Day seven (and final day) of Rogue and Gambit week. Today is a free day and I immediately knew I had to do their vows (X-Men Gold 30). Their wedding will forever be one of the most iconic Romy moments.
Happy 8th anniversary Rogue and Gambit!
Since today is the last day of Rogue Gambit week I just want to say an thanks for all the support and love this week! This marks about a year since I started posting my Romy art regularly and the community has been amazing all around. So thankful for all my Romy friends, you guys mean a lot to me!
This print (as well as all the others from this week) are avalible in my Kofi shop! If you are outside the US you will need to reach out to me directly.
Extra special thanks to @roguegambitweek for organizing this year after year. I truly enjoy it (and am happy to assist with icons/banners again in the future!)
â...A lone woman could, if she spun in almost every spare minute of her day, on her own keep a small family clothed in minimum comfort (and we know they did that). Adding a second spinner â even if they were less efficient (like a young girl just learning the craft or an older woman who has lost some dexterity in her hands) could push the household further into the âcomfortâ margin, and we have to imagine that most of that added textile production would be consumed by the family (because people like having nice clothes!).
At the same time, that rate of production is high enough that a household which found itself bereft of (male) farmers (for instance due to a draft or military mortality) might well be able to patch the temporary hole in the family finances by dropping its textile consumption down to that minimum and selling or trading away the excess, for which there seems to have always been demand. ...Consequently, the line between women spinning for their own household and women spinning for the market often must have been merely a function of the financial situation of the family and the balance of clothing requirements to spinners in the household unit (much the same way agricultural surplus functioned).
Moreover, spinning absolutely dominates production time (again, around 85% of all of the labor-time, a ratio that the spinning wheel and the horizontal loom together donât really change). This is actually quite handy, in a way, as weâll see, because spinning (at least with a distaff) could be a mobile activity; a spinner could carry their spindle and distaff with them and set up almost anywhere, making use of small scraps of time here or there.
On the flip side, the labor demands here are high enough prior to the advent of better spinning and weaving technology in the Late Middle Ages (read: the spinning wheel, which is the truly revolutionary labor-saving device here) that most women would be spinning functionally all of the time, a constant background activity begun and carried out whenever they werenât required to be actively moving around in order to fulfill a very real subsistence need for clothing in climates that humans are not particularly well adapted to naturally. The work of the spinner was every bit as important for maintaining the household as the work of the farmer and frankly students of history ought to see the two jobs as necessary and equal mirrors of each other.
At the same time, just as all farmers were not free, so all spinners were not free. It is abundantly clear that among the many tasks assigned to enslaved women within ancient households. Xenophon lists training the enslaved women of the household in wool-working as one of the duties of a good wife (Xen. Oik. 7.41). ...Columella also emphasizes that the vilica ought to be continually rotating between the spinners, weavers, cooks, cowsheds, pens and sickrooms, making use of the mobility that the distaff offered while her enslaved husband was out in the fields supervising the agricultural labor (of course, as with the bit of Xenophon above, the same sort of behavior would have been expected of the free wife as mistress of her own household).
...Consequently spinning and weaving were tasks that might be shared between both relatively elite women and far poorer and even enslaved women, though we should be sure not to take this too far. Doubtless it was a rather more pleasant experience to be the wealthy woman supervising enslaved or hired hands working wool in a large household than it was to be one of those enslaved women, or the wife of a very poor farmer desperately spinning to keep the farm afloat and the family fed. The poor woman spinner â who spins because she lacks a male wage-earner to support her â is a fixture of late medieval and early modern European society and (as J.S. Leeâs wage data makes clear; spinners were not paid well) must have also had quite a rough time of things.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of household textile production in the shaping of pre-modern gender roles. It infiltrates our language even today; a matrilineal line in a family is sometimes called a âdistaff line,â the female half of a male-female gendered pair is sometimes the âdistaff counterpartâ for the same reason. Women who do not marry are sometimes still called âspinstersâ on the assumption that an unmarried woman would have to support herself by spinning and selling yarn (Iâm not endorsing these usages, merely noting they exist).
