#modernized anime are travesties

[xbuster]

SUGIKO?? WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOUR HAIR???????

[italiansteebie]

Modern Steve was never allowed to watch SpongeBob. His parents always said that it would rot his brain, and he was too afraid to test that rule even when they weren't home because he's heard something about cameras around the house, and he was not going to get in trouble.

Modern Eddie was practically raised on SpongeBob and got his sense of humor from it. He thought every episode from 1999-2007 was an animation masterpiece and he wasn't afraid to admit he still watched it as an adult. (as much of an adult you can be at 21)

Eddie catches wind that Steve has never watched SpongeBob and thinks it's an absolute travesty, so one of their first dates consists of them eating pizza on the couch and watching the first season of SpongeBob.

Steve loves it.

[queenharumiura]

Just a Neo doing a lil test warm up drabble thing. I’ll write another with the other POV on the other blog. Starting off with HARU BECAUSE I AM BIASED.

A part of my test run to see if I think I can feasibly write my newest test muse.

-

“Oh? Yamamoto-kun! Good morning!” Haru waves the athlete down who slowed to a halt to chat with a friend.

“Mornin’! What are you doing out so early in the day? I thought I was going to see you at Tsuna’s place yesterday.”

Yesterday? Haru thinks about it and the recollection makes her shed a mental tear. Haru had wanted to drop by the Sawada household before she had to go, but she got caught trespassing on Namimori grounds by Hibari-san. He gave her a warning and Haru somehow ended up getting distracted by the cute birds he had following him. They were so cute, they would sing little tunes, and they could speak!

Hm? Are the birds more important than spending time with Tsuna-san, you ask? No… but… spending time with the birds is more rare, so Haru has her priorities in line!

Somehow, Hibari-san allowed Haru to stick around and he didn’t disallow the birds from approaching her. Well, to be fair, this wasn’t the first time this has happened, so they were familiar with her presence. She’s been caught by the Disciplinary committee before, and she continued to visit Namimori from time to time. The difference was… she got a bit better about not getting caught.

She’d still get caught by Hibari-san though. He was just that good at catching people, she’d suppose. Haru started carrying a lot of treats for birds around with her on the days she knew she’d be visiting Namimori to offer as a peace offering to the birds.

Basically, on the days she got caught, she’d be told to keep the birds company for some time. Those were the days she wouldn’t be able to drop by the Sawada household and see her lovely Tsuna-san! The travesty! The inhumanity! It’s so mean, isn’t it? Keeping her from seeing Tsuna-san. It’s like… a modern day case of Romeo and Juliet! Except no one is going to die!

In usual Haru fashion, she playfully recounts her tale with a flair of dramatics. A fake, dramatic sniff. “You see… Haru got caught by Hibari-san yesterday. She was forced into servitude for a few hours, so she wasn’t able to find time to visit Tsuna-san yesterday. A shame too, because she wanted to see Lambo-chan and I-pin chan.” Another fake sniff.

The look of visible concern on Yamamoto’s face made Haru internally panic a little bit. “Hahi! Haru is joking, you know? She wasn’t forced to work for nothing. She got to play with the hibirds. They’re very cute, you know?” Yes, because that certainly was what was going to be worrying him when hearing you say you ‘got caught’ by the Hibari Kyouya.

Haru didn’t think that Hibari was that scary. (Don’t listen to her, he’s very scary). Sure, Hibari-san has a temper (as does Gokudera), and he can be violent (so can Gokudera), but animals loved him! Animals won’t be friendly with someone that they deem to be a threat. They wouldn’t willingly follow and cuddle up to a dangerous person. Haru trusts the judgement of the yellow birds that Hibari took under his figurative wing.

The little birds were so cute, and you know what cuteness is? CUTENESS IS JUSTICE! Therefore, if you behave appropriately, Hibari-san isn’t much of a threat.

His temper is still scary though.

“Haha, how did you get ‘caught’ by him anyways? Were you okay?”

Haru blinks a few times in curiosity. If it were someone like Tsuna-san that she was having this conversation with, he would’ve freaked out. Probably start asking her if she was threatened or harmed in any way. What did she do to earn his ire? He was probably the biggest culprit behind Haru feeling intimidated by Hibari-san. Gokudera has also made comments about how violent and difficult the prefect could be to work with. Ryohei Onii-san… well… he’s a special case, and Haru elects to ignore a lot of what he has to say.

A guy who thinks you can pass off broken bones with ‘I climbed a chimney’ or ‘I got hit with a shooting star’ is not someone Haru will take very seriously.

She’s a bit curious about him asking if she was okay, but she simply nods her head. If she had been harmed at all, she would’ve dramatically recounted the tale, so she didn’t think he’d ask about it. Well, it’s Yamamoto, so there’s probably a reason for it. “Haru is okay. Haru has been accosted by the disciplinary committee before for trespassing, but she’s not faced any harm,” unless you consider the harm to her poor, easily frightened heart. She’s allergic to pain, you know? “Haru sometimes drops off some treats for the birds when she has some time, but other times, Haru gets caught trespassing and she’s told to watch over the birds for a time.” Which is the case of yesterday, of course.

Now that she thinks about it, she’s never mentioned this to anyone, has she? Haru Miura is a girl who often likes making new friends wherever she goes and her ability to network was strong. It simply made sense for her to try to get along with the guardians (minus Mukuro) because they worked alongside Tsuna-san, her future husband! Kyaaa she thought it~ There was method to her madness in trying to get acquainted with the ‘scary Hibari-san’ that Tsuna would tremble over at times.

Well, she does remember that one time where Reborn-chan called him over to request help in disposing a body… which he surprisingly didn’t have an issue with agreeing to. Haru had always secretly wondered whether he was playing along with a skit… or if he really had the ability to dispose of a body without it being found. A shiver runs down her spine at the thought.

