#eagle painting prints for sale

[barry-kent-mackay]

The Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus) breeds throughout most of temperate and the more southern parts of the boreal regions of North America, as well as in the West Indies, where there are five different island or archipelago-specific subspecies, all endemic and non-migratory. Northern birds winter as far south as central South America. In fact, the northern birds are noteworthy here in Ontario and much of eastern North America for their spectacular southward migration – that is, if you know when and where to look.  Massive numbers can pass by in a single day in the autumn, but usually (not always) rather high up, slowly circling, wings outspread, to catch thermals, or updrafts, that allow them to fly with minimum energy expenditure. Updrafts are like large bubbles of rising, warmer air. The birds start near the top and circle around the invisible bubble. Actually they are going down as the air goes up, so they may rise, slowly descend or stay at a pretty much the same altitude until reaching the bottom of the bubble at which point they soar to the next one. While they obviously detect the upward movement of warmed air they also know where such thermals are by seeing other hawks, eagles and vultures taking advantage of them. Thus, they actually fly many times further than the distance they cover from start to end, but with far less energy used than if they went “as the crow flies” in a straight line.

I have had people tell me they have never seen a Broad-winged Hawk on days and in places where I have seen hundreds.  One has to be attune to looking for them, and a good pair of binoculars certainly helps to enjoy the sight.

These flocks, some numbering in the thousands, may include various other birds of prey, including other members of the genus, Buteo, all having broad wings and rounded tails, along with other birds of prey, and vultures. It can be fun to try to identify the various species, and keeping track of numbers over the years is an important “citizen science” project that can determine trends in population sizes. Such “hawk watches” can turn into enjoyable social gatherings in places where the topography enhances the occurrence of updrafts, such as Hawk Cliff, Lake Erie, here in Ontario, Hawk Mountain, in Pennsylvania, Hawk Ridge in Minnesota and the River of Raptors in Mexico.

These are smallish, chunky hawks with relatively short tails. I have shown an adult, which is somewhat barred underneath, with the bars tending to coalesce across the upper breast, although typical of hawks, there is a great deal of individual variation. Immature birds are streaked on the breast and can be a little tricky to distinguish from the young of other members of the genus, Buteo.  Broad-wing adults weigh about 265 to 560 grams, or approximately 9.3 to nearly 20 ounces. Most are light morphs, but there is a rare dark morph that can be an all-over dark sooty-chocolate brownish color but with the same underwing and tail patterning as the typical pale morph.

Food consists of pretty well any small vertebrates they can capture, as well as large invertebrates, including insects, worms, and crabs, but small mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians make up most of the diet. Driving through “cottage country”, in the Precambrian shield country of central Ontario, this hawk can often be seen perched on telephone wires, along the road’s edge, patiently waiting for prey.  This painting is approximately life-size in oils on a birch panel. I have also included a small preliminary study I did very many years ago, in acrylics on illustration board.

art may be used for non-commercial purposes with attribution

prints and original art for sale on Fine Art America

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[thunderworks]

f2u disabled bases

have fun, be kind base requests open

descriptions & rules below

[ID: a bald human sits on a wooden chair, in front of a stained glass window, surrounded by plants. Hands in their lap, looking peaceful. They have an IV drip connected to their right arm.

a dragon with an omnipod on their left arm sits cutely, grinning at the viewer and giving a peace sign. A sparkle is beside their face. They have top surgery scars.

A fat anthro dragon sits down, looking grumpily off to the side. They have gnarling horns, droopy ears, and crystalline earrings. Their left arm is ampurated and they have an omnipod on their left leg.

An anthro cat is sitting down, looking defeated. "You've gotta be kidding me..." they say. This cat has a very long fluffy tail, and an omnipod on their left shoulder.

an anthro eagle is standing, smiling to someone off camera. Their "hair" is a tousled collection of feathers. They use crutches that support the whole lower arm

end ID]

rules

You may NOT remove my signature if present, digitally redistribute blanks, or use for any sort of NFT/cryptocurrency. Do not use any of my images for/in images of sexual nsfw.

You MAY use for commissions, adoptable character designs for sale. You may print physical copies to sell if you modify them in some way (color it, paste it into a collage, paint over it). 

