#some inaccuracies aren’t culturally loaded

[daisyachain]

Another axis for story description should be Homeliness vs Exoticism.

Homeliness: Some depictions of real or real-analogue places are rooted in an understanding of the logic of that place. Geography/climate is described as welcoming or at least non-hostile. Customs are treated as common-sense. Details of everyday life are accurate.

ex. Oofuri shows life in a major Japanese urban area with very little deviation even in the name of story convenience. The logistics of train rides, local landmarks, sunset, and distances factor into the plot.

ex. Infinity Train Book 4 sets its real-world portions in the Canadian music scene during like one of two 5-year periods in history when the Canadian music scene was ever relevant. Its characters’ backgrounds are rooted in two real-world demographics (third- or fourth-generation Japanese-Canadians whose parents grew up in internment camps, first-generation Korean-Canadians whose parents were displaced by the Korean War) and their backgrounds match (Ryan’s family are more assimilated, Min-Gi’s are less).

Exoticism: Some works depict settings with no understanding for why the community depicted came to exist in that way in that place. Worldbuilding doesn’t add up. Rules of culture aren’t explained and have no reasonable basis. Any questions about the setting are shut down or are answered with absurd responses. The setting is bizarre, hostile, impossible to understand, difficult to question. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; just as homeliness enhances realism or emotional connection, exoticism can enhance performance. Depictions of real-world customs are outright false, inaccurate, or twisted.

(loose) ex. 1990s-2000s DC Gotham City depicts a version of New York that gets razed to the ground every 6 months and never gets any new buildings. The people living in it are hardened criminals, child vigilantes, and also murder victims, with nobody apparently working in insurance. The city is full of glowing green chemical vats while also, apparently, being the home of the nation’s ruling class. There’s an evil clown there. The place is not meant to feel real, it’s a caricature of 70s NYC as depicted by conservative news channels. The real forces and pressures that created 70s NYC (waves of immigration from Europe in the early 20thC, hostile WASP power structures, the Cold War turning the federal government’s resources to overseas imperial conquest) don’t really exist except by implication.

ex. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time has dozens of gimmick fantasy cultures that function by nonsense rules designed to waste the reader’s time and put female characters in situations that only he, personally, finds sexy.

In-Between: Then other depictions have a grab-bag of the two. Some rules about the setting are treated as normal, others are nonsensical or shown to be strange. There are outright mistakes, but there’s an effort at accuracy. Something like that.

ex. North American writers using the UK as a setting while writing with US colloquialisms and demographics.

ex. Pathologic, which scores full points on the Homeliness scale except for the treatment of the Kin characters, who are firmly on the Exoticism end of the spectrum.

Homeliness and Exoticism don’t have to be determined by the creative team’s ID. A lot of US writers treat the US with Exoticism by having 0 clue about the history of their country and writing about its customs without any sort of context or understanding for where they came from. Writers from one region can do enough research with enough good will to treat another region with Homeliness. The above Infinity Train example is a piece of work by a US team set in Canada that feels really homey from a Canadian perspective. Admittedly these are 2 really similar nations, but I’ve seen US writers fuck it up before. Can’t ever expect anything from those mfs.

[mimeparadox]

The New Half-Truths about Corsets

As true as it is that corsets are often misrepresented in audiovisual and written media, and as glad as I am to see people defending them, GOD, am I annoyed by the current discourse.  Not because the defenders are wrong —they’re not, in general terms—but because Twitter, Instagram, and their incentivitization of easily digestible sound bites over nuance haves stripped the conversation from all the complexity inherent in a subject as big as corsets. In seeking to be more accurate, corset defenders have often just muddied the water further, with a brand-new set of half-truths.

Here are my favorite (least favorite) talking points.

“Corsets are literally just bras!”

As a cis dude, I’ve never had reason or occasion to wear bras. I have worn corsets, though, and let me tell you, things like having to take off one’s boots after one has been out in the snow while wearing a corset is work—moreso, I imagine, that if I’d been wearing a bra. Actually putting on boots before a corset? Even harder, enough that “boots before corsets” is a common bit of advice. Corsets aren’t torture, but they do force one to rethink how they interact with the world, in ways different than bras do.