“That reminds me, you were the one who coined the name ‘Hibird’ for his birds, weren’t you?”

“Oh!” Haru claps her hands with excitement. “Haru has always seen the bird perched on his shoulder or on top of his head. It always calls him like ‘Hibari, Hibari!’ It’s really cute.” She mimics the tiny bird with gusto. “It’s like… a pocket monster. Haru thought that ‘Hibird’ was a cute and fitting name. Somehow the name stuck.” She feels proud in the fact that the name that she coined for the yellow avians stuck. It made her feel like a godmother of sorts to the birds.

Yamamoto smiles in response, “sounds like you’re getting along with him just fine. Just be careful not to wake him. He gets cranky from what I hear. Aside from that, he’s not a scary guy.”

Haru playfully salutes, “Roger~ Haru will heed your advice. Haru won’t keep you from your morning jog for much longer. See you next time~” Haru waves him off so he could continue his early morning jog for conditioning. Haru is on her way to buy a bunch of seeds! There are so many little birds that she had to stock up on seeds every now and then.

It would kill her internally if one of the Hibirds approached her for seeds and she didn’t have any. There won’t be any disappointed birds on her watch! “Interesting, Yamamoto-kun’s stance towards Hibari-san is so different from Tsuna-san and Gokudera-san.” As they say, curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back. Maybe there was more to Hibari than she thought? What did Yamamoto know that the others didn’t?

No, maybe he was the special one? The one con of being such a smart student… was that once your curiosity was sparked, you won’t stop thinking about it until you’ve solved the mystery. Maybe if she observes Hibari-san enough, she’ll understand the mystery. Sounds fun!

[urists]

Mostly yelling into the void here, but:

We (as in, the world population) are eventually gonna have to be okay with either GMO crops or food riots.

I’m not saying they’ll happen this year or anything like that. But our trends of rising income (increasing meat/non-staple grain consumption) and decreasing farmlands (climate change, soil exhaustion) are going to conflict sooner or later. We fundamentally need to crank out 50+% more food on less farmland under worse climate conditions.

And while I’d love to say we can do with traditional breeding methods, we can’t. It takes half a decade or more to breed one trait - like resistance to a novel disease, for instance - into one crop. We can do that in a year with a GMO organism - and then we can also make that crop use less fertilizer, grow faster, and be more heat tolerant within that same year. It’d be insane to toss that sort of advantage aside at any point, much less during a time when crops are simply not improving fast enough to keep up with demand.

There will come a point where people either eat GMOs or they don’t eat enough. There’s no way around it.

(Safety sidenote here: if you’re in the US and you eat meat from non-specialty stores, it’s a virtual certainty the animal you’re eating was fed GMO crops. We know they’re not harmful to eat. Our refusal to consume them is bizarre.)

(Food security sidenote here: I understand frustrations about commercialized industrialized farming, and I understand that GMO crops are not going to make that situation better. On the other hand, the median human being in an industrialized developed nation currently spends a tiny fraction of their time trying to acquire the calories required for survival and can still easily do so. This has never occurred before in human civilization.) (No, seriously, it hasn’t. (see Smil, Energy and Civilization, 2017: ‘No traditional agriculture could consistently produce enough food to eliminate malnutrition. All of them were vulnerable to major famines’.) You can argue that developed nations stumble on the distribution aspect, sure - and I’ll agree with you; while the US doesn’t really get famines, much less major ones, the fact that ~10% of the country faces malnutrition is a travesty - but that’s not the production side causing problems there. Modern commercial agriculture is a machine for turning energy into calories, and it’s dammed good at it. What’s next is getting our shit together enough to make it even better.)

[askkrenko]

Krenko’s Guide to Pokemon: Sentret Line

Because Rattata was overpowered

DESIGN: 

Sentret does a perfect job of being adorable, obvious, unique, and full of personality all at once. You can tell at a glance that it’s some sort of normal small woodland creature, but you can’t pinpoint which one, because it’s a smooth amalgam of squirrel, meerkat, tanooki, rabbit, and really whatever. It’s a small woodland creature. It raises itself up on its tail to look larger and to be able to see more. While Rattata was just a rat, Sentret is only Sentret. 

The shift to 3D ruined it though. Modern Sentret stands on its feet rather than its tail, and it really loses a lot of its impact. Silhouette is an important thing for creature design, important enough that “Who’s that Pokemon?” used to appear in every episode, and without standing on its tail Sentret loses that. A lot of Pokemon got their iconic stances altered in the move to 3D, but putting Sentret on its feet is just a travesty.

Furret I’m much less impressed with. That’s just a cute weasel. Or ferret, but honestly, they’re very closely related. It’s a very cute weasel-ferret, mind, and the stripes definitely help a lot, but I’m not intrigued by this creature. I immediately identify it, and I forget about it because it’s just a weasel. I’m not even sure how you copyright Furret and Rattata. Can nobody else make a cute striped weasel or a purple rat? 

ECOLOGY:

Sentret and Furret live primarily along the southern border between Johto and Kanto, though small populations exist elsewhere. They are extremely social animals, and though they’re only active during the day, many Sentret will stay awake all night to guard their nests. Furret will wrap around young Sentret to protect them and will dig deep nests that are difficult for predators to enter.

Sentret are omnivores, but they are not strong hunters. They primarily eat small insects (which exist according to the Pokedex despite the player never seeing them) and berries, though they may also steal eggs or even Exeggcute. Furret are much stronger hunters and primarily hunt Rattata. Rattata, in turn, frequently hunt young Sentret, but their largest danger is Hoothoot. While a Sentret keeps a lookout to keep Rattata at bay, it leaves itself vulnerable to Hoothoot or Noctowl attacks from above, which will happily attack either of the two Pokemon. While Raticate will eat Sentret given the opportunity, their large size makes attacking a Sentret burrow impossible.