Editing the lineart is fine! I encourage you to submit alternates to me, so there’s more variety! We will both be credited.

[livingbutterfly]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: 🔖 ✨ 🦋 Living Butterfly 🦋 Like For Sales 🔖.

[jmelam]

✨Day 8 of Holiday Sales ✨

These four paintings are on sale in my Art Store now!

✨”Beneath The River” | Ink and Watercolor

✨”Heist” | Ink

✨”Eagle” | Ink

✨”Tempting” | Ink

If you’re local to Louisville, Kentucky, ask about my FREE delivery options.

Shop here:

[arclantis-blog]

Art Print Wall Decor: Eagle & Aves

Elevate your living space with our exquisite "Eagle & Aves" Art Print, a captivating masterpiece that celebrates the awe-inspiring beauty of nature's feathered creatures. This meticulously crafted gallery wall fine art print showcases a stunning array of majestic birds including a regal eagle, enigmatic owl, elegant crane, colorful woodpecker, and an array of other avian marvels. Each intricate detail of the original artwork is expertly captured, bringing the essence of these magnificent creatures right into your home. Whether you're an avid birder or simply appreciate wings on things, infuse your living space with a touch of nature's splendor!. This wall art print is an economical choice that effortlessly transforms any room into a haven of sophisticated natural wonders.

This Gorgeous Wall Decor is a stunning, digital recreation of an original piece of clay art, that you can frame up to enjoy in your home, living room, or office!

> Originally hand painted by our skilled artist and production partner, Jose Juan Garcia Aguilar from Oaxaca, Mexico. Feel good knowing a percentage of your sale goes directly to Jose Juan to help him support his family through making fine art. :) > You are receiving an ART PRINT that gets mailed to your home UNFRAMED > Measurements vary depending on the size of print that you order.

To learn more about the product, click here.

Please check out other Luv2Brd products here.

[usafphantom2]

McDonnell-Douglas TF-15A Eagle 71-0291 (1) by Wing attack Plan R Via Flickr: F-15B-4-MC. C.N. 0012/B002. The F-15B was originally designated McDonnell Douglas TF-15A in the early 1970’s. Aircraft 71- 0291 was the second two-seater variant produced. It made its first flight on 18 October, 1973 and was re-designated an F-15B on 1 December, 1977. Over time the aircraft was used to develop the FAST (Fuel And Sensor Tactical), PACK conformal fuel tanks used on the F-15E and made world-wide sales tours. One stop in 1976 was the Farnborough Air Show wearing a paint scheme to celebrate the 1976 American Bicentennial. 71-0291’s career ended as a Battle Damage Repair trainer (BDRT). Photo Credit's: Unknown to me (Original Print). Photo taken at the Farnborough Air Show 1974.

[newriverartist]

Kendall Kessler is hobbling along

Kendall Kessler is hobbling along

Charlie Chaplin once said when you are in pain, everything else is just fantasy. I am remembering that quote today. A muscle in my back decided to go ballistic and I am slowed down to a crawl which is very hard on a workaholic. Oh well, I took some medicine and hopefully I will be able to get around without wincing. I am just going to post my latest Youtube and a favorite painting. Cheers to…

[comparativetarot]

El Sol. Art by Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapantli, from Tarot Yohualli Ehecatl.

This is the Tonatiuh card, which is equivalent to The Sun in the standard Tarot. In the Nahuatl language, Tonatiuh is both the word for sun and the name of the Teotl of the Sun. In the card, a young man rides naked on a deer. He is naked to show that he has nothing to hide, and is unashamed. His face and hands are painted yellow, which is the color of the Teteo (gods) of corn, the sun, and pleasure. In his hair are two eagle feathers, signifying his bravery. The deer is a symbol of the sun, and is associated with the dry season, warmth, and heat. He rides it through a patch of cactus, but sitting on the deer’s back, he is carried safety through. Behind him shines Tonatiuh, the sun. He fills the world, and the young man, with the strength of Tonalli, which is the life-giving force of warmth, heat, growth, and bravery. However, his tongue is a flint blade, for Tonalli only exists through sacrifice. In the beginning, Tonatiuh sacrificed himself so that he could become the sun, and thereby ensure existence on earth; therefore, we, as humans, are required to sacrifice for his sake, so that he might live. Behind the young man grow four sunflowers. They are four in number, to symbolise the four directions, and also the four suites of the Tarot. Sunflowers always turn their faces towards the sun, and fill themselves with the warmth of Tonalli. Likewise, other men and women turn towards the youth, mesmerised by the strength of his Tonalli; his warmth, youthfulness, adventurousness, and fearlessness. The Tonatiuh card represents radiance, abundance, success, and youthfulness.

