Stars on the Windshield

when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”

“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME

they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.

and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS

 In Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy Dayes, everybody’s layer against skin (shirt tunic or shift) is gonna be linen. it’s almost never wool except stockings or hose (like pant legs). Say “undyed cloth” if you wanna make them sound simple and peasanty. Comment on how you can tell it wasn’t made for them (the fit is off) and has had probably eight owners before. 

Outer clothing is gonna be either wool, or a blend called Linsey-woolsey, and again you could say Undyed, but dyes are not only common they are CHEAP and relatively easy. (innerwear is often left undyed or bleached to white because it gets washed to heck- like beaten by a wooden stick on a stone by the river- and dye would just fade out a lot so why bother. Ths is also why innerwear has ties, rarely buttons, unless you are so rich you have people doing your washing delicately because they’re hired to do only that. Buttons would get broken in the washing)

Example medieval dye colors. Lots of yellows and orangey-browns. Woad gave a range of blues that are basically what we think of as “denim colors.” There were purples - royal purple was a specific color from a specific source - but if you mix wine-dye and woad-dye, you get purpleish dye. (Getting the color to stay that way may be more difficult. Everything worn by peasants fades; they couldn’t afford the really good fixatives.)

More examples and explanations here: 

Plum, dusty purple, lavender, burgundy, chestnut, blood red

Walnut, chocolate, tan, linen, pale apricot, spice, dark spice

Peasant clothes were often more colorful than the nobility. Nobles could afford bright, clear colors that peasants couldn’t - but one mark of wealth was being able to buy all 4-8 yards of fabric for an outfit at the same time. So nobles would have a full outfit, including hat, stockings, even shoes, of one type of fabric (with ornamentation of a contrasting type, and as many buttons or bits of silver as they could get away with wearing), while peasants would often have a shirt, bodice or jerkin, skirt or pants, stockings, and hat of all different colors.

I didn’t want to get arrested so I just never asked my mom for spaghettis after that. Lesson, learned. Don’t ask mom for spaghettis or she’ll call the damn police on you. 

So I have this memory in my head, and it goes unquestioned until I say it outload for the first time a few months back and as soon as I say the words “When I was six, my mom called the cops on me for asking for spaghettis” My adult logic slams into place and is like “Hang on. Your mother definatly did not call the police on a 6 year old for asking for spaghetti.” 

So obviously that’s not what really went down. I call up my mom to tell her how I remember it and on top of her figuring out why her kid has always been really cagey around spaghettis for the last 3 decades she tells me what really happened. 

So on that night, a man tried to break into our house through the front window. It was just my mom, and her kids so she did what she felt she had too and shot him in the head. He’d been wearing a helmet, which landed on the floor under the window.

Now I just want ya’ll to put yourselves in my moms shoes for a minute here. This woman has just taken a human life. The trauma of that- the instant agony, the panic, the guilt, the fear- all of it hitting her at once, her only solace the knowledge that her children are safe. She protected her daughters. No matter the cost to her soul- her children are safe.

Behold, the saddest Christmas comic ever created.

i realized this was also lost in the fall of the CH website so

Toothless greeting Stormfly.

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