To be less glib though, yes, corsets could and did provide the sort of breast support that is now provided by bras. This doesn’t render the multiple differences irrelevant! For one, breast support is the one thing bras are meant to do: with corsets, it is secondary or even inessential, evidenced by all the corsets that do not provide breast support, such as corsets for men, old-timey corsets for kids, and underbust corsets, which are still definitely corsets.

(Megan Fox in Jonah Hex, wearing a corset that is doing exactly the same thing as a bra. Yes, I know it’s not historically accurate; that is not the point.)

What most miffs me about this argument is that it is exceedingly reductive, and displays simplistic thinking regarding both corsets and bras. Because yes, corsets were like bras…and? What is this argument trying to say, given that bras their own baggage?  Is the argument that corsets aren’t torture because corsets are bras? Plenty of people find bras uncomfortable, and something to be abandoned as soon as it becomes feasible. Corsets were purely practical because corsets are bras? Plenty of bras exist for primarily aesthetic purposes—some even do a fair amount of shaping. In the end, both garments have complicated, multifaceted, and distinct features, histories, and semiotics, and trying to equate them in a single sentence says nothing useful about either of them.

“Stays are not corsets!”

Amusingly, this argument seems somewhat incompatible with the previous one, given that stays have much more in common with corsets than with bras, but here we are.

Yes, 18th- and early 19th-century stays are significantly distinct from the corsets that we see later in the latter century, and if someone wants to don Bridgerton-inspired looks that accurately reflect Regency fashions, they should not look at Victorian corsets to obtain it.  And yes, one can make the case that stays and corsets were entirely different animals.

Here’s the thing, though: historically, that’s not a case that people made. Corsets are we know them weren’t considered to be a completely different thing from stays, but rather a different style of stays—two different breeds of dog, perhaps, but dogs all the same. Once the term corset entered regular parlance, the two terms were usually used interchangeably, as can be seen in multiple 19th century documents, including technical ones where differences between the two, if they existed, would have been noted.  

The Duties of a Lady's Maid: With Directions for Conduct, and Numerous Receipts for the Toilette (1825)

English Patents of Inventions, Specifications, 1865, 3186 - 3265 (1866)

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What’s more, it’s not until very recently that people began treating stays and corsets as altogether different things. Gone with the Wind, the book? The terms corsets and stays are used interchangeably.  The Oxford English dictionary? Describes stays as a sort of corset.  The longest-lasting site dedicated to corsets on the internet calls itself the Long Island Staylace Association, with no indication that doing so represented an inaccuracy on its part.  Sure, Elizabeth Swann should have properly said “You like pain? Try wearing stays”—at least it one wanted to be more accurate (if not good: good writing is partly about making oneself understood). But speaking here, and now, looking backwards? Very few people are trying to be that precise.  

Additionally, it’s worth noting that corsets have had a variety of styles and features throughout history, and the term is by no means exclusive to what we most often see as corsets. The S-shaped corsets from the Edwardian era are very different from Victorian corsets, as are the more girdle-like garments that followed. While not everything is a corset, I’ve yet to see a convincing argument that the term isn’t broad enough to include 18th-century stays.    

Tightlacing, Part 1: “Almost nobody did it”

Statements about tightlacing annoy me more than most, largely because they involve clearer instances of wrongness, but also because they hit closer to home.

Tightlacing has always been an imprecisely defined term: Lucy Williams, one of the best-known contemporary champions of corsetry, talks a little bit about the various ways the term has been used in her post “Waist Training vs Tight Lacing – what’s the difference?” found on her site. Usually, it refers to a quantitative measure—your corset must reduce X amount to be considered tightlacing—although recently, the discourse appears to have adopted a more qualitative definition, applicable to any instance where someone is shown displaying discomfort at being laced into corsets, regardless of how tightly they are (or aren’t) being cinched.

