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angelofdumpsterfires · 3 months ago

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BILL'S CONTRACT FINE PRINT DECIPHERED

I'm sure someone has beat me to this, but because I decided to decipher/translate all 1000ish words of the fine print on this here totally normal contract (by hand)

Bold code is theraprism substitution cipher, the rest is the author's substitution cipher, i've reformatted the text to be more readable but i've also made a version with the more accurate, original line formatting here

YOU ARE NOW TWENTY ONE GRAMS LIGHTER

THIS CONTRACT IS LEGAL AND BINDING, WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO USE YOUR LIKENESS, FACE, VOICE AND SMALL TOWN PLUCK IN WHATEVER NEFARIOUS MANNER IS DEEMED NECESSARY.

SANS SOUL YOUR SOULMATE WILL NOT RECOGNIZE YOU AND WILL WALK RIGHT PAST YOU ON A COLD AUTUMN DAY, NEVER MAKING EYE CONTACT, NOT EVEN PROCESSING THAT YOU HAVE EYES AT ALL. NO AMOUNT INTERACTION WILL MOVE THEM TO A PLACE WHERE THEY CAN REMEMBER - IN FEELING THE THOUSANDS OF LIFETIMES YOU HAVE ALREADY SPENT TOGETHER, EACH TIME CHOOSING WHATEVER FORM WOULD KEEP YOU CLOSEST LIKE OTTERS HOLDING HANDS IN A TUMULTUOUS RIVER. YOU WERE BIRDS, YOU WERE TREES WITH ROOTS ENTWINED, DRINKING IN THE SUNLIGHT TOGETHER. WHEREVER WE GO NEXT, WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE, I WILL ALWAYS BE RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. -

THATS DONE BUDDY, CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE CHOSEN BILL INSTEAD.

MCDONALDS RESERVES THE RIGHT TO PUT A GIANT YELLOW M ON YOUR TORSO AND FOREHEAD AND SEND YOU WALKING THROUGH A CROWDED TIMES SQUARE WHILE YOU SCREAM “THE FRIES, THE FRIES, THEY DON'T DEGRADE IN NATURE… ITS AN IMMORTAL FOOD… THEY WILL BE IN THE LANDFILLS LONG PAST OUR DEATHS.”

GOOD GOD, THE THINGS S I’VE SEEN, ME. WHO AM I? OH BILL'S PREVIOUS LAWYER, HE PUT MY SOUL INTO A QUILL PEN SO I CAN WRITE HIS LEGAL DOCUMENTS UNTIL THE SUN SNUFFS OUT LIKE A CANDLE IN THIS SICK UNIVERSE. I USED TO BE SO HOT. I WAS SO FINE. NOW I'M FINE PRINT.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, BILL RESERVES THE RIGHT TO PUT YOUR SOUL INTO AN INANIMATE OBJECT, A STRANGE CREATURE, A CONCEPT, A SENTENCE, A TASTEFUL BUT RUSTIC MASON JAR WITH WILDFLOWERS IN IT.

IF AT ANY POINT YOU WISH TO HAVE VISITATION RIGHTS WITH YOUR SOUL YOU WILL BE SWIFTLY DENIED UNLESS YOU HAD A COOL DAY PLANNED FOR THE BOTH OF YOU, THEN BILL MIGHT COME ALONG.

BY SIGNING THIS DOCUMENT YOU FORFEIT ANY RIGHTS TO EATING SOUL FOOD, IT WILL TURN TO ASH IN YOUR MOUTH, A FITTING PUNISHMENT FOR A FOOL WHO SQUANDERED THE ONLY TRUE GIFT LIFE OWES YOU.

BILL RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DRESS YOUR SOUL HOWEVER HE DEEMS NECESSARY, ESPECIALLY IF YOUR SOUL WAS A NERD BEFORE ACQUISITION, SOUL MAKEOVERRR!

YOUR SOUL MAY BECOME FRACTURED AND PLACED INTO DIFFERENT OBJECTS. THIS HAS NO PURPOSE AND WILL NOT RESURRECT YOU WHEN YOU DIE.

SIGNEE HAS FORFEITED ALL RIGHTS OF ANY AFTERLIFE INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: HEAVEN, HELL, PURGATORY, BIG CORNER, FLOW STATE, THE DREAM HOUSE, THE REINCARNATION PROCESSING CENTER, AXOLOTL'S TANK AND CONSEQUENCES HOLE.

SIGNEE CAN NO LONGER BOARD THE SOUL TRAIN AND IS ADVISED TO DISCARD ALL BELLBOTTOMS.

SIGNEE CAN NO LONGER HAVE A PUPPY AS A BEST FRIEND, THEY CAN SENSE WHAT IS GONE. CATS ARE INDIFFERENT.

