"god damn it, you've got to be kind"

Call me 'Away', she/her, adult. Writings, musings, and misc reblogs. Not spoiler free, but always tagged.

[casperxp]

I want more aromantic characters who are not also asexual !!! I want more characters who 100 percent want to get it on but just don’t feel any romantic feelings for anyone. I want more aromantic characters with “friends with benefits” except it’s literally just that. That’s their best friend and sometimes they let them fuck. More aromantic characters please !!!!

[mzminola]

The bit of fandom I stuck my toe into recently seems to pretty much agree that King Jonathan’s concession to Wyldon, to have Keladry on a probationary year when she began page training was hypocritical & unfair, but also likely politically necessary, that as king he has to make unsavory political choices, that you have to make concessions to advance other parts of a given cause, etc.

I see these points, and now I’m going to list out all the ways I can think of that it was a bad political decision too:

1. Alienated his long-standing allies (was there anyone who trained with Alanna when they were all kids that wasn’t pissed about this choice?).

2. Undermined the other progressive policies; he made the decree that girls could openly try for their shields ten years before First Test begins, the training master at the time agreed to it, and Wyldon accepted the decision when he took the job. Stepping backward as soon as it’s put to the test invites other such decrees and programs to be attacked as well.

3. Insulted the Mindelans, who are valuable diplomats, quite badly.

4. Potentially undermined Alanna in her job as King’s Champion; yes, she acknowledges that people often credit her success to her Gift and being god-touched, but she did go through the same official training as all her peers. To make the next woman knight leap more official hurdles is to throw Alanna’s qualifications into question.

5. Nearly lost them Keladry as a knight. She almost makes the decision to wait a few years and apply to the Queen’s Riders instead, because a probationary year for only her was blatantly unfair.

6. Potentially lost them other knights as well. We don’t hear of any other girls starting page training during the rest of Protector of the Small, which spans over eight years. How many other girls, or their parents, looked at that probationary year, and refused to let themselves be so insulted? How many wondered, if the year was lifted for future applicants, if some other humiliation would be sprung on them instead?

Jonathan could have mitigated some of these problems by having Wyldon place all incoming pages under a probationary year, by officially declaring that this was simply yet another change to the training program they were making. Even if rumor went that this change was because of Kel, without it being officially so, it would be less insulting to her & her politically important family, leave less room for open attacks on the other progressive policies, and not raise the stakes so high for future girl applicants.

But he didn’t. The probationary year was a political mistake, as well as being hypocritical and unfair.

[pawthorn]

Absolutely.

This decision also highlights one of the main themes of the series—systemic vs. individual bigotry and how individuals can uphold or work against the status quo.

Wyldon takes Jonathan’s compromise as permission to continue his bigotry. In turn, Joren and the other pages take Wyldon’s treatment of Kel as endorsement of their own bullying.

Wyldon barely allows Kel to stay, despite her exemplary performance, and openly treats her poorly— pages take their cues from him. Many are openly misogynistic and sexually harass Kel. Vinson takes it to the point of committing serial rape and assault of other women in the castle and city. Joren holds onto his own bigotry so tightly that he can’t survive his Ordeal. They make their own choices, but they were certainly influenced by Wyldon.

In addition to reinforcing misogyny, Wyldon mistreats other pages who don’t fit his ideals of knighthood—Neal in particular. Once again, Joren and his crew respond to this, bullying young pages as they please. Had Kel not stepped in and rallied her friends against it, how many other young pages would have been bullied out of knighthood or turned into bullies themselves?

There’s a great moment at Joren’s trial, where Joren basically says he was dojng Wyldon a favor in trying to get rid of Kel. Wyldon objects—he didn’t want that. But it’s too late. It doesn’t matter what he says. His mistreatment of Kel set the tone, and Joren and many other pages followed.

The same holds true for King Jonathan. His treatment of Kel—and his own daughter, for that matter—sets the tone for how women are treated in general. He is in the wrong.

And Pierce doesn’t really give Jon and Wyldon of them a chance at redemption, or any credit for Kel’s success.

Wyldon retires in shame. He is—quite explicitly—a failure at his post. Though he learns and grows, his failure remains.

Jon doesn’t win Kel’s sincere loyalty, which Raoul rightly points out as a major loss. In fact, when choosing between allegiance between King Jonathan and Kel, Alanna, Raoul, the King’s Own, almost an entire generation of knights, Wyldon’s squire, and Jon’s own son all choose Kel, some to the point of treason.

Kel succeeds in spite of them, mostly due to mutual support with other people/ creatures rejected by the system, and the steadfast support of other women. And it’s through that solidarity that Kel effects change in the system from below, unlike the men that maintain it from above.

[all-pacas]

do you ever find something that is so funny and you want to share it with everyone but it also requires 18 layers of context spanning things like. 90s anime. aviation history. europop. canada. in order to even remotely understand why it is so funny

[all-pacas]

in the late 90s there was an anime called initial d which was all about street racing and drifting. naturally every single drift was played for great drama and excitement.

in 1999, an italian named giancarlo pasquini released a europop song under the alias dave rogers called Deja Vu. this song was picked up as the theme song for the above anime. it in turn became a meme, a shorthand for drifting and Cool Moves as a concept.

in 1983, air canada flight 143, a full sized 767, ran out of fuel halfway to edmonton, alberta. this is not something you want to have happen to a huge airplane. the flight chose to try and make an emergency landing at a nearby decomissioned airforce base (as they were falling fast and could not make it to a proper airport), where they ran into a second problem: they were falling out of the sky at 500 feet per mile, but reached gimli (the base in question) while still too high to safely land. normally a plane would just do a big loop-de-loop to lose altitude, but they had maybe three minutes of airtime left before they hit the ground: not enough time to make any kind of circle. the pilot, therefore, decided to execute a side slip to lose speed and altitude. this is Not a move you want to do with a massive 767, because airplanes are not built for that and if you screw it up that plane is hitting the ground at a high speed at a weird angle and breaking into a million pieces. nevertheless, the captain tried it... and succeeded. the plane landed perfectly, and there were no major injuries! (a couple of people did get minor injuries when evacuating the plane after.) he did it so well, in fact, that the plane was refueled, flown out of gimli a couple days later, and continued to fly for another 20 years with the nickname "Gimli Glider."

