#unmodern

[ohoshi]

i just realized my carrd says i'm 22 when i'm already 24 AND A HALF!

[starcurtain]

Everyone on Twitter playfully dragging Aventurine for his crop top and track pants fit, and while I agree that this is hilarious and should be meme'd into oblivion, I also can't help but think that the Aventurine fandom as a whole should definitely embrace turning "He's kind of tacky, wouldn't know a subtle outfit unless it was picked by Jade, and wears bizarrely out-of-touch fits on his days off just because he personally thinks they look cool" into an endearing fanon character trait.

Because like, canonically? It makes perfect sense.

As a child, his family didn't have the luxury of giving him a wide variety of clothes in different styles or fabrics. He wore what he could get. Then, we're only ever shown adult Kakavasha wearing rags until joining the IPC.

We know from his character stories that he was kept extremely out of the loop on world news and mainstream media as a slave and literally wouldn't know anything about clothing other than seeing it on other people.

From the time he was a child, wearing whatever his family could pull together, to the time he became an adult prisoner wearing literal scraps, there was never a need or even reasonable opportunity for him to learn about fashion or the social pressures of "dressing to fit in."

The first thing he's told to do as a member of the Stonehearts is "Go pick out new clothes," and the next time we see him, he's wearing the most peacock-esque outfit possible. When Jade told him to pick out his clothes, he literally went in completely blind with no lessons on how to appropriately dress for any adult occasion at all.

While I do think that one of the first things Aventurine would have done as a new Stoneheart is research how to establish a certain "character" for himself and how to dress to give a specific impression, I also think that Aventurine would delight in finally, finally having the power to present himself exactly as he chooses--and that would likely be very strongly informed by an entire child- and young-adulthood growing up without a single social pressure to "dress normal."

Given that he never had someone to teach him how to dress in any modern intergalactic style in his formative years, I think that it makes perfect sense for his "fashion" sense to be extremely unique to him, with little outside influence except for being strongly based on what he knows best: the luxuries the Avgin people could gather from the deserts of Sigonia-IV.

Ratio accuses him of being "flashy," but Aventurine likely loads up all his personally-picked outfits with turquoise jewels, fur trim, and gold metal accents because that's what he grew up perceiving as status symbols and signs of prosperity. Of course he's flashy! Why would he not want to wear furs and jewels now that he has them?! What do you mean wearing six gold bangles is overkill with a t-shirt? No such thing as overkill, come on!

Topaz dropping the Star Rail equivalent of "You look like what would happen if Fashion Week was themed on the yakuza and the Roaring 20s at the exact same time" every other month.

"Well, I think it looks great!"

tl;dr: Aventurine can definitely do his research and blend his outfits into any scenario if needed, but when left to his own devices, he absolutely wears the most over-the-top and/or bizarrely unmodern and "I couldn't care less what is currently trending" fits because no one ever taught him fashion sense when he was growing up, he's finally got the autonomy to dress himself in whatever he thinks looks best, and he's still a little bit drunk on the opportunity to bath in the natural luxuries he longed for but could never have as a child.

Just sayin'.

[transgenderer]

Internet communists have a very distinct...traditional streak? Noticed it re: the recent sinwar stuff. Lot of posts about how cool he was in death. This seems fundamentally unserious, unmodern to me. We figured out war is bad in the 20th century! That's not to say you should never fight a war of course. But like. I don't know what's all that heroic about dying in a war against a vastly more populous and richer enemy that already controls the territory you live in. Throwing yourself into a meat grinder isn't heroic, it's just sad. This is real life!Obviously this kind of rhetoric is common among normies but is bizarre to see among people who have like, read theory.

