The Sleeping Giant

He's mocking me. I am full-speed sprinting for my life AND GORE'S FUCKING BARELY JOGGING.

I HATE HIM

trying to find good lore friendly custom clothing for skyrim

I know this is a goof, but I've been hoarding armor mods for years. So if you want some suggestions:

not convinced any of the skyrim designers quite know how sewing works. well at least they can draw meat

no bc your right and you should say it! historical and historically inspired sewing is my special interest and the absolute ?? ? that is skyrim clothing is so impractical and illogical

I’m so glad someone agrees with me. it’s really a shame because there are so many creative things they could have done by pulling inspiration from real life if they’d actually bothered to properly research the cultures their world is based on instead of being like ah yes medieval people ive heard of them

I'm not versed in the art of sewing please please please enlighten me as to what is so wrong about it

So much. There is so, so much wrong like. It would need a whole essay.

OH BOY! long time friends and followers know I will talk about this in detail and at length to anyone who will listen. I don’t have an essay unfortunately but several people asked about this so maybe I will peak your interest to do more research into historical fashion and sewing.

from a technical standpoint the biggest thing I notice is the fuckoff huge seams on nearly all of the common clothing.

if someone more knowledgeable than me knows what they were trying to accomplish here please tell me because I genuinely see no reason for what sometimes almost looks like lacing to be there except to make farmers look more Rugged™️. on clothing more like the one on the right, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe it’s supposed to be some kind of whipstitched seam felling (felling is a technique that involves enclosing the edges of the seam allowance inside the garment to prevent it from fraying and reinforce the seams. for something like this, historically speaking, you’d probably see a line of tiny horizontal stitches or maybe running stitches on the outside of the garment beside the construction seam. the former is much stronger). the alternative is that the construction seams are being pulled apart because they’re GIANT AND SLOPPY and also not felled (big problem because linen frays like crazy, and that’s likely what at least the chemises are made of).

also, no one in skyrim knows how to spin thread fine enough to sew with apparently. I guess it could be some kind of decorative embroidery, but…. be fr.

and now, some excerpts from a series of discord discussions about the clothing design in skyrim, because it’s easier than typing it all out again

^ I’ll spare you the rant I went on about how underdressed people are (especially the women but I get this is potentially controversial so I’ll come off it for now) but tldr: realistically we should be seeing a lot more layering (why does no one have hose or at least socks?) and possibly more garments made from wool. there are goats I guess, but what about mammoth wool clothing? could be fun to explore!

I’m sure a lot of people WOULD be wearing undyed clothing or muted colours like this. you do see some slightly brighter colours in the merchant and noble clothing, which is cool. but there were many brightly coloured natural dyes available even to lower class people in the middle ages, and fact that it’s a fantasy world gives you a lot more room to explore fun new dye colours. you’re telling me they have flowers that make your skin fire retardant but not dyes that’d make a pre-synthetics cloth merchant pee his pants?

I know this one is going to make some people mad at me. it’s ok to like corsets and want to see them in fantasy worlds. you can do whatever you want, I can’t stop you. but there are soooo many other cool things that existed over the course of history that also deserve your attention!! it’s not necessarily a bad thing that the designers pulled inspiration from a lot of different time periods, but in this scenario to just slap 18th century-ish corsets over top of dresses felt so careless. I say all this not because I believe all fictional clothing should conform to one “historically accurate” standard, but because there is so much more out there to explore and remix than what comes out of hollywood.

dont even get me started on the tavern clothes.

if you’re interested in learning about historical fashion, I highly recommend looking for sources in art from that time period as well as extant garments + reproductions in museum collections! there are also many educational youtube channels that explore historical lifestyles: bernadette banner, the welsh viking, townsends, vincent briggs, and morgan donner are a few I’m a fan of.

feel free to reblog for discussion purposes, but please don’t share as a reference—I couldn’t bear the emotional burden. I’m NOT an expert. just some guy who’s really passionate about costume. please correct me if you know something I do not, I really want to believe bethesda knew what they were doing :,]

ive said this before but the reason skyrim clothes are like this is to make them look less civilized and more "barbaric". "vikings are all hulking, brutish raiders who are barbaric and uncivilized and only care about war" is the pop culture belief which makes people draw upon racial stereotypes of BIPOC rather than actual historical clothing of the viking age. because that pop culture idea of heavily painted, bone wearing, badly made leather clothes, and feathers in hair shit is what people associate with scary barbaric "other" cultures (which is. you guessed it racism)

even when they do have stuff from actual historical norse clothing its done wrong like

balgruuf what are you doing. those broaches and the apron dress are for women. i dont think their goal was for cross dressing/nonbinary jarls though but it's always in the back of my mind whenever alt right weirdos are talking about how "manly" the men of skyrim are.

my skyrim OCs and his future husband Vilkas🤓

There's a mod that lets you climb in Skyrim now?!

WHAT

Fuck it, Skyrim dinner

This game lets you eat the most ridiculous things and it is glorious.

TESFest Day 3 - Teeth

As a young child, his baby teeth were placed along the family shrine. Dunmeri tradition dictated that this ceremony would bring him closer to his ancestors.

Today, he had them in a jar.

Wyndrelis clutched the glass in his palm, turning it over. The College of Whispers had been the only place that would accept him. The Synod knew of the accident. Conjuration was involved. It was no wonder, then, that their rejection letters were so biting.

He watched the pearl-bright shards as he moved his wrist, hearing them clink against the insides of the container. His grey thumb grazed the smooth surface. His dorm - no larger than a closet - swallowed him in the dark. The sweet song of sleep had eluded him again, passing it's voice away from his ears to the ones of those who slept in the other rooms, down the hall, lulled to depths of dreams. It did not reach him here, the night racing in long silver streams outside the cynosure.

Wyndrelis had been on thin ice since the moment he was born. Among the Dunmer, his family were strangers, unable to use magic. A curse had been placed generations back, tying knots and subduing the magicka that should flow in their veins. A Telvanni had placed it, he'd heard, though the legitimacy of that claim was debated.

i can‘t be the only one who hates the unofficial skyrim patch. it‘s so annoying how they keep „fixing“ things that may not even be bugs! like for example, they decided that the way narfi was talking was a „bug“ and not an artistic choice. well joke‘s on them, because trying to „fix“ that broke everything else, so they had to reverse it

anyway, i only keep it around because one of my favourite mods (i‘m glad you‘re here) depends on it

You defintely aren't the only one!

You might like Purist's Vanilla Patch and Vanilla Writing Plus Purity Patch ('Pure' referring to pure Vanilla lore, aka as the devs intended, not Arthmoor.)

These are the biggest two still, I think: there are likely more but modders tend to be vague with the names because Arthmoor has a history of being an ass about that sort of thing (and in general.)

Also, the user Deejmaster333 has been releasing a series of mods that change some of the really nonsensical changes made by USSEP (and general little fixes as well)

-> after a spar

"You, my friend, have a halo."

"And you have a concussion," replied the disgruntled voice of reason.

you need to check out this amazing follower mod: his name is gore and he will respect your gender identity (you can tell him you‘re nonbinary!)

of course some people made stupid comments about that, so the mod author did this:

gore can now also be trans!

(he also has interactions with auri and remiel and he is constantly getting more and more comments)