i like my men like i like my women. transgender

M. C. Escher (Dutch,1898-1972)

Puddle, 1952

Woodcut in colors on thin laid Japon paper

dustmite comic

Ugh ugh ugh I’m upset IM UPSET. I have been goin to protests since I was 18, before I could even drive! I was just jumping on buses or hopping in strangers cars or WALKING Everywhere! I got heat stroke twice! But now I’m nearly 24 and I’m tired. I shouldn’t feel this tired but I do. I’m tired of liberals treating protests like they’re parades. I’m tired of the same 3 chants. Im tired of the cutesy protest flyers and slogans and instagram photo ops. I have REAL anger in my body! I feel so much anger when I see injustice around me it makes my skin itch! But now I’m tired and I don’t know what to do

This is 100% the gay supervillain music video I’ve been waiting for.

I love campy gay villains, but gay villains of this type are amazing too and sorely underrepresented.

…Oh, so by “gay”, you mean. Actually gay.

I don’t usually reblog stuff like this but tbh this is the kind of content I live for.

Happy 10 year anniversary to these two, specifically

(single dropped Dec. 3, 2015, music vid hit youtube Jan 12, 2016)

i love this tweet

commenting "cloying and saccharine" under a pic of someone's baby

maid tried to kill me again by putting poison in my tea she doesn't know that i'm something far more terrifying masquerasing as a princess but i honestly don't think i'll tell her because i think it's really really adorable how desperately she wants to kill me. i don't want her to stop trying. i want to see the look on her face grow progressively more terrified the more she realizes things that should kill me don't seem to do anything. and in that moment i want to embrace her so gently like a mother carrying a child, and show her exactly how much i love the little game we play, her and i

woke up last night with a knife in my back and i couldn't stop myself from pulling it out and licking the blood off the blade, ahahaha, she came by again, this morning. the look on her face when she realized i was still there, still breathing, still "alive", ahahaha. she's so adorable. she looked so pale. she told me, princess, you're still here, and i gave her a smile, my smile, my special little smile i save just for her, and i told her, why wouldn't i be, maid? what reason would i have for being gone? please, set my tea down on the nightstand, join me on my bed. and i saw how shaky and nervous her every breath was as she approached me, wondering to herself, did i do something wrong? did i stab the wrong girl? did i hallucinate that? totally unsure of herself, unsure of even the very fabric of this reality we share, her and i, and i couldn't help myself. she was so cute. i wrapped my arms around her and held her, and told her, it's alright, little maid. please don't let yourself be so afraid. you have nothing to fear, i promise. why don't you have some tea? and in that moment, as i held the cup up to her mouth, i swear i could see it in her eyes, the moment she knew she was about to die

Meiji period fashion was some of the best in the world, speaking purely from an aesthetic standpoint you can really see the collision of European and Japanese standards of beauty and how their broad agreement even in particulars (the similarity between Japanese and Gibson girl bouffants, the obi vs the corset, the obi knot vs the bustle, the mutual covetousness for exotic textiles, the feverish swapping of both art styles and subjects) combined and produced some of the most interesting cultural exchange we have this level of documentation for. Europeans were wearing kimono or adapting them into tea gowns, japanese were pairing lacy Edwardian blouses with skirt hakama and little button up boots. haori jackets with bowler hats and European style lapels. if steampunk was any good as an aesthetic it would steal wholesale from the copious records we have in both graphic arts and photography of how people were dressing in this milieu.

«The botany professor,» from Kkokei Shimbun, October 20, 1908. she's wearing a kimono blouse or haori, edwardian skirt or hakama, gibson girl bouffant, a lacy high-collar blouse with cravat and brooch, and a pocket watch with chain

1910-1930 (Taishō era, right after Meiji, which I should have included in my OP) men's haori with western lapels

I have a love for both kimonos and bustle dresses, so I love seeing how the two fashions influenced each other over this period.  And thanks to Pinterest, I have pictures!

Victorian tea gown that clearly started as a kimono.  It still has the long furisode sleeves, but now they’re gathered at the shoulder and turned around so that the long open side is facing the front instead of the back.  Similarly the back is taken in with curved seams to fit the torso and pleated below that for the skirt.

Woodblock of a woman in a a bustle dress made with colorful patterned fabrics and examples of how a woman could style her hair with it.

More prints to showcase hairstyles, two women wearing western wear and two women wearing kimonos.

This next one’s modern, but it involves hoopskirts so I’ll add it in because it makes me so happy.  There’s been different styles of wedding fashion that take kimonos and give them a more modern look.  Often this involves taking a kimono and then cutting and resewing it into a new dress.  Very pretty, but it can’t ever be worn like a traditional kimono again.  But now there’s another trend where the bride wears a hoopskirt with a white skirt, then you take the kimono and drape it on.  The back of the kimono covers the front of the dress, the long sleeves fall across the sides or the back, and you still wear an obi with it.  The result is pretty and the kimono itself doesn’t have to be altered at all.

And because you mentioned steampunk, I have to add in these two:

Personally I’m a big fan of Taisho Meisen kimono, which are what happen when the Japanese textile industry abruptly gets access to aniline dyes, new spinning and weaving technology, and the concept of Art Deco:

Vegan Doro Wat (Ethiopian "Chicken" Stew)

@pestisly

I always assume the train will be so boring and I bring seven things to do but then I'm entranced by the wonderful window the entire time

String of gold and lapis lazuli bead with pendant, city or Ur, Sumer, 2600-2450 BC

from The Penn Museum

Laura Wilder (American b.1959), Winter Woods IV, 2022, Woodblock print on paper

ID. a blocky woodcut showing bright golden light streaming through snow-covered trees. the art is printed in blues and oranges. End ID.

Kind of obsessed with this woman's freakishly modern jacket from 1904.

The complete lack of shoulder definition gives it the silhouette of an MA-1 bomber jacket, but bombers weren't even a thing yet. The Wright brothers barely achieved powered flight in 1903. The ribbing on the shoulder and the angular cutouts with the hexagonal mesh are so futuristic and cyberpunk, but even art deco wouldn't be a thing for another 15 years. The color is like a dusty NASA flight suit. All together it's giving lone spacefarer crash landing their tiny rustbucket ship on Mars.

Truly a visionary of her time.