cares about the 20th century, so maaybe she’s got good stuff on the 20th century at least? I don’t know, but the 2 videos that I saw were so incredibly awful that I’m highly suspicious of all her stuff. 

The first bad thing about her channel is that her videos all have a one or two sentence caption and nothing else. (I clicked on a few more just to check) No sources listed, no links of any kind except to her merch store. I don’t recall her mentioning any particular sources for any of the things she said in the videos either, she just declared them very matter of factly. 

Good historians cite sources! Bernadette Banners’ video on the history of PPE has so many source links she ran out of room in the description box and had to put the rest of them on a page on her website.  (Oh poo, now I feel a bit bad because I love Karolina Zebrowska but she really needs to do better with leaving source links. But she does talk about doing research, talk in a more nuanced way, and doesn’t present herself as an expert or academic, unlike the UFH lady.)

Good historians also embrace nuance, and aren’t afraid to say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong”. Presenting things in a “this person did this one big thing, and then this happened, and that caused this” kind of way isn’t good because history is more like “all these things happened and as far as we can tell it appears to have influenced this, which was also connected to this other stuff that we don’t know all that much about”. History is foggy and complicated, no matter how much the general public wants it to be simple.

Her description of herself also seems a bit... misleading? In her about page on youtube it says “Amanda Hallay, a college professor specializing in fashion, costume, and cultural history.” but if you look at the CV linked on her website the only degrees she has are in creative writing and art history. I’m not saying a person can’t be really knowledgable about something without a degree, but her whole online presence is about being a “professor” who teaches this stuff so I find it weird.

And if the 1850′s-60s video is anything to go by, she presents things in a shockingly unprofessional way. She starts off by saying she thinks these fashions are ugly and ridiculous and that she has some “theories of her own” on them. @marzipanandminutiae has a post with a lot more about what was wrong with that video, and a few others I haven’t seen. She claims that hoop skirts were oppressive cages when in reality they were a liberating garment that allowed women to achieve full skirts without the heavy layered petticoats they wore previously. 

She posts a photo of a naked lady and says “Now lets start with a beautiful naked lady and cover her up with ugly and unflattering clothes. Now this sexy naked lady isn’t so sexy” I wish I was making this up but that’s almost word for word what she said. Along with a whole lot of untrue or exaggerated stuff about Victorian modesty. She says dresses with layered flounces were called “pagoda dresses”, which isn’t a term that anyone has ever used for those dresses. She says this is cut down from a longer video she uses for teaching class, and I find the thought of this being presented in a classroom quite appalling.

After spending about 95% of the video talking about womens fashion in an extremely condescending and disdainful tone of voice, she posts what appear to be the 5 biggest and most extreme examples of 19th century moustaches she could find, presenting them as if they were what every man looked like.

This part really grinds my gears, because she says “I haven’t said anything about menswear because there’s really not much to say.” She posts photos of suits from 5 different decades and says they’re basically all the same, and also basically the same as a modern suit. Excuse you, there is A LOT of difference between menswear of the 1850′s and the 1890′s. Yes the changes over the decades are more subtle, and the colours are often more subdued than in centuries past, but it is absolutely not (as she claims) “the century when men stopped doing fashion”.   I personally am not hugely interested in 19th century mens fashion, and can tentatively date things in the first few decades but after the middle of the century I can’t. But people who are interested and who study that era can tell the decades apart. Because they’re different. And there is SO MUCH to talk about! Suits for different levels of formality, accessories, waistcoats, sportswear, sleepwear, knitwear, swimsuits, loungewear, underwear, etc. are all extremely different from their modern equivalents. 

It’s perfectly fine to only study womens fashion if that’s what you’re interested in, but it is not okay to then declare that the history of mens fashion is worthless and nonexistent. Simply not being interested in a thing is no excuse for publicly shitting all over it. (I’ve seen people do this more than once. We already have so few men who do historical fashion stuff! Stop putting off newcomers who might be interested!!)

The fact that her online presence is so closed off is also highly unusual. Comments are turned off for her videos, and the only social media link she has is to a private facebook group. (There is also a link to a fb page, but it appears to have been deleted.) Turning off comments is of course the personal choice of the one posting the videos, but the fashion history side of youtube usually tends towards pretty decent comment threads, and people often have nice little discussions and learn stuff in them. Here it looks like she doesn’t want discussion, doesn’t want to be contradicted or asked for sources, doesn’t want to learn new things.