I wil be announcing pre sales of the Tarot Yohualli Ehecatl soon! Follow me on Patreon for a release date, calendar readings, prints, and to help support my project of cultural diffusion and rescue.

https://www.patreon.com/corazonmexica

[skyfire85]

-An F-4S painted in the Heater-Ferris scheme in 1983. | Photo: Keith C. Svendsen

FLIGHTLINE: 138 - HEATER-FERRIS CAMOUFLAGE

Tested by the US Navy and Air Force during the 70s and 80s, the Ferris and Heater-Ferris schemes sought to optimize the effectiveness of visual camo.

Carlisle Ferris, who goes by his middle name Keith, was born on 14 May 1929 in Honolulu while his father was stationed at Luke Field, Pearl Harbor. His father was then transferred to Kelly Field, Texas as a flight instructor before being moved again to March Field, California. There he was treated to a flight in a Douglas B-18 Bolo, which ignited a life-long fascination with aviation.

After WWII, Ferris enrolled in Texas A&M's aeronautical engineering program with the aim of getting commissioned in the USAF. When he found out that he was medically unable to become a pilot, he transferred to George Washington University to study anatomy and figure drawing. In 1951 he moved to St. Louis and worked as a contactor producing artwork for USAF training manuals. When the USAF closed the operation in 1956, Ferris moved to NYC to become a freelance artist for the aerospace industry, as well as participating with the Air Force Art Program. This program allowed him to fly on numerous USAF aircraft from the late 50s through to the 1990s, and in locations from Thailand to the Balkans. Ferris was one of the the program's most prolific artists, producing 62 paintings, along with two giant murals for the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum: "Fortresses Under Fire", which depicts the B-17 'Thunderbird' during its 70th mission, and "The Evolution of Jet Aviation", which is exactly what you'd think it is.

-In this 2005 photo, Keith Ferris stands before his mural “Fortresses Under Fire” at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. | MarkBennett13

APPLIED THEORIES

Seeking to combine his knowledge of aircraft and his artistic talent, Ferris went on to develop and patent several camouflage ideas, including painting a false canopy on the bottom of an aircraft to confuse opponents, and another involving asymmetrical, splintered patterns of gray. Another change was reducing the size of aircraft marking, as well as making them gray, black or white.

-A Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II with a false canopy on the underside. | Photo: USAF

The Ferris scheme was applied to several early F-14s and F-15s for testing, with mixed results.

-A painting guide for a model F-14, showing the splintered pattern of Gunship Gray, Dark Gull Gray and Gull Gray. | Illustration: Don Color

-An F-14 painted in a Ferris scheme. | Photo: US Navy

-Two Farris painted F-14s deployed on a carrier. | Photo: US Navy

-Painting guide for a USAF F-15 in a different scheme of Dark Gull Gray, Gull Gray and Camouflage Gray. | Illustration: Don Color

-An F-15 painted in the above scheme. | Photo: USAF

Later, Lt Commander Chuck "Heater" Heatley of the Naval Fighter Weapons School ("Top Gun") made some changes to the basic Ferris scheme, simplifying the pattern and running the various shades of grey across the entire aircraft. Two F-4S squadrons adopted the Heater-Ferris scheme, VF-301 ("Devil's Disciples") and VF-302 ("Stallions").

-One of the VF-301 F-4s in the Heater-Ferris scheme. | Photo: Keith C Svendsen

Experiments with the Ferris and Heater-Ferris schemes proved that they did work at reducing the range at which an aircraft could be seen, as well as disguising the direction of travel, but the usefulness of visual camo was being deemphasized in an age of radar guided BVR missiles, though the F-15 and F-16 have worn other schemes influenced by Ferris.