Local noodle warms her potats  by Sifyro

TYPING:

Normal. It’s only good on bulkier Pokemon that can leverage a lack of weaknesses, which this isn’t.

STATS:

Sentret is slower and weaker than Rattata. Maybe people were complaining about Rattata’s high speed stat as the first enemy in Gen 1, but Sentret is just sad in comparison.

Furret is on par with Raticate, but we’re still talking about a Pokemon whose best stat is its 90 speed, with a stat total of just 415. This is good for gameplay, but is extremely weak competitively. Its stat spread isn’t inherently bad, but 90 Speed doesn’t go a long way when your better attack stat is a 76, and 85 HP isn’t enough to save defenses of 64 and 55. 

Floof by Cynderela2001

ABILITIES:

Run Away has no effect in trainer battles. Moving on.

Frisk enables you to check the item of an opposing Pokemon. While this isn’t nothing in competitive battling, it’s usually not that strong an ability. Many items are obvious as soon as a turn happens, and only a few will relevantly change your strategy by knowing about.

Keen Eye prevents Furret’s accuracy from being decreased and allows Furret to ignore Evasion boosts. Once again, it’s not nothing, but it doesn’t really matter, either. Frisk is probably the better option, because you can take moves to leverage it.

Hypervoice by Koui

MOVES:

Let's pretend somebody forced you to use Furret competitively or they’ll kill your wife. Otherwise, not sure why you’d try. There isn’t a tournament tier low enough for Furret to be viable, unless you somehow illegally snuck it into Little Cup.

Furret is a Normal Physical attacker, so our big hit SHOULD be Return, but that might not exist anymore, so Double-Edge it is, even though you have to breed for that. Hope you weren’t hoping to keep this Furret up for long.

For coverage, you can take Brick Break or Focus Punch to hit Rock and Steel Types, and you can take Shadow Claw to hit Ghosts.

Using Frisk to know what an opponent’s item is, you can use Thief, Knock Off, or, with careful breeding, Trick to get rid of troublesome ones. 

Then… U-Turn. So your Furret doesn’t get attacked because it’s not exactly one of the more durable Pokemon, even in its stat tier.

Furret suffers from a serious lack of good moves, even via TM.  Weirdly, it DOES get a lot of good special moves, but its Special stat is so low that it’s still better off using its sub-par physical attacks. 

Finishing Blow by Mark331

OVERALL:

Sentret and Furret being weak for gameplay is fine, but it’s weird that they seem so much worse than Rattata and Raticate. They’ve also gotten absolutely no love over the years, while Raticate has better abilities, stronger moves, and an Alolan form. It’s actually kind of wild to me just how rare Sentret is, with Rattata being not just in many more games, but being far more common throughout Johto. The move selection via TM and Breeding also keeps a player from doing anything with a Furret even in the post-game or in doubles, when things like Hidden Abilities and obscure moves allow a decent number of weak Pokemon to still be useful.

Sentret is such a perfect design that I wish they’d figure out a way to use it more, even if Furret remains competitively useless. Of course, a third form or a regional form could go a long way, especially if it made Furret more interesting and unique instead of just being… cute weasel.

[kookaburra1701]

please tell me more about hay bales. were they not a thing in olden times?

So, you almost got a BEHEMOTH of an info dump about my Very Special Interest and I was three paragraphs deep into a discussion about exactly how the mule-powered jack-screw in Samuel Hewitt's 1843 Mormon Hay Press worked when I ran across this post which said everything I wanted to say, and much more succinctly.

"And people, particularly urbanites, tend to regard farming as something old-fashioned and unchanging. (We’ll pause for the farmers to stop laughing.)"

Let's all thank KV Johansen for sparing you from a history of hay storage in Europe from 1000 to present, a subject I will babble about at the slightest provocation. I have truncated the post and included more pictures, because sepia tone is fun.

In brief: Hay bales are actually very, very modern! The appearance of nice square bales of hay in any production that is set before about 1850 is surefire way to tell that someone who doesn't know anything about what goes into baling hay was involved.

This absolute travesty is set in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in Swindler's Den, and it bugs me so much every time I have to go clear that damn dungeon that I've started writing an entire fanfic about that one stupid hay bale. An Alteration spell and a Dwemer Centurion Dynamo Core is involved. I'm damaged.

The small square bales that most people know were not a thing until the invention of the reaper-harvester by Charles B. Withington in 1872! It was commercialized by Cyrus McCormick a few years later and was adopted for widespread use very quickly.

(Image courtesy of the Shaker Museum) The first reaper-harvesters used the forward motion of the draft animals to power the machinery, and farmers had to put the hay into the hopper by hand. Up until well into the 1900s hay presses were static. They could be pulled out to the field but hay had to be brought to them. But the manufacture of them still required innovations in metallurgy and material science that occurred during the industrial revolution.

For an idea of how much mechanization is required to create a compact square hay bale, I will leave you with these pictures and videos of a Lightning Hay Press in action.

Lightning Hay Press, image from RM Wade & Co 1883 Catalog

The above video is a great demonstration of the operation of the Lightning Hay Press, using a tractor engine to turn the mechanism.

This clip shows a horse being used to drive the hay press instead of an internal combustion engine.

However, there were many ways to turn the belt drive! Farmers are pretty creative. With the inclined treadmill, the weight of the horse is what provides the power - I have seen ponies able to power large machines that would usually take a hitch of draft horses using treadmills.

[omaskit]

Ochette in my Modern AU, Octopartment Travesty II! In this Au there's some magic but it's not common place. Ochette is a one of a kind creature found on the Toto'haha Nature reserve/park. She grew up on the park with the help of Master Juvah, Miss Corhazeh, and some select park rangers. To her right is mahina and to her left is the Toto'haha logo on her shirt. I based her outfit on her merchant sprite in game. Her magical ability, besides the tail and ears, is being able to understand animals.