(Left: Moi, wearing a custom corset from The Bad Button Corsetry; Right, Upper: Scene from Bridgerton; Right, Lower: Scene from Enola Holmes)

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Take, for example, the scene that has most recently caused a stir, from Bridgerton, where the character Prudence Featherington is seen grimacing as she is laced into her corset stays corset, while her sisters wince in sympathy and their mother, Portia, insists that she be laced tighter. Others have raised objections to this scene, focusing mainly on the fact that Portia’s mania for a smaller waist is anachronistic and makes little sense given fashions that de-emphasize the waist, but fewer have noted that for all the hemming and hawing that is being done by the characters, Prudence’s figure is ultimately not all that compressed, and seems perfectly in line with everybody else’s. Is what is been done to her tightlacing? A lot of people appear to think so! And yet, that assertion carries some implications. If Prudence is being forced to tightlace here, is everyone else with a comparable silhouette (again, pretty much everyone) also tightlacing?  The answer is kind of important, especially if one also wants to claim that tightlacing was rare.

It’s worth noting that Valerie Steele’s The Corset: A Cultural History, one of the seminal works on corsetry throughout history, doesn’t actually attempt to make a case for the rarity of tightlacing. What it does attempt is to determine the accuracy of claims that women regularly laced down to 18 inches, 16 inches, or even smaller measurements, which is not quite the same thing. When exploring the question by looking at collections of surviving corsets from the era, the book has this to say: "Statistics from the Symington Collection [...] indicate that out of 197 corsets, only one measured 18 inches. Another 11 (five per cent of the collection) were 19 inches. Most were 20 to 26 inches.” While Steele readily admits this is hardly conclusive evidence, she took it as a sign that women with 16-inch waists were nowhere near as common as accounts suggested they were.  Case closed, asked and answered, no one tightlaced, right?  

Well, no.  

Again, it comes down to definitions. Even speaking quantitatively, very few people define tightlacing as “lacing down to nineteen inches or fewer” (certainly no woman in Bridgerton is that tightly laced). The consensus, rather, is that tightlacing is not about the size of the corseted waist, but about the size of the reduction. How much people cinched, however, cannot be determined by looking only at corsets, because doing so requires not only those corsets’ measurements (and even those don’t tell the whole story, given that they don’t necessarily indicate how tightly they were worn) but also the starting measurements of the people wearing them.

In other words, say someone with a 33-inch waist uses corsets to reduce their waist measurement to 25 inches. This, according to most definitions, would be considered tightlacing—a 24% reduction!—and yet the absolute measurements would be nothing to write home about. How is that reflected in Steele’s sample of corsets? Impossible to say. A 25-inch corset could also be worn by someone with a natural 27-inch waist.

What, then, can we say about the frequency of tightlacing? Well, if we’re talking about dramatic reductions of, say, more than four inches (a two-inch reduction, by the way, can look like this—again, more dramatic than what we see in Bridgerton) one can say, with a fair level of confidence, that it was probably not the norm. And yet, “not the norm” is itself a very broad category, and given the numbers involved, “a minority of people” can easily still be “loads and loads of people”, as seen, for example, with COVID-19. Even if two percent of the population who wore corsets tightlaced, that’s still hundreds of thousands of people—hardly “almost no one”, as some argue. And if wearing corsets as seen in Enola Holmes or Bridgerton counts as tightlacing, the number becomes even higher.

Tightlacing, Part 2: “Tightlacing is bad”

Perhaps not coincidentally, another element of the current corset discourse involves taking all the baggage usually assigned to corsetry in general and applying it to tightlacing instead. Corsets are not painful, goes the argument, but tightlacing is. Corsets are not unhealthy, but tightlacing is. People could do everyday things in corsets, they’ll say, but not when tightlaced. Arguments made against corsets in the 19th century were slander made by people who just hated women (another half-truth I have little time for), but are apparently utterly unobjectionable when applied to tightlacing. This, as many modern-day tightlacers will tell you, is bullshit, but it feels like an especially odd argument to make in light of everything else.

As in, what is the point? It feels a lot like saying “I’m not sex-negative, but having sex with more than X partners is icky.” And given the history-focused slant of the current discourse, it’s safe to believe that most people arguing against tightlacing are not people who have attempted it. There is, however, an existing community that will happily tell you, based on personal experience, what tightlacing is actually like.