-A USAF F-16 showing multi-shade pattern camouflage, influenced by Ferris. | Photo: USAF

Now retired, Ferris and his wife operate a small online business, offering his original art and prints of his work for sale.

[thecollinhartman-blog]

Collin’s Coronavirus Thoughts

Corona Diaries

 I know what you are thinking. It is Day 4 of the Quarantine and Social Distancing and Collin has gone so crazy without all the busy-ness of life that he is writing a blog post. And you would be absolutely correct. Like every other millennial twenty-something, I have a lot of really great ideas that haven’t quite come to fruition. By now I thought I would be operating a volleyball facility, or traveling the US in a VW van driving for Uber, or pursuing a PhD program in England while playing volleyball, or coaching a small college team in Southern California.

All this to say I’m a big-time dreamer and a mostly incredibly poor “executer”. I often mistake my busy-ness for full-ness. I have seven unread books on my night stand, I haven’t been grocery shopping in weeks, I never got around to painting the trim in the bathroom my dad and I remodeled, my phone hasn’t been at full charge since November, and there has been an overflow of recycling sitting outside my house from the garbage disposal and mattress I got for Christmas… and now it’s March. Welcome to it, friends.

 Let’s start here: I stopped by my parents’ house this week to print something – which I often do because I have a lot of printing needs but haven’t ever purchased a printer. It’s nice because I can print some papers I need AND I can always count on cool ranch Doritos and a Mango Orange Crystal Lite…. that I’ll likely take one sip of, leave on the counter, and finish when I’m there 4 days later.

 Anyway, here I am printing in my dad’s office and running late for a meeting  (all because I napped for too long). I rush out the door of the house, accidentally leaving one document on the printer, pens and paper everywhere, and a cupboard desk drawer open. A few minutes later, my dad sends me a picture of his office, which was without a doubt entirely put together five minutes prior to me being there. The tone of his text is sarcastic but loving but semi-annoyed which I can handle. I spend six seconds feeling bad about my reckless and disorganized self until Hillsong’s Highlands comes on the radio and I turn it up. I don’t spend time reflecting on things that would make me sad, I’m a 7.

 In the midst of my frantic printing and meeting prep, my dad told me he was going to call me “F-5”as my new nickname. By the look on my face, he could tell I was confused as to why. He begins to tell me that tornados are classified in F-0 through F-5 categories, with an F-5 tornado being the wildest in nature. My quick google search defines an F-5 tornado as the most “violent damage, homes lifted off foundation and carried considerable distances, autos thrown as far as 100 meters.” I think what my dad was trying to say is that my general way of life is to rampage my way through different spaces, groups, situations… often times in an assertive, proactive, somewhat wild, chaotic way and then just… leave (I think this how I drive too). Stop go stop go stop go. I go from this thing right on to the next without pause. I show up, jump out of my car, race to wherever I’m supposed to go, be (mostly) present there until BOOM, it’s a Monday evening and I’m in the Eagle gym, shutting off all the lights, gathering volleyballs, turning on the alarm, leaving for Young Life – all in an attempt to get there three minutes before it starts so I can prep items for the game I’m leading ALLLLL before being interrupted in the parking lot by a mom of a U11 kid who is reminding me (probably for the 3rd time) about the t-shirt they ordered and are waiting on. Following? Me neither.

 In short – my life actually is like an F-5 tornado. I run run run from one thing to the next, filling my world to the brim with as much as I possibly can all until I arrive back at my house at 10:30 pm, gas light on, eat whatever I can find in the fridge before my head hits the pillow 4 minutes later, only to set my alarm and do it again.

 I’ve been living my life like this for a really long time until…. well until Sunday when we got the news that school is cancelled, which means volleyball activities are all cancelled too, and Young Life gatherings paused and suddenly my wild Monday is WIDE OPEN.

 This blog post / journal / diary is my attempt to articulate from my squirrel brain some things I’ve learned about myself in the last 48 hours since this craziness called coronavirus officially stopped my (and probably your) collective world right in their F-5 tornado tracks.

 First, let me tell you about my day today paint a picture of how my world feels just a bit (LITERALLY ENTIRELY) different…..

