Anyone out there who knows more about optics than I do and would be willing to beta-read a short scene for egregious errors? Scenario involves someone trying to explain prisms and dispersion to a young child, while trying not to overwhelm her with detail.
Someone else on tumblr pointed out that PASSENGERS might have been a more
meaningful movie if it was about just THE ONE person dealing with being
alone on the ship for the rest of their life. And if, to cope, they go
through and make it a point to learn everything they can about all of the other
people on the ship.
And I just keep thinking about this idea.
There are
4999 other people on that ship and what if the protagonist spent the
remainder of their life (and they do live their full life) learning about each of them.
They took an
interest in their hobbies so that they could have some sort of
connection to them.
As their sanity flexed in an effort to cope, they could have had these really involved
imaginary conversations with the crew about their interests. And by the end
of their natural life they will have known everything they could have ever known
about these other 4999 people.
…
AND THEN THE REST OF THEM WAKE UP. And they have some
90 odd years of security footage of this one crew member talking to each of them in turn. And it goes far beyond ‘I have figured out how to cook that one dish you were struggling with’ or ‘I have readTHE SILMARILLION at your suggestion and Jesus Christ I have thoughts about it.’
They actually start making connections between all of the crew.
Like ‘You like bugs! You should totally talk to Cindy! She’s an entomologist!’
Or ‘Did you know that you and Said’s grandfathers were both in the same infantry?’
Or ‘You and Jamie are both avid bee keepers and I think you need to meet.’
Or ‘I know you’re really struggling with this, but Aneesha said she went the exact same thing and I think talking to her can help.’
And because all of these crew members are watching the videos that have been individually addressed to them (Because why not? They’re colonizing. There’s not a lot yet available by way of entertainment) they sort of start talking to each other at the Protagonist’s suggestion. And within a year they are THE MOST unified interconnected colony of any of the colonies because this one crew member broke the ice for them a lifetime ago.
Several of them are engaged.
Two are about to have children named after the Protagonist.
…
AND BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE NOW they notice when one week a crew member isn’t out and about and no one can get in touch with them. So finally somebody goes to check and they find them huddled in a ball and mourning.
Because Protagonist is dead.
And the other people are like: ‘Yes. We know. This is literally the first thing we knew about them.’
But Mourner is like: ‘You don’t understand. I got to the end.’
And then everyone realizes that the mourner has basically been BURNING through all of the videos Protagonist has addressed to them and got to the last one they made to them before they died. And Protagonist left a final message for each of them.
Suddenly everyone’s having a real frank conversation with themselves about how fast they’re going through their videos and if they’re prepared to keep going at that rate and get to the end, or if they should put it off indefinitely.
And one by one, in time, each of them realizes they can’t put it off. Not only are they invested in the end, but they care enough about Protagonist to really acknowledge their death.
Each crew member does this at their own pace. It becomes a rite of passage of sorts. And Protagonist is given some sort of proper memorial so the colonists all have a place to go when their time comes to grieve.
…
BUT BEFORE EVERYONE GETS TO THE END, someone has started noticing how Protagonist treated the robots on the ship over the years. And surprise, surprise, Protagonist named all the robots too and treated them like individuals depending on their quirks. So now someone has finally solved the mystery of why droid 808 insists on being called ‘Bob,’ and why 239 knows ASL, and why the auxiliary robots are so salty about nobody ever being able to tell them apart.
Not only that, but security logs shows that the robots were about 19% more efficient when Protagonist was alive than they are now. And THE VERY SECOND the rest of the crew starts observing the same habits Protagonist used in treating these robots ALL OF THAT EFFICIENCY COMES RIGHT BACK.
Because they missed Protagonist too.
…
And things settle. Everyone thinks they’ve reached the end of Protagonist’s surprises.
…
THEN THEY ARE FINALLY ABLE TO START TRANSPORTATION BETWEEN THEMSELVES AND THE OTHER COLONIES.
And a visiting party shows up.
The visitors are surprised to see HOW WELL everyone on this colony is getting along, because, wow, people are civil where they come from but GODDAMN.
And one of these visiting members is really excited to see their sibling.
And ‘Oh, that’s so nice! Who is it?’
And then the visiting member says a name every single person on this colony knows.
The colonists have to tell them what happened to their sibling, Protagonist.
But they also HAVE to tell the sibling what knowing Protagonist MEANT to them. And what Protagonist knowing THEM, meant to them.
And it’s sad.