[juurensha]

Top Favorite Works

So, I got an ask about my favorite works from an account that I can't tell whether or not it's a spam bot, BUT it did get me thinking about my top favorite works, and since I did write them out, I thought I might as well post it here:

Top 10 (not in any particular order):

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (specifically, if I had to pick a favorite, Night Watch or the City Watch storyline as a whole, but I still love the Death ones and the Witches ones as well)

Angel the Series (s2 as my personal favorite)

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki Kun by Izumi Tsubaki (GIVE ME A SEASON 2 PLEASE)

Persuasion by Jane Austen (do not talk to me about Netflix's travesty, I refuse to acknowledge that it exists)

Lord of the Rings (books and movies)

Exorcist series by Feitian (...technically Tianbao is my favorite, but I helped co-translate Mingwang, so those clown modern exorcists hold a special place in my heart)

Mass Effect trilogy

Hannibal (TV series by Bryan Fuller)

One Piece by Eiichiro Oda

Craft Sequence novels by Max Gladstone (with either Four Roads Cross or City of Angels as my favorite)

Honorable Mentions:

-Star Wars (which one? ....look, I love the prequel trilogy and the Old Republic era is my favorite, but in general, all I want is well-choreographed light saber battles)

-Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir (only in honorable mention because there's still one book left, and I need to see the finale before I decide)

-Eyeshield 21 by Riichiro Inagaki and illustrated by Yusuke Murata

-Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud

-Steven Universe

-Surprise! The Supposed Talent Show was Actually--?! by Yan Baibai

-Oresama Teacher by Izumi Tsubaki (GIVE ME ANY ANIME FOR THIS PLEASE)

-Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro by Yusei Matsui (manga only, do not mention the anime to me)

-Undertale (I never played again after getting the golden ending because I like to think of everyone happy and well with no resets)

-Ready or Not (2019)

-Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett (specifically I am in love with City of Blades, but the trilogy as a whole is great too)

-American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett (idk how many times I've reread this book, but basically, think eldritch abomination in American surburbia)

-Spy X Family by Tatsuya Endo (only in honorable mentions because it's not done yet, and I don't want to see a sudden tragic ending)

-Neverafter (Dimension 20) (only here because I have a bad habit of not watching the final episode of D20 campaigns, I DON'T KNOW WHY)

-Escape from the Bloodkeep (Dimension 20) (yes I know it's a LOTR spoof, that's why it's down here but I have never laughed so hard in my life)

[welcometomy20s]

May 2, 2023

#775 - p.h. (SEVENTHLINKS) [Flower]

Achievement Date: 23-04-01, Upload Date: 20-05-29

One of the little hits of the COVID year part 1, the idea of drug fueled addiction feels quite close at the time and the distorted flower voice is quite distinctive. Two-person group which kind of had a fallout, and therefore only left this song, apparently. Huh.

#776 - Dependent Fritters (Denpol-P) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 23-04-01, Upload Date: 14-07-09

Very different from his more modern songs, this song has that 70’s grease, especially with that whack effect on the intro, and there is a lot more effect on this song. And even the lyrics are your typical kind-of seduction song, which is an interesting turn.

#777 - Mikazuki Step (r-906) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 23-04-01, Upload Date: 20-03-26

r-906 follows Iyowa as the new and rising VOCALOID producer. This is their first real hit, at least this is when I first encountered them. Apparently the song got popular in late ‘22, so it needed to have a second bump to get here. I think this is more conventional of r-906’s work, which oddly surprises me, considering their later output.

#778 - Capriccio Farce (MothyP) [MEIKO, KAITO, Miku, Rin, Len, Luka, Gakupo, GUMI]

Achievement Date: 23-04-07, Upload Date: 11-10-29

Kind of the big season finale of the Evilicious series, with 8 VOCALOIDS, much akin to Hitoshizu x Yama songs. It really does sound like an ED to late 90’s serial anime. Only miff I have is that the tuning is bad enough that the words kind of get eaten sometimes. 

#779 - SHANTI (wotaku) [KAITO]

Achievement Data: 23-04-09, Upload Date: 21-09-17

The latest KAITO song uploaded on this list since… Doctor=Funk Beat? wotaku’s unique tuning really sells what is otherwise an awkward VOCALOID. An intrigue premise and the arresting visual and what might be one of the best examples of wotaku’s signature sonic palette. 

#780 - Anonymous M (PinocchioP) [Hatsune Miku, ARuFa]

Achievement Data: 23-04-18, Upload Date: 23-02-17

An expansion of the interview being turned into a song by one of the great masters featuring a friend and major YouTuber in his own right. Probably PinocchioP’s more cynical song that’s directly about Hatsune Miku… Compare to a song that would be coming up from CosMo soon. Very stylized, very 2020’s PinocchioP.

#781 - Love Song (LamazeP) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Data: 23-04-23, Upload Date: 13-10-31

It is an absolute travesty that LamazeP has only three songs on this list considering his influence (4 if you include Ochame Kinou), but this is a fine inclusion. LamazeP is known for his shitpost songs, but I like his genuinely sweet songs like this better. 

#782 - GETCHA! (Giga, KIRA) [Hatsune Miku, GUMI]

Achievement Data: 23-04-27, Upload Date: 20-09-04

Big collision of western and eastern greats, only to be shadowed by two VTubers. Well, the original certainly lives up to that cover. Seriously, it really is one of best Giga/KIRA songs out there with expert tuning and K-Pop style that really pops out, and the GirlBoss lyrics are nicely welcomed, and the distinctive art… that’s good too.