 1)    I didn’t set an alarm and I woke up at 8:30 am.

2)    Shortly after, I went on a quick walk to the nearest coffee shop and ordered a Misto: I am on my journey to black coffee and I just graduated from a latte to this half coffee half milk concoction (with caramel) and I feel accomplished.

3)    I stopped by my neighbor friend’s house to say hello.

4)    I got home, cleaned a couple things around the house, washed a couple plates in my sink, and went on a bike ride to downtown Boise where I enjoyed a takeout lunch from Whole Foods. I would like to tell you that I rode my bike home, but a friend happened to see me and my girlfriend (she is working remotely from Utah and visiting right now) saw us and somehow realized the journey completely uphill from downtown to my house on the bench might not be all that fun so we piled our bikes in her car and she took us home.

5)    I took a 20 minute snoozer.

6)    I got up and did some yard work outside, gathering pine needles from underneath my big backyard tree and finally broke down those big boxes that have been sitting outside my house for months and was able to fit them all inside my recycling can.

7)    It started to drizzle so I came inside, crawled under a big blanket and read the first couple chapters of Prodigal God by Timothy Keller.

8)    Kinslie and I then stopped by the store to pick up some things for dinner and I grilled some steaks and shared a giant salad and some grilled asparagus.

9)    After a few girl scout cookies (they stopped by yesterday), we watched the last half of Ellen’s Game of Games and picked a movie on Netflix.

10) Now I’m lying in my (perfectly made) bed (because I had the time to make it) writing all my thoughts down in a word document wondering if I’ll actually post this or if there is really anything of worth that I’m typing. I think there is but not sure yet.

 Well, friends of the interwebs, you might be wondering why you just read a detailed list of my day from start to finish. Here’s what I want you to know.

 1)    Upon arriving at the coffee shop, I had a cheerful silly conversation with the barista about what drink I should order as we laughed about me wanting to eventually enjoy drip coffee. We engaged in authentic dialogue for a few minutes and on the way out I thanked her for the drink recommendation.

2)    Before leaving for our bike ride, my tires were flat so we walked them to the gas station and filled up with six quarters before we went on our merry way. I empathized with the Chevron employee as we talked about coronavirus and how it might impact our lives. I wished him well and went on my way.

3)    While bikeriding downtown I noticed there are five…. FIVE… different types of massage or spa places between my house and Curtis, which is the next main stop light.

4)    At Whole Foods, I asked the clerk their favorite pasta salad as she walked over and told me all about the 2 for $6 deal. I noticed the different textures of the floor and the neatly stacked chairs and how the vegetables were perfectly arranged in their place.

5)    While doing yardwork, I stopped and looked at Kinslie as she was raking leaves into a pile. I went over and looked, I mean REALLY LOOKED into her eyes and noticed how the Irish green edges melt into a light sky-ish blue before meeting her pupil. I noticed the way she parted her wavy blonde hair and the way it fell just barely over the sweatshirt she was borrowing of mine.  I noticed how thankful I was I had someone to share this day with and even more thankful for her idea to do this yardwork that surely wouldn’t have been started for maybe forever.

6)    While reading, I noticed the way the soft sunshine pressed through my semi-open blinds onto my page and made the black ink pop off the page. I contemplated Keller’s words of Pharisees and tax collectors and a story of two sons on their journey of deeper understanding of God’s steadfast love and grace in the midst of their own struggles.

7)    While making dinner I couldn’t help but take just a little extra time to delicately cut each cucumber and carrot slice with care as I heard sounds of clattering branches from my cracked window as dusk began to settle in.

8)    And while writing this blog post, I can’t help but notice all the things I noticed in my own world for perhaps the first time.

 While I can’t be sure what life will look like in a few short days, weeks, or even months, and while I’m not positive what my income will be, and what daily routines or rituals will be impacted, or how our schools and communities will be changed – I can be sure of this: I hope in the midst of my crazy F-5 tornado life that surely will be back in busy routine before I know it – I hope for a couple things.

 I hope I can continue notice the little things. To notice the wildly interconnected, perfectly-timed, awe strikingly beautiful, crazy detailed, little details of this world like the way I noticed the lines on the fresh steaks as I pulled them off my garage sale grill.  

