#referencing and “tracing” and using others creations as inspiration

[sp00ky-scary]

To preface this I don't like AI, I think the ways in which AI is currently being used is the worst way we could be using AI, HOWEVER, I think the ways in which we discuss what makes AI art "bad" aren't like productive I guess. I don't really know how to explain it but the way in which people are defining what makes art human and what makes it "good" or "bad" are more detrimental to artists than anything ? And like idk it feels kinda discouraging at times and like it falls into old discourse surrounding art and things like referencing.

[snuffysbox]

man, it's a little disheartening to see how much the idea of 'content creation' and creation for the sake of the algorithm and a more desperate push for visibility in an increasingly hostile environment is perpetuating bad practices within the art community.

young artists, inexperienced artists, I have a plea for you. it's completely fine and okay to trace art you like as part of your growth and exploration! It's fine! It's normal! We've all done it! it's immensely helpful to see through the eyes of another artist and understand what makes their art appealing to you. it helps build confidence. it's fun to see results that you like and can inspire you to draw more. it's a great tool when used in conjunction with normal practice and should never be discouraged as such. (and I'm not talking about tracing reference material made for the purpose of being heavily referenced here, I'm mostly talking about other peoples' published works.)

what's not fine is to publish that exploration under the guise of it being your own art. at least ask permission. at least give credit. if something has inspired you enough to want to replicate that work fully, at least lend that person some basic respect.

[2d-dreams]

Pollux Codex

In this post I'm going to go reeeally in depth into Pollux's name and what it meant since the beginning. I'll tackle both "meta" (symbolism, foreshadowing, etcetera) reasons and why Pollux himself would choose it ::)

Warning this is like a super super long post. I am insane.

Section 1: Who is Pollux?

It is necessary to know first and foremost who this lil guy is. I mean. I don't think anyone who isn't in "The Arts of Being"'s mini-fandom is going to wind up reading this,.. so I guess it'll be quick!

Pollux is a Hexagon who, back in Flatland, really loved history (and interestingly enough, eventually was to repeat it from the very beginning, tracing back to Flatland's 'Big bang') — His real name is Paul Schwarz, but he uses his codename, Pollux Codex, and has earned the title "The Hexed" post-TAoB.

Pollux became an Apostle of the Gospel of Higher Dimensions, supposed to enlighten his world along with Bill.

Section 2: Why did he choose the name?

Pollux chose the name because it is related to his main interests! Pollux is a character in Greek mythology (while greeks or their mythology may not exist exactly in Flatland, this is still important.. maybe he translated the name from that of an actual character of an ancient mythology and saw that it had the same attributes as the Pollux of Greek mythos so thats why he uses it in our language? idk give me a Break) and a codex is an ancient manuscript text, tied in to history and his love for reading.

Codex, with the x removed, is Code, like a secret code - reference to Bill's codename, Cipher.

Also, both Pollux and Codex have 'x' in them, and Pol REALLY loves how that letter sounds. ks. ks. ks. ks. Also loves the sound of 'k', but clicking doesn't have a lot of positive connotations according to Flatlanders.

And, of course, it sounds really cool, somewhat similar to his real name [fun fact: i did not realize that Paul and Pol are probably pronounced the same.. perks of not being a native english speaker] and goes along nicely with Bill Cipher.

Section 3: Pollux

On to the interesting part! The meaning behind the names.

Yes this section and everything below was written like 5 days after everything above lol.

Pollux in Greek Mythology is known, along with his twin brother Castor, as the gods (together called Dioscuri) of twins, horsemanship and sailors.

Pollux is immortal, whilst his twin Castor is a mortal. Castor is killed, and Pollux asks his father, who is a god, to share his immortality with his brother. Once turned immortal together, they both become stars, stars that sailors use to guide themselves at sea.

Twins

Twins and duality are a reocurring thing in both Gravity Falls and The Arts of Being. In Gravity Falls there are Dipper+Mabel, Stanford+Stanley, and there is discussion of an entity that is 'the opposite of Bill', in the fandom said to be either the Oracle or the Axolotl.

The twins theme is reinforced on accident by the interpretation of The Olden Days of Bill's last words, where people thought he was invoking Xolotl, aztec god of fire and lightning, twin of Quetzalcoatl, and also god of twins, illness, deformities, and monsters, but also an important part of the creation myth of the mythology. Quetzalcoatl, on the other hand, represents life, light, wind, rain, civilization and knowledge.

