A Choice Was Made

I am Arran, god of the most important thing

And meanwhile over in historical costuming, we are fucking eating, sleeping, swordfighting, riding horses, and feeling great like this:

(credit: Jenny La Flamme, The Tudor Tailor, Verdaera)

Like is there NO overlap between people who want to bind and people who care about accurate 16th century clothing reconstruction techniques?

(I, okay, maybe it is kind of a niche interest, but…. REALLY? Anyone who’s made a boned binder, PLS SPEAK TO ME)

This was only the second pair of stays I made, but it already made me practically flat and was quite comfortable. I didn’t even full bone it and it looked like this:

(don’t judge me for the awful way the boning sticks out at the top, I am by no means a corsetry expert)

People who are actually good at stays will be able to make things like these with no trouble, because if something made from old sheets and recycled boning can do this, imagine what you can do with proper materials.

Just for fun, here’s me in my gentleman’s outfit:

She uses form as a way to destabilize English, as a direct way to respond to and critique colonialism and linguistic colonialism. A lot of her work engages with  Lakota language as well, and very much pounds on the door of all the ways English is limiting, restricting, and destructive to Native American languages, as well as being incredibly unsuited to talking about Native American issues. She feels deeply the injustice of talking about the horrors of colonialization in a colonizer’s language, and her poetry is so damn good at expressing that. 

The connection between land, language, family, and self is alive in her work, and I cannot recommend her enough. 

Her first full-length collection was published in 2017 and is called Whereas. It is, among other things, a scathing and in-depth critique of the Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans, which was signed in 2009 and is essentially a sham document which never actually admits to any wrongdoings nor uses the word “apologize” in the body of the text, and was also not actually directed towards any Native person or peoples. The second half of Long Soldier’s collection just rips the whole thing to shreds. The rest of the collection is a deep exploration of language, motherhood, family, and identity. It’s so, so, so good.

Here are some poems from it!! (I’m sorry for the image quality, my camera and lighting suck).

you raise a good point! I should really make a post explaining why I dislike the state of intellectual property worship without mentioning piracy!

However, because a lot of them are based on horror film I have found comfort in doing things that “go against” horror films and being like “see? This could never happen.”

(It’s irrational. I know that. But shut up. This is how I cope.)

For example: I started hearing garbled whispering from beneath my table, so I started playing the muppets sound track. Because they would never play Movin’ Right Along when the protagonist is about to get attacked. That won’t happen. Disney, who owns the muppets, wouldn’t give them the rights.

And it fucking worked.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

book two: the triumphant return of seivarden vendaai’s distinguished military career! unfortunately, breq is in love with her ship. it’s fine. it’s fine. it’s fine.

Breq's offer comes with social advancement but no real connection either between them (Breq states outright that she's offering because she wants to ensure that Basnaaid is taken care of, for Lieutenant Awn's sake, and would probably never have considered the possibility that Basnaaid could form any personal connection to her) or to the house (neither of them has any actual desire to be part of Mianaai). On the other hand, being adopted into Elming would be a significant social comedown that emphasizes an emotional bond of friendship and shared love of Lieutenant Awn. While also at the same time being an incredible fuck you to both Anaander Mianaai and the class structure of the house system as a whole.