FWIW, "mauve" was one of the coal-tar dyes developed in the mid-19th century that made eye-wateringly bright clothing fashionable for a few decades.

It was an eye-popping magenta purple

HOWEVER, like most aniline dyes, it faded badly, to a washed-out blue-grey ...

...which was the color ignorant youngsters in the 1920s associated with “mauve”.

(This dress is labeled "mauve" as it is the color the above becomes after fading).

They colored their vision of the past with washed-out pastels that were NOTHING like the eye-popping electric shades the mid-Victorians loved. This 1926 fashion history book by Paul di Giafferi paints a hugely distorted, I would say dishonest picture of the past.

Ever since then this faded bluish lavender and not the original electric eye-watering hot pink-purple is the color associated with the word “mauve”.

Oh! Just like the Victorians did to the Gothic, where actual Gothic cathedrals which had been built to be bright and full of light were portrayed as dark and gloomy places, because that's what happens after a cathedral is filled with candles for several hundred years.

[image description: a photo of a brown dachsund with a little chain mail cape and a wagging tail. /end id]

The incidence of the publishing of alchemical texts almost perfectly correlates with precious metal shortages in Europe lol.

"Aw fuck the plague kneecapped our workforce and the Spanish aren't flooding the market with cheap silver anymore. Listen wizard, I'll give you a lab but if you don't deliver I'm hanging you from a gold-plated gallows."

Okay I see where you're coming from but Alchemists were often just straight up frauds. Like, many of them actually did advance proto-chemistry/material science but many of them were straight up lying or over-promising to their patrons. Like they weren't persecuted many of them straight up had legal contracts with their patron that explicitly stipulated "If I don't deliver on my promises, the prince is legally allowed to hang me from a gold-plated gallows."

Like, the idea of the late-medieval-slchemist-as-mystic is largely an ahistorical misconception from victorian writers looking back on the late medieval era and assigning greater spiritual import to Alchemical practices than was actually present.

They were wonderful little freaks, don't get me wrong, but in reality, most of them weren't mystics, they were *spits* entrepreneurs.

Oh absolutely! None of them actually managed to transmute base metals into gold because that's pretty difficult without a particle accelerator, BUT many of them did genuinely develop useful advances in material science. They developed methods of testing the purity of metals, chemical methods of refining ore, advances in electroplating, distillation, glassblowing, perfuming, and especially heating.

A good way to get hired as an alchemist was to say "hey I can't transmute gold, but I CAN test if the gold you're getting from other alchemists is REALLY gold."

NO ITS EVEN FUNNIER Augustus II forced him to live in a lab/dungeon as an assistant to alchemist Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, which Bottger HATED. Like there is nothing that historical alchemists hate more than Other Alchemists Who Know More Than Them. It's how you would torture an alchemist.

And then they discovered hard-paste porcelain together.

it’s crazy how much diversity there can be in one species…these are all pictures of the same bird species (red-tailed hawk)

what they all have in common:

The look of annoyance and utter disdain at the human exposing their wing pit.

Yes.

UNHAND ME FEATHERLESS BIPED

XIX century Library at Marienburg Castle, Germany

I saw a post about tumblr user ages...

Reblogs are welcomed for that sweet, sweet increased data pool (aka getting more than 20 responses 😅)

The only retail job I miss is being the cashier at a local Hardware Store in a small town surrounded by other small towns, because I was essentially a high fantasy GuildMaster.

I worked there three summers in a row, and every laborer from every nearby town would come there for whatever supplies they needed, and man could they gossip like there was an Olympic medal for it.

At 8 AM, every morning, every plumber, roofer, electrician, and landscaper in the county was at the door waiting for me to unlock it, and they’d come back throughout the day.

I knew every tradesman in a 30 miles radius, and I knew too much about everyone in town because of, like I said, the tradesman gossip. It’s shocking that people basically tune out an entire person in their living room and say whatever they want, because they don’t see the guy fixing their light fixture as real somehow.

Then your average citizens, the townsfolk, would come in to ask for labor recommendations. The cashier at the local hardware store is a god among yelp reviews.

A woman needs her roof repaired. A man wants central air installed in his 100 year old house. Someone needs to break into a safe they inherited without the combination.

And I would make recommendations. I’d take down names and information so when a plumber I liked walked in an hour later, I could say, “come here, I have a job for you” like I needed them to clear a village of Redcaps.

There is no difference between your local mom-and-pop hardware employee and Greed Karga sending the Mandalorian on bounty hunting jobs.

If Geralt of Rivia walked in, I could have found him something to do.

I believe all plumbers dual-wield drain snakes and arcane magic, because you’d be surprised how often Liches come up in septic tank repairs.

You can belong to a monster hunters’ guild and a welders’ union, if you have the time. Always good to diversify your portfolio.

method actor this method actor that. toshiro mifune played a guy getting shot at by arrows by getting shot at by arrows

and yeah i believe it. ^ this is the face of a guy getting shot at by arrows

I... I just had to

You did god’s work.

idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com

this post went from 600 to 2400 notes in the time it took me to write 3 emails. i’m already terrified for what’s going to happen in there

k but also, as an addendum, the reason we study literary analysis is because everything an author writes has meaning, whether it was intentional or not, and their biases and agendas are often reflected in their choice of language and literary devices and so forth! and that ties directly into being able to identify, for example, the racist and antisemitic dogwhistles often employed by the right wing, or the subconscious word choices that can unintentionally illustrate someone’s bias or blind spot. LANGUAGE HAS WEIGHT AND MEANING! the way we communicate is a reflection of our inner selves, and that’s true regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel or a blog post or a tweet. instead of taking a piece of writing at face value and stopping there, assuming that there is no deeper meaning or thought behind the words on the page, ask yourself these two questions instead:

1. what is the author trying to say? 2. what does the author maybe not realize they’re saying?

because the most interesting reading of any piece of literature, imho, usually occupies the space in between those questions.

Also, sometimes it has hidden meaning relating to how art was funded.  For example, Dickens never met an adjective he didn’t like because he was paid by the word.  Dumas included long and pointless dialogue because he was paid by the line.  Even stuff that was purposely included for dumbass reasons can teach us about the world the author lived in.

Imperial passport of Kublai Khan “I am the emissary of the Khan. If you defy me, you die.” 1240 A.D. [886x960]

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared

This. Writing is not like dinner. It can be consumed many times

Ramona Wultschner on Instagram

still thinking about this scene and these tags by @fuckyeahisawthat

I think it’s funny how Mormon God was like “look polygamy is super important and I am telling you my followers to practice it even in the face of persecution” and then 40 years later Congress said Utah wouldn’t be given statehood as long as the LDS practiced polygamy and Mormon God was like “Ok tell everyone I changed my mind”

I just really like the idea that Mormon God like, basically caved into pressure from the federal government