These two gods are also a great inspiration for what later on become the roles of Pollux and Bill in the new mythologies of the Exwhylians, Ypwherenians and Zetwhatians, is referenced through things like Bill's association with fire and Irregularity being important in his story, and Pollux's love for rain and later on how he became the foundation of the new civilizations.

and it's also a lovely reference to my homeland México ::3 !!!

In The Arts of Being, this twin situation is mirrored. Bill's father and uncle, Caesar William+Arrhenius William Campbell are twins. A. Square, author of Flatland, and B. Square are twins in TAoB. However Bill and Pollux themselves.. don't seem to have their own twins.

For Bill, either he has a twin that he does not know of, or his twin bond is with Liam, his adoptive older brother. He is very close to him, so who says they can't have the twin bond?

When it comes to Pollux, he actually had a twin. One that existed for little time. (Yet another thing I should add in the rewrite, because while it was always a thing I knew, I never really mentioned it and it bugs me). Basically, while in the womb he had a twin, one that early on merged with him. Had this not happened, Pollux would've been a pair of Pentagon boys instead of one Hexagon. Pollux himself sees his mind as 'two brothers trying their best to pilot one body'.

The twins of Gravity Falls are often seen as opposites, like Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl, Stanley and Stanford with the 'strong dumb' vs 'smart and shy' etc. Bill's father and uncle have a similar dynamic even down to their children - Caesar had an Irregular son and whatever the hell's going on with Bill, while Arrhenius had three perfectly regular and successful Square sons.

Bill and Pollux both become part of their duality through their close relationship, despite not being twins, they are undoubtedly sticking together forever after losing their 'counterparts'. Bill's the outgoing dream demon who lies just because he can, who's purpose becomes that of 'liberating' each dimension, while Pollux is the quieter dream angel - oneiraph - who only lied in an attempt to protect himself, eventually becoming the builder of the new Flatlands. There are more details, like their color pallette outside of Flatland, with Bill having a golden body and blue fire, while Pollux has a blue body with yellow fire, the associations with fire vs rain, etc.

Horsemanship and Sailors

Neither Pollux nor Bill have any interactions with horses, and the sea doesn't even exist in Flatland. How does this tie in to TAoB, too? Well, in a more symbolic way, just like how Bill and Pol themselves have no biological living twins.

Well I'm going to ignore the horsemanship part because. Yeah. But, as for the sailor part. Their sea is that of extradimensional knowledge.

Pollux and Castor, once turned into stars, are used as reference by sailors to guide themselves at sea. If you refuse to use any sort of guide while at sea, you are likely to get lost and eventually die. Pollux and Bill 'become stars' as they ascend into what would be the sky if Flatlanders had one, when A. Shape and A. Sphere pull them three-dimensionally-upwards in order to turn them into their Apostles of Higher Dimensionality.

As 'stars' (Apostles), they are supposed to guide the Flatlanders to enlightenment - to survival. But ignored, ridiculed and imprisoned for this, Bill ends up accepting A. Shape's deal and liberating the dimension under the excuse that they had not allowed themselves to be guided.

Beyond Dead Flatland, they still are guides for those who follow them - those who seek chaos and destruction and fun follow Bill, and those who seek higher knowledge follow Pollux, Apostle of the Axolotl itself.

Section 4: Codex

Guys I'm starting to get tired of writing so much but I'm still hyped up. Excuse the decaying quality I am no longer talking about aztec/mexica gods.

Codex, an ancient manuscript, is a reference to the Book of Three Dimensions/the OG Flatland written by A. Square/Mr. Abbott (and Gravity Falls' Journals).

Codices are usually amongst the few things we have available to know about ancient cultures, their traditions, etcetera. Pollux in the end of The Arts of Being becomes a living codex of his own lost world, being the last person within Time and Space that knows of Bill's full origin and the old culture of Flatland, along with being the one to build history of several dimensions afterwards.

Pollux as the Apostle of the Axolotl isn't only restricted to the Second Dimensional Worlds, but he also learns of many, many worlds and dimensions beyond them, becoming one of the wisest and most ancient creatures of Timespace.

Section 5: The Hexed

Pollux earns this title thousands of years after The Arts of Being, a title that has an unknown origin in universe, whispered in awe across dimensions.

