For The Resistance

tigs blog of random stuff, current avatar Asha Ryder

[makingqueerhistory]

Shoutout to all the fanfic writers who cite their sources and link to Making Queer History. Our analytics consistently show Archive Of Our Own as one of the main sources of referrals to our site.

[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.

[scrupulosity-comics]

title of this is just ‘lesbian sex’

[scrupulosity-comics]

lot of terfs have been reblogging this so I may as well publicly state that the woman on the right is modeled with permission after my transfemme friend. if you relate to it as strongly as many of you claim in the tags I urge you to reflect upon that with empathy and compassion about the depth of experiences you truly do share with trans women.

otherwise fuck off I guess. my art is not fuel for your hatred.

[this-is-a-love-story-isnt-it]

This insane update from Neocities

[syzara]

it got restored!

https://bsky.app/profile/neocities.org/post/3mnkzbz3bgv2k

[pyrrhiccomedy]

we're heading towards some record setting humidity this summer so JUST A REMINDER that if you're in any way prone to migraines, this weather is great at triggering them! Be EXTREMELY diligent about staying hydrated if you're going out, EVEN TO AN AIR CONDITIONED SPACE, and ESPECIALLY if you are drinking any alcohol at all! even a single glass of wine or a cocktail! You will feel fine for an hour or two but then you will NOT FEEL FINE. If you have a headache that isn't responding to painkillers and it gets noticeably worse when you move or change elevations (sitting to standing, not like, going to the mountains) then drink a full glass of water and go lie down in a cool, quiet, dark room until it passes! DO NOT LOOK AT A SCREEN UNTIL THE DANGER HAS PASSED. I know you're bored but it could be so much worse!

[pyrrhiccomedy]

I see this is going around again! Happy Migraine Season everybody! Remember to keep a damp washcloth in your freezer so that if you feel the migraine coming on you can lay down and press it against your forehead and temples to give yourself a better chance of ducking it before it's too late!

[literary-potato]

Also a reminder that for some folks, big changes in air pressure can also be a migraine trigger. So if you’re in an area that, like mine, is having a lot of really wild temperature swings (ie multiple very hot days that end abruptly with storms at which point it cools down a lot), might be a good idea to have your migraine remedies locked and loaded, because with migraines the sooner you intervene, the more likely it is you’ll avert the worst symptoms (and will need less medication to do so).

[sunflowersosa]

Nigerian Pride 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇬

I meant to have this out yesterday. Happy belated pride. :)

[sunflowersosa]

I'm glad you all like the Nigeria Pride post!

Originally, I went in worried the opposite would happen. Growing up, I've been taught that Nigeria, the country, is homophobic. (I was born in America.) But over time, I learned that there's tons of other queer Nigerians; some are out, and some are in the closet 😭.

I'm also not used to this much attention, lol

Thank you all!

[ororium-z]

Happy Pride!

[geneticdriftwood]

honestly? abandoned/on indefinite hiatus/very slow to update fics, even and especially AUs and longfics, are often some of my absolute favorites. and people who refuse to read them are missing out!

for one, stories don’t have to be finished to be enjoyable and worth reading. but also? an unfinished fic is a whole little universe that just keeps on existing in my head! their world stays alive for me in a way that doesn’t always happen with fics I binge read and finish, and i love it. i don’t know how their story ends, so it just keeps going! and even when those stories DO update and finish years later, they’ve been in my head for so long that they stick around like old friends.

so to any author with unfinished works: thank you SO much for sharing what you had without waiting to finish it first. you’re just giving me the gift of getting to spend more time with your story and your idea. if you do update again someday, i’ll be delighted to jump back in! but if you don’t, just know a little piece of your world still lives on in a beloved tiny terrarium in my brain. i promise i’m taking good care of it :)

i don’t normally ask this, but if this resonates with you please reblog it, so it can reach the authors who need to hear it <3

[myjetpack]

I will be in Madrid signing books, reading comics and talking this weekend. Details here: https://ferialibromadrid.penguinlibros.com/Gauld,%20Tom

[puppygirllaika]

Could you personally navigate a cross-country road trip, door to door, without your electronics (phone/computer/tablet/etc)?