what is a side-slip, you ask?

it's drifting.

the guy goddamn drifted his 767.

in 2008, the tv show Mayday: Air Disaster featured the gimli glider with full reenactments as an episode on season five of their show.

and so, in conclusion, the thing i have been giggling to myself about all weekend:

[all-pacas]

this is somehow starting to make the rounds so because i am a pedant i am going to take this time to talk a little more in depth about air canada 143, the GIMLI GLIDER

so you may be wondering: how the hell does a 737 (capacity of roughly 100-120 people) run out of fuel midair? the METRIC SYSTEM, that's how!

up until the early eighties, airplanes would have three people in the cockpit: the pilot, first officer, and flight engineer. generally speaking, the pilot's job is to fly the airplane; the first officer's job is to provide support, monitor instruments, and assist (the pilot and FO will swap roles periodically), and the flight engineer's job was to watch over all the fuel gauges, electrical systems, hydraulics, etc., to make sure they were all working properly, as well as taking charge of things like "setting engine power."

however, in the early 1980s -- when this story takes place -- the flight engineer role began to be made obsolete as computers and more advanced systems became capable of doing most of that work. the boeing 737 of this story was one such plane: actually, air canada 143 was quite a new airplane at the time of the accident, and had no flight engineer.

also in the early 1980s? canada was making the switch from the imperial system to metric.

neither of these things is bad in and of themselves. but put together? one of the flight engineer's jobs was to monitor fuel; it hadn't yet been made clear whose job it was now. canada, at the time, was doing refuelling in a convoluted "the fuel is weighed in pounds but put into the plane as liters" system that required Math and Conversion.

let's talk about AIRPLANE FUEL. unlike a car, you don't take your airplane to the station and fill 'er up: fuel has weight, and airplanes care a LOT about weight. way more than you'd imagine. it's the pilot's job to therefore calculate a) how much fuel they need to get from A to B b) how much extra/emergency fuel they need for safety and c) if and when they need to refuel and by how much. is there bad weather in the area? where's the nearest backup airport? if i need Ten Fuels to get to alberta and there's storms in alberta, i need another Two Fuels to circle around and kill time before landing safely, plus another Five Fuels to get to calgary in case alberta is impossible. my airplane is fully loaded, which means it's heavier than usual, so needs another One Fuel for takeoff power. so altogether i need Eighteen Fuels. except i'm in canada in the 1980s so now i need to figure out what that is in liters, and this used to be the flight engineer's job, and idk man. maybe it's 5 liters? that sounds right?

...you see the issue. it isn't that anyone was slacking off, but no one was quite sure what the conversion was, and so instead of giving the soon-to-be Gimli Glider 18 Fuels, they took off in that fucker with nowhere near enough fuel. to make things worse, the plane had a broken fuel gauge, which was a whole other thing and series of comical misunderstandings, but basically it meant that not only was there No Fuel, but the fuel gauges looked something like this:

the very-soon-to-be crashed airplane's day started off normally. they did a little hour long flight from one city to another with no issues. because they knew the fuel gauges were being silly, while on the ground they did a "stick test", which i'm imagining involved a tree branch, basically checking that yep, there was fuel in the tanks, we're good! (in actuality, what it was doing was measuring the weight of the fuel. except, again, they had their maths all backwards, so due to this convoluted conversion process they went "our fuel weighs 5 kilograms, which equals 20 pounds, which equals 18 fuels, which equals 900 liters." just. silly math. i don't want to make these guys out to be idiots: they would obviously have never flown the plane if they had realized their mistake. but the other problem was of course that the process was already convoluted and required multiple conversions; imagine how much worse it would be if, like these pilots, it was a new system you weren't used to!)

so they boarded their passengers and set off from montreal with the intention of flying to edmonton. and that's when things all went terribly wrong.

pictured: the intended and my interpretation of the actual flight.

all this set up leads to the actual flight, which is almost boring in summary: while high up in the sky, the plane suddenly ran out of fuel. this is bad. we do not want this to happen. the pilots had no idea what was happening at first, but i mean: it was pretty obvious. there's no fuel. no engines. no power. you're 30,000 feet in the air in a 64 ton machine and gravity is going hey girllll heyyyy.

but the thing is, airplanes are really cool. like, this is what got me so interested in these plane crashes and accidents: airplanes are awesome. because first of all: just because you weigh as much as a building and are thousands and thousands of meters in the air? doesn't mean the airplane just falls. hell no! without power, an airplane will still stay in the air, losing altitude, sure, but gliding fairly safely and manageably. this doesn't mean you're safe, but: when air canada 143 lost all power, it still had time and options. it also had... the RAT.

the Ram Air Turbine, or the RAT, is an amazing fucking guy. if an airplane loses power? a hatch pops open, and a little propeller drops down automatically. he's wind powered, and he will provide just enough backup power to keep the most critical systems online, even without fuel or engines or god. we LOVE the rat. and the rat leapt into action here, providing the pilots with enough basic systems to keep going.

this doesn't mean that air canada is out of the woods. landing without power is not easy! the trick to landing an airplane is doing it at a nice shallow angle and low speed, which involves things like "doing nice steady turns to line up with a runway" (no time, we're falling steadily), "using engines to get our speed right" (what engines), "getting to the correct altitude and speed to touch down gently" (we have NO POWER we can't go "oopsie too low" and pull up and adjust). if a plane loses too much speed, it WILL fall out of the sky (a stall) because the aerodynamics stop working. if it's going too fast, you're not landing, you're diving cockpit first into the ground. without power, you can turn, but turns will reduce speed. you can't level off or go back up. you are Going In A Downward Direction. the trick is figuring out how fast and how far and aiming at a runway.