The colony pretty much wholesale adopts Protagonist’s sibling as a part of their family because they don’t know what else they can do to fill that void. But just in case, they give the Protagonist’s sibling THE ENTIRETY of Protagonist’s security footage. Because there is 90 years of it and that way they can carry their sibling with them for the rest of their life even if only in video.
And then the colonists think:
‘This. This was the end of Protagonist’s story. And this was a good a proper way to observe it.’
…
AND THEN ONE DAY A SHIP SHOWS UP THAT IS NOT LIKE ANY SHIP THE COLONISTS HAVE EVER SEEN.
And the people driving it aren’t human.
They speak English and passable French. They can chicken scratch Urdu, Mandarin, and Swahili.
Everyone is stunned and wants to know ‘why…?’ and ‘how…?’
And the aliens are just, like, ‘Oh. Protagonist. We ran into them while you were in space. They told us you’d be settling here and asked that we check up on you whenever we were rolling by this quadrant next.’
‘They were really nice. Taught us English. Gave us the files on a couple of your other popular languages as well just to be safe. How’s the colonizing going anyway?’
And everyone thinks back to THAT ONE MONTH of security footage where Protagonist was NIGH IMPOSSIBLE to find. And when they finally did come back to their normal routine they were really quiet and thoughtful for about a week before really getting back to themselves.
The linguists all suddenly remember that IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THAT REALLY WEIRD MONTH, Protagonist had a new coded language saved to their personal affects and was very insistent that they LEARN IT. ‘FOR REASONS.’
And very quietly, the entire colony makes peace with the fact that Protagonist established a very successful first contact while they were all asleep.
Because of course they did.
JESUS WEPT this needs to be a Netflix series RIGHT THE FUCK NOW
Walk into the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. right now and you will find a painting that has been ripped to shreds.
Another one, nearby, hangs half-loose from its stretcher, rumpled. It’s a portrait of Thomas Jefferson; behind it, you glimpse a seated black woman.
They are works by the artist Titus Kaphar. He takes familiar images and remakes them. Maybe he pulls a hidden figure to the front.
His work often confronts the history of slavery and racism in the United States.
“If we are not honest about our past, then we cannot have a clear direction towards our future,” Kaphar says in an interview.
As of today, Kaphar’s work has been recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship — the “genius” grants which come with a $625,000 unrestricted award (paid over five years). The phone call informing him of the fellowship came at his total surprise.
“The truth of the matter is: I did not believe the person on the other end,” Kaphar says. “And in fact, I said, ‘Stop it, who is this?’ But no, they reassured me that in fact it was real.”
two fellows, reclining in Doctor Brighton’s Indian Medicated Vapour Bath (type of Turkish bath), a cure to many diseases and giving full relief when every thing fails; particularly Rheumatic and paralytic, gout, stiff joints, old sprains, lame legs, aches and pains in the joints, at a five-foot distance as their mutual affection is of a restrained and filial kind!
it’s hilarious to me when people call historical fashions that men hated oppressive
like in BuzzFeed’s Women Wear Hoop Skirts For A Day While Being Exaggeratedly Bad At Doing Everything In Them video, one woman comments that she’s being “oppressed by the patriarchy.” if you’ve read anything Victorian man ever said about hoop skirts, you know that’s pretty much the exact opposite of the truth
thing is, hoop skirts evolved as liberating garment for women. before them, to achieve roughly conical skirt fullness, they had to wear many layers of petticoats (some stiffened with horsehair braid or other kinds of cord). the cage crinoline made their outfits instantly lighter and easier to move in
it also enabled skirts to get waaaaay bigger. and, as you see in the late 1860s, 1870s, and mid-late 1880s, to take on even less natural shapes. we jokingly call bustles fake butts, but trust me- nobody saw them that way. it was just skirts doing weird, exciting Skirt Things that women had tons of fun with
men, obviously, loathed the whole affair
(1864)
(1850s. gods, if only crinolines were huge enough to keep men from getting too close)
(no date given, but also, this is 100% impossible)
(also undated, but the ruffles make me think 1850s)
it was also something that women of all social classes- maids and society ladies, enslaved women and free women of color -all wore at one point or another. interesting bit of unexpected equalization there
and when bustles came in, guess what? men hated those, too
(1880s)
(probably also 1880s? the ladies are being compared to beetles and snails. in case that was unclear)
(1870s, I think? the bustle itself looks early 1870s but the tight fit of the actual gown looks later)
hoops and bustles weren’t tools of the patriarchy. they were items 1 and 2 on the 19th century’s “Fashion Trends Women Love That Men Hate” lists, with bonus built-in personal space enforcement
Gonna add something as someone who’s worn a lot of period stuff for theatre:
The reason you suck at doing things in a hoop skirt is because you’re not used to doing things in a hoop skirt.