E.W. Barber (Womenâs Work, 29-41) suggests that this division of labor, which holds across a wide variety of societies was a product of the demands of the one necessarily gendered task in pre-modern societies: child-rearing. Barber notes that tasks compatible with the demands of keeping track of small children are those which do not require total attention (at least when full proficiency is reached; spinning is not exactly an easy task, but a skilled spinner can very easily spin while watching someone else and talking to a third person), can easily be interrupted, is not dangerous, can be easily moved, but do not require travel far from home; as Barber is quick to note, producing textiles (and spinning in particular) fill all of these requirements perfectly and that âthe only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily foodâ which of course was also a female-gendered activity in most ancient societies. Barber thus essentially argues that it was the close coincidence of the demands of textile-production and child-rearing which led to the dominant paradigm where this work was âwomenâs workâ as per her title.
(There is some irony that while the men of patriarchal societies of antiquity â which is to say effectively all of the societies of antiquity â tended to see the gendered division of labor as a consequence of male superiority, it is in fact male incapability, particularly the male inability to nurse an infant, which structured the gendered division of labor in pre-modern societies, until the steady march of technology rendered the division itself obsolete. Also, and Barber points this out, citing Judith Brown, we should see this is a question about ability rather than reliance, just as some men did spin, weave and sew (again, often in a commercial capacity), so too did some women farm, gather or hunt. It is only the very rare and quite stupid person who will starve or freeze merely to adhere to gender roles and even then gender roles were often much more plastic in practice than stereotypes make them seem.)
Spinning became a central motif in many societies for ideal womanhood. Of course one foot of the fundament of Greek literature stands on the Odyssey, where Penelopeâs defining act of arete is the clever weaving and unweaving of a burial shroud to deceive the suitors, but examples do not stop there. Lucretia, one of the key figures in the Roman legends concerning the foundation of the Republic, is marked out as outstanding among women because, when a group of aristocrats sneak home to try to settle a bet over who has the best wife, she is patiently spinning late into the night (with the enslaved women of her house working around her; often they get translated as âmaidsâ in a bit of bowdlerization. Any time you see âmaidsâ in the translation of a Greek or Roman text referring to household workers, it is usually quite safe to assume they are enslaved women) while the other women are out drinking (Liv. 1.57). This display of virtue causes the prince Sextus Tarquinius to form designs on Lucretia (which, being virtuous, she refuses), setting in motion the chain of crime and vengeance which will overthrow Romeâs monarchy. The purpose of Lucretiaâs wool-working in the story is to establish her supreme virtue as the perfect aristocratic wife.
...For myself, I find that students can fairly readily understand the centrality of farming in everyday life in the pre-modern world, but are slower to grasp spinning and weaving (often tacitly assuming that women were effectively idle, or generically âhomemakingâ in ways that precluded production). And students cannot be faulted for this â they generally arenât confronted with this reality in classes or in popular culture. ...Even more than farming or blacksmithing, this is an economic and household activity that is rendered invisible in the popular imagination of the past, even as (as you can see from the artwork in this post) it was a dominant visual motif for representing the work of women for centuries.â
- Bret Devereaux, âClothing, How Did They Make It? Part III: Spin Me Right RoundâŠâ
If I may tag onto this: it's really astonishing how much spinning you can get done when you do it in tiny increments. When I'm at a medieval market or music festival (back when that was... a thing), I carry my spindle everywhere and just spin a tiny little bit, constantly. Waiting in line for food. Sitting somewhere waiting for the next band to play, in the early morning when nobody's up yet. I can get through 100 gr of fibre in a day like this without consciously dedicating any extended time periods to it (and I'm not the best with a drop spindle). I would imagine that is roughly the way it worked in pre-modern cultures, too, which means that yes, it was possible to supply the fabric for an entire household this way, if the fabric was also taken care of properly (mended, re-used, recycled ...) and the spinner didn't suffer from illness or had any disabilities (!). It wouldn't be easy, but it also wouldn't be terrifying back-breaking labour.