this is also where ATC comes in! we love air traffic controllers!! air canada called a mayday, and ATC leapt into action. their job becomes to Get Them What They Need. air canada wants to go anywhere in canada? atc will move everyone out of the way and get them any runway in the northern hemisphere. when this happened, air canada 143 was near winnipeg, which was their initial goal: this IS going to be a crash landing, and the nearer they can be to emergency services, the better. however, the first officer was doing Good Math, calculating their rate of decent vs distance flown, and soon realized that even though they could literally see winnipeg from the windows, they just weren't going to make it. they were falling too fast.

enter: GIMLI. the first officer had actually trained there during his air force days; it's a former base with two runways. it wasn't ideal, because ATC had no information on it and it lacked instruments and equipment (normally, for example, airports will have locator beams and so on to help an aircraft lock on to the runway at the Correct Safe Angle), but... better than a field or lake. one of the dangers of this type of no engine landing is actually being non-committal: waiting too long to make a decision, trying to maximize time in the air rather than land. this makes sense! it's probably pretty human instinct! prolong that crash as long as possible! but it's much, much better to simply Commit and Prepare and Go For It. and that's exactly what air canada now did.

they told ATC they're going to gimli and made the turn. the cabin crew was meanwhile preparing the passengers for a crash landing.

the crazy thing about plane crashes is, actually, that they are very survivable. don't get me wrong: they're bad. people die. but the number of worst case scenarios where dozens of people still, somehow, survive? shockingly high. of course, you don't want ANYONE to die. i would be terrified if it was me. but cabin crew had to know it would probably be... well, not okay. but that if they got everyone prepared and braced, people were going to make it out. people were going to survive this. possibly most of them. possibly all of them.

as the plane approached gimli, problem #87 came up: they were still too fucking fast. they're gliding down! they can't stop! normally, a plane would simply slow down with flaps, or maybe do a couple of big circles before reorienting themselves towards the runway to lose some speed and altitude, but they don't have time -- or altitude. and that's where the theme song KICKS IN

here are reasons you DO NOT DRIFT airplanes, by the way. it can fuck up your engines: engines work in part by taking IN air, so flying at a Drifting Angle means that's all wrong. the aerodynamics are wrong. you're losing speed VERY fast. you can get OUT of the drift, but now your engines are fucked. on the other hand, this plane effectively HAS no engines, but... there's a reason people don't drift planes, okay.

another plot twist: gimli air force base was no more. the runways were still there... but it had been turned into a drag strip, ironically enough. and it was family day! picture this. you're a nice canadian racing fan in 1983, at the strip with your family, cooking hotdogs and poutine on a grill. and a fucking 737 APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE in front of you. because that is exactly what happened. there were KIDS. on BIKES. with a PLANE HEADING RIGHT TOWARDS THEM. in the mayday episode, the kids tried to outrace the plane in a panic: in the pilot's telling, the kids simply froze in fear.

by the time the pilots realized the runway was occupied, it was way too late to turn back. they landed. in a twist of bad luck that turned into good: without power, they had to manually release their landing gear.... and the nose gear didn't lock. this turned out to be a weirdly good thing: without nose gear, the plane's nose hit the runway and acted as one hell of a brake in ITSELF, grinding on the asphalt as the plane barreled down at high speed. the pilot also intentionally steered the plane into the rail in the middle of the runway, trying to slow the plane even more. and... it worked! the plane came to a stop. everyone was fine. even the kids on bikes.

all this friction caused a small fire in the nose, and so the pilots called for an immediate evacuation to be safe. this caused a bit of an issue: because the nose was on the ground, the butt of the plane was higher than usual, and the back slides were basically just vertical drops. a couple people got mildly hurt using them, as you'd expect.

meanwhile, the drag strip folks were rushing over with fire extinguishers and the like, and the small fire was easily contained (note: do not fuck with burning airplanes. this one had no fuel so COULD be contained). by the time ATC got emergency services to gimli, everyone was safe, ankles were being iced, and presumably everyone was eating hot dogs.

the airplane itself had some minor damage (from when the nose acted as a brake), but was largely intact: it was patched up, refuelled, and took off from gimli a while later, where it flew for another 20 years before retiring of old age.

and that is the story of the Gimli Glider: that time a pilot drifted his plane so hard that he saved the lives of everyone on his plane.

all 69 of them 😎

[athelind]

I had read the story of the Gimli Glider before, and I had seen the video with "Deja Vu" playing, but I never understood where the song came from or why it was supposed to be funny before.

This is "The Most Tumblr Punchline" in action, only I didn't realize there was something to look up.

Now that I do?

Okay, that's funny.

[stele3]

Because it’s in the news and being hotly debated everywhere…

Which would you prefer?

Permanent daylight savings time (darker in the mornings, lighter in the evenings

Permanent standard time (lighter in the mornings, darker in the evenings)

Neither (keep the current system of changing clocks twice a year)

Bald/I don’t have this issue where I live

Voting ended onJul 18

I’m curious because I know how I and my friends feel but maybe we are outliers?

[onedirectionforever]

“you support gay rights so you must be gay”

i support animal rights do i look like a fucking alpaca to you

[onedirectionforever]

turns out i am gay

[monsieurenjlolras]

holy shit how’d this alpaca learn how to type

[mywitchcultblr]

Diversity win! The alpaca is gay!

[adreamthatsworthkeeping]

[thebirdkiwi]

he was a llama

[fritextramole]

a llama?! he’s supposed to be dead!

[cossackia]

The Timeless Trilogy

[pebleeee-deactivated20151227]

im happy they worked it out

[the-rom-man]

I need updates on this 

are they still bffs?