[cousingregs]

rewatching tsn and had a total plate of corn moment when i realised that when they’re in the bar with sean eduardo is the only character in the whole scene wearing a tie. a bright blue tie in a film where both colour and formality of dress are representative of where each character stands on a sliding scale from modern to traditional on a character whose costuming is picked out as being important (���i wasn’t sure whether to dress for the party or the meeting, so i kind of dressed for both’) im going to throw up the fucking TIE. a superficial attempt at modernity that only serves to demonstrate how completely unmodern he is. the tie

[loving-n0t-heyting]

my apartment bldg is very old and beautifully ornamented with a quaint exterior and all manner of little nooks and crannies in the units but the pipes suck ass and the heating via radiators is a huge pain and in general you have to treat the place like a borderline gf likely to break apart and sputter at you in malicious resentment if you look at her wrong. so i think, every time there is some blowup about how hideous new apartments are: are the unmodern aesthetics here really worth the daily grind of housing that hates you?

and the answer is: yes. i would absolutely not trade in my shitty pipes in return for some featureless white cube with those noxious sliding windows and an outside that looks like a childs first foray into minecraft architecture. if anyone wants to foist the trade on me my honest feeling is that they can get fucked. if the matter were put to a vote im pretty sure a solid majority would come down on my side. make new housing that it doesnt drain my soul to look at and live in, pls

[jmtorres]

so i was exploring non-english audiobooks as a way to listen to voices while trying to fall asleep without getting hooked on a narrative and

1. why are such a high percentage of Hebrew audiobooks L. Ron Hubbard???

2. I figured out the language my brain doesn't reject as foreign (I don't know how to explain this, like, just in the wrong rhythm to relax to I guess? but my brain flat out refused German, Spanish, French and Hindi; I think middle English might have worked but I didn't like the voices of either of the guys who have read Canterbury Tales unmodernized) was Japanese. and i'm just like OF COURSE you giant weeb. of course i've watched enough anime that Japanese sounds familiar even if I only know like one word in a thousand.

2a. Audible's plus catalog has free shit in a lot of languages but not Japanese apparently?

2b. librivox.org only has two Japanese reader contributors, and the one I like has only recorded two poetry books. I guess I'm listening to these until they stop working for sleep

2c. oh i see the problem. the church of scientology I guess? aggressively translated hubbard into a lot of languages so whenever there's a dearth of titles in a language, he dominates. maybe a third of the japanese language titles on libro.fm are this dianetics ass bullshit, too.

[max1461]

When Atatürk introduced the European style flat cap as a replacement for the fez its because he didnt know what was causing western europes economic and military success. it could have been the hats for all he knew. due to his superstitious and unmodern upbringing.

[wrishwrosh]

was enjoying some recreational dumb shit i hate reading time last night and came across a litmag profile of annie proulx, infamous recluse, where the author tried and kinda failed to interview her and the thesis was “annie proulx is a cold mean bitch, which is so complicated and unmodern of her, isnt being a mean reclusive old bitch kind of uhhh homophobic actually?” and like a) shes an 89 year old who lives in the woods and writes books about cold mean reclusive bitches. what did u expect and b) GOOD FOR HER. i dont need authors to be instagram pr trained and in fact do not want this from them. all authors should be 89 year old recluses and i myself dream of being an 89 year old recluse one day

[eelhound]

"[While translating The Iliad,] the dangers of anachronism always needed to be balanced against an equally pressing danger: that archaizing or unidiomatic English risks suggesting that The Iliad is both more alien and more simplistic in its values than it really is. I wrestled constantly with the delicate balance whereby the slaughter that is central to the epic is presented as both glorious and terrible. The horror and grief of war is imagined in ways that are quite unmodern: this is a world with no concept of human rights, no written laws, no hospitals or antibiotics, and no Geneva Convention. I hoped the translation could, like the original, suggest compassionate understanding of the tensions and fault lines within the competitive, hierarchical, aggressive societies it evokes."

- Emily Wilson, from the translator's note for her rendition of The Iliad, 2023.

[angstics]

I think it is more interesting to engage with the range of sexual understanding from the 20th century (and older) rather than dismissing it as “unmodern”. These people were working under dire circumstances to understand this complex thing and we’re just gonna ignore it? Nothing to be learned, nothing to be adopted? We’ve figured it out, huzzah!! Surely there will be no changes in the next 20 years (as there have been in the last 20 years)

[alarrytale]

Because Harry is very often very far from Harry Styles tm.