 I hope to breathe deep and see, I mean REALLY see the world around me, to engage in relationship in more authentic and honest ways, to stop for a moment wherever I am to truly connect with the people around me.

  I hope to take my time through a home cooked meal, and to not be so filled with anxiousness and fear of the future and unknown that I my eyes are blinded to see the way God is working in and through my (and our) world, possibly even through something like the freaking COVID-19.

 While I’m sure there will be more lessons to be learned in the next little while, I challenge you to take a couple moments to really press in and reflect upon the way this Zombie apocalyptic ish tirade is impacting your world. I truly hope in the midst of empty toilet paper shelves and hand sanitizer hoarders there is something beautiful in your world that you’ve noticed, too.

[barry-kent-mackay]

The Lappet-faced Vulture (Torgos tracheliotos) is distributed throughout many parts of Africa, mostly in arid, open country. Sadly, they have recently been classified as endangered. Big and powerful and in the same family as the eagles, they are known to take live prey, although mostly they are, like other vultures, consumers of carrion.

I was first made aware of the species when, as a kid, I came across a copy of a book called Artist Naturalist in Ethiopia, in the library of the Royal Ontario Museum’s well known bird curator, James L. Baillie. The book contains journal notes by American bird artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, on a wildlife collecting expedition to Ethiopia, along with a variety of paintings of birds painted quickly from live or freshly dead specimens – mostly species I was then unaware of. The paintings had to be done quickly, under field conditions, and impressed me very much. In those days colour photography was nascent, and since the colours of un-feathered parts of birds could change quickly after death, and never be preserved accurately in museum specimens, artists would record them in what were called “soft-part studies”. Fuertes died tragically in a level crossing accident soon after his return from Africa, adding poignancy to the art he created.

Since then, I’ve been to Africa myself, and the “soft part” colours of birds are less of a mystery and more easily accessed by artists. In the case of this species, they vary significantly between individuals, as does the configuration of the head, and the various wattles and carbuncles and feathering or lack thereof on the head. But the species lives up to its name by having a fold of skin to other side of the upper neck, as I have shown in this portrait.

Many people deem bare-headed birds such as vultures, turkeys and guineafowl as “ugly”. I hope this study helps to show the bird as I see it, accurately, I trust, but also as an important part of the ecological whole, inherently dignified, performing its functions within the context of a world primal and more natural than what we contrive for ourselves with steel, concrete, glass and plastic. They are the current manifestation of a three billion year journey of evolution. To me they are beautiful, magnificent and a worthy subject I greatly enjoyed painting.

Lappet-faced Vultures have weighed in at over twenty pounds, making them one of the largest of raptors still extant. Long may they soar over the hot savannah.

This painting is in oils on a canvas panel, 12 by 9 inches.

art may be used for non-commercial purposes with attribution

prints and original art for sale on Fine Art America

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[myfriendpokey]

Morality Play

What does it mean to have a videogame tell you you're a good person? It doesn't know me, can't see me. I don't know if you can be *immoral* in a single player game outside of some very inventive custom controls. Why should I care what a game says? Any inner moral life that a videogame or a painting might possess would be more alien to me than that of a bug or a starfish. Of course videogames and paintings are made by humans, and shaped by the moral opinion of humans.. but we might make a distinction between what the human says and the object says, we might still feel the latter is more important, somehow. 

The moral authority of an artwork or object comes from the fact that it's not quite human, that it comes to us from outside humanity to an extent, is distinguished from the unreliable back and forth of human consciousness in motion. But this distance is exactly why you might expect those moral verdicts to be unintelligible to us, or at the very best, to be untrustworthy, an imitation. So what's the appeal – that of having a human voice which speaks with the gravitas of an immortal object? The pleasant conceit that the general shape of our minds is universal, like all those Star Trek aliens that are just regular guys with slightly weirder ears or foreheads? The void speaks, and turns out to sound like a computer engineer.

