Could I PLEASE stop seeing period dramas where women aren’t wearing chemises under their corsets
Also to add- corsets were not because of “patriarchical oppression”. In most cases it was how you held up and supported your boobs with the benefit of shaping your figure at the same time. Just like a bra today. I hate it when some actresses refuse to wear corsets for a role that ABSOLUTELY WOULD HAVE WORN ONE because they’re trying to express their feminism. Like, I get it, it’s 100% okay to express your feminism but for goodness sakes do some historical research about what it actually was before making assumptions
Also, also, please no more “I can’t get into my corset without help” because that’s nonsense. I’m sure there were a lot of rich ladies who were laced in every day but a lot of other women managed to put on corsets themselves just fine. There was a study done in the 1887 about how women laced their corsets and the majority of them didn’t lace it so tightly they couldn’t breathe. In fact most women laced it to a comfortable place, with a 3 to 4 inch gap at the back.
There are so many myths about corsets and I’m passionate about accurate depictions of historical clothing
you can say Emma Watson, it’s okay
I didn’t want to call her out specifically but yeah okay I was thinking of Emma Watson because that made me furious
Let us consider this: can we stop pretending corsets in modern films are about getting a “period-appropriate look,” because if we were going for period-appropriate looks there would also be armpit hair, bad teeth, and smallpox scars. Also if we’re sticking to period constraints Belle wouldn’t have been able to read and the furniture wouldn’t be sentient, so there goes the whole fucking film, aww bye.
Can we also stop pretending corsets were “necessary for supporting boobs,” because literally every other culture on Earth besides Europe’s figured out how to boobs without corsets.
Tightlacing in modern films isn’t about realism. None of these Disney remakes are documentaries trying to recreate the old times. They’re fantasy films about magic. Their ~look~ is about creating the fantasy. And in this case, that fantasy draws on a lot of recycling old-school European beauty norms like tightlacing, which keeps them fresh and aspirational today.
”Who said anything about tightlacing tho?”
Oh idk maybe LITERALLY THE LAST LIVE-ACTION REMAKE DISNEY DID right before Beauty and the Beast
where they did “period-appropriate” tightlacing for a ballgown that doesn’t match any actual period. It’s got an 1860′s skirt profile, princess seams that weren’t invented until the 1870s when that skirt shape was already out of fashion (thnx House of Worth), and rainbow chiffon and rhinestones straight out of the 1980s. GOOD THING WE’VE GOT THAT PERIOD TIGHTLACED DRESS SO WE CAN BE AN AUTHENTIC HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY ABOUT FAIRIES AND MAGIC PUMPKIN CARRIAGES
and yes, Lily James couldn’t fucking eat while wearing it. For, like, the 12-hour shooting days that you do for a film. Are you really gonna try and tell me that “anorexia is good for business” Hollywood wasn’t gonna try that shit with Beauty and the Beast. Have we even thought about what Emma Watson was asked to do, by a giant corporation that controls a huge slice of the world’s media, before bagging on her for saying no.
Are you really into costumes and like tightlacing? Great! Emma Watson clearly isn’t. If you really believe you should be able to wear that because you like it, you should also support people who choose not to wear it because they don’t like it. That’s what supporting choice means. It’s not Emma Watson’s job to make lifestyle choices that match other people’s personal hobbies.
kudos to Emma Watson for not putting up with Disney’s bullshit. She had the star power to say no and she fucking went for it. I mean, how the fuck are you supposed to be a public figure working with the UN on women’s rights and “let’s stop female genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle East” but you’re all aboard the “it’s painful body modification but it’s ok because it’s from Europe and it’s cute” tightlacing train. what the fuck. Get it Emma Watson
reblogging for the last comment because HECK YES.
also I just have to— “corsets were not because of “patriarchical oppression”. In most cases it
was how you held up and supported your boobs with the benefit of
shaping your figure at the same time.“
who do you think these women ‘shaped their figure’ FOR
fandom as a whole is migrating away from a mutual appreciation of a story and towards an endless cycle of nitpicking and discourse and frankly that’s just Exhausting
Its just an endless stream of “you’re doing it wrong”. You’re reading this wrong, you’re appreciating this character wrong, you’re appreciating this character too much, you’re not appreciating this character enough, its not enough that I don’t like this pairing but it’s wrong to like it, you’re enjoying this wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Somewhere along the way fanart become worth more than fanfic to fandom.
Artists have Patreon accounts where people pay real money to view their art early or to access special pictures like scraps or tutorials.
Whereas writers are expected to produce more and more, faster, for nothing in return. No one wants to see our “scraps” and writers who do provide Tips and Tricks often get crap for “policing” how people write.
And it falls into the prevailing notion that somehow writing is something easy, something anyone can do.
This isn’t an attack on fanartists. You deserve to receive some sort of compensation and accolades for your work. And so do fanauthors.
