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convexicalcrow · 1 year

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we're gonna talk about pharaoh cub again. bc i am brainrotting hard over this skin and it's honestly kinda ridiculous. usual caveats of i am not an expert but do know enough to be like, wtf is that skin cubby?, and ofc there are exceptions and variations and wraps and cloaks and overskirts and other ornamentation as well depending on the occasion and time period. so it's def not wrong per se, just an ... unusual choice.

another caveat is that i love what he did with the pyramid and the approach he took, not making it a recreation but making his own twist on it, and i adored that mix of ancient and cub design. it was such a good way to do it and i'm not even mad. i'm not even mad about the skin. i just have. Questions. mr cubfan sir.

(also this will probably be quite Long and image-heavy but I need to get this shit out of my head so.)

i'm gonna start with a screenshot of some skins from the egyptian mythology pack on bedrock, which is the version of minecraft i mostly play bc it's what my partner plays. now, these skins are arguably not necessarily java-friendly, but i wanted to give you some sense of how you can do egyptian pharaoh skins in minecraft as a comparison so you can see how they translate.

obvs there's some variation in design (and for some reason, Tutankhamun - second from the right on the bottom row - appears to have been made to look like his sarcophagus, poor boy) but i've separated out the queens from the kings just so you can see the difference in style. the sleeve-ish look on a couple of the queens is more likely to be representing a shoulder wrap more than something with actual sleeves even though they'd made them look more like sleeves bc there's only so much detail you can get on a minecraft skin. but the important difference i want you to note is the queens all have ankle-length dresses/skirts, and the kings do not.

this is very typical of egyptian dress styles. men are usually shown with knee-length kilts, though, as i said, sometimes they are shorter or longer, or have longer overskirts over shorter kilts, or have more ornamentation. but the basic male style is a knee-length kilt. you'll see that more often than not.

women are usually shown wearing (something close to) ankle-length skirts and dresses. dresses are usually sleeveless and commonly skin-tight (or close to it), and they can have shoulder straps but some will sit up under the breasts instead. sometimes they will just be wearing a long skirt on its own. they will have shoulder wraps or longer body wraps for extra layers and these usually just cover the upper arms and can sometimes look like 'sleeves' but they aren't. just fabric covering the arms. they don't look anything like what cub has going on with his sleeves.

so, given all of that, this is a quick sketch of what i expected pharaoh cub to go with:

plz excuse the 5 min sketch and my shitty handwriting (bc it's been a long time since i've drawn in this style), but you can see all the basic things i would have gone with that would be easily replicated in a minecraft skin. the nemes headdress with uraeus (cobra), the beaded collar, the kilt, and the arm bands. the fake beard is probably the other essential but may or may not work depending on your skin's face.

but that's your basic pharaoh look. like, there are more ornamented and detailed looks, with cloaks and longer skirts and overskirts, and different hats and headdresses and whatnot, but that's really the basic look that you see in statuary and art. the nemes headdress is what sets him apart as pharaoh more than anything else (and the tail, but that's optional and difficult to do on a minecraft skin).

let's compare that to wtf cub did:

the kilt is long, and much more typical of female styles. an usual choice but not an incorrect one. like i said, this isn't actually wrong? just weird. he could have easily made it a shorter kilt and the design still would have worked. it's just not the typical style you will see for male Egyptian dress, is all.

also i fully appreciate, given the skin change in s8, how you can see old man cub as representing the fake beard bc it was never really his face, just the one he used for so long. it's a nice touch, even if it wasn't perhaps intended that way.

the sleeves tho. like. i do not understand the sleeves. egyptian styles just do not have sleeves like that. it may be he was trying to replicate the shoulder wrap look, but that's usually tied in the middle of the chest or at the waist and they usually only come down to the elbow and are not bound by the armbands or bracelets but sit over them. and they are more commonly seen on women. and there's no visible shirt or anything under the beaded collar to suggest the sleeves are part of some weird tiny undershirt. it's just skin.

also iirc from the pharaoh cub plushie he has bare shoulders? which is actually quite hard to see on the skin itself so idk maybe that's right, but it's even weirder if that's the case. he's just gone for arm warmer type things, with gold bands on either end, bc ... idk??? so i am baffled at this man wanting to show off his torso but not his limbs. weird flex, but okay cub, you do you.

it's why i keep saying the pharaoh cub skin is inherently feminine, bc it has these styles that are more typically female (but not exclusively so). hence, it's not wrong, just an odd choice. gives off bellydancer vibes as well fwiw. like he's a temple dancer and his torso is bare to emphasise his hips and belly and tiddies moving as he dances. like without the sleeves, it would be fine and it would lose some of those more feminine associations, but the sleeves tho, i am confused cub. wtf is up with the sleeves. they make absolutely no sense.

but do you know what the really fucked up weird thing about all of this is tho? i made this egyptian style self-portrait in a nonbinary style 9 years ago or so and guess who also used a long female-length skirt and a male head with a fake beard to queer my gender up. >_>

(i modelled myself off canonically bigendered Nile god Haapi tho. >_>)

(i did not give myself sleeves tho >_>)

honestly between this and the skulk cub thing i stg it's beginning to feel like cub and i share like one braincell XD

#hermitcraft #hc7 #cubfan135 #pharaoh cub #trans cub #this is a long essay about ancient egyptian dress styles #that you may or may not be interested in #but that pharaoh skin keeps bugging me #mostly bc of the sleeves #and the more feminine styles #it gives me female king vibes #and tbh #pop off king #we support female kings in this house #bc king is just a title anyway #and fucking around with gender presentation is fun #and has historical precedence #with egyptian female kings #so there

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