#783, R-4 - Kiritan Wants to Battle Online Endlessly (GYARI) [Kiritan, Yukari, Akari]

Achievement Data: 23-04-28, Upload Date: 19-12-19

Kiritan has been a favorite lately, but this is an early version made by the VOICEROID and VTuber group head GYARI in… I think this is the final series on this list, making VOICEROID Singing series one of the few series where all the songs are in this list. GYARI nicely uses the drawling and flat voice of Kiritan to demonstrate the life and times of gamer’s playthrough of a popular game…

#784 - Superhero (Guiano) [IA]

Achievement Data: 23-04-29, Upload Date: 18-04-14

Another song in YouTube Top 100 finally popping onto this list. It’s also been a long time since an IA song got on this list, last one of Surges? Yeah… Certainly has that Orangestar summer IA feeling, which I think is the ‘correct’ way of using IA. 

[arbitrarygreay]

I feel like, around 1.5 decades ago and earlier, one could more consistently describe anime as a style over substance medium, where the best productions were style and substance, but the next few tiers would often paper over the cracks with a whole lotta flair. One of the primary perceptions I have of that is that most shows seemed to have strong senses of rhythm, even when it ended up being in service of something hollow. You very much do not get that today. In fact, it's almost emblematic to me now of anime adaptations (especially of light novels) direly lacking rhythm. Forget tailoring to the medium, it's not even giving me a sense of if it would have worked better in the source material! (Sometimes manga timing-through-paneling can be carried over, especially for shounen, but other times it seems like the production can't even be bothered to approximate that.) My guess is that it's a function of industry oversaturation and overwork. There is no longer a continuity of training (masters passing on their hard-earned wisdom), nor enough production time for timing to make it to the screen. Modern key animation is giving us the equivalent of a first draft script reading, and no edits are allowed. This snowballs because that prevents the voice actors from injecting some types of character that come from dialogue rhythms. It's no secret that I think western TV cartoon cinematography is a travesty, but those shows often nonetheless retain strong personalities, as the visuals are working to enhance the prerecorded vocals (and prerecorded vocals can also therefore be edited for timing both before and during animation, to further work together).

[lily-drake]

Going 2 b honest it's kind of weird of u 2 assume those of us who use it/its don't know the implications that might come from that . For some of us its reclaiming it (plenty of us got called "it" as children for looking a bit 2 transgender or being a bit 2 autistic or weird or gay) for some of us we don't care. Some ppl use it because their genders r more complicated than "man" "woman" or "nebulous other/none". Some ppl use it because they r therians/kin/etc but that is not my experience so I can't speak on it. It's not rlly ur business 2 decide what we deserve 2 call ourselves. I mean if u want 2 misgender ppl that's its own problem but assuming u don't want 2. Don't patronize us and assume we don't know what we're doing. Most of us aren't children and we r perfectly capable of understanding what we r saying. I hope u never interact with someone who uses it/its because its literally not that fucking deep

It is deep though. I am deeply sorry for the people who were constantly called and referred to as “it” throughout their childhoods and lives. That’s a heartbreaking thing and I can only imagine the pain each individual felt when being referred to as such. It’s heartbreaking to know that many of the people were not truly seen as humans, and it truly is a travesty of our modern age.

I know many of the people don’t understand the implications of the word as a majority asking to be called “It” are in fact children. Children that don’t fully comprehend right from wrong, that don’t fully comprehend truth from fiction, children that simply can’t understand the meaning because their brains are still not yet full developed. If you don’t trust a 10-year-olds to drive safely by themselves as they don’t fully comprehend the dangers of the road, if you don’t trust a 13-year-olds to comprehend the consequences of getting filler/injection as they are still underdeveloped puberty wise, if you don’t trust a 16-year-olds to be able to comprehend what it takes to take care of a family; then you shouldn’t trust them to comprehend the decision they are making to willingly dehumanize themselves, to be at war with themselves constantly, never knowing who they truly are.

Gender isn’t actually that complicated. See “gender” was created for the use of languages and languages alone! For example Latin uses genders to refer to masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns and verbs, and where all Romance Languages are derived from Latin, they follow similar patterns! For example Agriculae means “The Farmer” and because it ends in “ae” the word is masculine; Stella means “A Star” and because it ends in “a” the word is feminine; Verbum means “A word” and because of the “um” the word is neuter. Gender was never used to describe a person, nor was it ever meant to, it’s just for the words themselves. And as for sex, well simply put, there are only 2 sexes as proven by science.

Animals also only have 2 sexes which are male and female. So even if someone finds that they wish to be more animalistic, they would still be either female or male.

I will call people by what they are. I hold respect for the person, but that does not mean I have to respect their choices; and I expect the same in return. When I made that post I already knew someone would tell me to kill myself, which a person did. I knew that I would be insulted and told to grow up, which many people did. I knew that people would talk down to me and try to guilt trip me, which did happen. Despite this, I hold no grudge and I will continue to talk in a respectful manner. I believe that everyone has an important purpose in life, that each person is imperfect (myself included), but even so everyone can create beautiful and important things no matter what. Most importantly, I believe that real and objective truth is one of the greatest things we hold in this life. For if we can not see the world through the lens of reality, there is nothing left in this world that can ever be viewed as true and beautiful ever again. Where truth has been covered up, chaos and cruelty will reign in its place. I often hear people say that “God made a mistake”, but that would imply that God is some bumbling oaf that doesn’t know his left from right. God is a perfect being, He has never, nor can He ever, make a mistake. If you don’t believe in God, then it must be even harder. To constantly be war with yourself, to never be at peace with oneself is a heartbreaking thought. To never trust your mind, to curse your soul, to choose to remain in confusion and darkness…I can only imagine how painful that must be. I send all my love and all of my prayers to these people, because they deserve happiness; but more importantly they deserve the peace and assurity that comes with truly accepting oneself for who you are, not who you think you “should be”.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this, and please know I am open to having a peaceful and open discussion. There is nothing wrong with a disagreement nor civil debate. I hope that even if we can not come to an agreement I hope that we can at least see eye-to-eye and that both of us can come to an understanding.