So from personal experience: tightlacing may not be like wearing a bra, and there are definitely some considerations that you have to take while doing it— getting dressed, sitting down, and eating are all done differently when tightly laced—but this is more logistical than anything, and also applies to other things—running in steel-toed boots is much different from running in sneakers, and the advice when doing the former is often “don’t”. Additionally, the margin for error decreases the more tightly laced one is, but corsets aren’t special in that regard: proper care is much more important when one is flying a commercial jet than when one is flying a one-seater. But yes, you can do physical activity while tightlaced. Not necessarily the sort that you could do in exercise clothes, but then, the fact that suits are not optimized for running doesn’t make suits bad.

Tightlacing, in the end, is not really different from wearing a corset. Some people will like it, some will not, but ultimately, how pleasurable or how unpleasurable it is (it’s very pleasurable, in my book) depends on what you put into it, and that’s something quite a few people—not a majority, but also not “almost nobody”—who are often far more tightly laced than people in movies, would attest to, if people listened.   

[blog-sliverofjade]

Of Doms & Subs 6: At Least it Wasn’t Twilight

Pairing: Angus Hopper x OFC

Summary:  What's a submissive female to do when she fights her nature and goes on the run as a Lone wolf to avoid being assimilated into a pack?

Word count: 1411

Of Doms & Subs Master List

“Why are we watching An American Werewolf in Paris?” I asked, head tilted to one side that I distantly recognized as a faintly canine gesture.

“It’s sort of a tradition,” Alan answered.  “When someone’s newly Changed, we watch a werewolf movie just to talk all the way through it.”

“There’s no American Werewolf in Canada, but they got French Canadians, right?  Close enough,” Shane said.  Someone threw a kernel of popcorn at him, which he deftly caught in his mouth.

“Could be worse,” Mickayla said mournfully.  “They made me watch Teen Wolf.”

“I thought chicks were supposed to like that stuff!” Shane protested.

“Yeah, if you’re thirteen,” Mickayla and I said in unison.

“Do you have a teenage girl living with you, Shane?” Alan asked far too innocently.  “Because I could have sworn you had every season on DVD.”

The bickering that ensued masked the sounds of Angus entering the room, but not even the popcorn could hide his scent.  My heart beat faster when he passed behind the couch to settle in the recliner within reach of my left arm.  His de facto throne was the highest seat in the room and thus avoided any breach of protocol by anyone sitting higher than him.  I was so painfully aware of his presence that any one of the already crowded couches looked good in comparison to my seat.  Everyone who didn’t have other obligations had come.  I wasn’t sure whether it was courtesy, by design, or on accident that I ended up sitting next to the fearless leader.

The movie, surprisingly, was a good teaching tool.  They were quick to point out inaccuracies (take off your clothes, first, idiot!), many of which I already knew, as well as what laws both mundane and pack were broken.  No to mention cultural differences.  Such as: why don’t we get crappy underground raves?  It’s Seattle, why throw one when you can go find one?

Apparently they also had a cage in the basement for injured wolves and those who had temporarily lost control, like newbies.  When someone tried to suggest that it was for kinky purposes, Angus quickly shut them down.  No one even complained when Alan and I ranted about the medical inaccuracies for a good ten minutes.  (They’d all be so much raspberry jam on the sidewalk.  Did they use packing tape on that bandage?  What is it even for, anyway?  Broken nose?  Concussion?  Hiding his funny looks?)

“Reason number two: we can have a little ‘chat’ with your ex,” Mickayla said, continuing her randomly numbered list of reasons why packs are awesome, when the Big Bad Evil Guy/love interest’s ex was killed at the end.

“Uh, that’s really not necessary,” I stammered.  She looked at me skeptically.  The others quieted to listen, which made me stutter out an explanation.  “He wanted the perfect 1950’s lifestyle complete with a Suzy Homemaker waiting with dinner when he got home and a mistress on the side.  He didn’t try very hard to hide it because he thought I’d put up with it.”  There were several snorts of scornful laughter.  “He’d signed a pre-nup thinking I wouldn’t leave.  I’ll never forget the look on his face when I got everything, which was how I put myself through school.  Now he’s stuck with some nineteen-year-old he knocked up who can’t cook any more than I can.”