The first time I got in a Colonial-aristocracy dress I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The construction didn’t actually allow me to raise my arms all the way over my head (yes, that’s period-accurate). We had one dresser to every two women, because the only things we could put on ourselves were our tights, shifts, and first crinoline. Someone else had to lace our corsets, slip on our extra crinolines, hold our arms to balance us while a second person actually put the dresses on us like we were dolls, and do up our shoes–which we could not put on ourselves because we needed to be able to balance when the dress went on. My entire costume was almost 40 pounds (I should mention here that many of the dresses were made entirely of upholstery fabric), and I actually did not have the biggest dress in the show.
We wore our costumes for two weeks of rehearsal, which is quite a lot in university theatre. The first night we were all in dress, most of the ladies went propless because we were holding up our skirts to try and get a feel for both balance and where our feet were in comparison to where it looked like they should be. I actually fell off the stage.
By opening night? We were square-dancing in the damn things. We had one scene where our leading man needed to whistle, but he didn’t know how and I was the only one in the cast loud enough to be heard whistling from under the stage, so I was also commando-crawling underneath him at full speed trying to match his stage position–while still in the dress. And petticoats. And corset. Someone took my shoes off for that scene so I could use my toes to propel myself and I laid on a sheet so I wouldn’t get the dress dirty, but that was it–I was going full Solid Snake in a space about 18″ high, wearing a dress that covered me from collarbones to floor and weighed as much as a five-year-old child. And it worked beautifully.
These women knew how to wear these clothes. It’s a lot less “restrictive” when it’s old hat.
I have worn hoop skirts a lot, especially in summer. I still wear hoop skirts if I’m going to be at an event where I will probably be under stage lights. (For example, Vampire Ball.)
I can ride public transportation while wearing them. I can take a taxi while wearing them. I can go on rides at Disneyland while wearing them. Because I’ve practiced wearing them and twisting the rigid-but-flexible skirt bones so I can sit on them and not buffet other people with my skirts.
Hoop skirts are awesome.
Hoop skirts are a fucking godsend in summer. Nothing’s touching your legs. It’s like wearing a big box underneath whic you’re naked, temperature wise.
Did this with a bustle rather than a hoop skirt, but was quite comfortable running around in said bustle, shirt, full corset, gloves, and overskirt in 117 degrees for a con. It was far more comfortable than the more modern dress i wore the next day.
Writer Note: this is fascinating research information not restricted to just the Victorian era under discussion. Though it’s stating the obvious, the obvious often needs to be stated: when seemingly-awkward garments like crinolines and hoop-skirts (or ruffs, or houppelandes, or etc.) were everyday wear, the wearers knew how to move in them because of practice.
For instance, how not to clear a table with a gesture while wearing sleeves like these…
Fashionable footwear has been weird for centuries.
Think of chopines, pattens, poulaines,
non-fetishy-y high heels, or platform boots worn with bell-bottom jeans so long and wide
that without the platforms
they trailed along the ground. The 1970s is called “the decade that style forgot” for good reason.
Elton John’s stage platforms aren’t as exaggerated as you think…
And then there are the doeskin breeches claimed in some fiction as fitting so tightly the
inside had to be soaped to get them on, going commando was compulsory, and the wearer couldn’t sit
down.
You’d certainly believe it from portraits like this one, “Hunter in a Landscape with his Dogs”, said to be General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of Alexandre Dumas the novelist, with legs apparently clad in just a thick coat of paint. (X-skin breeches would seem more suitable for hunting, but these may represent cotton “inexpressibles” which really did fit like that.)
Like the supposed problems with crinolines etc., not true. Research and reconstruction has shown that doe / buck / sheepskin
breeches have natural stretch and recovery; a common comparison is to
old, well-worn jeans. Of course the artist also wanted to show that his subject “had a good leg” (look up “artificial calves” and be amused) and wasn’t letting realism get in the way of doing so.
This is a bit more like it.
Nowadays “deportment” seems to have an aura of outdated snobbishness – upper-class debutantes learning to curtsey, or walk with books balanced on their heads – but ”porte” in French means “carry”
and the old meaning of deportment was “how to carry yourself”; how to move properly, without inconveniencing yourself or others.
Various historical-costume books point out that “moving properly” in some periods – memory suggests the court of Louis XIV at Versailles was one – meant a sequence of artificial, prescribed gestures, partly enforced by the clothing and partly by court protocol. IIRC one description was of “movements as precisely delineated as the steps of a formal dance”, and getting them wrong resulted in social mockery.
