I can’t. Every single sentence in this could not be more wrong if the author deliberately set out to be the wrongest person in wrongville. I just.
I don’t care what else might be useful in this book, if your introduction is as fundamentally incorrect as this, the reliability of everything else you’ve ever said and that your editor has ever touched is immediately thrown into question.
I… that is… such bullshit. Wool and silk are arguably the easiest fibers to dye. Cotton’s a stone bitch to color. (Let’s not even get into ‘change clothes irregularly’, that’s bullshit too.)
I know, right?? Protein fibres suck up dye like no-one’s business; it’s cellulose that hates it.
And as for the others… linen bedsheets, bitch. And linen and silk woven so finely as to be practically transparent. And I’d like to take my records of inventories with 100+ linen shifts for one person, because of multiple-changes-per-day, and shove them up his grant.
It’s like he assumes that without cotton we also wouldn’t have, like, modern inventions and techniques? “Wool is hard to clean” I mean yeah you have to use Woolite on the gentle cycle and air dry but that’s not that much harder than using normal detergent
wool being excellent to dye is its other great selling poin besides warmth- which is why ‘black sheep’ became a derogatory term, as black wool could not be dyed and thus was worth less as it would only ever be dark grey
historical perspective on the fabric alternate reality he proposes- linen was durable but not easy to dye, but you largely didnt care as it was undergarments or bedsheets where you wont be publicly showing off the linens- who other then nobility cares if their bedsheets are vibrantly colored? the reason you wore linen undergarments is that they breathe and protect you from any itchyness (wool that had been properly treated by a fuller {one of the worst jobs in history} would not have been very itchy either) of thick wool clothings and to keep you from getting sweaty or stinky, not to show off your bright red skivvies. linen is still freaking awesome, its comfortable, durable, breathes. i wish i had linen undies instead of cotton ones that get stretched out and threadbare after a few months. i wish i had linen and wool shirt options instead of only paper thin cotton shirts
the statement that sheep would require all the land ever- the deal with livestock through human history is that not all land is created equal, and livestock is how you used the areas that were sub-par. the fertile land you farmed crops, but there is far far more land thats unsuited for vegetables but grows grass just fine, as we cant eat the grass we set out animals like cows and sheep that CAN eat the grass and let them go wild chewin their cud and poopin on the ground while the humans are busy ploughing and harvesting on the more valuable land; allowing the ungulates to convert that grass into usable products like wool, cheese, meat, leather. there’s reasons some areas are covered with sheep and cows EVEN TODAY- either its not usable as croplands or the population nearby is so low that you couldn’t effectively organize labor to exploit farming. new zealand and australia have absurd numbers of sheep for this reason- the land is either too sparse, hilly, or remote, but wool can be exported for profit just fine. however areas like iowa and california have very few sheep as the land is better suited for grain and seasonal vegetables and using it for grazing would be less effective
further the statement that wool and linen are more labor intensive then cotton- theres a reason the cotton industry historically relied on slavery when wool and linen were historically a cottage industry people did in their spare time while being a full time farmer. you let a sheep out on the lawn to do its own thing, it grows the wool, once a year you shave it and spin it into thread- it produces more sheep and tasty mutton as well. linnen is made from flax plants, which are harvested with a sickle and then left in some water to rot for a week, split open, and the fibers inside spun into thread- teams up well with beekeeping as flax produces huge fields of beautiful flowers. in both the hard work is done by animals and a pond, not human hands. cotton however required you to not only plant it but spend time to pick individual bolls off of the flowering buds after it went to seed in the summer sun one at a time instead of mowing with a scythe like flax in an afternoon, which then had to have someone pick all the seeds out of each boll individually before spinning, theres no side product and it depletes the soil like a sonovabitch
pictured- super easy, giving a sheep a haircut would be so much worse right? im sure the man on a horse with a whip and gun is there to make sure everyone is having a good time
and finally the primary dumb part of the highlighted segment- the
assumption that if cotton didnt exist you would sleep on a pile of
straw. what? is this talking today or talking medieval times again? flipping NEOLITHIC folks were bright enough to lay a blanket on top of their straw pile before they took a nap on it. even back
when straw beds were common you didnt lay on the straw, the straw was a
filling for a leather or canvas bag so that you didnt get poked, and even then chances are pretty good you stuffed your bed with
feathers because if theres something an agrarian society has more then
enough of its poultry. if you are talking today i challenge you to go to
a matress store and find a cotton filled bed- theyre filled with
springs or foam, and for all points and purposes the foam is just a high
tech version of straw that doesn’t rot. that, and any modern mattress
is synthetic fiber to combat body odor and sweat absorption
this is not how beds work
these pre-cotton folk seem to be pretty comfortable, even if they hadnt invented perspective yet. as there is no crown im pretty sure they werent importing their fabrics from india or egypt
oh, look, pre-cotton comfortable underwear, soft sheets, and a bed that looks excessively comfortable with no straw or furs in sight
a world without cotton isnt a world without soap either jackass
The idea is already widely present with Terry Pratchett’s dwarves, but let’s apply it to the Hobbit movie ones
And I don’t just mean like “dwarves have opera somewhere in their dim cultural history,” no I mean a thrivingpresent opera scene that’s a huge part of daily life
Think about it: every dwarf can play an instrument. They seduce Bilbo onto the quest by singing him the song of their people
Imagine grand, sweeping Wagnerian (without the gross overtones) dwarven opera. It’s long, it’s bombast, it goes on for hours (dwarven endurance, hey!) The stories are intricate, the vocal ranges sweeping. This is none of your namby-pamby Elvish crap (unless we’re talking Second Age Noldor Baroque because ok fine they can come too).