But maybe not necessarily, maybe in fact it's sometimes not universal authority and moral support that we seek from the object: maybe a certain jankiness of verdict around the way these things communicate in human terms is itself part of the appeal. I think of paper fortune tellers, magic eight-balls, "love tester" machines that return a romantic prognosis based on palm temperature. The entrancing bathos of the chance-driven or mechanistic judgement that still speaks with a human voice: I’m sorry, I cannot answer right now. Please shake me, so I may try again. How different is that to the widely beloved and magnificently broken romance system in Dragon's Dogma, where, spoilers: your "soulmate" is not a matter of direct moral choice, but of variables being tracked over the course of the game including who you talked to and what sidequests you completed - which means it could arbitrarily turn out to be the weapons merchant, or a grandpa npc you found a potion for. Which is goofy, but only in a slightly more blatant way than "accidentally unlocking the romantic option in a dialogue tree from just clicking around" or "having your morality score drop 5 points because you pressed the wrong button and accidentally hurled a rock at someone's head while trying to equip shoes". 

I think something I appreciate about videogames is the kind of insectlike moral life that they tend to portray, the sense of value systems which are in some way recognisable but which have mutated in conversion to something alien and horrifying. Lara Croft shooting a wild eagle is unfortunate, Lara Croft shooting a thousand wild eagles is bizarre – but really those thousand eagles are just the one eagle, the one self-contained pulp encounter fantasy, which has been extended, extrapolated, systemised as result of being placed in this machine. The latter may be more egregious but it’s still composed of repeated incidents of the original encounter - and part of the strangeness in these games is just the uncomprehending machine effort to systemise the half-formed gunk substance of our terrible fantasy lives, which only bear a vague and halfhearted relation to any notion of ethics in any case.. We can contemplate with envy and excitement the possibilities of running more realistic, recognisable emotional and moral situations through the meatgrinderof the format in this way. How about a solemn middlebrow videogame about divorcing 50 different wives, each one larger and more powerful than the last (excluding sprite recolours)? 

All this is not to say that the casual political and moral stupidity already in videogames should simply be excused or exist outside of critique. But in addition to the body of discourse  around "moral commodities" - commodities invested with moral  or political meaning independent of any brutal labour practices they might entail or monopolistic accumulation of private  wealth they might support – I think it's also worth considering the purpose of the "moral object" itself. The alienation intrinsic to the object form can be a way to think, and also a way to avoid thinking. To project moral beliefs away from the specific context of a creaturely human existence can be a way of expanding that existence, but also of denying it. The paltriness of the human can itself be problematic next to the splendour of the object, and the reflected moral superiority of those with the means of producing such objects.

*****

There's a famous line in the Spiderman comics that with great power comes great responsibility. But it's also kind of a weird line because, while obviously applicable to Spiderman, the person it's actually delivered to is Peter Parker - who is, for all his uncle knows, still a physically awkward and friendless nerd with no immediately visible "great power" to speak of. He does like nuclear physics, though - maybe the advice was intended as a friendly intervention to keep him from turning into the next Edward Teller? Or possibly it's just a kind of unconscious, pulp-writer-trance-appropriation of the muscular liberal rhetoric of the then-current Kennedy administration. Or maybe, and stretching a bit, it's a line that relates more to the conditions of pulp culture manufacturing itself, to the awareness that the stuff you make will be printed thousands of times and sold to kids around the country, poured raw into the national subconsicous. With great sales figures comes great responsiblity.

I mention it because I think it connects to an issue with the kind of cultural criticism that emerged, like it or not, from the specific context of an age of mass media. With great power comes great responsibility - but conversely, to execute your great responsibility you also need great power. And what are you meant to do if you don't have it? Does no power mean having no responsibility? It's possible, but i feel like most people would be dubious about this as a moral lesson - and the inescapability of heavily-financed blockbusters in the culture means that an assumption of already "having great power" sometimes becomes a critical starting point. If you don't have power you should get it, so that you can then have great responsibility and contribute to the discourse. The effect can sometimes be like climbing a mountain of corpses to get a better platform for your speech about world peace.

