“It’s digestible” is pertinent!! Okay, for those of you who haven’t researched Crisco for writing fic about gay sex in the mid-late 60s:
The first-edition of The Joy of Gay Sex, published in 1977, declared, “Vegetable shortening may be the best lubricant, since it is not only greasy but also digestible”[4] Such a statement perhaps gives new meaning to the companies boastful declarations that “Its digestible” and “Crisco has been making life in the kitchen more delicious for years.” Similarly, in the 1978 sex manual The Advocate Guide to Gay Health, Crisco even earned an entry in the book’s index. Discussions of the shortening’s use as an anal lubricant indicate its popularity, with statements such as: “The lubricant, typically the cultic Crisco, must be copious.”[5] In fact, Crisco was so synonomus with gay sex that discos and bars around the world took on the name, such as Crisco Disco in New York City, which was one of the premiere clubs during the 1970s and early 1980s. Other clubs or bathhouses, such as Club Z in Seattle, even featured murals with Crisco. Thus, Crisco was conversely also one of many things that led to the formation of gay identities during the 20th century.
from this essay: http://www.columbia.edu/~sf2220/TT2007/web-content/Pages/drew2.html
Love this post for so many reasons but most especially because this is from all the way back in 2012 and and yet not a single blog in this thread is deactivated
Love the gay history, but i just wanna correct that the “it’s digestible” in the gay stuff was a reference to crisco’s tagline it had been using since 1911, the actual meaning of its digestible is because it’s main competition came from “enhanced” lards which were rendered pig fat mixed with non food thickeners that literally did not digest and caused people to basically just shit out pig cream, since crisco was veggie based the body digested it along with the food
This post is the opposite of net zero information. Not only did I learn several new facts about gay history but also we rounded our way back to the original question of the tag line and the mini obelisks.
What if I'm Tybalt, and my sense of identity is so fiercely tied to this feud between my family and the Montagues that I can't even imagine myself outside of it, because someone has to take these matters seriously, and if that leaves little room for thoughts of settling down, then so be it, and if I find myself thinking of Mercutio more often than is reasonable, it's only because I cannot understand how a man can so easily disregard all standards of honor and dignity, how he can spend his days idling on the beach with the Montagues and then come laughing into our halls as if nothing matters, dressed in a way clearly meant to provoke, lips painted red, performing for every eye in the room, surrounding himself with men and making them crawl at his feet, his skirt riding up his thighs as he dances without a shred of shame, and if I cannot look away, it is only because I know his deception goes beyond drag, because no one in Verona can claim neutrality, you're either with us or with the Montagues, and Mercutio is clearly loyal to Romeo, who had the audacity to come where he was not welcome and try to claim my cousin, and everything that happened is his fault, because he has a way of making people abandon reason, and if Mercutio died at my hands, then it was only because Romeo put him there, because Romeo always gets what he wants, and I never wanted any of this, I never wanted any of this.
TIL in 1896 a temporary, one-day city was named in Texas called Crush, where two locomotives were to be smashed head-on for purposes of spectacle. It was, for a few hours, the 2nd largest city in TX with 40k attendees. The collision caused engine boilers to explode, resulting in death and injuries.
Meiji period fashion was some of the best in the world, speaking purely from an aesthetic standpoint you can really see the collision of European and Japanese standards of beauty and how their broad agreement even in particulars (the similarity between Japanese and Gibson girl bouffants, the obi vs the corset, the obi knot vs the bustle, the mutual covetousness for exotic textiles, the feverish swapping of both art styles and subjects) combined and produced some of the most interesting cultural exchange we have this level of documentation for. Europeans were wearing kimono or adapting them into tea gowns, japanese were pairing lacy Edwardian blouses with skirt hakama and little button up boots. haori jackets with bowler hats and European style lapels. if steampunk was any good as an aesthetic it would steal wholesale from the copious records we have in both graphic arts and photography of how people were dressing in this milieu.
«The botany professor,» from Kkokei Shimbun, October 20, 1908.
she's wearing a kimono blouse or haori, edwardian skirt or hakama, gibson girl bouffant, a lacy high-collar blouse with cravat and brooch, and a pocket watch with chain
1910-1930 (Taishō era, right after Meiji, which I should have included in my OP) men's haori with western lapels
I have a love for both kimonos and bustle dresses, so I love seeing how the two fashions influenced each other over this period. And thanks to Pinterest, I have pictures!