"The Hexed" is, first and foremost.. a pun. Hexed. Hex. Hexagon. he is a hexagon. euehehehehehhe im so sorry.

A hex is sort of like a curse. Pollux feels cursed, hexed - he survived the death of his entire universe, but he suffers. Everyone he ever knew, every book he ever read, each and every single innocent person died, and he feels responsible for it, and it haunts him.

He hopes that Bill can be redeemed, that he really will return to the Axolotl, but his hope is stretching very thin as millions of years pass by and Pollux is still there, painfully remembering everything.

And he also feels horrible for yearning for Bill so badly because he knows, he's completely aware that Bill isn't out there spreading love and kindness in the multiverse, he knows he causes suffering just for funsies and he hates himself for wanting to give him a second chance after all that has happened, and at the same time, feels ungrateful for wanting to undo his destruction, because that would also imply the destruction of his dear Exwhylia, Ypwherenia, Zetwhatia, of undoing all the good deeds he's done as an angel, of never giving Providence and Nature the relief of knowing that the descendants of their world are in good vertices.

[wowzerwyrm]

Train of thought here, long and rambling, apologies in advance. Feel free to tell me if anything in here is drastically incorrect

Thought 1: I think the main, literal point of difference between that post and what Patton was saying is that there is no actual database of copied art that is referenced every time the AI is promoted to create a picture. What is there is training from a large database of art, most—if not all—which was copied without permission or consent. After the training is done, there is no need for the art to be referenced anymore.

Second thought: The difference between the two is not what is actually important to Patton and presumably IAmAWrittenSentence. The actual existence of a database is less important than the fact that the art was used at some point in the process.

Third thought: Does theft make something not art? Is a collage not art because it is theft? Parody? What about a tracing of a piece of art? What about learning from someone else's work? What about memes, those are generally using the same image that someone else made with edits, in different ways. At least to me, the common denominator is not the fact that that the art was copied without permission. Some of those are art, some of them… well, I think it depends. Again, this is just train of thought.

Fourth thought: Where does it become wrong? Tracing is the one I immediately plucked out of that lineup as Wrong, and why is that? Well, generally when you hear that someone is tracing their art, I think its within the context of "They have a ton of art and no one was aware that it was traced from other people's artwork until we started comparing it."

Fifth thought: To find the line where it shifts, is there a context in which tracing is okay? Well, sure. If someone traces a work of art but then is open and honest about that and where they got it from, I would think that’s probably okay. Tracing is a good way to learn, and at that point it’s closer to collage and parody than theft.

Sixth thought: What makes it bad then is probably not the technique itself, but misleading or outright lying about what work you personally did. Collage and Parody and Meme Edits are all usually pretty clear from a glance that they were taken from other pieces of art, so they rarely need extra context given. Tracing often is not, and it is easy for people to assume that all the work seen was done by you.

Seventh thought: huh, I didn’t used to think it mattered if AI was labeled AI or not, but I guess this train of thought is sort of leading me in that direction. Same as a composer of a song (the previous metaphor used) wouldn’t claim to have played every instrument in a band, it might be good for AI art to state somewhere that it’s been generated. Maybe we’ll produce better shorthand for that as time goes on.

Eighth thought: Well, doesn’t that mean that AI should be able to go back into its archives and credit every single artist whose work was used in its creation?

Ninth thought: Well, not necessarily, we seem to have a contribution cutoff where it’s no longer relevant to give credit to inspiration or learning. Most artists don’t, for example, credit every tv show, book, movie and piece of music that came together in their mind to create a piece of art. Personally, I think very little art is truly original, if any, but we don’t have the capacity to trace our memories back and find every little thing that contributed to the things we make. Ignorance of source does not equal original content. And on the scale of tracing to human learning, the way AI creates images is much much closer to the way humans do, even if it’s coming at it from a different angle.

Tenth thought… no I think that’s pretty much it. There’s more rambles somewhere in there but I’m trying to stay mostly on topic. Mostly I’m posting because these are thoughts I’ve been having for a while and this is just a good opportunity to get them out.

some thoughts re: me calling myself "an artist". too tired and in pain from PT today to transcribe, if someone wouldn't mind doing the honors.