Thorin’s coronation actually includes as entertainment the first two hours of the opera that will one day make up the Quest for Erebor Cycle. This is par for the course for Thorin, he’s already been represented in the Azanulbizar Cycle and the legendary Fall of Erebor (in that one as a minor character).
Bilbo has no idea what’s going. It takes him until about 90 minutes in to realize that it’s even about a story he was a part of, since it starts much sooner with some truly lengthy arias by Thorin as he assembles the Company, bids goodbye to his sister, and makes his impassioned plea to the Seven Clans for aid. However when he does recognize himself (it’s difficult, they’ve stuck a beard on his character for reasons he cannot fathom but have everything to do with Dwarven Opera Tradition), and realize that he has absolutely been cast as the love interest and what’s more, this whole thing is eventually going to be nine hours long, well, let’s just say that his lessons in tea-time propriety come in very handy for sitting with a pleasant smile through all of it
(He catches Thorin singing the songs to himself in private wearing a silly grin, and Thorin has to explain how excited he is to finally have a song about him that isn’t all blood and guts. Dwarven operas can be… intense, at times)
as an opera fan: oh HELL YES
tbh The Hobbit (movie based, just cut the Video Game Legolas stuff) would make a GREAT opera
also: who would be opera!Thorin? THIS GUY
he already has the look and he’s a bass-baritone
I’m fucking crying this is great
So I get the Met catalogue and I SAW THIS PICTURE of him in… was it… Nabucco? And I almost LOST MY MIND. I dare anyone to tell me that the character/costume design wasn’t influenced XD
Your headcanon is your headcanon. The characters in your mind are what they are, and nobody is trying to take them away from you. Think of the Good Omens TV series as a stage play: for six full hours, actors are going to be portraying the roles of Crowley and Aziraphale, Shadwell and Madame Tracy, Newt and Anathema, Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian and the rest. Will they look like the people in your head? The ones you’ve been drawing and writing about and imagining for (in some cases) almost 30 years?
Probably not. Which is fine.
The people in your head and your drawings are still there, and still real and still true. I’ve seen drawings of hundreds of different Aziraphales over the years, all with different faces and body-shapes, different hair and skin, and would never have thought to tell anyone who drew or loved them that that wasn’t what Aziraphale looked like. (And a couple of years after we wrote it, I was amused to realise that the Aziraphale in my head looked nothing like the Aziraphale in Terry’s head.) I’ve loved every instance of Good Omens Cosplay I’ve seen, and in no case did I ever think anyone was doing it wrong: they were all Aziraphales and Crowleys, and it was always a delight.
Good Omens has been unillustrated for 27 years, which means that each of you gets to make up your own look for the characters, your own backstories, your own ideas about how they will behave.
The TV version is being made with love and with faithfulness to the story. It’s got material and characters in it that Terry and I had discussed over the years, (some of it from what we would have done it there had been a sequel). Writing it has taken up the greater part of my last three years. You might like it – I really hope you will – but you don’t have to. You can start watching it, decide that you prefer the thing in your head, and stop watching it. (I never saw the last Lord of the Rings movie, because I liked the thing in my head too much.)
Remember we are making this with love.
And that your own personal headCrowleys and headAziraphales and headFourHorsemen and headThem and headHastur and headLigur and headSisterMary and all the rest are yours, and safe, and nobody is ever going to take them away from you.
So me and @alexkablob watched Rogue One and I think I can put into words what resonates so much this time. I realize other people have said this already more eloquently than me but…
While everyone I’ve seen agrees that R1 is fucking gorgeous, the main thing I’ve seen from people who don’t personally like it is that the total party kill is too dark, too depressing, it doesn’t feel like Star Wars exactly; that Star Wars is about hope and good triumphing over evil despite the odds. And look, Rogue One is heavy. You don’t have to personally like that, that’s fair.
But there is one thing that I have to contest. Because….Rogue One is about hope.
The good guys win.
They win. They pass hope like a baton, bloody fingers to sweaty palms, sprinting forward and trusting that someone will manage to slip it into their hand before it’s too late.
The message of Rogue One, the reason I adore it for its quietly unflinching look at sacrifice, isn’t the dark-and-gritty People Die In War, Don’t Be Naive. Its message is…look. Look at humanity. Look at what we do, what we are capable of. The beauty of hope, the love and the faith we have for one another. Look at what courage and compassion accomplish. All the hatred, all the brute force in the galaxy can’t match that simple, silent strength. The Empire fails.
A dark, gritty movie would be: the Empire wins. Or the Rebellion wins but the cost was too high, it wasn’t worth it. Rogue One says, yes, it was.
That soft rising music over the entire end of that relay race, from the moment the plans beam out. It’s quiet, and sad, and solemn–and triumphant.
It says: it’s over. It’s done. You’ve done enough. Breathe. This was worth it.
Websites that block me from viewing its content and tell me to turn AdBlocker off to continue severely overestimate my caring to see the content in the first place.
The perfect antidote to the Ghost In The Shell news! Hope it gets an American release. Your move, Hollywood.
I think this is pretty fitting, since cowboy movies have been cribbing from Japanese samurai film for a long time now. Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven, Yojimbo got a remake via A Fistful of Dollars, and The Hidden Fortress helped inspire George Lucas to create Star Wars. (Even the word “Jedi” is derived from the “jidai geki” genre of Japanese film– an appropriate name for a group space samurai.)
This has always been one of my favorite cross cultural phenomena, the relation between western and samurai movies
Wanderings and Perigrinations 