A good essay on jrpgsaredead.fyi points out the way that certain industry conversations on "accessibility" revolve specifically around access to whatever mainstream AAA action games are currently dominating the news cycle. And the related effect where both problems and proposed solutions are particular to these games, the audience they have, and the resources they can bring bear: More consultants! More characters! More romance options! Better character creators! If you're speaking to an (essentially captive, given the marketing monies involved) audience of five million people you'd better be sure your ideas are, at least, not actively harmful, and in fact should ideally be improving - - fine. How about an audience of 50 people? Or an audience of 0? Does that mean this work is less moral than what speaks to a larger crowd - in effect, that it's worse? And what about the relationship to audience that this kind of teaching implies? i can think of several occasions where people from different subcultures or minority groups were reprimanded because something in their own experience might read differently, or problematically, when presented to a presumably white/cis/affluent etc audience - which is of course the audience that matters, because what's the value of presenting work from an alternative perspective to an audience already familiar with that perspective, to whom it has no automatic moral significance (might, in fact, merely be 'aesthetic')? Compare the complexity of a specific local audience which can think for itself to the easy win of the alternative:  a phantasm audience of moral blanks to whom rote lessons in hypothetical empathy can be tastefully and profitably imparted over and over, forever.

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If the ethical act is that which we'd be willing to posit as universal law, perhaps we could say: the ethical artwork is that which we'd be willing to mass produce. Small or hobbyist developers are encouraged to work from the perspective of a mass-productive capacity they do not in fact possess; their successes and inevitable failures are hoovered up alike by the industry proper for later deployment in the form of cute dating sim or inspirational narrative with similar but sanitized tone or aesthetic. In essence a kind of moral QA testing, with all the job security and recompense that this implies. 

The hobbyist is, by definition, not universal: they are enclosed within the local and the material. What time do you get off work? What materials do you have to hand? Are those materials always legal? The entire western RPG Maker community exists as result of widespread bootlegging; the entirety of videogame history and preservation essentially depends on stolen copies; we find out about it through ROMs, videos and screenshots which mostly depend for their continued existence on copyright holders either not finding out or choosing not to pursue these debateable violations.  It's a complicated discussion whether this stuff can be justified on a general, universal level - but also I'm not sure we can do without it. When Fortnite uses dances from TV and music videos of living memory they're considered to be in the public domain; but Fortnite itself is not in the public domain, even though it's so inescapable that even I have a pretty good idea of what it looks and plays like despite having made a pretty determined effort to not find out anything about it. It's "public culture" in that sense, and it includes public culture within it, but both game and imagery are privately owned and aggressively policed (suing teenage hackers, etc). What does it mean for art to emerge from an ever more privatized sense of public life?

In 2007 the RPG Maker game Super Columbine Massacre RPG was added to, then removed from, the Slamdance festival following complaints; it was a minor cause celebre at the time following concerns about censorship and the lack of protections for expression in the videogame format specifically following the Jack Thompson media crusade in the United States. In 2019 the same festival retrospectively changed their reasoning: now the game had no longer been removed on the basis of questionable taste, but on the basis of questionable compliance with copyright law, since it included music from the likes of Smashing Pumpkins without paying for licensing fees (and also because the author generally "hadn’t created several of its elements" - asset flips!!!). There's some humour in the fact that a benign-sounding concern with "artist's rights" could just be swapped in as a more respectable-sounding surrogate for general prudery with exactly the same result. But also, in this instance, what does it mean about the game? As facile as SCMR is, the bootleg use of graphics and music was its most interesting element: the game was a bricolage of American pop culture at a specific point in time, as were the killers, as are we. The nearness and recognisability of that culture, the sense of not being able to get enough distance from it to properly fictionalise or think about what happened, is what stands out. An "ethical" version of the same game which used original music - Nirvanalikes, some tastefully copyright-adjacent Marilyn Manson clones - would not just be diminished, it would be actively insulting in the false distance it implied.

I don't mean this at all as a request for more edgelord-ism. But it's worth remembering that videogames themselves are not ethical; are, in fact, colonized materials assembled with exploitative labour and dumped aimlessly into public life by electronics corporations looking to make a buck. The bizarre and haphazard ways this long dump of poor decisions has manifested, warped, been adjusted into culture is part of what's worth attending to about the format – I think it's worth looking closer into all these pools of murkiness, before ethical  landlords can come drape a tarp over them as part of the process of divvying up the property.

(image credits: youkai douchuuki, quiz nanairo dreams, trauma center: under the knife, espial)

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