Maybe it doesn’t have a connection or maybe it does have one but your answer to the anon reminded me how last year during one show H got a hand-made mask of himself and after a while of playing with it he said “You know, sometimes I feel like I’m wearing a mask, you know”. Ofc most people didn’t get it ‘cause he jokes all the time especially on stage but for me he was dead serious and that H is more than aware of who he is as a real person and who is his carefully curated brand - HStm as a mask the true H is wearing. Something similar was his message for MFASR video - he is more than aware of who he is to the industry and his bosses and knows that once he will lose what makes him special, they will get of him…or at least move to someone fresh and young.

Also you wrote that him being everything for everyone and not problematic is working which is probably true but the question is how long it will work? Because as far as I am aware of all those true legends - who are the ones H’s label is working hard to make H become, you know, the next gen *insert name* - weren’t blank space and totally unproblematic. They had an opinions, they had attitudes, they had done something controversial (and no, being a homewrecker and filling tabloids isn’t it), some of them became vocal when talking about politics and what is more important - they were themselves and didn’t care if they were likeable to everyone.

Hi, anon!

He is wearing a mask, he is not able to show his true self to the world. He's two faced. He knows he's not presenting his truth, his own wants or choices. He's adopted the persona of someone else, who looks like him and talks like him, but is not him. It's a constructed utopic image of someone who is seemingly pefect. But it's not him, it's not Harry.

H always talks a lot about compartmentalising. Seperating and isolating his thoughts and feelings as a defence and coping mechanisms. I think he knows who he is now, who Harry is, what he's like and what he likes (do you know who you are?). He knows he's not Harry Styles tm. He knows he needs to be Harry Styles tm in order to please his label and fulfill his contract. There might have been a time where he didn’t know who he was and was afraid to be anything but Harry Styles tm and live up to that persona, but he isn't anymore. He's taken a firm stance against Harry Styles tm, he puts him in a compartment and closes him up, he doesn't give that guy a second thought. Harry doesn’t care who Harry Styles tm is currently dating, he doesn't care about Grammy's and number of nights at MSG, and he doesn’t care about the stunt songs he's written. He doesn’t care about the lies and hurt done in his name, because he's learned to ignore it and he knows that's not who he is.

His friends and family know the real him.

In regards to how long this blank canvas strategy will work, i have no idea. I don't think it will work that much longer, but it has worked this far, so i don't see them changing it anytime soon. I agree that for H to become the legend and icon they all want him to be, he needs to have a personality, something that sets him apart, something that's not just a copy of other legends. They're not on the right trajectory and i feel like he's falling more and more behind the times. The approach is unmodern and he's not moving with the zeitgeist. I think he'll be fine as long as he hasn't got competition. But we'll have to see how long the gp will tolerate it.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Oh my god, apparently we're doing YET ANOTHER "words have meanings" post in relation to an SJM book. I'm on chapter 28 of Queen of Shadows, and Aelin just yote Rowan's ass into a bathtub because apparently stowaways don't bathe (and no, I'm not mad about her insistence on modern plumbing in questionably unmodern settings...I get that fantasy and I'm here for it). But then she gets all ooey gooey over his muscles and stuff (as you do, I guess), and the book says:

"She poked him in the shoulder. It was like touching velvet-wrapped steel."

*presses palms together*

*inhales deeply through the nose*

IDIOMS HAVE CONTEXTS AND CONNOTATIONS. They absolutely can be re-contextualized or used in surprising ways to literary effect, but THATS NOT WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE. This is just WEIRD and it BROKE MY BRAIN A LITTLE because what precisely about a shoulder is so similar to a penis that we use the same bad romance phrase to describe both???? For the love of all that is holy, can we PLEASE stop VIBING OUR WAY THROUGH DESCRIPTIVE SCENES??? Some of us read the actual words in addition to the vibes and this broke the vibes, my immersion, and my brain.

THINK OF A DIFFERENT WAY TO DESCRIBE HIS SHOULDER.