[cossackia]

[fluorescentnova]

Wow NASA has a what did Hubble see on your birthday

Let me just open up that bad boy to my birthday and see my cool space vis---

Sure. Sure yeah. Okay. That's Fine. That's really fine and good. Really normal.

[fluorescentnova]

What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday? - NASA Science

Hubble explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Take a look at what cosmic wonders Hubble observed on your special day!

Oh yeah if you want to see yours or just look at cool space pictures.

[i-like-reblog-maps]

What month were you born in?

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Voting ended onMay 28

Doing a final project in my stats class, we have to pick a subject and collect data on it. We need at least 100 data points, and I figured this blog is big enough that a poll on here could get to that pretty easily!

Doing my project on if it’s more likely to be born in certain months :]

I have gotten the OK from my teacher to collect data using a Tumblr poll, btw. I’m also going to have to send her this post as proof of where I got the data from / proof I didn’t just make up the numbers. So. Behave

[ashlgcostumes]

I pull up my slide show. The first slide says “I do not want to financially support the Church of the Latter Day Saints in any way”. There are murmurs of agreement and approval from the room

Next slide. “Brandon Sanderson is a member of the LDS”. The muttering has changed tone

“It’s not a very big amount of money though.” Someone in the audience pipes up. “His cut is only a small fraction of the cost of the book, and then-“ my next slide shows an income breakdown, it is titled ‘a small fraction of $10,000,000 is still a big number’

I’m sweating. The following slides explain tithing rules. The vibe of the room has shifted. I start to doubt I’m getting out of here alive

[fuckblast]

[asofteredge]

hey everyone, just curious:

what is everyone's criteria for blocking people?

[madmonksandmaenads]

I wish I could make white people(and not just white Americans) understand how diverse the pre-columbian Americas were. The history, religion, culture, politics was at least as complex as Europe's. There was the full gamut of religions, from monotheists to animists to ancestral religions. There were city building empires, village farmers, nomadic traders, and so many other ways to live. This is all just based on what we know, the fragments left behind and the stories of survivors of an apocalyptic plague. All this before the most extended campaign of genocide in history was waged in an attempt to wipe out those survivors.

Over 500 years spent trying to cut down a whole trunk of human culture.

Do you understand how much poorer our whole species is because of it? Can you imagine where art, religion, and science would be if we still had these vast bodies of knowledge? The stain of the colonial project will never be fully washed clean. We owe more than just the land to those we stole from. We owe them a whole future, a future that could have been brighter for all of us. If only greed and fear weren't allowed to rule this land.

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

You are an adventurer in a generic fantasy world and you use this weapon!

Do you like it?

YES!!!!!

yes

Eh it's okay

No

NO!!!!!!!

Remaining time: 1 day 1 hour

[charlesoberonn]

[doloneia]

dissertation graded, who wants to hear my blisteringly hot takes on the chronology & development of attic geometric pottery

[doloneia]

SAY NO MORE. everyone sit down, grab a drink, and listen to what i like to refer to as "hey what the fuck are we even doing." i will preface this with 4 statements:

I am a terminal hater. I view every claim made in an academic publication with a suspicious squint, which probably influenced my dissertation significantly and definitely influenced my outlook on Attic Late Geometric (henceforth called LG) pottery.

I am specifically a terminal hater of periodization. I love continuity. I love observing the integration of old and new as things gradually change over time. I do not like cutting time up into ‘neat little boxes’ which end up simplifying gradual processes into sharp breaks. I am also already a bit of a hater of Early Iron Age Greek chronology. I would kill Submycenaean in a heartbeat, I think it’s stupid as hell (shoutout Papadopoulos et al 2013 btw). So I am even more predisposed to be skeptical here.

I especially hate the idea of definitive statements being applied to a protohistoric period & region like, say, Early Iron Age Attica. like man i think it depends

Either everyone else has been using a totally separate mindset here which I am incapable of having towards pottery analysis or perhaps they've been smoking crack in a corner for almost a hundred years, its really uncertain. Either way this is literally just me. I have tried to find someone else with this specific critique. Nope. Its Just Me. so take that for what you will.

Anyways, here is my beef with the Standard Approach To Late Geometric Attic Pottery Chronology & Development (Abridged) (This was an 8000 word undergraduate dissertation):

So, background context for those of you not emotionally invested in Ancient Greek Pottery Lore - THIS is the standard [big-picture] chronology of Attic Geometric Pottery (from Coldstream 2008, "Greek Geometric Pottery"):

Ignore the top bit (Proto-Attic/PA), he ain't relevant (sorry proto-attic stans). What REALLY matters here is my buddy the Late Geometric - LG I and LG II and all variants therein (LGIa, LGIb, etc). This is the one which I will focus on today, for I find the way it's been framed to be total, utter bullshit.

You may be wondering "how is this utter bullshit? it looks fine!" Well. Well. For that I must backtrack a little to first discuss the Average Approach To Studying Ancient Pots. Due to multiple factors - especially antiquities trafficking, loss of in-situ contexts, antiquarianism - the Pot People have been molded into a strange lovechild between archaeology and art history. Which means that the analysis of pottery production, and of specific vessels is less about where they were found and more about their shape and decoration [ie, if its a fuckin skyphos or not + how Achilles was painted on it]. This isn’t the only way that ancient ceramics are analyzed - there’s also other indicators such as the clay used to make them (which is very useful for pinning its original production site to a particular geographic region, since the chemical composition of clay can be pretty confidently localized) and inscriptions/writing (ie, signatures by the artisan(s) or the usage of regional alphabets). But figural decoration remains the primary focal points for scholarship centered on Athenian pottery, and influences so much of how Attic vessels are analyzed in comparison to one another and how ancient Greek ceramic production is discussed as a whole.