Writing fic is hard work. Yes, anyone can type out a story, same as anyone can pick up a pencil to draw, but what makes the difference, what makes a good piece is the experience and talent of an author. It’s all the stories no one saw, it’s all the writing books we’ve read, it’s the classes we have attended, all rolled into a package that works weeks, months, years to bring the fandom their fic. Yes we write for ourselves but we also write to contribute to fandom – just like artists do.
We’re just the same – artists and authors – and we deserve the same respect for our work.
Thank you so much, OP. And thank you to everyone who remembered us on Fic Writers Appreciation Day.
Let’s be clear, writing takes for-fucking-ever to do and it’s hard, lonely, strange, isolating, exhausting work. There is no art that is easy to make. NONE. All art is hard and deserves recognition if it has made you feel something or you enjoyed it.
Allll of this
As both an artist and writer, I have to say that I’ve been struggling and asked to write fanfic faster than I can produce, and I’ve been producing more art than fanfics because it is faster and easier to produce and more people come in. It drove me away from writing and honestly it does help when both sides are appreciated. As everyone else said, both take really long to create, and all should be deserved of recognition.
I can say writing is a lot more exhausting than drawing, but that’s my personal opinion.
^^^^^ this for days
I’m not saying artists have it easier, you guys legit blow my mind and I worship the ground you walk on But people pay for fan art while (most) people still don’t consider writing fan fiction to even be a skill. I’ve STOPPED telling people I write fan fiction because they just roll their eyes and ask if I write anything real.
Like, sorry if my 50k, heavily researched fan fiction with an original plot and excellent dialogue isn’t as “real” as the original six page story you wrote in tenth grade
A GODDAMN MEN. I’m so glad you wrote this OP. Something similar has been pinging around my brainspace for ages and ages and I couldn’t figure out how to say it. It’s like, here, take my soul and my heart and my ideas and my creativity and just *have it*, for nothing. Because I want to talk to you, because I want to connect with you, because we share the same fandom language. And somehow, in the last 3 years or so, Fan Authors have become the strange little hobbyists in the world of fandom, quality doesn’t matter, care doesn’t matter, research and talent and learning about writing doesn’t matter.
Which – if a writer writes a story and no one reads it, does it exist in the fandom? One wonders, and it makes it hard to continue screaming into the void if all you get back is the echo of your own voice, sometimes.
This is the greatest post ever. It is so true though- I’m a shitty artist but I write fanfic and pour my heart and soul into it. I also write original stories. Both are hard. Art is hard. All three involve talent, creativity, and a lot of goddamned work. And then you look comparatively at a beautiful piece of art and an equally beautiful piece of fanfic? The art almost always has more likes. It almost always has more comments. Let’s take fics on ao3, for example. The hit ratio to kudos- I’ve had fics with hundreds of hits, no comments, and two kudos. Like, I get if you hit something, read a bit, and decide it’s not for you. That happens with every fic, and it doesn’t mean it’s bad- people just have different tastes. Some people also hit something so they can mark it for later and haven’t read it yet. That’s cool too- thanks for considering my work interesting enough to want to get to at some point. But I KNOW that that wasn’t the case for all 298 of 300 people that read my fic and DID NOT EVEN LEAVE KUDOS!!! I’m not trying to sound vain here, but I KNOW that fic was good. I’ve been writing for years and have extensive training. Sure, there might be some typos, but that’s just because my brain snags on an idea at weird times and flows really quickly and I’m rushing to get all the ideas down. I will go back and edit at some point, but haven’t yet had the timing or motivation (also, I’m majoring in a second language, so some of the minor grammatical issues might be simply because my brain is kinda frazzled from switching back and forth constantly and studying literature and semantics in a language I wasn’t raised speaking). Anyway, I know that I deserve more than two kudos. Kudos is literally the BARE MINIMUM you can do for something that has provided you with at least some level of entertainment. And comments- you don’t have to write a book (although on the occasions I do receive such a comment, I’m literally on cloud nine for a long time and reread it every day and glow all over), but anything that has at least something nice (ie, constructive criticism is appreciated, but also say something you liked so there’s a balance) is amazing and we love it. I know some people don’t like to comment because they feel they don’t have anything profound to say and don’t wanna ‘annoy’ us with ‘redundant’ comments like “this is good” or “nice chapter!” But I promise you, we could never be annoyed by nice comments. Even something as small as a smiley face is like pure heroin (without the negative effects obvs). Since I’ve started posting my fics, I’ve made a point not only to leave kudos on a fic that I even marginally liked but also to comment, even if it is just with a smiley face and I can’t think of anything to say besides *heart eyes*, because they deserve that. PLEASE APPRECIATE ALL ARTISTS BECAUSE WE ALL WORK HARD AND ALL OUR WORK HAS VALUE!!!!
Death By Catchphrase 