[superhell]

ok picture the the most annoying guy to EVER live with the weirdest custody situation of all time a) loves his family b) is feminist c) is obsessed with his wife d) keeps saying modern meme shit in a distinctly unmodern setting e) has ethics f) keeps getting into homoerotic relationships AND was a well written actually entertaining show

[leohtttbriar]

"Walter Benjamin argued, in a 1936 essay, that the form had replaced the patient craftsmanship of the storyteller, who passed traditional tales down from one generation to the next, and who lived more comfortably with the idea of eternity. He quotes Paul Valéry speaking fondly of these storytellers of yore, who were inspired by the slow-cooked works of nature, 'flawless pearls, full-bodied mature wines, truly developed creatures,' all of which were 'the precious product of a long chain of causes similar to one another.' It’s this older, slower kind of workmanship that makes Voetmann’s novels feel decidedly unmodern, and which Valéry attributes to the storyteller’s alignment with nature:

This patient process of Nature was once imitated by men. Miniatures, ivory carvings, elaborated to the point of greatest perfection, stones that are perfect in polish and engraving, lacquer work or paintings in which a series of thin, transparent layers are placed one on top of the other—all these products of sustained, sacrificing effort are vanishing, and the time is past in which time did not matter. Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated."

"Up All Night," Meghan O’Gieblyn

[lightthewaybackhome]

I just couldn't resist talking about the kitchen, so here is a little encouragement for your week, HearthKeepers! This room should be special to us specifically, and it's worthy of our respect. I'm learning to love my kitchen, what it produces, and yes, even the work involved with keeping it clean and productive. It truly has become one of my favorite rooms even though it's a very unmodern galley kitchen.

[newdsm5xl]

Forging Islamic science (2018)

"... The fake miniature depicting Muslim astronomers is far from an isolated case. One popular image floating around Facebook and Pinterest has worm-like demons cavorting inside a molar. It claims to illustrate the Ottoman conception of dental cavities, a rendition of which has now entered Oxford’s Bodleian Library as part of its collection on ‘Masterpieces of the non-Western book’. Another shows a physician treating a man with what appears to be smallpox. These contemporary images are in fact not ‘reproductions’ but ‘productions’ and even fakes – made to appeal to a contemporary audience by claiming to depict the science of a distant Islamic past."

"... What drives the spread of these images and objects is the desire to use some totemic vision of science to redeem Islam – as a religion, culture or people – from the Islamophobia of recent times. Equating science and technology with modernity is common enough. Before the current political toxicity took hold, I would have taught a class on Arab Science, rather than Islam and Science. Yet in a world that’s all too willing to vilify Islam as the antithesis of civilisation, it seems better to try and uphold a message that science is a global project in which all of humanity has participated."

"... However, there is a dark side to this progressive impulse. It is an offshoot of a creeping, and paternalistic, tendency to reject the real pieces of Islamic heritage for its reimagined counterparts. Something is lost when we reduce the Islamic history of science to a few recognisably modern objects, and go so far as to summon up images from thin air. We lose sight of important traditions of learning that were not visually depicted, whether artisanal or scholastic. We also leave out those domains later deemed irrational or unmodern, such as alchemy and astrology."

"...Faced with fantasy or forgery, we are left to stand in awe of the telescopes and alembics, marvelling that Muslims built them, but knowing little of the actual artisans and scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. In these lives lies the true history of science in Islamic world: a midwife’s preparation of herbs; a hospital doctor’s list of medicines for the pious poor; an astrologer’s horoscope for an aspiring lieutenant; an imam’s astronomical measurements for timing the call to prayer; a logician’s trial of a new syllogism; a silversmith’s metallurgic experimentation; an encyclopaedist’s classification of plants; or a judge’s algebraic calculations for dividing an inheritance. These lives are not easily researched, as demonstrated by the anaemic state of the field. However, by refusing to collect and display actual historical objects, and instead championing their reimagined counterparts, we efface these people of the past."

thx 2 @johnandrews111 in the replies 4 mentioning the article (used new link bc old 1 was broken)

Jinn causing toothaches. Illustration from an 18th-century Ottoman manuscript.