SIGNEE MAY EXPERIENCE OCCASIONAL DEMON POSSESSION FROM HORCULUS THE RED, PLABOS THE MERCILESS, MORBUS SON OF MORTEM, PLAGA THE OOZING AND OTHER SUCH COMMON DEMONS ROAMING EARTH SEARCHING FOR WEAKENED/EMPTY VESSELS.

TIPS FOR RIPPING YOUR SOUL OUT: WATCHING YOUTUBE COMMENTARY CHANNELS, ATTENDING AN EXTENDED FAMILY EVENT WITH AN OPEN BAR, USING GENERATIVE AI AND ASSERTING THAT YOU ARE CREATIVE, TURNING A BLIND EYE TO HUMAN SUFFERING, AMASSING MORE WEALTH THAN NEEDED, PURCHASING A BLUE CHECKMARK.

#gravity falls #this is not a website dot com #thisisnotawebsitedotcom #bill cipher #the book of bill #cryptography #i like how it just turns into alex ranting near the end brennan lee mulligan style #also “i was fine. now i'm fine print.” took me out #also 21 grams experiment mentioned??#lmk if theres any mistakes the lines bled together when reading a lot

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skrunksthatwunk · 3 months ago

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hitting this article with a rolled up newspaper. bad. stop it

sigh. exhaustive argument that none of these shows grouped together have the same art style below, complete with images and whatever

oh also im not the type to comment on articles so idk the etiquette but don't like. go over there and say "ur list sucks >:P" that's just gonna bring more traffic to it. i linked it so people could ratio me if need be not so that you guys could dunk on this random listicle writer. it's pointless and kind of cruel. just so we're clear on that

edit: the quote above uses "time period" instead of "era". i quote it as saying "era" a lot. i'm not fixing that

note: here i'm assuming "art style" refers to, generally: character designs (facial and body proportions, how things like hair is dealt with, etc), lighting, color (palette, saturation, value), line weight, etc [and mostly excluding things like shot composition, direction, etc because while those probably count my personal experience with these shows is mostly limited, and because most people focus on the previous things i've listed in their discussions of art styles. the analysis within the article is incredibly shallow, and if they think samurai champloo's art style is "rehashed and reused", i don't think they're like. super deep in the art analysis sauce. anyway]

code geass vs death note. what are you saying. what are you talking about

code geass' approach to color is more vibrant, and dn's is more washed out. dn takes a more realistic approach to faces and bodies, both in proportion and in shape (namely how curved their features are (as opposed to cg's far more exaggerated sharp faces, large eyes, and lanky bodies. note how lelouch's lips barely jut out in profile, for instance)). i shouldn't have to explain this they're not even close

that's the most extreme example, but samurai champloo and cowboy bebop aren't That similar either

it's hard for me to speak on bebop for the most part because i've never seen it (vs my ~8 eps of samurai champloo knowledge), but from what i have seen, bebop often has a sort of delicate intricacy to a lot of its linework (especially its backgrounds) that champloo tends to sacrifice in favor of bolder lines and higher contrast. it was hard to find great examples, but the silhouettes champloo's characters cut are often sort of.. choppy and wild, and usually lanky and stretched-out, while bebop's are more realistic (focus on the shoulders in the last image set, for instance). there's overlap, sure, but there are clear and intentional differences in the designs, to say nothing of champloo's higher saturation and the natural differences between hand-drawn and digitally-drawn animation

(and if "art style" is referring to the direction rather than just character design, lighting, color, etc, it's because these two have the same director, which hardly creates an "era". that's like comparing two miyazaki films from the 90s and saying "this is what 90s anime movies looked like", it's nonsense. also, i feel like lumping these two together because they look a little similar is unfair because they're pretty unique from their contemporaries in their own right. they may resemble each other a bit, but how much do they resemble other late 90s early 00s sci-fi/historical anime? does samurai champloo look like outlaw star to you? or trigun? or evangelion? does cowboy bebop look like ninja scroll? or samurai 7? or sword of the stranger? etc etc etc?? if we're claiming that cowboy bebop and samurai champloo share an "era", then what of their contemporaries, and what about differences across bebop and champloo's very different genres? more on this point later)

even fruits basket and ouran, the ones i initially felt were most similar, have clear distinctions

ouran's got a distinct abundance of pastels in its color palette, tending towards pinks, blues, yellows, oranges, etc. its use of black and brown is very limited. fb's palette is a bit more relaxed, and while its colors are often pale, i wouldn't call them pastel (they also skew more towards natural, earthy tones). fb's characters have noticably.. flatter skulls? in some shots, and their heads are so squat that they can seem consumed by their eyes. anyway this is a trait ouran does not quite share, for a number of small reasons, like how their cheeks bow out, greater emphasis on noses and mouths, and its use of highly variable line weight (vs fb's very stable line weight). hair is more voluminous and multilayered in ouran, and features like lips and noses (esp noses) are fuller, more three dimensional (in general, ouran's approach to shading hair and faces makes the characters feel rounder). the sharp edges and bell-sleeves of ouran's uniform blazers are actually far more reminiscent of the designs in code geass than fruits basket, imo. (actually.. i'm not sure how to express this but a lot of the poses in ouran resemble code geass poses, in their locked-joint arms-stretched kinda way). ouran forgoes hair-shine, while fruit's basket adds them in either jagged points (see most of the images i included) or a sort of triangle wrapping around the head (not pictured here, just trust me)