Victorian tea gown that clearly started as a kimono. It still has the long furisode sleeves, but now they’re gathered at the shoulder and turned around so that the long open side is facing the front instead of the back. Similarly the back is taken in with curved seams to fit the torso and pleated below that for the skirt.
Woodblock of a woman in a a bustle dress made with colorful patterned fabrics and examples of how a woman could style her hair with it.
More prints to showcase hairstyles, two women wearing western wear and two women wearing kimonos.
This next one’s modern, but it involves hoopskirts so I’ll add it in because it makes me so happy. There’s been different styles of wedding fashion that take kimonos and give them a more modern look. Often this involves taking a kimono and then cutting and resewing it into a new dress. Very pretty, but it can’t ever be worn like a traditional kimono again. But now there’s another trend where the bride wears a hoopskirt with a white skirt, then you take the kimono and drape it on. The back of the kimono covers the front of the dress, the long sleeves fall across the sides or the back, and you still wear an obi with it. The result is pretty and the kimono itself doesn’t have to be altered at all.
And because you mentioned steampunk, I have to add in these two:
Personally I’m a big fan of Taisho Meisen kimono, which are what happen when the Japanese textile industry abruptly gets access to aniline dyes, new spinning and weaving technology, and the concept of Art Deco:
whenever i look into a historical monarch who doesn’t get talked about much and is just kind of a blank spot in my understanding of the historical narrative, 95% of the time what i find is pure white hot blistering capability. a pencil pusher for the ages. a 39 year reign with no more than three hours of sleep a night. there aren’t any good stories from his reign because he systematically caught and stopped all catastrophic good stories before they could start. you shrimply must respect it
the fact that we only have “herculean task” and “sisyphean task” feels so limiting. so here’s a few more tasks for your repertoire
icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down
cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)
feel free to chime in i ran out of ideas much faster than i anticipated
Promethean task: opposite of a Cassandraean task. You have the right information, and SOMEONE has to share it. But it's all in the delivery and if you're the person to identify the problem you WILL be hated forever.
Oedipal Task: (1) Attempting to avoid an unspeakably awful outcome and in doing so creating the circumstances that will bring it about.
(2) Trying to solve an problem and discovering that you are in fact the problem you are trying to solve.
damoclean task: the thing you've been putting off long enough that it becomes a constantly hanging doom over your head
pyrrhic task: you can get it done but it's going to cost you
medean task: you can get it done and you don't care what it costs you
dionysian task: task that might not be -better- if you do it drunk, but -will- definitely be more fun
hegelochic task: it was a simple job, but your name will be recorded in the annals of history for how impressively you fucked it up
task of theseus: a project for which the parameters have changed so many times that you're not sure it IS still the same task
gordian task: ok technically there Is a Right Way to do this but it's going to be fiddly and awful and take forever and what if. what if you just said fuck it. and started slicing
not only are most people completely unaware of the devastation of indigenous languages in the americas, most people are completely unaware of the devastation of indigenous languages in europe. never mind occitan, they don't know about basque! it's wild! bleak! existentially horrifying!!!
the last few centuries of french history involved, amongst other things, a concerted effort to establish "french" as a legitimate country and cultural identity, and crucially as a language, which sounds like an absurd statement if you know nothing about the languages of france. french is a language, yes; it exists and existed in the late eighteenth century. but it was limited primarily to the north of france and was certainly not spoken or even understood across the country. other languages within france were banned and french was enforced following the french revolution and even to this day other languages indigenous to france have very little legal protection and are not recognised as official languages.
that's just one country in europe. one. and many people straight up have no idea about any of this!
did you know france has celtic languages? breton is the only celtic language spoken outside of the british isles. did you know france has germanic languages? alsatian, for example, is spoken in the east of france, unsurprisingly in alsace. it's not even the only french germanic language. did you know france has a number of languages and dialects known as langues d'oïl closely related to french? norman and picard, for example, are spoken in the north of france. did you know that france has gallo-romance languages? franco-provençal (which has a number of dialects) is spoken in the east of france, as well as parts of switzerland and italy. did you know that france has a language most closely related to catalan, the langues d'oc? occitan is spoken in the south of france and has a rich literary history. did you know france is home to basque, or rather euskara, a language isolate which predates indo-european languages? romani dialects! corsican! so much more than just french! there are even extinct jewish dialects of occitan! extinct langues d'oïl like angevin! so much linguistic diversity and all anyone talks about is french.
STOP the "grimdark muddy and grey medievalism film about a white dude doing some bullshit" industrial complex. WHERE is the Questing Beast WHERE are the cool women WHERE are the people of color WHERE is the fun and whimsy and fantastical
29th June 2026.