I had never even heard of this channel until I saw @marzipanandminutiae mention it, nor have I ever heard any of the many historical costumers/youtubers I follow mention it, yet somehow it has 55k followers? I don’t know the demographics that watch it (especially not with the comments turned off!) but I’d wager that videos like the 1850′s-60′s one I suffered through are mainly watched by people who like hearing things trash talked, rather than people who actually want to learn about fashion history. The same sort of people who loved that Beau Brummell twitter thread, which was also full of lies and unsourced garbage. People like to believe the past was way worse and grosser than it was because it makes them feel like we’re smarter and better now.

Lastly, the whole premise of the channel is just bad. Calling any one thing “The Ultimate Fashion History” is a bad idea. Her channel trailer says “Youtube’s number one channel for original fashion history content” “we’ve got it all, fifty thousand years of fashion history”. You can’t have one channel that’s the ultimate resource for ALL of fashion history! It’s a huge, HUGE subject, and even if she did do actual good research she’d barely be able to scratch the surface of fifty thousand years. That’s like saying one channel is the ultimate source for all of science, or all of music, or all of cooking. No one thing can come close to covering all of it. I will deign to admit that she’s at least right to call it “original”, because she has some very original lies I haven’t found anywhere else. 

Most people who study fashion history/historical sewing have one or several eras they like best and find most interesting, perhaps with occasional jaunts into other eras. This way we can focus and get a much better understanding of the eras that we find most interesting, rather than just a vague notion of everything. 

For example: I’m most interested in 18th century menswear, and so far have mainly researched and sewn 1785-95 stuff, and more recently some 1730′s. I usually focus on fashionable civilian clothing, so I don’t know as much about working class clothes, and next to nothing about military and other occupational dress. Even with this narrow area of interest, which I’ve been obsessed with for many years, I still have so much to learn! I could never make anything claiming to be the ultimate source for 18th century menswear, because I’m just one person focusing on some aspects, and there are other people out there who research other aspects of it and their work is just as important. It’s all so big and so much, even if you narrow it down to one era.

Amanda Hallay is basically holding up a bucket of saltwater and calling it the ocean.

I haven’t watched any of her 20th century videos, so maybe they’re better than the older ones I watched. I don’t know. (But even if they’re actually good they still don’t have source links.) Edit: okay, nope, turns out they’re just as bad! They appear to make up the vast majority of her videos, so if she’s most interested in the 20th century then maybe she should just... make her channel more clearly 20th century focused instead of trying to paint it as a channel for all eras?

TL;DR, the main bad things about that channel are:

Lying and making ridiculous claims, not citing ANY sources. Spouting easily debunked myths.

Stating things matter of factly without any nuance, even though history is foggy and complicated.

Being extremely judgemental about historical fashions and talking about how much she hates them and thinks they’re ugly, which really isn’t appropriate for a fashion history teacher. You can hear the disgust in her voice and it’s awful and I hate it.

Comments turned off on all her videos, leaving no way to communicate or have public discussions. Unknowing viewers are left to accept her statements as fact without any outside opinions.

Claiming one channel is the ultimate channel for an incalculably enormous subject. Says it covers 50,000 years of fashion history when it’s mostly just the 20th century.

I would like to add that I am not what I would consider an expert either, and have no formal education in fashion history beyond the one college class that was part of my 2 year sewing course. I have learned mainly from books and the internet, and as I said earlier I still have a huge amount to learn. I’m sure a more knowledgable historian could put things better than I have. 

But I’m confident in stating that primary sources are needed to back up a claim! Sometimes even widely accepted beliefs turn out to be entirely unfounded myths, like that one about doctors using vibrators to treat “hysteria”. Total nonsense someone made up in 1999.

Wow this post got way longer than intended. Anyways, yes, I do not like condescending slideshow lady.

