Memewear

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Who's got some ideas for Memewear, In or Out of character? (ialdaloboth *genzundheit!*)


The Yellow Sign, obviously. Of course, since it is strictly self-centered (to laymen, it doesn't seem to represent anything but itself), the traditionally related question has to be asked through the same T-shirt medium.

Imagine crossing people in the street who wear a kind of range of
black-and-yellow clothes.

First, T-shirts bearing the Sign, be it a single large one or a barely noticeable speck that subtly attracts the eye.

Other shirt seen in the street, using same yellow colour on black background: "Have you seen the yellow sign ?" (perhaps with a miniature Sign as the point above the letter "i")

Yet another shirt with he same colours and fonts : "Yhtill ! Yhtill !"

If it is a successful enough meme, having it worn by some people in fashionable places should suffice. Some celeb picks it up for its mysterious appeal, and because it looks like an isolated trend that no "competitor" thought of. Replication-by-imitation process is launched.

<silly idea> In a different approach, it would be nice to find a way of replacing the Red Cross with the Yellow Sign, so as to get the benefit of "altruism piggybacking" all over the globe. (Sylvain Clément)


We have been talking about "memeware" in the sense of ordinary clothes with stuff written or drawn on it.

But perhaps we should remember that uninscribed clothing carries social messages and status messages implicit in its cut, design, and fitting.

Consider, for example, the social "message" projected by the universal adoption of the dress of late 19th century European males as the clothing of high status individuals everywhere and of every culture.

The european suit is a "meme", as surely as is the Bible or the Koran. It carries a message.

Now, what clothing style would project the Vibe, or tell watchers that its wearer was favoured by the Darks? I don't mean a t-shirt with something written on it: I mean a coherent, functional, ornamental, style of clothing that was consciously alien and functionally insurgent. (Andy Roberston)


I'd say something just this side of uncomfortable.

Black PVC and cenobite-like PVC gear, with lots of straps and buckles, showing off as little skin as possible outside of the face and hair. The neck would be hidden by a roll of rubber, with a triangualr tapering effect, so a lip would roll up under the chin and jaw, and it would come to a point just above the hairline.

That's the most outlandish case - so let's scale that back a bit for everyday wear:

Dark, sobre and tight-fitting work clothes with very shiny, strangely-shaped buttons - preferably silver-toned with intricate, looping patterns. Long sleeves with cuffs that come down to the knuckles. The same kind of 'turtleneck' that you'd get with a PVC job, but made from cloth. Jackets that come down past your beltline, so you can't see anyone's waist. No ties.
No overly-ornate earrings.

As for makeup - either both sexes wear it, or no one does.

You could make the case for both sexes shaving off their eyebrows, too, but I think that'd be pushing it. (ialdaloboth *genzundheit!*)


My vote is for both. I guess we are assuming that these folks are still mentally present enough to understand that there are people around them, and that they respond to the cultists' appearance. The cultists are also still "present" enough to actually *care*, if only in some small regard. I can only assume, however, from the phrase "consciously alien and functionally insurgent" that they oppose making their look "attractive" in any real sense. The way I see it, they wouldn't want to use makeup in the creepy/sexy vampire tradition of the common Goth-tard. This look, while still slightly off-putting to those who didn't live through (or are too old to remember) the Eighties, is largely a way to say, "hey, I'm creepily sexy,; I'm daring; be intrigued by me". It's not alien, nor particularly insurgent. I'm not sure it ever was.

Those who were farther "down the well" than the average sinister clubgoer, would use makeup to alter the parts of their face that most use to merely enhance. To attract is not the idea. To *repulse* is. Instead of makeup to make the eyes bigger, more alert, sharper, it would be used to make them duller, smaller, ~less~ likely to convey the "sparkle" of empathy. Lip gloss and lipstick, instead of enhancing the natural pout and fullness of the lips, should be used to flatten out and deaden the lips, to knock out the contrast between the flush of the lips and the flesh around it. Also, the horizontal line of the lip should be altered. Either use makeup to make the lips smaller in their diameter across the face, more pinched, or make them appear twisted into a lateral *slash*, an up/down diagonal, off-center. All contrast between eye/lip/hairline/cheek blush, and the rest of the face/head, should be eliminated.

The idea here is to use the cues that "lesser" primates do(to establish emotional contact, to get that good first impression across. But use them to ~erode~ that very impulse. To ramp up up the anomie. To make the meeting of the eyes, the movement of the lips, the dimpling of the cheeks, a repulsion. To sicken instead of attract. To make the "first impression" something to be dreaded.

Of course, when millions at once are doing it, it will be no less repulsive. Regular humans will still be looking for those primate cues of health, interest, and implied intelligence. The blush, the pout, the sparkle, et cetera. They'll find it less and less; but they'll become ~used~ to the implied normalcy of the repulsion.

The Chosen People of the Darks will seem less and less like people. "People"-ness, by implication, is devalued (duh).

You could make the case for both sexes shaving off their eyebrows, too, but I think that'd be pushing it.

Nonono, PUSH IT. Do.

I knew this "White Power" girl when I was in high school (Troy High was her brief two-week stop before her truancy became permanent), who naired her head and face, thus getting rid of all head hair and eyebrows.

And, more importantly, she ~clipped her eyelashes~ completely off. Pale skin, only highlighted by the raw patches irritated by the Nair. And her eyes, unframed by lashes, brows, or any darkening makeup, were actually, well, less *alive* looking. The ugly effect was helped along by the whites of her eyes getting raw and red, filled, I presume, with the dust and crap that the lashes couldn't catch.

Ohhhhh, man, you can't imagine how hard it was to view this young woman. Just a few changes, taking away framing devices and contrasts for the face and eyes. And it's like looking at some kind of homunculous. You look at this living, breathing person, and you don't want to think of them as a person. This was something, I found out later, she desired. She was, among other things, probably crazy.

Mind you, the effect was helped along by her probably being crazy. She had, even in her "I hate niggers" talk (that I briefly hung around to hear), a lack of affect that was really wierd and ugly. She just…wasn't…connecting to anything going on. She wasn't a zombie, or anything, but her lack of emotional response to anything was immediately noticeable. And fuckin' ~sickening~, frankly. More sick than her dumb hick nazi bullshit, or anything else she said.

So, attitude counts! None of these makeup and accessorizing tips for OUR GORGEOUS ENDTIMES FALL LINEUP will matter a bit, if our models are out there, y'know, being nice or something…they've got to cultivate that "wrong affect" so talked about in the Ice Cave'd articles on the Tcho-Tcho…

(WORK IT, BABY! C'mon, make Loooooooove to the camera!)

King In Yellow Cultists are a different thing. They do, for reasons all their own (or the Vibe's), want to attract, or to look sort of attractive, to make that initial positive connection. So, as memewear, it's entirely useful for them to go with the creepy-crawly-but attractive Cenobite-gear Mr. Edward mentioned. They generally skip over the middle steps I've outlined above,i.e., still interacting with people, but as an utter assault on their sensibilities. Well, what I mean is, they DO get to that point, but not by way of changing their "look". They jump right to the third stage; deciding it's time to start cutting their face off to get to the "real" face underneath, or tunneling a hole to His Promised Land through their own intestines. (J. Armstrong)

(followed up in Human-Mythos relationships)

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