I would like to amend the above: spinning all day every day in order to keep your family afloat must absolutely have been terrifying back-breaking labour eventually. Or wrist-breaking.
In unrelated news, last year I got a repetitive strain injury from too much spinning, and had never been so grateful in my life that I can simply stop spinning and suffer no financial hardship from it.
how it feels waking up and immediately remembering fidesz lost so hard that by the time like 50% of the votes were counted orbĂĄn had to give a wimpy little losing speech and shuffle off stage with his whole crew in shame
Hi! It's me, your resident murder mystery historian/freak. You might remember me from this reference guide I wrote about Knives Out and Glass Onion. And now I'm back!
Wake Up Dead Man, the third Benoit Blanc mystery film, is doing something different with source material than the previous two, less quoting and more synthesis, so I'm going to give you a little overview of how the film was pulling from golden age detective fiction and priest media, as well as a list of things to check out if you want more of the good stuff, some of which Rian Johnson was probably (or definitely) pulling from. I'm separating this into two sections: the mystery bit and the priest bit.
The Mystery Bit (Impossible Crimes)
There are crimes which are impossible because they occur in a locked room, and crimes which are impossible because they occur in front of spectators with no clear cause--Wake Up Dead Man is the latter. Locked room mysteries have existed as long as the genre of detective fiction--Poe's Murder in the Rue Mogue is one, and it's widely considered to be the first detective story. That isn't the film's only tie to golden age detective fiction, however (the golden age is generally considered to be the interwar period--1920s & 30s--but some stretch it to 1950). It follows a fairly typical whodunnit structure; the suspects are introduced, the protagonist (who is not the detective) among them, the crime occurs, and subsequently the detective arrives, sometimes quite late in the game. Rian Johnson has also taken the stereotypical English village and plopped it down in upstate New York (sort of). Can't get much more classic whodunnit than that.
Johnson name checks probably the most famous impossible mystery, The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr (published as The Three Coffins in the US). Carr is interesting, because he was an American who exclusively set his books in Europe. His most famous detective was Dr. Gideon Fell, the detective in The Hollow Man, and he delivers the lecture that Benoit quotes from (sort of lol) in the film. I pulled that chapter out of a copy of the book if anyone is interested in reading it. I read a bunch of Carrs after Johnson mentioned him in an interview about WUDM, but Carr wrote 70 detective novels, 1 novella, and 9 short story collections across 4 names (his own and 3 pseudonyms) so this is FAR from comprehensive.
The Hollow Man / The Three Coffins (1935) Features both a locked room murder AND one witnessed by several people.
The Black Spectacles / The Problem of the Green Capsule (US title)(1939) This is emphatically about murders witnessed by spectators, as the person who dies is literally doing a demonstration of a false murder (his own) and having it filmed in order to prove to his audience that their perceptions are flawed. But of course he dies for real.
The Crooked Hinge (1937) Another murder in plain view, this time of a man in a garden surrounded by but obscured from others in the garden and but also in partial view from the house. This one features an 18th century automaton (for fans of Father Jud's knife-throwing robot), and has one of the wackiest conclusions I've ever read.
Christianna Brand was another prolific golden age detective writer who employed impossible crimes to good effect. Death of a Jezebel (1948) shares some DNA with WUDM: a person nobody likes is murdered literally on a stage and all of the suspects are in view of the audience the entire time. (For more on this genre, I recommend the Shedunnit Podcast's Locked Room episode.)
The Priest Bit
Priest detectives (the Catholic kind) aren't really a thing, with one major exception: Father Brown, who was introduced by G.K. Chesterton in 1910. His DNA is present twice over, as Carr was a big fan of Chesterton's, and the character of Gideon Fell is based on Chesterton in personality and appearance. Father Brown is a Catholic priest who solves murders using his insights into human nature. The stories predate the golden age and Father Brown was in conversation with Sherlock Holmes--another proto-golden age detective--who instead relied on science and logic.