[jun-wu]

omf well if u want to know how insane i am i paused on this screenshot from joy of life and spent 45 minutes trying to figure out what dynasty that painting is from (if any). my gut instinct was to say tang bc of the blue/green coloration but obvs that doesnt say much bc like every other dynasty after them did the same shit LOLLL and the jol one doesnt seem to have much a traveller/wanderer story vibe so it probably isnt tang and anyway  all the tang ones on artstor werent promising except the one on the bottom left which is part of the orchid pavilion preface i think. anyways i was like ok no luck so i searched thru qing bc they had a similar style in terms of mountain shape and plant shape and they did some blue/green stuff but they r way way later (its the one in the middle btw) but i thought this one looks sort of similar if you were to mirror it vertically maybe and like... erase a lot of the filler in the middle... and my final guess was southern song just bc their stuff was waaaay softer lots of empty space and evaporating mists n shit u know anyway thats the bottom right which i felt pretty good about except song def didnt use the green/blue color scheme so what im assuming happened is they painted an amalgamation of all diff types of chinese landscape and slapped it on. which is fair but as an art historian i did sigh a little. anyways thats all

[lilikoi-lacroix]

Hello :) just wanted to chime in to say i love your blog and the love and happiness you have for yizhan and tu/mdzs. Im always curious to read whatever you have to say. Pls keep it up. Btw if you dont mind me asking is this a sideblog? Or do you only have this blog here? What other things do you like ie tv shows, movies, music, hobbies, books whatever? If its too personal obv u dont have to reply. Im just curious. Thanks once more for your awesome blog and have a great day :)

😳😳😳 This is so sweet, anon. omg.

This isn’t a sideblog. I used to have a tumblr that I abandoned in 2018 and it was mostly just beyoncé and sasuke shitposting.

I have some personal and work soc media accounts and a fandom twitter I mostly just use to lurk with these days.

I’m not a very confident writer tbh and it’s been surprising to me how much I’ve been feeling motivated to write about mdzs, bjyx and fandom issues here.

other stuff i’m into:

Some other shows that I like: black sails, hannibal, mob psycho100, russian doll, winter begonia, and I recently did a rewatch of hikaru no go I’m currently watching the svsss donghua and I’m almost done reading the novel. I’m waiting for the last episode of sdc3 to get subtitled even though most of the big stuff has been spoiled for me at this point. It’s ok though i’m just watching for my kings huang xiao and qiao zhi. and my son xiao chao. god i should make another sdc3 post. i haven’t looked it up yet because i want to see what happens in the finale first but i’m really curious if there are cpf of huang xiao and qiao zhi 👀👀👀

Other interests include astronomy and astrobiology (life on venus! maybe!) and various fields of history and theory (the two deeply unfun books about war and systematic oppression I am reading at the moment) amongst other things

For some masochistic reason I’m darkly fascinated by cults, mlms (not the fun kind), alternative medicine scams, and debunkings of far right conspiracy theories. My yt subscription list is like 40 bjyx or c-ent channels, a couple of science channels and ask a mortician.  Ask a mortician is phenomenal if not a bit cheesy but be warned that there are graphic images in most of the episodes.

I listen to a lot of podcasts. A few of my favorites are:

-you’re wrong about (two reporters go back to mostly american news stories from the recent past and examine how the story and the people involved were misrepresented at the time.)

-one from the vaults (canadian trans historian morgan paige profiles a different trans person from us, uk, or canadian history each episode.)

-bad gays (each episode two gay historians profile someone, usually a cis man, from western history who can be loosely called gay and loosely called bad. Loosely gay as in the subjects are often from times with a very different conception of gender and sexuality from today and thus aren’t gay in the modern sense of the word. What they call bad ranges pretty widely from innocuous and fun crimes like art forgery to genuine issues like transphobic and racist gay journalists and activists to genuinely monstrous stuff like gay fascists and gay monarchs presiding over genocide and slavery.)

-overinvested (movie and tv critique by two journalists/writers who met in the slash fandoms of the early 2010’s. big crush on gavia) Anyways thanks for asking! I probably won’t post about any of these things here. Maybe I’ll try to restart a general blog one day but right now mdzs and bjyx are what make me the happiest and I want to have a space to just focus on that.

[awsugar]

what happened with alicia? obv bandom like hard stanned her but i wasnt it in during that so like. whats the record mr historian pls help me

im not sure what you mean by what happened with her?

if you mean what happened with her and mikey, she found out that mikey was involved with a 19 year old fan through her followers on twitter, they linked her to the girl, sarah’s insta posts with mikey. i’ll never forget it cause it all blew up at once and i remember her tweeting ‘devastated...but i’ll be back’ and then left twitter for a long time. some people say they had been separated at the time but i still think what mikey did was shady bc of the reaction that everyone else had. lynz started vagueing mikey on twitter and telling alicia she’d always be family, i think chantal got involved, gerard got on twitter and said ‘aww pickles!’ and then didn’t come back for months it was so fucking weird.