Yes

No

Voting ended onMay 29

[puppygirllaika]

every other note on this post is someone going "am i allowed to use paper maps?" yes. obviously. i did not say "without a map", i said without your electronics. And to the like, 20% of people saying "of course, i would simply take the train" that is definitionally not a road trip. i love trains too, but that is a rail trip. a road trip requires taking a trip on the road.

[puppygirllaika]

#a train can go on the road if you believe hard enough

casey jones off the shits

[c-rowlesdraws]

✨Excellent News📰

for sophisticated enjoyers of obscure Mass Effect lore! This reddit user compiled ALL of the old Cerberus Daily News e-mails into a google doc, helpfully formatted for better readability and organized by topic! There are plenty of one-off articles about various aspects of galactic life, but also a bunch of multi-installment stories. The whole thing is very entertaining and compelling despite CDN having been written as "just" a fun extra thing for players to read along with in ME3, and it's packed with tons of neat glimpses into the setting outside of Shepard's immediate circle and experiences.

[soldiermom1973]

OMG there is some FASCINATING stuff here! I'm reading most of it because I'm looking for things to incorporate into future fics. If you write Mass Effect Fanfic, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND perusing this. Be warned - it's 124 pages, but each article is a very quick read. You should be able to skim most of it to look for things to pique your interest.

[draconym]

The eye doctor is the most fun doctor you can go to. They never steal your blood. They never make you get naked and put on a paper dress. They're just like, "Can you see these letters? It's fine if you can't, we can fix that." And they don't even spell anything.

[draconym]

[syzara]

there was this one time i had to follow the light on the walls like a cat when i was at mine

[syzara]

hey pocket friends,

what game(s) are you playing currently?

[thedaswolves]

Evanuris💜

[pcos-and-endo-awareness]

If you haven’t heard, today PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome has been renamed to Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome. This change reflects that this is not a reproductive “problem” but a whole body disease.

[leahstuff]

For reference, from the WHO website:

(Text: PCOS affects an estimated 10-13% of reproductive-aged women. It is estimated that up to 70% of women with PCOS worldwide do not know they have this condition.)

[laziestgirlintown]

The Lancet link about shift to PMOS. Spread this to everyone who works in health care now. People with uteruses and ovaries are in agony - yes, the whole body suffers a crisis every fkn month - and health care should help

[thememedaddy]

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

The really funny thing about "snakes aren't mammals your snake girl shouldn't have breasts!" is like yeah. Neither should your cat girl.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

The fact that this is the line drawn is really funny! Human breasts are actually incredibly rare among mammals! We don't know exactly why humans have big bazongas but it's probably sexual selection, which presents the really funny problem

If your snake women having sex with people is normal and expected...then yeah, they're ALSO probably going to have something resembling breasts. They might even just have breasts in all but function.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Like yes, non-mammals don't make milk, but you actually don't need the whole kit that humans do in order to make milk. Arguably its not even the important part of the breast to begin with.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

You also don't need to justify it at all you can just be a pervert about it.

[swiftrunnerfelidae]

We actually have another theory why human breasts are like that, and it's because of our flat faces.

Most mammals have, compared to humans, an elongated jaw. So a little tiny bump of a mammary gland is fine, just enough to get the nostrils away from the teat, and the young can freely breathe while nursing. However, as humans started using fire more and more to cook food - which softened it up, rendering powerful jaws less necessary - their jaws began to shorten, resulting in the development of the chin and other unique facial structures as the face flattened out.

This, of course, meant that babies could suffocate while nursing, which would obviously be bad. But what if... what if nipple further from chest? Bigger bump, so baby's nose have spot to go that isn't directly into mommy's chest? Oh, turns out that works! Of course, as more and more fat stores become dedicated to growing that breast mound to keep baby from suffocating, it becomes harder and harder for the mother to reabsorb that tissue when not nursing (as many other mammals do), so they just... don't. Knockon effects from there, and bam. Tiddies.

Which means if your cat girl has a flat face she probably should still have boobs but if she's got the full muzzle, not so much.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

That's actually really interesting honestly.