“I like her, can we keep her?” Alan asked of no one in particular, which elicited more good-natured jibes at his expense as well as general agreement.  Or matter that latter was just wishful thinking.  It was either that or their testosterone talking.  Probably the testosterone because the conversation turned to the various methods of disposing of bodies.

While the others debated the merits of burial at sea vs woodchippers and lye, Ellie caught my eyes with her own hazel ones before heading upstairs with several empty popcorn bowls.  I followed a moment later.

“I-if,” she stuttered, swallowed hard, then started again as she loaded the dishwasher.  Everyone else knew to leave the cleanup to Ian and Gordon as it was their turn, but she seemed to need something to do with her hands.  “What’s my timeline for making a decision?”

“The ceremony to bring a new member into a pack is done on the full moon, which is in eleven days.”  A look flickered across her face that suggested she was aware of the math, but refrained from interrupting as I gave a brief description of the ritual.  To her credit, she didn’t bat an eye at the thought of consuming my flesh.

I fell into a practiced relaxed pose in the hopes that it would put her more at ease as it often had with others in the past.  Even if she wasn’t adept at reading body language, or even consciously aware, her wolf would pick up on my cues.  I was glad that she had not yet learned to smell emotions and would have to believe what I allowed my face to reveal, which was currently wearing the mask of patient mentor.  What I felt, however, was worlds away from what showed.

“If I were to join a pack, what would be expected of me?”  I smiled at the conditionals, though they lacked the same determination as before.

“Monthly meetings.  A ten percent tithe once you find employment, which goes towards things like helping members get back on their feet, new wolves, and the like.  No one would ask you to fight, but any pack would benefit from your medical expertise.”  Her eyebrows quirked up in surprise.  “Fast healing can present its own issues, like bones that aren’t set properly.”  Soft, dusky pink lips pursed in thought as her sharp, sky-blue eyes with a touch of green and honey at the center flickered back and forth in contemplation of various scenarios.

“You already have Alan for that.”  That was not the conclusion I was expecting.

“As great as Alan is, he’s only one person, who has a full-time job,” I pointed out.  “What if, God forbid, he was hurt?  Or there were more injured than he could handle at once?”

“Does that happen often?”  Instead of appearing stricken at the prospect, or for not having considered those possibilities first, her eyes narrowed shrewdly as if she were already calculating assets and performing triage in her mind.

“Even once is too often.”  Ellie accepted that non-answer without digging further.

“Even though I have to give it up as a career?” she asked bitterly.  That was when realization hit like a hammer.  Nursing was more than a job to her.  She’d all but said that her ex forbade her to work.  Then she took his money to rebuild herself.

“Your wolf will see frightened patients as prey,” I said gently.  The dismay she tried to hide nearly broke my old, cynical heart.  “Even if the humans would let you once they figured out who you are.”

“Any specific duties for an unmated, submissive female?”  She had turned her back to me to wipe down the counters.  Her scent was a confusing mix of fear tinged with arousal.  Evidently she found her emotions bewildering as well because when she faced me again a rosy pink blossomed across her cheeks even as a furrow developed between her brows.

“Help out when and where you can as the situation calls.  As a submissive, your presence can have a calming effect on us sociopaths.”

“I think you mean ‘psychopath’,” she muttered.  A smile threatened to lift the corners of my mouth.  “And I seem to have the opposite effect on ya’ll.”

“How can you help this looney bin if you aren’t calm yourself?”  Small, white teeth worried at her bottom lip as she digested that.  I didn’t point out that the males were reacting to her like wolves in rut, which no amount of submissive energy would fix.  She was skittish enough as it was.

“I promise that I won’t touch you.”  Disappointment and relief flashed over her face like the shadow of a cloud.  To hide a small smile of satisfaction, I leaned until my nose nearly touched the soft flesh below her ear and breathed her in.  Her heart beat under her skin like a trapped butterfly.  Desire, both hers and mine, spiked sharply in the air.  “Not until you ask me first.”  I forced myself to walk away as casually as I could manage, her stare boring into my back.

[spudstuddicus]

Horrible History: (BBC) Sherlock Edition

Just How Historically Accurate is TAB and Why Should We Care?

