"As an educator, I don’t just want you to feel what I feel. I don’t want you to consider me correct because I said it beautifully. I want to sharpen your critical thinking skills and your world-making capacities. I absolutely do not leave emotion out of that! Emotions are as central as the written, verbal, numeric, social, ecological knowledges we are able to gain to navigate this world and the next. I am just… extra cognizant of how much I can lead viewers to feel with me without further thought. The videos of mine that go most viral are ones where I show the most emotion, whatever that emotion is: hopeful, cheery, despondent, grieved, furious, combative. We love emotion. We live such isolated, stifled lives.
The challenge of reading is to navigate the narrative without the overtures of overt feelings. There is no face to latch onto, no music that sways you. Words on a page especially cannot compete with screen-time. They’re not meant to. The boredom opens up space in your mindscape to your own thoughts, opinions, and feelings."
—Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings on Substack
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Early 18th (and late 17th) century fashions are so under-utilized in vampire media and I think it's a damn shame.
I don't actually think I've ever seen a single image of a vampire character in an early 18th century suit. Hardly any movies set in that era either, and hardly any historical costumers who do it.
(Even my beloved gay pirate show set in 1717 takes nearly all of its 18th century looks from the second half of the century. Not enough appreciation for baroque fashion!!)
Yes I love late 18th century fashion as much as anyone, and 19th century formal suits are all very well and good, but if you want something that says old, dead, wealthy, and slightly dishevelled, then the 1690's-1730's are where it's at.
(Retrato del Virrey Alencastre Noroña y Silva, Duque de Linares, ca. 1711-1723.)
There was so much dark velvet, and so many little metallic buttons & buttonholes. Blood red linings were VERY fashionable in this era, no matter what the colour of the rest of the suit was.
(Johann Christoph Freiherr von Bartenstein by Martin van Meytens the Younger, 1730's.)
The slits on the front of the shirts are super low, they button only at the collar, and it's fashionable to leave most of the waistcoat unbuttoned so the shirt sticks out, as seen in the above portraits.
(Portrait of Anne Louis Goislard de Montsabert, Comte de Richbourg-le-Toureil, 1734.)
Waistcoats are very long, coats are very full, and the cuffs are huge. But the sleeves are on the shorter side to show off more of that shirt, and the ruffles if it has them! Creepy undead hands with long nails would sit so nicely under those ruffles.
(1720's-30's, LACMA)
Embroidery designs are huge and chunky and often full of metallic threads, and the brocade designs even bigger.
(1730's, V&A, metal and silk embroidery on silk satin.)
Sometimes they did this fun thing where the coat would have contrasting cuffs made from the same fabric as the waistcoat.
(Niklaus Sigmund Steiger by Johann Rudolf Huber, 1724.)
Tell me this look isn't positively made for vampires!
(Portrait of Jean-Baptiste de Roll-Montpellier, 1713.)
(Yeah I am cherry-picking mostly red and black examples for this post, and there are plenty of non-vampire-y looking images from this time, but you get the idea!)
And the wrappers (at-home robes) were also cut very large, and, if you could afford it, made with incredible brocades.
(Portrait of a nobleman by Giovanni Maria delle Piane, no date given but I'd guess maybe 1680's or 90's.)
(Circle of Giovanni Maria delle Piane, no date given but I'd guess very late 17th or very early 18th century.)
Now that looks like a child who's been stuck at the same age for a hundred years if I ever saw one!
I don't know as much about the women's fashion from this era, but they had many equally large and elabourate things.
(1730's, Museo del Traje.)
(Don't believe The Met's shitty dating, this is a robe volante from probably the 1720's.)
(Mantua, c. 1708, The Met. No idea why they had to be that specific when they get other things wrong by entire decades but ok.)
(Portrait of Duchess Colavit Piccolomini, 1690's.)
(Maria van Buttinga-van Berghuys by Hermannus Collenius, 1717.)
Sometimes they also had these cute little devil horn hair curls that came down on either side of the forehead.
(Viago in drag Portrait of a lady, Italian School, c. 1690.)
Enough suave Victorian vampires, I want to see Baroque ones! With huge wigs and brocade coat cuffs so big they go past the elbow!
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An update from Bisan, posted today 11/05/23, saying she does not think she will survive long because Israel is bombing anything that may help people survive. Sources of electricity, solar panels, water. Bakeries are running out of petrol and wheat and any that obtain said materials are threatened with bombing.
There is no food and water and without electricity it is impossible to find or make any. The infrastructure is collapsing because 100-300 bombs happened last night, all over Gaza, and people are coughing and ill.
Today, they dropped posts saying this is their LAST CHANCE to evacuate to the south. People have no way to leave, nothing to sustain them, this is genocide. They are starving, injured, ill with gassed air with only the sea left to them. Aid is not reaching anyone.
Please watch all 7 videos across the three tweets in the thread, linked above. My summary cannot do this justice. If you do not have a twitter account, here's tweet one, tweet two, tweet three.
This is her instagram, the videos are also in her story.
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