This year's Strawberry Moon was extremely low in the sky, which made it look very large and bright. (A perfect photographic opportunity!)
i never understood what made steampunk punk. romanticizing georgian era england and industrial revolutions are some of the least punk things ever. youre putting gears on a top hat
i genuinely believe that you can directly blame steampunk directly cribbing from cyberpunk for the fact that solarpunk is an aesthetic and not an ideology. the roots of considering a civilization for its trappings and appearance rather than what it does goes back to that. cyberpunk was punk* because of the stories it told** not because of its aesthetics***
*extremely debatable depending on which punk you ask.
**objectively debatable depending on the game and system
***cyberpunk as a modern franchise not a genre is absolutely a prioritization of aesthetics over punk ideology. you cannot be punk if youre a fuckin franchise of a corporation idk i feel like this should be obvious
Hi hello, Steampunk here: the 19th century was punk as fuck actually, and the active steampunk scene in 2005-2010 was very much aware of and into it. You're citing the Spirit Halloween version.
Way back in November 2013 I made a post about the aestheticization of the subculture that STILL stands:
Steampunk: VICTORIAN LONDON VICTORIAN LONDON TOP HATS CORSETS ARISTOCRACY GLORIOUS BRITISH EMPIRE AIRSHIP PIRATES RAY GUNS APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!
Me: …Industrialization, colonialism, imperialism, exploitation of the working class and oppression of POC culminating in violent socialist revolution because fuck yeah the working class and don’t you dare forget it?
Steampunk: ::crickets::
[Steampunk]: THE GREAT GAME COGS GEARS VAMPIRES BUSTLES EXOSKELETON GOGGLES ANGLOPHILIA SUPER CREEPY OBSESSION WITH ORIENTALISM INCLUDING CLOCKWORK GEISHAS MANOR HOUSES TEA!
Me: ::sigh::
^ you are doing exactly this.
The punk ethos is primarily made up of beliefs such as non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism, anti-corporatism, a do-it-yourself ethic, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate greed, direct action, and not "selling out". That is what 'punk' means, in terms of subculture.
When steampunk arose as a subculture, out of Goth mind you, it was entirely a DIY and small business scene.
What steampunk music, fiction, craft groups, or meetups have you been to? Steampunk is, like cyberpunk, about the stories it told/is telling. Often stories of revolution (often violent), the overthrowing of governments and toppling of monarchies, civil rights movements (emancipation from chattel slavery! Indian wars! Rising against colonial powers!), the dawn of first wave feminism and women's suffrage, the original source of communist and socialist thought, workers' rights movements, the fucking enlightenment...
What is more punk than The Communist Manifesto(1848)
What is more punk than The Battle of Greasy Grass(1876)
Who's a more OG Punk than John Brown?
Steampunk literally music and fiction set in and about the Age of Revolution.
Judging Steampunk as a subculture by the part that was heavily commercialized is like judging all of Goth and a subculture by Hot Topic (which is not punk rock).
Go read China Mieville's Bas Lag cycle.
Go read Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve
Go read Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Go read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (crossover with dieselpunk and biopunk!)
Go read Steeplejack by AJ Hartley
Go listen to some The Cog is Dead and some Abney Park and some Rasputina and some Steam Powered Giraffe and, hey, let me link Painless Parker one more time. You will note that that recording is from Occupy Wallstreet.
Also keep in mind that labor/union songs are wildly popular steampunk standards; you will hear Solidarity Forever and other songs from The Little Red Songbook at steampunk song circles. You will hear marching band and orchestral covers of The Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen and The Clash's London Calling. You'll hear songs from Chumbawumba's album English Rebel Songs 1381-1984.
I'm gonna linkspam a bunch of my older writings on this:
#50 Overcoming the Noble Savage & the Sexy Squaw: Native Steampunk–Guest Blog by Monique Poirier
#98 Musing about Native Steampunk-Guest blog by Monique Poirier
Some of you already know Monique Poirier, either from her Beyond Victoriana essay , or from Tumblr , or you know her from cons and stuff. S
Other steampunks of my followers, please reblog with more recommendations about Steampunk stuff that's actually PUNK.
@sapphoandvanzetti , would love to hear you chime in.
Well shit yknow what I retract my statements because I had no idea about any of this! And the fact that the Spirit Halloween version was the only one I'd heard about is actually insulting with how cool a lot of this stuff sounds! Thank you for spending the time to drop all this, it's really appreciated!
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