[coldgoldlazarus]

This is also why I'll always prefer the stylized Miramax approach to portraying the characters. It keeps that visual language from the pieces, but isn't bound by them, and it winds up feeling so much more authentic to me. I can sorta understand the people who prefer the stuff that looks more like the sets, like the Ghost Animations and TLR, or at least respect their right to their opinion, but that just feels so reductive to me in a way.

(I will say that my one gripe with the Miramax stuff is the way eyes are melded into the masks rather than visibly set beneath them, making it harder to see them as masks a lot of the time, and I do wish they had the same level of... crispness, as Ghost's rendering style, but that's neither here nor there.)

I also really love seeing the set prototypes and how it shows how kitbashed chunks of older parts evolved into newer ones, helping keep that consistent visual language going forward even as the style of the builds evolved and new aesthetic ideas were added on top. (The mix of industrial structural kludge and refined angular art deco influence of the Metru-era sets, the Piraka/Inika piston overdose and use of blocky, chunkier textured design elements, the Barraki/Phantoka organic sleekness, and the Glatorian emphasis on elemental aesthetics.) That so much of this got cut up and remixed into new molds also really helps maintain a certain level of consistency among the variety, a perfect balancing act that really makes the universe work.

I also feel like this is what people were kind of trying to get at when criticizing G2's aesthetic, but couldn't quite articulate effectively. We wanted to see new shells and addons that also carried forward the design languages G1 had established, but that thought just came out as "moar pistons!" which is how we wound up with the minor travesty that is the Uniter Torso armor piece. Maybe calling it a minor travesty is a bit much, since I respect the intent at least, but I still don't like it; whether due to the fandom's badly-communicated complaints, or failure to understand on the design team's part, it feels like it's trying to be a compromise between the new and old aesthetics but doesn't really manage to fulfill either all that well.

But yeah, I really like how much distinctiveness and personality the original run had; it's a unique and difficult to replicate set of design ideas, that evolved interestingly across Slizers and Roboriders, G1's decade lifespan, and even the first year of Hero Factory. Sometimes I feel like even the modern fandom's 3D modelers sometimes fail to capture it in an authentic way, but at the same time I do love some of the newer spins I've seen put on it. It's just a really incredible visual identity.

so, random little tangent that came from looking at the old bionicle pens

there’s something about that white bead in the middle, the piece that’s essentially two bohrol limbs smushed together, and it kind of makes me think like… bionicle was never just about the parts the toys were made of

like, all across secondary media and even just firsthand media, you can sometimes see combinations of parts that never existed. the toa hordika’s arms in wos, for one, the way those worked they were clearly pulling from different parts but blending them together to create the look they wanted, some of that happens in the bionicle heroes console game too, they’re not bound to just what appears in the sets

and then you open up the rahi and dark hunter books, and you see these creations that sometimes use things that aren’t lego to hold themselves together, rubber bands and illegal connections, some stuff you’ve never seen in a bionicle set before (probably because it came from a roborider or a slizer but that’s besides the point)

and you see the way that giant parts are strewn about on the surface of bara magna, or making up sculptures in po-metru, and maybe they’re split in strange ways, or they’re overlapping, but you get the sense that, unlike in the toys, these shapes are mutable, they aren’t just static parts that you make the robots out of, they’re almost ideas, visions of anatomy from a world foreign to you

with all of this, it feels like bionicle was always more than just toys. it was more than something you could hold in your hand, there were ideas that you can see and understand but that were beyond your reality, things that didnt exist but could, and that’s how you knew it was more than a toy. the toys were glimpses into a bigger world, representations of living characters, not just plastic playthings but something greater than that

so yeah, there’s more to this silly little customizable pen than i think they intended, and i think that’s great

[journeydb]

July 4 2022 Boulder and Asheville NC

Happy Independence Day!  The Fourth of July is a really important day in the United States, since it was the day when, in 1776, the Continental Congress ADOPTED the Declaration of Independence.  It was then written on parchment, which took a while, and on August 2, 1776, delegates to the Congress began signing it.  There are lots of ways people celebrate July 4th, including running in races, having barbecues, watching fireworks, and just resting because they have the day off.

President Biden and his beautiful family watched fireworks shot off by the Washington Memorial from a balcony at the White House.

While I recognize that our country is far from perfect and has been, many times, responsible for travesties and atrocities, as well as fomenting political unrest in its  “national interest”, it has also done a lot of good in the world.

The duality of Life allows for this contradiction, and I can still love my country and the places, animals and (some) people in it, even though I know about its dark deeds.  We can all hope for and work towards a better, more compassionate, country which lives up to its promise of offering “LIfe, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” to EVERONE.

This afternoon we left Boulder for our annual anniversary vacation.  This year we went to Asheville, North Carolina and stayed at the Omni Grove Park Inn.  The Inn has a long and illustrious history:

“Edwin Wiley Grove, known as the “Father of Modern Asheville” was born in 1850 on a small farm in Tennessee. After serving in the Civil War he had a very definite plan for his life and career – the pharmaceutical business and the determination to rise from his early poverty to great wealth and success.

He purchased a pharmacy in Paris, Tennessee in his mid-twenties. He put all of his energy into formulating a tasteless quinine to prevent malaria, a life-threatening disease that permeated the South in the 19th century. After experimenting for several years, Grove introduced Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic and experienced immediate success. In the late 1890’s Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic, which had become a household staple, sold more bottles than Coca-Cola. After 20 years on the market, Grove had sold over 1.5 million bottles of his Tonic and surpassed his dreams by making millions of dollars.

