Snowflake Challenge #5

[justanorthernlight]

Challenge #5

In your own space, tell us about 3 creative/fannish resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom or like many people at the moment, fannishly adrift right now) Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Rather than reccing Wookieepedia again, I am going to follow the footsteps of someone I saw last year using this prompt to promo resources for historical accuracy in historical fiction fandoms, however I am going to focus less on timelines and more on the realities of day-to-day living.

Day-to-day life was very different prior to the Industrial Revolution, and as much as I try to turn my nitpicking side off when I'm reading fic for historical stuff, it really throws me out of the narrative to see things like cooking stoves and kitchens counters (or screened-in porches and iced tea in tall glasses) in fic set in/around 1715.

So, here are some living history resources from Youtube to make your historical works (fanfic or original) feel more authentic! I'm afraid they're primarily Western/European sources, but since most of my personal fandoms are western in origin these are the resources I have on hand. (If you've got more diverse living history channels or websites, I would love to hear about them!)

• Townsends is a living history youtube channel focusing on life in the 18th century American colonial frontier. They have a ton of videos on historical cooking and recreating recipes from antique cookbooks, as well as some about building/crafting some of the essential things we take for granted in the modern era (building a log cabin, digging a well, crafting hinges, etc).


• Bernadette Banner is a youtuber who focuses on historical sewing techniques and garment recreation, often in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, but she does spend time on other eras. I also especially like this video she made on how the concept of "historical accuracy" is not completely applicable to fantasy media, but one can apply logic and practicality to the established worldbuilding to achieve something equivalent to "historical accuracy" in a fictional setting (it's a Game of Thrones case study).


• Morgan Donner is another youtuber who does a lot of historical sewing and garment recreation, although her focus tends to be more on the Medieval period. Rather than highlighting her sewing videos (which are excellent!) I wanted to focus on two of her videos on her experiments with recreating historical hairstyles: this one focuses on using Iron Age tools to recreate hairstyles from a ~800BCE gravesite, and this one is about Elizabethan hair taping and and similar hairstyles.

Comments

[obstinatecondolement]

I love Bernadette Banner and Morgan Donner's channels, but Townsends is new to me. Thanks for the rec!

[justanorthernlight]

No problem! Youtube has so many great living history channels!

[turps]

Like I said at the comm I really do like the theme you've used.

All these links look interesting and I intend to check them out as soon as I have time to do so.

[justanorthernlight]

I'm glad, I had a hard time thinking of fandom-specific resources or recs! Then I remembered that a lot of people don't know about living history/experimental archeology type stuff.

[muccamukk]

If I click on those, my entire youtube sidebar is going to turn into historical sewing people again, and I'll never get anything done :D

*clicks on the hair ones anyway*

[justanorthernlight]

Haha, I went down the historical sewing rabbit hole when Covid first hit and I was looking for hand-sewing tips for masks! It took months before my recommendations contained anything else :D

[mekare]

Love your theme of recs and I think I first heard of Bernadette in another round of snowflake. Time for some rewatching!

[justanorthernlight]

Thanks! She's really great.

[senmut]

Awesome.

[justanorthernlight]

Thanks!

[tsuki_no_bara]

i've watched i think two bernadette banner videos and she was just fabulous. i too am afraid to click on the hair videos in case youtube suddenly starts suggesting a million historical hair tutorials and i fall down the rabbit hole and no one ever sees me again.

...ok, that would not be a terrible way to go. thank you for all of these!

[justanorthernlight]

I love historical hairstyles and tutorials. One of my favorites (that I didn't link) is the Elling Woman bog mummy- I saw a print tutorial on Tumblr years ago and that actually started me on a journey of using hairsticks and the like for buns instead of elastics 🤣