fanfic forensics

clothes are as loaded with meaning as language. Visual semantics matter too.

In Tudor homes, where bedrooms were often pathways to other rooms or shared by several people, where there was no heating except open fires and fuel was scarce, well-to-do people usually dressed for bed in a nightgown, a nightcap and stockings. Even with a fire burning in  the hearth, glass or horn in the windows, and heavy bed-curtains, Tudor bedrooms could be chilly places. The modern viewer doesn’t take all this into account and expects to see near-total nudity in sex scenes.

Calling this historical drama, its clothes historical costumes, is like calling comics made by non-Japanese people in their own countries ‘manga’.

A friend recently commented that she sometimes misses the days when fandom seemed like this shiny, egalitarian place where issues surrounding race (and gender, to a lesser extent) just didn't exist and she didn't realize it was an illusion courtesy of her own privilege, and it struck me how telling a comment that was: For a whole lot of people, the anger that their fandoms are being "polluted" or "ruined" by this kind of discussion stems from a deep-seated conviction that these problems didn't exist in fandom before some troublemakers started talking about them, and they view the people talking about them as the instigators of the problems rather the people who have been hurt by them or seen others hurt by them speaking up to say, "This is wrong, and it's something fandom collectively needs to work on."