Sherlock Holmes has a long history of being both a wide selling novel during the 1800’s, and in the past 10 years been turned into a hit TV show. One of the more recent episodes, (The Abominable Bride) takes fans back to 1890’s London to experience a Sherlock interpretation in its natural time period. While the episode earned an 8.2/10 on IMDB and a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Directing in Film or Television (IMDB), there was some discourse within the fan base over some historical mistakes. Not that the film didn't deserve the rewards, but it may have earned more simply by remaining true to the time, accurately.

Historical Inaccuracies: Club-Foot

One of the more prominent historical inaccuracies is a sign in mandarin outside an opium den. The characters translate roughly to ‘Club foot’, and are written in Simplified Chinese, which is where the mistake lies. Mandarin was only simplified in the mid 1950’s, and would’ve been written in Traditional Chinese at the time.  Not only is it roughly used, but you must use Google Translate for it to anywhere resemble 'club-foot' in an English translation.

Apparently, this mistake was on purpose. Writer Steven Moffat, says that it was meant to be a reference to one of the original Sherlock Holmes novellas, The Musgrave Ritual (Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). “As ever with us, we’ve chosen several [sources of inspiration] and there are loads of references. One of them you have to be able to speak Chinese to get.” (China Economic Review).  

“They are not all successes, Watson," said [Holmes]. "But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here's the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Varnberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife." (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Musgrave Ritual)

This may be nothing more than a nod to the original books, but if it is just a reference, how come the writers of the show left it in, fully knowing that it was historically inaccurate? The plot of the film would not have changed in the slightest. In all, it might've unknowingly hurt the reputation of the show, more than it brought respect.

Personally, I didn't notice it at first. It was only until I had a mandarin-speaking friend point it out to me, that I began to research more into the reasons why they might've included it, knowing full well it wasn't historically accurate. When questioned, that same friend (who also is ethnically Asian,) spoke on the issue. "There would be a translation for 'club foot' in traditional [Chinese], so it was unnecessary to include it in simplified [Chinese]. They should respect Chinese culture and history." (Madeleine, who asked to not include her last name).  

When asked if this damaged the reputation of the show for her, she replied, "Not really, everyone makes mistakes. I'm fine with it. But the next time they make a movie, they should be careful."

Historical Inaccuracies: The London Fair

Another inaccuracy is a poster advertising a fake event.  During the start of the episode, we see John Watson talking to an old friend inside a restaurant/pub/café, with a poster on the wall advertising London World Fair at Bayswater Road, on a Saturday in October (unknown year). But although Bayswater Road does exist, there was no London fair at any time during the early 1890’s, which is the time period that this takes place. In fact, the last time there was a world fair in 1895, it was in Atlanta, USA.  

Research has shown that this may be another reference. In the past episode, a pivotal scene happens at Leinster Gardens, Bayswater, London, during the modern retelling. So it may be no coincidence that Bayswater shows up on a poster in the very next episode. Why, though, we still don't know. Since the reference is to a past episode, there is no reason for it to be put in the very next episode, as it's not exactly foreshadowing. Simply put, there was no discernable reason for this to be kept in the final product. The poster is unavailable outside of the episode, proving it was made specifically for the episode, and may have also served in providing an aesthetic to the scene.

Historical Inaccuracies: Consumption

During the climax of the episode, Dr. Watson mentions that the abominable bride showed clear signs that she died of consumption, also known as tuberculosis. This is historically inaccurate, as 1890s medicine was not refined enough to find symptoms of tuberculosis after death. These symptoms include fever, weight loss, night sweats, and white phlegm, most of which can only be found if the patient is alive. In fact, during the late 1800s science had just found out that tuberculosis was contagious, and that it came from a rod shaped bacterium. This was the farthest in technology and medical practice they were able to get in 1800's England, although across the sea in New York they were able to define a sort of cure; fresh air, good diet, and physical activity in the mountains.

The effect, or impact on this film is miniscule, and may have just been a ripple in the episode's pond, so to speak. Watson is responding to Sherlock's assumption that she killed herself, because 'every great cause has martyrs'. Watson sought to prove him wrong, by showing his medical skills in identifying the cause of her death, no matter how historically inaccurate his statement was.  