Grove himself was often ill, afflicted with periods of bronchitis and exhaustion and his doctors recommended the clean mountain air of Asheville, NC to relax and recover. He spent time in Asheville throughout the year and that is where he would realize his next big dream.

While pursuing new pharmaceutical inventions, Grove met Fred Seely in Detroit, who was making a name for himself in the pharmaceutical business. While working together in Detroit, the two sparked a friendship and mutual admiration. Grove invited Seely to his summer home in Asheville. One week later he left his position in Detroit to work for Grove and his Paris Medicine Company. But business was not the only thing that interested Seely. When Grove introduced his daughter, Evelyn, to the bachelor, within 24 hours Grove had given Seely permission to wed her.

Seely began working for the Paris Medicine Company in June 1898 and in October of that year married Evelyn. Both men ventured into other businesses including real estate. In Asheville Grove began purchasing property, he had successfully developed residential neighborhoods in Atlanta and was considering doing the same in prospering Asheville. With the expansion of the railroad and publicity surrounding the opening of George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore House, Grove was positioning himself as a serious investor in the future of Asheville. In 1909 Grove purchased 408 acres in north Asheville, including what would become The Grove Park Inn. But he would concentrate on residential neighborhoods before ever considering building a hotel.

Two years later Grove began to plan the building of a hotel on Sunset Mountain. In 1911, Seely became involved with the plans. After reviewing the plans of several prominent architects, Grove did not find any of them satisfactory. The consummate visionary, Seely presented a sketch of the proposed hotel to Grove and he not only accepted the plan but gave Seely the enormous task of building the hotel.

Four-hundred men worked 10-hour shifts six days a week. With only the use of mules, wagons and ropes, granite boulders, some weighing as much as 10,000 pounds, were hauled from Sunset Mountain to build the hotel. Seely kept his promise to be open for business in less than one year from the ground breaking.

Just three days shy of one year, The Grove Park Inn opened on July 12, 1913. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, delivered the keynote address to four hundred of the most distinguished men of the South, gathered for the opening banquet. He had no idea of how true his words would become when he proclaimed that The Grove Park Inn “was built for the ages”.

The views from the terraces were also spectacular!  Bruce and I checked into the hotel and were amazed when we found that the suite we were staying in used to be the apartment of E.W. Grove and his wife.

Many of the hallways inside The Omni Grove Park Inn are filled with pictures and stories of the famous people who’ve stayed here, including ten US presidents, multiple world-renowned authors, and other trailblazers.

Industrialist Henry Ford, Inventor Thomas Edison, President Franklin D Roosevelt,  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and author F. Scott Fitzgerald all walked these hallways.

[imspardagus]

Two Horse Race

“And Democracy has fallen at the last fence…”

My Mother enjoyed a flutter on the horses. I think it started with a lucky, superstitious win during the Second World War (the war, if you recall, to end fascism), when she backed an outsider with a name that recalled her brother Ken, who, at that time, was a Red Beret, parachuted into war-torn Europe, and it romped home at 66 to 1.

But she always flatly refused to bet on the Grand National. “It’s a cruel race,” she said, “Horses are maimed and die.” My Mother’s kindness was second to none but her willingness to pursue logic beyond first base was never strong.

I’d like to think, however, that if she were still alive she would be aware of a painful analogy that we face in present-day politics. Because it seems to me that what we see in our electoral commitment to “first past the post” (FPTP) comes pretty close to the Grand National in its pursuit of winning for its own sake regardless of the damage left in its wake: the fallen horses of people’s hopes and aspirations and, at the last ditch, of democracy itself.

I feel this very powerfully when I consider what now passes for the Labour Party. FPTP is so manifestly a corruption of representative democracy that any decent party, or politician, with even a passing commitment to the national interest, should be determined to see it replaced by something better. And by better, I mean something that, at the least, allows each member of the electorate to conclude that his or her vote counts (companies can’t vote, of course. But in our travesty of a democracy, they are allowed to bribe politicians to do their bidding).

But the Labour Party is so convinced that it can occasionally “win”, outright, under FPTP that it would rather see the country as a whole lose nine times out of ten in an election, and allow a minority party to scoop up the majority of seats (only then to ride roughshod over the constitution through the whipping system) than change to a fairer system under which we can all claim to have a voice, if change would mean “sharing” the temporary ascension to absolute power that corruption once in a while allows it.

This is, frankly, perverse, but also, frankly, very human. Contrary to what Steven Pinker wishes to persuade us (his book, “Rationality”) we humans are not rational. We are rationalisers, a very different animal. We think, yes, but we think mostly to support our own short term advantage, or to confirm our prejudices, not to promote our long term best interests or to change our minds.

If only the leadership of the Labour Party would stop and think. It’s the race that’s wrong. They are saying the equivalent of “I know this is a dangerous sport, I know my beautiful horse, and several beasts of great majesty may die outright or be so horribly maimed that they need to be put down, I know that even I and my fellow jockeys may be thrown and suffer appalling injuries. But I believe I can win. I believe I can beat all the others to the line. And that’s what counts.” No. No it doesn’t.

What counts is the national interest. First, second, third and last. What counts is service to all the people of this nation. Ideology is a false god that must be subordinated to service. And serving the people involves, just at the base level, ensuring that their voice is heard, ensuring that they have real access to justice, ensuring that they have proper, effective levels of social security and health care, ensuring that they have clean water to drink and can afford to live, and building a future that is fit for their children. If that is “socialism’, so be it. But all it is in fact is Element 1.01 of effective governance in a healthy modern democracy.

The trouble is that people have been duped by consumerism into seeing everything as a “winner takes all” competition that exists for its own sake. It isn’t. People are not disposable commodities. They are what life is about. They are what it is for. This is not X Factor or Strictly, where those voted out get to sit in the audience and applaud the stronger acts as they pick up the trophy. We have to make a world in which the ceremony is just the start, and is where the real work begins; work to ensure that nobody gets left behind.