In terms of what shows up in golden age fiction, we have the vicar. Similar in plumage to a Catholic priest, vicars tend to have moral standing in the village if not outright social or political power. They turn up more often than Catholics due to the whole state religion thing. They are victims or suspects, but in the golden age did not tend to be detectives (I'm sure there are scattered exceptions--I can only think of Reverand Dodd in John Bude's The Cornish Coast Murder (1935)). Modern mysteries have rectified this a little, with titles such as James Runcie's Grantchester Mysteries (begun in 2012) and more recently the Canon Clement Mysteries by Richard Coles (himself a Church of England priest). Also priest-adjacent we have The Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters (1977-1994) and Umberto Eco's In the Name of the Rose (1980). (Shedunnit also has an episode on vicars/priests in mysteries.)
I am fundamentally uninterested in priest stories, so for priest media writ large, I called on my Priest Correspondent @wellntruly:
The Exorcist (1973): Boxer priest, "much more of a hang-out movie with a stressed priest than you might expect"
M*A*S*H (tv series, 1972-1983): Boxer priest, "very comic (and in the earlier seasons quite bitingly anti-Republican), but also very socially sincere and sweet"
On the Waterfront (1954): "Marlon Brando is the fighter this time, but the priest character is a major part of the story and like, if youâll forgive the pun, hell-bent on fighting injustice, and a real community organizer."
The Exorcist (tv series, 2016-2018): "one of our premiere priests text, also discusses the mixed value of the Church capital C a lot, and one of the priests in particular has a rough past + intent gentleness vibe that I definitely thought about watching Father Jud"
First Reformed (2017): "my running theory is that First Reformed is actually part of the reason that Wake Up Dead Man is set in upstate New York, as Father Jud is said to be from a town in Albany County, the same area that Ethan Hawkeâs pastor works in in that movie. And once again, this is a movie about a man of the cloth unearthing injustice and getting very intent on fighting it with everything heâs got"
"I would also like to recommend the Polish film Corpus Christi (2019), which is about a devout kid who gets out of juvenile prison, and ends up semi-accidentally posing as the new priest in the little town heâs sent to for workâand the thing is, heâs really good at it. But also, will this lie and the darkness in his past come for him? Etc. etc., good stuff."
Adaptations
There are few--zero??--film adaptations of Carr or Brand's work. Which is bad and should be rectified. Brother Cadfael was on tv in the 90s, played by gay icon Derek Jacobi. But for priests and vicars (are they different? we just don't know), you're in luck. Father Brown's on the BBC, Canon Clement is on Acorn, and Grantchester is up to its 3rd detective vicar now. Of these, I highly recommend Murder Before Evensong: set in the 1980s, progressive and proactive priest (vicar)(canon??), VERY good visuals and vibes.
That's all I got! Huge thanks to Tarra for caring about priests so I don't have to. If you read any of these mysteries (or have read others that you see in Wake Up Dead Man) please let me know.
Ahaha honored to be your Priest Correspondent! Reporting live from these trenches.
Still tapping my wrist by the way waiting for someone to make me a gifset of all my 1970s boxer priests + Neue '70s (because heâs a Rian Johnson product) Father JudâŠ..tap tap!
sick of hearing about "healing crystals" that "cleanse your mind and body of negative energy" i want to know which rocks can hurt you and fuck up your vibe so bad
everyone suggesting uranium isn't wrong but anyone who said "literally any rock if you're willing to resort to violence" are the only people who can get on my level. you're hired.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary:
A sequel to Yarning For You, or the story of Siegfried digging himself a hole while an amused Audrey is watching closely. Stolen kisses, stolen mistletoes. Enjoy.
like look at Smaug, look at his ears, DONâT YOU JUST WANT TO SCRATCH BEHIND HIS EARS AND TELL HIM HEâS A GOOD BOY
and look at this guy, I guess heâs supposed to be ferocious but it looks more like âwhoa man chill out, Iâm just saying that those shoes with that helmet was maybe not the greatest fashion decision, just a little friendly advice, no need to get defensive.â
THIS LITTLE BB ALL CURLED UP AND TAKINâ A NAP
I want this one to live in my pocket and be my sassy talking dragon sidekick
SO SMILEY!! âgonna go terrorize some helpless villagers aw yissâ