(note: i'm assuming they are referring to the 2001 anime adaptation of fruits basket rather than the 2019 one, because not only does the 2019 adaptation resemble ohshc even less, but because they are closer in time period, and the grouping is supposedly based on era).

my point is none of these shows look rehashed from one another. there's sometimes overlap, but each has a unique aesthetic based in many small choices made in their design.

now let's look at their use of "eras" a little more. this is the timeline of air dates for the first episodes of the six shows mentioned (for their original japanese runs, obviously):

cowboy bebop, april 1998

fruits basket, july 2001

samurai champloo, may 2004

ouran high school host club, april 2006

code geass, october 2006

death note, october 2006

code geass and death note being paired by era is, at least, accurate. same month, same year. it's about as close as one can get. however, the other two groups are far more removed from each other. fruits basket and ouran have five years between them, and bebop and champloo have six. this wouldn't be such an issue if there weren't other anime within this list that came between them. if bebop and champloo are in the same era, why is fruits basket grouped differently? ouran came out in 2006 just like code geass and death note, so why is it grouped with something that came out five years prior instead of them?

i think it's fair to say that eras are not purely chronological, that there's overlap between them. one doesn't begin as soon as (and not a moment before) its singular predecessor ends. but era feels like an incomplete distinction here. this list alone shows quite a lot of variety for what someone can mean when they say something "looks like 2000s anime". most anime fans have a picture in their head of that, and, to be so honest, i don't think samurai champloo is it. using only time as a distinction rather than movement, genre, etc is simply not enough. the fact that 5/6 of these shows occur within 2001-2006, and yet they're set apart into three different eras, and each pair (in ways i'm sure the author of this piece would admit) does not resemble the other, is proof enough that 2001-2006 did not have one repetitive art style, at least not in a way these anime exemplify. that's to say nothing of whether or not the anime within the era-pairs look the same, which we've established i don't. but since they don't actually tell us what their eras are, we can only speculate. personally, i speculate that they didn't think about it too hard at all, or even look up the release dates, going off vibes instead, if that.

when this person is talking about "eras", i think "eras within certain styles or genres" is more accurate, but even with these in mind, matching shows up like this makes a lot less sense than i think they realize. death note and code geass are sometimes lumped together because they're both mind-gamey thrillers with megalomaniacal protagonists with a single unique power that they use to try and fix/control the world, not because of their art styles. trying to say they look the same just because they share plot elements and came out around the same time is just... really weird. fruits basket and ouran both fall into early 2000s shojo, which is part of why the comparison fits more. target demographics and what magazines cater to those demographics (and thus the aesthetics of those magazines, which you have to fit into enough to get your manga published, and which also just influence what you want, what readers want, etc through exposure) (<- oversimplifying) are an actual valid point of comparison, at least more so than "idk 2006 lol". even if the result is more like "romcom for girls, 2006"

it doesn't help that many of the choices they made for unique art styles don't feel particularly "unique" to me.

choices like mononoke and land of the lustrous i get. and i'm not saying any of the examples i've just pulled or in the article are bad art styles, or that they don't bring anything unique to the table. i'm sure many of them are beautiful, and help elevate the tones of the stories, and all that jazz, whatever. but if the name of the game is "unique", then i don't think these cut it from what i can see. it doesn't help that most of the analysis comes down to "it looks really really cool" or "you don't normally see this art style with this genre/tone" (which is not the same thing as being broadly unique, imo)

it could be that we have different impressions of what "art style" means. it could lie somewhere in the bits of art style that i cut out, like shot composition and direction, etc. and some of it is probably a difference in what constitutes uniqueness, both between our differing experiences with media and personal taste/philosophy. but i don't think i'm wrong here when i say that the assertion that samurai champloo is era-typical in a way that beyond the boundary (2013) isn't is just fucking wrong.