It is easy to claim to be “the party of business”. Business is selfish, myopic and easily appeased. But business is just what people do and it is people we have to take care of. People who actually do the business, get things done, keep things working. People who, admittedly, sometimes don’t know enough to judge what is in their best interests but who still need to be protected, sometimes even from themselves. Democracy has, first and foremost, to be a safeguard from tyranny and not to become the tyranny of a claimed majority.

And that requires people of good will to work together even if it means surrendering some of the imagined sovereignty of individualism. Working together is what saved the human race from extinction. The lie of extreme individualism, “libertarianism”, is now the human race’s greatest threat.

If only Keir Starmer weren’t so stupidly wedded to coming second behind the sweaty arse of the Tory horse, the almost inevitable outcome of his blinkered approach to our corrupt electoral (and Parliamentary) process, he could pull off the biggest win imaginable: the creation of a modern nation, confident and secure, tolerant and dynamic, vibrant and successful. But to do that, he has to surrender his addiction to power at any price and recognise the need for concerted change above all. He needs his ambition to be bigger than an electoral win in a rigged competition.

We are running out of time for Keir to grow up and see the true nature of his patriotic duty. The race to the bottom, which sees the Government treating Parliament with the utter disdain of a bullying thug that expects now to get its own way because it always has, is under starter’s orders. He needs urgently to change his colours and ride for a progressive alliance.

[animagician]

AAAA OHMYFUCKINGGOD THEY ARE

RUINING

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

WHY

WHY

WHY

OH MY FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOD

DREAMWORKS I FUCKING RESPECTED YOU

Let's fucking break this shit down, piece by piece:

we're gonna absolutely take a massive fucking dump on the end of the hidden world, with which the ENTIRE POINT WAS THAT DRAGONS WERE INDEPENDENT

NO MORE HUMAN RIDERS

THEY CAN COEXIST ON THEIR OWN, THEY'RE NOT JUST STEEDS ANYMORE

WHICH IS UNDERLINED BY THE FACT THAT TOOTHLESS (for whom it was a MAJOR plot point that he couldn't fly) BECAME THEIR FUCKING KING, AND CAN NOW FLY ALONE!

but No! we are going to first destroy that,

then come back with animation that is fucking lifeless as all hell and does not have ANY of the distinctive sweeping motions and exaggerated flight paths that MADE HTTYD's dragon's so beautiful.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1448287508173926412

LOOK AT THAT TURN

IT LOOKS LIKE THEY JUST FUCKING ROTATED IT IN BLENDER

WHY??? GIVE THE ANIMATORS MORE TIME TO ACTUALLY MAKE A PRODUCT DESERVING OF THE SERIES YOU ARE CONTINUING???

THEN!!!! We are going to get RID of fucking

VIKINGS

THE MOST IMPORTANT PLOT POINT OF THE ORIGINAL SERIES

and sure, ok, maybe that was getting worn out. let's replace it with something cool then! maybe a take where it's set in south america, or even asia to play off of dragon myths and folklore in that region (while still undermining THW's ending, but we'll let that slide for now)

ACTUALLY NO

WE'RE SETTING IT IN FUCKING THE MODERN ERA AND USING THE STUPID FUCKING "MISFIT KIDS BROUGHT TOGETHER BY FATE" TROPE

so they are taking what made how to train your dragon amazing (all of these kids who are so wildly different interacting)

and making it the most BLAND shit possible

instead of them being cousins, or childhood enemies, forced to grow up with each other hating each other and now working together, ANY of the actually interesting dynamics from HTTYD

you are making them be the kids of Scientists. Who Come Together To Investigate Something and Suddenly have to Work Together!

fuck off dude

THEN

FUCKING THEN

THE CHARACTER DESIGN

ONE OF THE BEST PARTS OF HTTYD

gone.

reduced to atoms.

hello, generic white boy no #31232138912371. i think it is very cool that you have near perfect features and no discernible flaws or fun things to mess around with in animation!

i also enjoy the fact that this series (which hinges so much on the fact that hiccup ISN'T the cool kid) is making chad mcfuckface over here the protagonist. compare the picture you have just seen

to this

THE ONE PERSON WHO HAS NO DISCERNIBLE FLAWS (tuffnut) is INHERENTLY SET OFF BY THE FACT THAT HE HAS A TWIN

fucking TRAVESTY

then there's the dragon design.

i don't really know how to put the dragon design into words, and why it feels so wrong.

but there's a MARKED difference between

this toothless knock off with fucking cat ears

and the SKRILL

the THUNDERDRUM

the SCAULDRON

the TIMBERJACK

i can't add any more images because of tumblr but

JESUS CHRIST MAN

they are taking a series that defined my childhood.

deliberately setting it in the exact same universe and thereby affecting canon.

and fucking ruining it.

i am not excited.

oh well.

in my heart of hearts, this will always be the pinnacle of how to train your dragon, and anything that they make from 2021 onwards can fuck right off if it doesn't agree with it.

[fremedon]

omg I want to ask SO many things about all your LM WIPs but: Wolf Interval?:D

Poetry Smash Bouzingo orchestra fic! Which so far doesn't even have Bahorel in it; this mostly exists as extensive notes towards an argument between Prouvaire and Combeferre over even temperament. (Combeferre thinks it's a mathematical marvel of the modern age, Prouvaire thinks it's a travesty, Grantaire takes Prouvaire's side even though he can't actually hear the difference: "If too many perfect fifths piled on each other sound like a howling animal to our ears, who are we to tame the wolf just because we can't tolerate that much perfection?")

I do very much intend to write the rest; I read a whole book on musical temperament just for this scene and I have opinions about it now.