This is further complicated by the general reliance on figural decoration to assign vases to a particular ‘workshop’ or painter. This is more common with later Archaic black-figure and Classical red-figure vases, which sometimes have signatures, but the method is also applied indiscriminately to unsigned vases with 0 provenance (including Geometric vases). This is all quite vibes based - ie, “the hand is pointing slightly downward so it has to be by THIS GUY!” - and tends to value the figural representation over any sort of written evidence. Beazley (the guy who basically pioneered this method for red-figure vases by staring at thousands of them for decades) actually hated painter signatures (Beazley "Attic Black Figure - A Sketch" 1989 , p. 9) which is… certainly a take! This approach to attribution & workshop studies has been criticized elsewhere (Whitley 1991, Smyrnaios 2017) but in the case of Athenian Geometric pottery (objectively one of the hardest styles to define a definitive workshop using only figural decoration [1]) it’s still Very Common (Coulié 2013, p. 2) and specifically instrumental for how we organize LG vases chronologically (Coldstream 2008, p. 8).

This brings me to the subject of Late Geometric chronology. For this I have to bring in another graph (bear with me again here, guys, please):

This particular diagram is from Davison, 1961 - a published and refined version of her PHD dissertation "Attic Geometric Workshops,” which remains influential in discussions concerning LG pottery (partially because Coldstream significantly relies on her for identifying characteristic works; cf Coldstream p. 3, 33). In her work, Davison organizes a metric fuckton of LG Attic vessels (many of which do not have a definitive in-situ context or provenance) into various workshops, relying primarily on their decoration (Davison 1961, p.6). Davison’s attributions here, including her chronology, were reinforced by Coldstream and are fundamental to current reconstructions & analyses of LG pottery production, and discussions re: the development of the Late Geometric style (especially in Coulié 2013, which is [afaik] the most recent, thorough examination of LG pottery). I want to emphasize here that Davison’s organization of these workshops is according to the painters of LG vessels, not the potters.

Which, in my humble opinion, is an absolutely fucking absurd way to conceptualize Late Geometric pottery workshops. Athenian workshops in the later Archaic period were centralized around the potters, not painters (Sapirstein 2013, 499-500); a theory that is further supported by the presence of faint inscriptions on red-figure pottery (made before firing) which delineate the position & identity of the figures depicted on the vase (Iozzo, 2018). And while I am hesitant to apply a later organization of production to what is, again, a protohistorical period with no written records, I find it far more plausible to center the production of ceramics around the potters, who are making the fucking vases here, rather than Davison & Coldstream’s focus on painters - who are fulfilling a secondary, and ultimately more specialized/individualized role in the process. Especially since painters in Archaic Athens were also not restricted to a particular workshop (Sapirstein 2014, p. 180-181), so the conception that painters were trained in the kind of centralized way that Davison & Coldstream are theorizing here (moreso Coldstream, Davison’s actually kinda flexible re: workshop organization) seems improbable. Regardless, basing the chronological sequence of vessels according to their decoration alone (in my opinion) seems far less useful than the potential route of how these vases were created.

For example, there was an incredibly interesting study semi-recently which analyzed the proportions of skyphoi cups from the Early Geometric through the LG (Smyrnaios 2017). The reason I find it so fascinating - and so useful as an approach to LG workshops - is because the study noted a consistency in these ratios, generally consistent changes in these ratios over time, and - in the case of two specific Late Geometric skyphoi - there was a clear break from the predominant pattern in favor of a different ratio which was used for only them!! (Smyrnaios 2017, p. 119). This (in my opinion) is WAY MORE useful for the reconstruction of a protohistoric workshop, because you can draw a clear, distinct contrast between how they were produced and the other studied examples. While this is not necessarily definitive in a chronological sense (maybe if you could pinpoint specific transitions in the ratio? but I digress), it’s still (again, in my opinion) far more useful than the predominant focus on the style of the painted decoration. There’s also another interesting study re: wheel-made vs. hand-made Protogeometric pottery (ca. 1000-900BCE) that proposes that differences in production methods were connected to who/where/how an individual potter was trained (Rückl & Jacobs, 2016). There’s so much more potential here re: ceramic production and its just being Ignored (well. Smyrnaios is pretty invested but overall this is a very niche area).

And workshop attributions are made even more complicated by the fact that Geometric pottery is so incredibly stylized.[2] So much of these attributions boil down to shit like the torso not being a perfect triangle (Coldstream 2008, p. 43), how fancy they want a meander to be (Bohen 2017, 229), the stars looking a bit sloppy (Coulié 2015, p. 41), the claim that the figures look too big so its gotta be a different workshop (Bohen 2017, also 229, i fucking hate Bohen 2017) - and it’s just… why? Why are we bulldozing past the abstract aspects of this style, the widespread usage of the same motifs and animals, and neglecting the flexibility of an individual painter’s style all to focus on ultimately unknowable technicalities in organization (which, as previously noted re: red-figure, could very well be due to the potter or commissioner, not the painter)? And people have been saying this shit since the 1940s (Chamoux 1945, p. 62-65) so it's not for lack of trying, but rather an insistence on academic stagnation.

Now, going back to Davison’s graph, you may notice something a bit strange about the chronology of Late Geometric workshops. The style itself - and the entire period - is defined by the Dipylon Workshop - and, more specifically, the painter referred to as the ‘Dipylon Master’ (who, judging by Coldstream 2008, p. 33-35 is maybe also thought of as a potter? but I'll get to that).

You may or may not know the Dipylon Workshop from such hits as:

Athens 804, aka ‘The Dipylon Amphora’[3], and my buddy Athens 192, aka the 'Dipylon Oinochoe.' There's lots of amphorai and oinochoai out there in the world so to me they are simply A804 and A192.