look i know that bit that i screenshotted that started all this was a filler paragraph. i know it was the mandatory setup for the listicle you scroll to immediately, the parts you're supposed to ignore. i usually ignore articles like this completely because they're kinda bullshit. but i think this hunt for what looks the most unique is a flawed and confused one, at least to some extent. especially when all of the justifications are like "it supports the vibe well", which is something that all art styles are supposed to do, no matter how "unique" they are or are not, and i think that when people discuss things like art styles and anime and what looks generic and what looks unique, lumping things together too much often removes the nuances that really do influence people. i'm an artist. it's gonna sound dumb, but the way things look matters to me, even if it's stuff like how shirtsleeves or noses are drawn. to ignore all these little differences that make each piece unique is to blend so many singular, unique things into this easy-to-categorize mush that just... does a disservice to the choices every artist makes, i think. even if it is a pretty mild disservice. again, i cannot stress enough that this article is not important, and that this post responding to it is also not important.

look, what i'm trying to say is stop and smell the roses. notice the differences in the art you consume and think about it. looking for something that's so different it jerks your brain around is cool and good and fine and normal, but to disregard things as "basically the same as xyz" is reductive and icky and i don't like it. if you want something unique idk go watch kaiba (2006) have fun it's really good. i'm going to bed

nvm miscellaneous gripes section + i go to bed at like 5am lol i LIED:

the only thing said about beyond the boundary's art style is "it's hard not to fall in love with the art style", and the rest of the comments are other elements. that's too vague! i'm docking points!!

a lot of this seems based in the color palette now that i'm rereading it. not that my analysis doesn't also involve that, and not that that's invalid, but it makes me think there uh. might not have been Too too much thought beyond that. (example: "Though the dark and cool colors provide a sense of dullness, these colors cater to the tone of the story, which is dark and representative of its heavy content." like. that's not. unique. that's not unique to solo leveling y'know to have a dark story be awash in dark and cool colors that's pretty normal actually. maybe how they do it is unique, but we'll never know bc i haven't seen solo leveling and the author didn't care to elaborate :/ oh well)

this one's petty but i actually think ohshc's art style is pretty unique. maybe it's just because i've seen it several times and certain details like how the bottom-lip-to-chin shadow is done have caught my attention but like. pouting crossing my arms huffing >:( i think it's unique wth...

demon slayer's an alright choice i agree. idk i barely watched it a few years ago and it still wrenched my art style in a new direction. i dunno anything that looks quite like it. i'm not mad about all these choices per se it's just hard to whittle something like uniqueness down to a top ten list, i guess. and to say samurai champloo's generic while violet evergarden is the 5th most unique anime you've ever seen is like. weird. you're setting yourself up for people to go ehhhh... idk...... if you're not picking stuff that's like. Clearly Out There (i.e. mononoke)

"It’s no surprise that Demon Slayer is an anime with some of the best art styles." i might be fighting something that was written by ai now that i think about it...

oh god this was totally written by ai. or it went very unedited. man i spent like 2 hours on this (<- LOSER LOSER). they can't decide what the plural of anime is

they insist that chainsaw man's art style is weird enough to maybe put people off, and the only reason i can think that is is bc it's cg. but don't do the same for land of the lustrous, which is also and much more obviously cg. idk

they phoned it in but didn't even include that ping pong anime smhing my head. y'know the one everyone includes. which means whoever wrote this actually did stick to personal choices over crowd-pleasers, or chatgpt goofed or whatever. idc. guys they didn't even put flcl (<- but they put gurren lagann? as a gurren lagann fan im confused) oh my godd

ik i said this before but im saying it again: a lot of their pros and cons come down to whether or not an art style is typical for that kind of story, so like whether something gritty in tone has a more realistic art style or whether it has something visually cutesy instead. art style is more than just those things, but even that analysis is like. pretty much as bare-bones as what i just said. yucky

oh also part of my issue with this (didn't phrase it right sorry) is like. "unique" is a broad term. a really broad term. it can mean anything. there is no top 10 anime with unique art styles article that would escape that problem, and my analysis here does not escape that problem. i find the term a little unproductive (same with the concept of "originality"), so just know that i guess

#this doesn't even go into things like shows with variable art styles. yu yu hakusho cycles through storyboarders in a very obvious way #and jojo's bizarre adventure's art style adjusts for every part (creating a sort of average for the gradual shifts in araki's style over th #course of that part). and that's off the top of my head i'm not even like a big boy weeb y'know #listen take all of this with a grain of salt i haven't watched any of these all the way through (minus ouran) and some of them i haven't #watched at all. but a lot of this is evident from just Looking at stills and footage bc it's a visual thing. that's gotta count for smth #at the very least i'm confident that my analysis is um. better than the person who wrote this's analysis. so yeah #i'll have to think more about the difference between something being overall unique and unique in application to smth else because im....#not 100% settled on the idea that one is the True Meaning Of Unique. again part of my problem with this is the oversimplification of unique #the concept y'know so like. whatever #noticing more differences. ouran includes the nose bridge/beginnings of a brow more than the middle line of a nose or a sole dot like fb

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