boy you're so tragic

inspiration side blog to swordbyte, including art, writing, etc.

[image-plus-official]

Igor Shcherbakov, The Five Graces, 2024 [1000x1347]

[vieneinpace]

William Etty's Male Nude, with Arms Up-Stretched (1828) revamped by Astra Zero

[kosmogrl]

[pinkbeetroot]

[ryebreadgf]

something something the poetry of science etc

[ryebreadgf]

woah

[dramaticwriter]

yeah

[echo-temporis]

Evening Sun by Jane Kenyon

[redstonedust]

pet peeve is when you look up fashion references from a specific era and you keep getting modern day '[era]-inspired' fashion like NO i want authenticity damn it. i can see your 2020 photo quality and your 2020 hair and your 2020 makeup. youre not fooling me.

[bincliff]

hello i'm a historical fashion researcher and i have a lot of experience looking up things! this is a very widely experienced irritation and you're definitely not alone in this, but i am here to share everything i know!

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

anyway, i hope this has been a good place to start for anyone interested! there are probably some i've missed because there are so many museums across the world and i don't know about all of them or can't remember them. but these are the ones i've used the most! (my specialisation/jobs i've had to research for have only really been in western fashion, so my resources reflect that)

[haemey]

Wikipedia has a list of fashion museums. Unfortunately, the page itself is only available in German, but the introductory paragraph is very short and after that, it's organised by country, and then it's a simple list. If you click on a museum's article, the website is usually linked in the overview table.

[havingapoemwithyou]

Dinosaur by Richard Siken

[heavensickness]

obsessed. also makes sense when you remember than butterflies drink blood

[dearorpheus]

[pngzoid]

The Kissing Knife, The Thorn Knife, The Leather Knife, The Black Knife - Chloe Arrouy

[oracleoutlook]

Teaching Shakespearean Sonnets to Brain Rot 15-Year-Olds

There's hope.

My co-teacher came up with an idea. She said to me: “I’m going to project a Shakespearean sonnet on the board that you have never seen before. They are going to watch you struggle through it, and they are going to see what it takes to authentically annotate something to attempt to understand it”. This was a good idea because it targeted a pitfall of my teaching: that I already know the answer— a predetermined answer I want my students to come to. Therefore, when I ask the class a question, they are aware that there is an answer in my head I want them to arrive at. This method can stifle students’ voice. So, I stood at the front of the classroom that day, feeling exposed, sight-reading Shakespearean sonnets. With most of the sonnets, I, with the help of the class, could only get to about 75% understanding and accuracy at best. But my confusion — my apparent struggle and frustration in understanding each new sonnet— was key for my students. They felt free to posit their interpretations and even to disagree with me. In each session, a student shared a thought or possibility that not only I had failed to see but was also ultimately accurate. One student couldn’t wipe the smile off her face when she figured out a metaphor that stumped both me and my co-teacher. “This was fun”, she and her classmate said to each other when the bell rang.

[proustiansleep]

"One thing I’ve learned from reading work on the Anthropocene and its variations is that it is a comforting fantasy to think that the world is ending. The fantasy of an end gives you finitude and formal satisfaction, whereas the fact of the matter is that we are living in the ending and don’t know where we are in that ending."

—Lauren Berlant, in interview

[boykeats]

On November 5, 1917, 100 years ago today, Wilfred Owen wrote a gorgeous love letter to fellow gay World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon. It continues to be one of my favorite love letters of all time.

[havingapoemwithyou]

Middle age by Jason Shinder

[weltenwellen]

E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems, 1904-1962

[admitier]

[ID: A quote by e.e. cummings.

It reads,“ –what does it all come down to? love? Love”. End ID.]

[misfitwashere]

I wrote a eulogy

"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."

He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.

I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.

Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.

Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.

I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."

Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.

So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.

Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."

"Have you joined a book club?"

"Just come."

Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.

"Mick. What's this?"

"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."

"Have you gone mad?"

"Probably. Shut up and listen."

I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.

I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.

I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.

He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.

When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,

"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."

That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."

But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.

And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."

Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?

Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.

They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.

Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”

.

[kestalsblog]

Not every story is about seeing yourself in it. Sometimes it’s about learning to see other people too.

[doesnotloveyou]

@tearyeyedcat this was beautifully written, thank you for adding it!

[charlesoberonn]

Another excuse for me to post Head Writer of ATLA Aaron Ehasz’s great characters board:

[mxrderscenes]

writing is so funny because i could write nonstop for 9hrs and then hit a block where im like "how do i transition between this moment and the next?" and then i just dont touch it for 6 months

[galadrieljones]

Serious advice tho if this happens, it's likely because you already wrote past the end of the scene and wandered too far from the more logical transition point, and you should go back to the last time the writing felt "unforced" and cut everything after.

You can also just skip the transition. Really good writing can span years in a single sentence, like you can just authoritatively state fact and your reader will go with it.

[xalphafox]

This is GOLD! You just saved me like thousands of therapy costs lmao

[jonjos-library]

I can't tell you how often I got stuck with this, put it away, came back to it, and realised I could literally just start the next scene and either didn't need a join or only needed a single sentence.