The Dipylon Workshop, for all intents and purposes, is seen as the progenitor of the entire Late Geometric style (Coldstream 2008, p. 29, 33, 35, 44) (Brann 1960, Preface, p. 12) (Bohen 1991, p. 62; Bohen 2017, p. 74-75) (Couliè 2013, p. 63-65). The chronology of every single proposed LG workshop relies on how they relate to the Dipylon Workshop. The ‘Dipylon Master’ is not only framed as the beginning of LG art (Davison 1961) (Coldstream 2008, p. 35, 36, 44) (Brann p. 12, 13) (Coulié 2013, p. 65), but also credited with the invention of several LG vase forms (Coldstream 2008, p. 34, 35). Bohen 2017 even calls him "the finest artisan of the Iron Age" (Bohen 2017, p. 72). The claim that this hypothetical lone painter invented entirely new vase forms, by the way, is a bit fucking absurd considering the aforementioned research focused on later Archaic Attic pottery production arguing that vase painters & potters tended to be specialized (Sapirstein 2013, p. 499-500). Yet I kept running into these claims again and again as I did my research.

But again, I’m a skeptical bastard. So I got curious. What was the evidence behind this? Who came up with this theory? Where did it come from?

Everyone (Brann 1960, p. 12) (Coldstream 2008, 3) (Davison 1961, p. 6, 23-24) (Couliè 2015, p. 39) kept pointing back to an article by G. Nottbohm as the first to really define the 'Dipylon Master,' describe his style, and attribute works to him. So I go look for Nottbohm’s article. and. oh my god stop the fucking train okay

It’s a JdI article (Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts[Journal of the German Archaeological Institute]) published in 1943 (under the fucking Third Reich, mid-WWII) -> 🚩🚩🚩🤨 I am now incredibly skeptical. I am scanning every sentence for even the slightest hint of nazi ideology. I am on red alert, like the bias equivalent of a tornado siren. I am re-evaluating Coldstream’s proud proclamation that he “Follows G. Nottbohm In Believing Such Distinctions Are Possible” (Coldstream 2008, p. 2 yes he fucking said this) and also his entire reputation. But I’m still withholding complete judgement here. Maybe she’s got decent evidence? Some sort of sound analysis? I don’t know man, this is apparently the whole fuckin reason we treat the ‘Dipylon Master’ as this pivotal figure, surely it has something.

Her evidence boils down to Athens 804, a shitload of Louvre fragments, and a giant oinochoe (bc it has a deer frieze. thats literally it) -> 🚩 - I am now fully judging. I thought there would be more evidence here?? Everyone is just taking Nottbohm’s word for it as if this isn’t the most patchwork shit ever. Chamoux even calls her out for cherry-picking later because the logic here is obviously just a vicious circle (Chamoux 1945, p. 63-64)! And Villard (1948, p. 1072) later kicked at least 1 of her other examples (the Baring Amphora) to the curb. There’s no mention of in-situ context anywhere?? Which is baffling, genuinely baffling, she doesn’t even mention it in passing. Which is astounding to me because the excavation of Athens 804 was actually somewhat fucking documented and was published in German (Brückner & Pernice, 1893), which Nottbohm could have almost certainly gotten access to as a PHD student at the University of Leipzig. Whatever faith I had in this fuckass theoretical guy is nonexistent, it is Gone

Her main comparison against what she attributes to the Dipylon Workshop is Athens 990 (The "Hirschfeld Krater,” whose provenance is [like the Dipylon Oinochoe] mildly fucked up on account of being from Palaiologos’ undocumented 1871 ‘excavation’) -> 🚩 again Nottbohm is establishing an entire workshop that she can compare to the ‘Dipylon Workshop,’ which she is still defining at the same time, which. Honestly she’s just shitting on A990 here. this paper invented the hirschfeld workshop too which just makes this worse since A990 is the defining vessel of that (cf Coldstream 2008 p 41). like can we not consider them both beautiful. must we always quantify. actually this is a nazi paper who the fuck am i kidding. guys, can we re-evaluate this or- oh no. oh god what's she sayin-

«Vielmehr handelt es sich um die schöpferische Tat eines großen Meisters, dem es nicht nur gelungen ist, den ornamentalen geometrischen Stil auf seine höchste Höhe und zur klassischen Vollendung zu führen - eben in der Amphora in Athen - sondern in dem auch die Kräfte dieses Stiles und seiner Zeit so stark wirksam waren, daß ihm die Darstellung der menschlichen Figur im Rahmen dieses Stiles möglich wurde.» 😟😬🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 the racist & imperialist ideology is in full fuckinv swing and this is only page 15 out of 31. we got it all. the ‘great man’ history where 1 guy singlehandedly spearheaded an entire phase of art (source? Personal Bias. she made it the fuck up i'm not even joking THIS is everyones source here). the conception of one guys art as the ‘peak’ of art and ‘classical accomplishment’. the idea that the ‘Dipylon Master’ was, somehow, just built different and better than everyone else ever. God. Are we really relying on this shit for all our comparative analyses of attic late geometric pottery. like its abundantly clear shes only in this for Athens 804. which… yeah, others at this point were also trying to connect this amphora to other vessels (cf Kahane 1940, p. 477) but Nottbohm is frankly both reaching to an absurd degree here, and is the one everyone's citing here (Coldstream doesn't even mention Kahane [Coldstream 2008, p. 2]! jfc guys). how has nobody reviewed this in the past 80 years.

«Im Verlaufe der gesamten europäischen Kunst ist ihm eigentlich — in der Größe seiner Bedeutung für die folgenden Zeiten — nur ein einziger an die Seite zu stellen, nämlich Giotto.» 🫩😑🫠 🚩🚩🚩 this line makes me feel like im high every time i see it. both for the first half emphasizing ‘in all of european art’ and then the bit comparing him to fucking giotto which sucker punches me in the face every time like are we really fucking serious here guys. Please. this is also immediately after the prior sentence for context, these two quotes are in 1 paragraph Together back-to-back. pages 15-16. Wow