At a minimum, it may have simply changed the script in the scene. On a larger scale, however, it would seem that the bride would've died from a different cause, or may have not died altogether, changing the entire plot drastically by altering the storyline and relationships between the characters. If she had known she was not going to die, or knew that she was suffering from a non-fatal illness, would she have found a less violent way to get the point across? Or would she have committed suicide nonetheless, this time with the sole reason of being a 'martyr to a great cause'?

How Would History Be Changed By TAB?

If history has played out as The Abominable Bride said they did, how would history be altered? Would the fight for women's rights be altered in length? How would this affect today's views of sexism, racism, homophobia, the like?

If historical events played out as The Abominable Bride said they did, then it may have taken longer for women to get the right to vote in England.  Following history accurately, women were allowed the right to vote in 1920, around 30 years after the events of TAB would have played out. Victorian politics would definitely use the suffragist's group from TAB as an argument against women's rights to vote. By way of  the butterfly theory, this may even make today's gender equality more radical then expected, with women discriminated against for their gender as the new normal (although, this seems to still be happening around the world, in 2017, 122 years later). Women would therefore have to fight longer, and harder for their rights.

If Chinese characters had, in fact, been simplified in 1895, then modern China would have their history of industrialization changed, happening sooner (around 50 years sooner). This would speed up the process of events, creating a ripple effect that would end up causing China to be in middle of their Industrial Revolution (so to speak) in around 68 years earlier. Judging from how England has bounced back from their historic industrialization, they may have become a first world country by the early 2000's, or even earlier, maybe late 19th century.

Historical Inaccuracies: Conclusion

The Abominable Bride has several mistakes that were easily avoidable, and did not contribute to the plot of the episode in any way. Not only did they prefer aesthetic and reference over historical accuracy, but they also used weak methods of translation within the film when referencing the original series of novels, and didn't do adequate research into modern medicine at the time. Suffice to say, all of these minor mistakes contributed to a weaker rating-or at least, in my eyes. As the inaccuracies didn't contribute to the development to the plot in the film at all, they deserve to be called for what they are- 'mistakes'. The fact that most- if not all- of them were easily avoidable raises the question of "Why?". Why go through all this trouble, simply to make references that aren't even accurate to the time, nor contributed much to the plot?

I can truly say in good conscience; bad move, Mofftiss. Bad move.

Works Cited

"Early Research and Treatment of Tuberculosis in the 19th Century." American Lung Association Crusade. University of Virginia, 2007. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

"The Game Is Afoot!" The Game Is Afoot! China Economic Review, 3 Jan. 2016. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

Gniob. "Analyze a Scene in a Film." WikiHow. WikiHow, 12 Feb. 2017. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

"Leinster Gardens." Www.sherlockology.com. Sherlockology, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

"List of World's Fairs." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Feb. 2017. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

"Plot Summary." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

Tschaab14. "Analyze a Movie." WikiHow. WikiHow, 12 Feb. 2017. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

"Tuberculosis." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Feb. 2017. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. "Adventure 5: “The Musgrave Ritual”." The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Lit2Go Edition. 1894. Web. <http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/40/the-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes/577/adventure-5-the-musgrave-ritual/>. February 12, 2017.

[barbariccia]

cheer up, liara, you aren’t the only one who’s at the mercy of galactic side-glances.

Liara: But I am not like Benezia. I will do whatever I can to help you stop Saren. I promise.

Shepard: Promises are easy to make, but hard to keep.

we get the chance for the first time to chat with liara and find out what her deal is. she’s not really hiding much, not like some of our other crewmates: she’s just a young archaeologist who gets excitable when the protheans are mentioned.

come to think of it...

i’ll freely admit it here and now: i’ve never cared much for liara. being the blue-skinned babe, she naturally rocketed to being the poster girl and ‘canon’ romance for the series above tali or ashley (let’s not even talk about how femshep didn’t have a canon appearance until the very last game in the trilogy), and i can understand why: unlike ashley, she’s not abrasive from the get-go and finds shepard interesting right off the bat, albeit from a scientific standpoint before a humanist one, and unlike tali, you can see her face.

still, the insistance that there is a canon for the series, despite being rife with lots of little choices that ultimately don’t effect the ending but do effect instead the journey you take getting there, things that make any shepard’s journey personal to the player, makes me uncomfortable, in some very vague and undefined sense - as does the way that liara is pressed upon you in a manner that screams to me as “me, me, pick me, pick me!!”

i don’t care to be rude to liara for choices that weren’t hers to pick - nevermind that created characters don’t exactly have agency of their own not being real and all that - but for what it’s worth, i do always feel bad shutting her down so sharply. ah well.

we get the chance to ask about asai culture some more and hear it from the mouth of an asari, though. let’s look.