Elizabethan men were taught, as part of their deportment, how to move while wearing the long rapiers of the period; that hand-on-hilt stance in portraits isn’t drama, it’s control.
Once familiar with the length of the sword, they know exactly what shifting the hilt one way or another will do to the rest of it – and the people, furniture and crockery behind them – without needing to look. IIRC the technique is still taught to actors today.
Crinolines, bustles, bloomers, breeches, inexpressibles and all the rest were clothing; after reading about peculiar but oh-so-stylish ways of standing and moving like the “Grecian bend” and “Alexandra limp”, the Kink’s satirical 1960s hit “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” isn’t just a song any more…
:->
Even better than the version I posted before.
I would note that I have a RenFaire style corset and I have run significant distances, sword fought, and danced in various styles without any discomfort. The only thing I can’t do is bend over. It actually forces you to pick things off the ground safely. It’s not wasp waist tight, partly because I have abs and don’t compress like that (which might be part of the wasp waist thing. Being able to do that said you didn’t have abs…and thus didn’t work for a living, which has often been a thing with women’s fashion).
This is all really interesting and new to me! And I have thought of deportment as a snobbish thing all my life, but now I’m wondering if early lessons in it would have been a good thing for clumsy and oblivious folks like me.
Somebody should…I wonder if I can convince some cosplayers to do a panel about this. Both for authenticity and because some of them need to learn what happens to their sword when they turn around quickly…
I’m amazed how few people understand what wearing a real corset is like. It isn’t uncomfortable in the slightest to me, and it’s actually quite fun. People think if you wear a corset you’re going to crush your bones or something. It just simply isn’t true.
If you’re intentionally waist training (it’s a kink with some people) then it will have an effect. Otherwise, a correctly-fitted corset provides more support than a typical bra, it also supports your back – I do wonder if women had fewer back problems in times when they were common, and I do know women who wear them instead of back braces…
honestly? even serious waist training (which isn’t always a kink) shouldn’t hurt hurt. Depending on the person and how the corset fits there might be some tension, sure, but there’s this whole process that you should be going through when you first get your corset(seasoning) that basically allows your body to get used to it. It might be a little uncomfortable for someone unused to it, but a properly fitting corset won’t hurt (it can also increase flexibility in the obliques – I wasn’t even seriously waist training last school year and I still felt looser in the sides at the end).
Some people today wear corsets because it def provides a lot of support to large breasts, and custom corsetiers sometimes specialise in making medical corsets for scoliosis and stuff.
And yeah, corsets really often were worn by working women! Not just the delicate ladies in parlours, but also farm women who had to haul 50 lb sacks of feed or whatever. The corsets would function the same way a weightlifter’s belt or back brace would today, keeping everything aligned and providing support.
With the super heavy dresses and skirts, too, it helps to provide support for the weight of the cloth over the hips so the skirts don’t sag.
One of the details I’ve always appreciated in handful_ofdust’s Hexslinger trilogy is that in the second book, when Yancy has to disguise herself as a man for awhile, her reaction to trousers is not “ooh, so liberating!” but “ugh, these things CHAFE how do men bear it?!”
I know Tumblr tends to be very US-centric, but there is something happening in my country that I absolutely have to share.
Soon, Brazil will host presidential elections. These are the first elections since the impeachment of our last president Dilma Rouseff.
The leading candidate is currently Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is a man who has made racist, sexist, and homophobic claims such as, “I would rather my son die in a car accident than be gay,” and, “my sons would not date black women as they were well educated.” He even said to a woman that she was, “so ugly” that she, “didn’t even deserve to get raped.”
A few decades ago, when Brazil was under a military dictatorship, the government tortured many people for speaking out against the regime. Bolsonaro has said that, “their only mistake was not killing those people.”
However, something incredible has been happening.
A movement called Mulheres Unidas Contra Bolsonaro (Women United Against Bolsonaro) has been surfacing. The hashtag #EleNão (#NotHim) has been getting popular and gaining international attention.
Yesterday, women all over Brazil (and the world!) protested against Bolsonaro.
Here are some pictures.
São Paulo, Brazil:
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:
Ilhéus, Brazil:
Cuiabá, Brazil:
Porto Alegre, Brazil:
Brazilians living abroad also joined the protests!
Zurich, Switzerland:
Madrid, Spain:
Melbourne, Australia:
New York City, US:
Protests occurred in over 62 cities around the world.
Even if you’re not Brazilian, please share this post! Show your support and raise awareness of the movement!
Mooncustafer 