«So ist der Meister der Athener Amphora die erste faßbare Persönlichkeit auf dem Gebiete der bildenden Kunst, die uns auf europäischem Boden entgegentritt! Seine Existenz und sein Schaffen fügen sich auf das schönste dem Bilde der zweiten Hälfte des achten Jahrhunderts ein, das W. Schadewaldt in seinem Aufsatz 'Homer und sein Jahrhundert' entworfen hat. Auch an dem Meister der Amphora erleben wir den Durchbruch der Persönlichkeit aus dem Dunkel der vorhergehenden Jahrhunderte. Sein Gestaltungswille durchbricht mit elementarer Kraft den ornamentalen Formenzwang und erobert sich die menschliche Figur als Darstellungsobjekt. Eines seiner Werke, die Amphora in Athen, in ihrer tektonischen Strenge und fast mathematischen Klarheit des Aufbaus wie der Einzelheiten, bedegutet für uns eine der großartigsten Manifestationen griechischen Geistes und griechischen Kunstwollens überhaupt.» 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩hey uh What the actual fuck (these are her concluding remarks. Btw)

This ^^ is the foundation for how scholarship compares Late Geometric Attic pottery workshops and positions their development. This fuckass article that positions the ‘Dipylon Master’[4] as the ‘first tangible artist on European soil’ who ‘breaks through the darkness of the preceding centuries’ and is ‘one of the greatest manifestations of the Greek spirit and Greek art of all time.’ like. can we all set aside all the decorative analysis this field's been obsessed with for 100+ years and unpack this? like, her framing of the ‘Dipylon Master,’ the fact that she even fucking calls him «Der Meister der Grossen Dipylon-Amphora», and the field all just adopted that shit too for some fucking reason, just. All of it. Chuck it in the bin for now guys. Please. or. no? we’ll just speculate abt which Middle Geometric workshop the ‘Dipylon Master’ came from (Bohen 2017, p. 160-162)? 🫠 🫠🫠🫠 please the racism & facism is right fucking there like am i HIGH?

And Nottbohm’s methodology has been critically reviewed only once - by Chamoux (1945), who was also afaik the first one to actually respond to the article - but… he doesn’t address the ideological bend to it that taints her methodology? He does make some very good points [5] that honestly just look like he got hit by Apollo's dodgeball, where he's like "Nottbohm's terminology will only encourage people to recreate an artist's personality which is ultimately unverifiable, surely we could be doing something better with our time" (Chamoux 1945, p. 68) (i'm paraphrasing & it's all in french). unfortunately he got proven right and this field refuses to do a u-turn. Chamoux why'd you have to focus on other shit besides Geometric pottery please you were the only one[6] on the right track,,,,

Anyways that’s my take on Late Geometric pottery chronology, development & workshops 👍 i hate the "dipylon master founded it all and was First" idea and i dont give a shit if killing it nukes our current chronological dating of the LG because i think the theory should Die

---

[1.] The reason I consider Geometric pottery as "objectively one of the hardest styles to define a definitive workshop using only figural decoration" is because Geometric art is - as I've noted above - kinda sparse with figural decoration? And when it does appear, it's very linear & abstract. So emphasizing the decoration here, and treating it like definitive proof of a shared producer for two vases, is just. Bizzare to me.

[2.] This is not a dig at the LG style here - I think it fucks severely. My main concern is that so many attempts to categorize LG vessels seem to ignore this element of abstraction altogether - or, worse, treat divergences from it as ‘a mistake’ (Moore 2007, p. 18), a ‘collapse’/disintegration (Coldstream 2008, p. 56), or ‘degenerative’ (Brann 1962, 15). This kind of thinking appears in tandem with the concept of Attic(cough Athenian cough) pottery being influenced by Corinth (Coldstream 2008, 56); take from that what you will.

[3.] rip to every other amphora from the hieraian gate cemetery ifg. only One Dipylon Amphora allowed

[4.] the quotation marks i have been using this whole time have been to convey just how much i fucking despise this name and all its shitass loaded baggage that it carries. this is quite an aggressive way to say this now that i think abt it but still im a Hater

[5.] Not including the bit where he tries to use LG battle scenes to date the Iliad. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole. I only care for his critique of Nottbohm ❤️

[6.] this is technically an overexaggeration, Siebert 2010 (p. 311) kinda took up the torch on this one (calling Nottbohm's methodology inadequate lmao) but. i fear its like a tiny corner of french scholarship and the anglophones need to catch the hell up ASAP.

========================================

Sources/Further Reading:

Nottbohm, G.G. (1943) “Der Meister Der Grossen Amphora Im Dipylon,” JdI 58, pp. 1–31.

Chamoux, F. (1945) “L’ÉCOLE DE LA GRANDE AMPHORE DU DIPYLON: Étude Sur La Céramique Géométrique à l’époque de l’ «Iliade»,” Revue Archéologique, 23, pp. 55–97.

Davison, J.M. (1961) Attic Geometric Workshops. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (Yale Classical Studies).

Coldstream, J.N. (2008) Greek geometric pottery: a survey of ten local styles and their chronology. Updated 2nd ed. Exeter: Bristol Phoenix press.

Coulié, A. (2013) La céramique grecque aux époques géométrique et orientalisante: XIe-VIe siècle av. J.-C. Paris: Picard (La céramique grecque, 1).

Smyrnaios, I. (2017) “Chaîne Opératoire: Moving from Theory to Praxis in the Study of Attic Geometric Pottery,” in L. Nevett (ed.) Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Ancient Greece: Manipulating Material Culture. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 104–123. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.8287082.

Kahane, P. (1940) “Die Entwicklungsphasen der Attisch-Geometrischen Keramik,” American Journal of Archaeology, 44(4), pp. 464–482. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/499959.

Villard, F. (1948) “UN NOUVEAU CRATÈRE DU DIPYLON AU MUSÉE DU LOUVRE.” Revue Archéologique 31/32, 1065–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41028776.

Brann, E.T.H. (1962) Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery: Mid 8th to Late 7th Century B.C. (The Athenian Agora). Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/3601969.

Siebert, G. (2010) “La réception de l’art géométrique grec dans l’historiographie (fin du XIXe-milieu du XXe siècle),” Ktèma : civilisations de l’Orient, de la Grèce et de Rome antiques, 35(1), pp. 299–312. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3406/ktema.2010.2505.