Liara: Although we seek to understand other species, it seems few of them seek to understand us. The galaxy is filled with rumors and misinformation about my people. Most of the inaccuracies are centered around our mating rituals.

Liara: Mating is not quite the proper term. Not as you understand it. Physical contact may or may not be involved, but it is not an essential element of the union. The true connection is mental. Our physiology allow us to meld with other beings. We can touch the very depths of their minds. We explore the genetic memory of their species. We share the most basic elements of their individual and racial identities.

love to hear it from the mouth of babes themselves that there’s an unhealthy hangup across the galaxy with another species’ mating act!!!

again, i understand that this is clearing up for the player rather than the character, but it still feels very... strange that in your very first conversation with someone who’s arguably the least qualified to be aboard the normandy (at least in terms of credentials, because this is a military vessel; tali would be a close second in this regard) that you can bring up sex when asking about a different race. fraternization isn’t quite the right word for it, but it seems very othering to me.

that this is brought up by liara rather than shepard and could very well be seen as simply oversharing, or wanting to clear up misunderstandings before they blow out of hand, is definitely a read! and shepard’s questions do lean more toward a general instead of personal sense.

we do get to ask if liara knows who her ‘father’, for lack of a better term - and god i wish asari linguistics were explored because this is a culture that would be rife with interesting nongendered terms - is, and liara tells us that benezia never told her who that was. and here we come to the second part i’m iffy about.

Liara: I am what is sometimes called a “pureblood”, though no asari would ever be cruel enough to say the word to my face. It is a great insult among my people.

Liara: It is possible Benezia’s partner was embarrassed by their union. She may have been too ashamed to publicly acknowledge me as her offspring.

so this is loaded!!!!!!

asari-asari offspring are explored a little better in me2, where we see what the implications of single-species union mean for the genetics (spoiler: it’s a sex thing), but this in itself raises some interesting questions that the series never addresses. at some point, even the asari weren’t able to leave their own planet or system - at some point they were the only race to have discovered the citadel and claimed its initial knowledge. so what the fuck were the thoughts on single-race offspring at that time? at what point in the asari’s history did it become culturally unacceptable to mate with another asari?

unless, of course, they’ve always melded with non-asari species, even if they aren’t the aliens that we know and are familiar with today. the equivalent of bestiality, except... because melding can be pulled off without a physical union, it’s considered okay? the offspring is laways another asari, the product of the individual and racial combination of both asari and the second parent’s experiences and culture, so it’s not like there’d be any weird asari-dog hybrids walking around.

i appreciate this got weird quickly, but the idea is so open and broad and only really discussed in an “ooh sexy we’re compatible with everyone and because we’re neither male nor female that means femshep can get in on this as well without having to be held to the same standards of lesbianism that isn’t aesthetically pleasing” manner. tldr, fuck you, bioware, this is my country now and i intend to plunder the land for all of its minerals no matter how weird they are because you didn’t strip it fully and left these nuggest behind for me.

so i was discussing this with one of my closest friends. i typically have a big problem consuming depictions of mother-daughter relationships within any sort of media, no matter how they’re displayed, because of personal trauma, but the realisation struck me as this line played - i don’t remember having any sort of problem with the way that liara and benezia’s relationship (and estrangement) were displayed the first time i went through this game, and i don’t expect it to have much of an affect on me now.

not that my personal experiences and trauma count for much as far as whether or not a piece of writing is good, but it doesn’t strike is as... realistic, i suppose is the right word.

no explanation on why liara hasn’t spoken to benezia in however long, or any indication of when benezia might have turned to saren’s cause or even why, but i’m sure it’ll pop up later. we’ll be taking liara to one of the planets for that extra dialogue.