I do appreciate what Cathy Hay has been doing of late. Her last video made me really emotional.
She has been trying to recreate the Peacock dress, designed by Worth and worn by Mary Curzon in 1903. It’s a 10 pound chiffon dress of woven silver and gold thread.
Frankly, the embroidery is far more beautiful than its design.
But she’s found it difficult to recreate, to say the least. The embroidery was done in colonised India, when The British Empire controlled and took credit for everything. And let me tell you, some of these Indian ateliers had a lot of people working on a single piece, because the designs are so intricate and elaborate.
And so, recently she’s been more outspoken of the fact that British colonisation really enables these wealthy western Europeans to wear gowns that almost look impossibly beautiful, but rightful credit was of course never given to the people who made it. Cathy started talking about this during the height of media coverage of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protest. She said she was reflecting on her position in the world and the lens through which she saw the Peacock dress.
So Cathy Hay has been researching it’s history. And she eventually found out the name of the man who owned the work shop that made it. Kishan Shand from Delhi. It was a firm owned by Manick Chand. And more importantly, she found a sketch of the men that worked there, around the period the embroidery probably would have been done. It was most likely those very same men.
And I just felt this lump in my throat. I always wonder about the craftsmen behind so much of history’s most beautiful art. They’re never named because the one who commissions the work, the patron, is usually given all the undue credit. We still don’t know the individual names, but we have a sketch of their faces.
why were the s1 sunny photoshoots so sexy. this isnt me saying that they’re hot (they are) but like its a show where in the sixth ever episode they found a dead guy who shit himself in their bar. and then the promo pics are the four of them making bedroom eyes at the camera
Just saw Destiel meta and I was like man it’s still out there. And like- people literally just forget Sam exists don’t they.
Like I have no explanation how you can come up with *those opinions* other than you are Sam-blind. Like Castiel is Dean’s only reason for keeping on going …in what world dude? When? What season? What episode? What Dean? Did you meet Sam yet? I have so many questions about how you can believe Dean’s only reason for living is Castiel- when Dean makes it so clear that he’s so inappropriately far up Sam’s ass he has the final say on how he wears his facial hair…
Like he is so close to Sam that he made you all deeply uncomfortable with the finale speech even though it was meant to be completely platonic.
Dean absolutely could and did live without Castiel. He was depressed about it because he did care about him but like- he didn’t go bromeo and Juliet on him even one time. He’s bummed when he loses people he cares about. John, Bobby, Benny, Cas. But he straight up loses his fucking mind over losing Sam. It’s obvious. Every time he’s destroyed, desperate to the point of insanity. It’s literally a major plot point for the ENTIRE run of the show. How did you miss this? How don’t you follow? What’s not clicking? I don’t get it!
Exactly. The relative comparison is why their insistence that D/C was somehow the greatest lurve story (n)ever told is so obviously bonkers.
We saw, over and over again what it actually looked like when Dean was completely devastated and couldn’t live without someone. We also saw what it looked like when Dean was sad someone died but then he moved on. The show was not remotely subtle about this - there was Dean’s reaction to losing Sam and then there was Dean’s reaction to losing anyone else.
They twist themselves in knots trying to meta a comparative reaction from Dean to Castiel dying into existence. Except if it really was the same or more intense, you wouldn’t have to ignore obvious storylines to dig twenty layers of supposedly extant subtext and parallels deep to find it, it’d be right fucking there … like it actually is with Sam. There’s little that demonstrates how much of a nothingburger D/C was in terms of the show more clearly.
Like, I could understand just not liking that and going off to write trope-y slashfic with generic placeholders called “Dean” and “Cas” instead. I don’t get convincing yourself that if you just write enough words on the Internet it will prove the show was actually something it obviously never was.
THIS. As both posts above stated, whenever Castiel died, Dean at best showed the same level of upset as when other close friends or family had died–he sheds a few tears, mourns for a short time, and then moves on. It can even be argued that Cas falls behind true family like John, Mary, Bobby, or even Baby in Dean’s priorities based on his level of reaction to their respective deaths. And he certainly never mourned over Cas’ body for days before selling his soul to bring Cas back, mourned for over a year and researched exhaustively to try to find a way to free Cas, killed himself to bargain with Billie to try to bring Cas back, or prepared to go on a suicidal mission to retrieve Cas’ body–those were solely how he responded to SAM dying.
This also applies to how differently Dean responded to when SAM was in trouble/danger vs. Castiel. Dean had absolutely no qualms abandoning Cas even in mortal danger in order to save SAM, such leaving Cas to face Raphael alone to get to SAM at the end of S4, leaving Cas in Purgatory in S8 and almost doing so again in S15 to return to SAM, letting Cas confront Metatron alone to save SAM at the end of S8, and of course kicking Cas out of the Bunker to make sure SAM continued to get the healing he needed in S9. Dean also never went out of his way to do anything to save Cas, whereas he essentially sold himself to the angels to protect SAM in S4, killed himself to bargain with Death to rescue SAM from the Cage in S6, willingly sacrificed Cas’ sanity to save SAM’s in S7, was willing to let all the demons remain free to save SAM in S8, bargained with Billie again and was willing to die to be briefly reunited with SAM in S12, and so on.
One of these relationships is clearly not like the other in canon, and no amount of manipulated GIFs, convoluted meta, and OOC fanfic is going to change that. Anyone trying to insist that Dean’s friendship with Castiel is superior (i.e. deeper, more intense, more meaningful) to his brotherly bond with SAM is simply deluding themselves.
I’m just gonna add CANON gifs to back all that up
Dean’s reaction to Castiel dying
And Dean goes living with LISA
And then when Dean finds Cass again (who is married to a woman btw) it’s only to cure Sam & ditch loony Cass with Meg
Dean’s Reaction to Sam dying
And then Dean ditches Lisa (who knows she can’t compete with Sam)