Štěpán Rückl and Loe Jacobs (2016) “‘With a Little Help from My Wheel’: Wheel-Coiled Pottery in Protogeometric Greece,” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 85(2), p. 297. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2972/hesperia.85.2.0297.

Iozzo, M. (2018) “Hidden Inscriptions on Athenian Vases,” American Journal of Archaeology, 122(3), pp. 397–410. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.122.3.0397.

Sapirstein, P. (2013) “Painters, Potters, and the Scale of the Attic Vase-Painting Industry,” American Journal of Archaeology, 117(4), pp. 493–510. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.117.4.0493.

Sapirstein, P. (2014) “Demographics and Productivity in the Ancient Athenian Pottery Industry,” in J.H. Oakley (ed.) Athenian Potters and Painters III: Athenian Potters and Painters III. Oxbow Books, pp. 175–186. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1djzf.

Moore, M.B. (2007) “ATHENS 803 AND THE EKPHORA,” Antike Kunst, 50, pp. 9–23.

Whitley, J. (1997) “Beazley as theorist,” Antiquity, 71(271), pp. 40–47. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00084520.

Bohen, B. (2017) Kratos & krater: reconstructing an Athenian protohistory. Oxford (GB): Archaeopress Archaeology (Archaeopress archaeology).

[thefibrarchaeologist]

#look I don't know shit about anything so I might be so very wrong but everything op says about how the field dates Greek vases sounds insane#especially since you can. apparently. figure out where the clay came from????? why aren't you DOING that

(with apologies to @doloneia for chiming in here)

See, the problem with that approach is that knowing where the clay comes from doesn´t give you a date of when the vase was made - at best it would give you a date of the formation of the claybed (hope that´s the right word in English). We can approximately tell when a vase was fired via a method called Thermoluminescence dating, but that is VERY approxomate and as far as I know mostly done to fnd modern fakes.

Normally - or at least unless you are a classical archaeologist with a certain training, grumble, grumble - we´d prefer to date by stratigraphy and correlations with historic cultures with calendar systems we can translate into ours. Radiocarbon, if need be, but that is also somewhat imprecise and can´t be done on clay directly (on accont of not being an organic material). Dendrodating - dating by yearrings in trees in wood closely associated with the pottery in question - would be really nice, too.

And for various reasons, almost none of that is an option. Like, we can manage stratigraphic sequences at least for some sites and regions, but thanks to the prolonged fallout from the Bronze Age collapse, we lack secure associations with historic cultures, and wood does really, really not survive well in the Greek climate. On top of that, chronology in the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt is also somewhat shaky during that time.

So we are in a situation, where we can fairly reliably date the last pottery from before the BA collapse (aka the Late Helladic B/C transition) and then nothing, really, until the Middle Geometric period at the earliest. Mostly, if I recall correctly, trading relationships with the Near East start up again at the end of this period around 750 BC and apply therefore mostly to (Attic) Late Geometric. The lengths of style phases before that are estimations.

All of that is before we go into the obsession of dating things down to a decade or two via style, an approach one of my professors called "an exercise in vanity" at one point. The problems with that op has thoroughly pointed out, but there are legitimate obstacles to doing it differently.

[doloneia]

tysm for this addition!! i didnt really discuss other methods for dating ancient ceramics so this is a really important addendum - pottery chronology is messy, but in many cases this is one of the few surviving pieces of evidence we have. in the case of funerary remains (which are basically our main sources for LG Attic pottery with figural decoration), you could also try to use radiocarbon dating, but this method can involve destroying the bones altogether which. we dont want to do that! those are someones bones!! so yeah stratigraphic sequencing (which is haphazard, and in the case of many LG vases hard to determine since they were either illegally excavated, trafficked, or excavated in like 1890) & stylistic analysis are often the only tools we have. the specific issue i discussed above mainly arises when we try to take stylistic dating, which is inherently relative, and treat it almost like it was absolute.

[sandersstudies]

Every time you go in a public place and something ISN’T disgusting it’s because somebody cleaned it. Every time you feel comfortable using a public bathroom or sitting at a restaurant table or setting something on a gas station counter or playing on a playground it’s because somebody cleaned it.

Thank you to everyone who cleans the world, especially those who are underpaid and under appreciated.

[my-life-is-a-sidequest]

I worked in a supermarket for 7 years and I don't think I can understate just how much cleaning you had to do for it to look clean (it very often where not in the places you aren't supposed to see)

[sandersstudies]

True for food service, retail establishments, gyms, outdoor areas, schools, religious buildings, office buildings, etc. People usually only notice when a space is NOT clean, meanwhile every time a space is clean it’s only because of the diligent work of janitors, maintenance staff, custodians, parks workers, or volunteers.

[millenniallust4death]

I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

[millenniallust4death]

Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️

[psycorax]

Reblog to have your dashboard be visited by the spirit of joy that death can end but not erase.

[leavescrown]

Love that this is well beyond 7000 people now and still going

[millenniallust4death]

@leavescrown Exactly! It’s a beautiful gift. Martin and Bosco out there travelling around the Tumblr community, continually making new friends.

[millenniallust4death]

@sseanettles

#hello again martin and bosco!! sending you boys round for another go :)

Reading your tag made me laugh out loud. It’s like two old friends unexpectedly stopped by your porch for a quick visit. XD

[petermorwood]

I’ll always reblog Martin and Bosco when they splash across my dash, because of Reasons.

What’s loved, lives.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

one of the funniest conversations I ever had with my ex was when they were still getting used to Celsius and asked me "what's 20 degrees?" and instead of converting it, I said "it's the highest your dad will ever let you set the thermostat and when you say you're cold he tells you to put on another sweater, we're not made of money" and they went "oh, 68"

the fact that this reference was that fucking precise was something they went on to tell people about for years.