[chloefashionthroughtime]

Disney

This logo shows the entertainment company Disney which produces films, series and cartoons. The Walt Disney Company's emblem is a beautiful castle, which initially featured on the company's logo in 1985. The picture is a recreation of the Cinderella palace from a Disney animated film. It is a symbol of fantasy and enchantment, generating feelings of joy and creativity. On a black backdrop, the initial Walt Disney logo included a lined picture of Mickey Mouse, the most famous Walt Disney figure. The logo also had a sleek wordmark "Walt Disney" and the words "home entertainment" underneath. Walt Disney created the Cinderella Castle, which is still a crucial component of the present emblem, in 1995. The animated emblem appeared as a white light ball with a shooting star tracing an arc behind it. The Walt Disney Company is one of the world's most recognised entertainment organisations, founded in 1923 and named after its creator. The corporation specialises in the creation of cartoons and family films, but it also creates toys, amusement parks, books, music, video games, and television channels.

History of Disney's logo:

The logo was shown on a deep blue backdrop, and the castle was a lighter shade of blue with a basic design. Later, as the Walt Disney emblem appeared in movie trailers, the "Walt Disney Pictures" tag was added, and the castle began to take on various animated looks. The Snow Dogs edition (2002), for example, included an arcing line with icicles and snow falling from it; Lino and Stich wore a blinking and beeping UFO-like object creating the arcing line; and finally, the logo gets caught in a green spotlight and flies off like a space shuttle. The Disney logo was designed to resemble a lovely castle. Although the initial "fairytale castle" had a true prototype, the corporation eventually dropped the comparison to the actual ancient castle. The logo was altered several times before becoming a prototype for the Disney Castle in Paris. Later, the revisions affected both the stylized castle and the logo itself, while the picture gained references to Peter Pen and other "born" fairy-tale characters by the studio.

Colour Meaning of Disney's logo:

Black is associated with sorrow, gloom, night, and desolation. It’s the hue of assurance and authority, and when contrasted with white, it represents the unending conflict between day and night, good and evil, and right and wrong. White represents purity, its simplicity undimmed by any other colour. White represents everything nice and right, and it is used figuratively in contrast to dark. White represents assurance, light, and insight, and it is associated with knowledge and learning. White is impenetrable, the hue that displays the repulsive in relation to its purity.

Referencing:

[another-blog-bites-the-dust]

Masterpiece.

Summary: While creating a piece of art for a gallery, Brian knows that you are the real masterpiece.

Warnings: Here be SMUT! Nothing too crazy but there is paint involved. Fingering, unprotected sex (pleaseeeee use a condom) swearing, some dirty talk. Do not read if you're under 18!

A/N: Just some soft, cute, messy, fluffy smut with Brian who is a literal walking piece of art. I hope you enjoy! 💖

You and Brian naturally connected and clicked through how creative you both were- you being an artist and him being a guitarist.

He'd sit for hours on end posing for you while you drew or painted him and you'd listen to countless of chords he played and lyrics that he sung.

Right now you were in your flat that you often shared with him staring at a blank canvas- your mind just as bare as you tried to conjure up a creation. A gallery had asked you to take part in a exhibition, the theme was love. You had a lot of it in your life but you weren't sure how to convey something so intimate and personal to you.

Your bedroom had transformed into your studio over the years- as well as the rest of the flat. Paints, brushes, palettes, pencils and pens were scattered practically everywhere and your work was kissing the walls. Brian loved your work- it was actually how the two of you first met.

He spotted you taking one of your paintings to Freddie and Roger's stall in Kensington. Fred always gushed how much of a fan he was of your work and how well it sold. You had arrived with a piece you had mentally had named as 'A view from earth'. It transformed from light blue to black with a lit up London at the bottom as the city accepted the fact that night was fast approaching. You were looking up to the sky above and painted what you could see of space from your back garden. The canvas was filled with little bursts of white, yellow, lilac and red paint to represent stars.

Brian saw it and almost audibly gasped at how stunning it was. "Surely you aren't just giving it to them?" He asked. You had only heard Brian's named mentioned every now and then but hadn't physically met him until you saw him at the stall.

You shrugged a shoulder "Why not? We split the money when it's sold."

"Yeah but," Brian motioned at it wildly and passionately "This should be in the National Gallery or the V&A!" Your expression softened and your smile spread from ear to ear.

"You think so?" You asked in a small voice, you had praise before but the way Brian spoke about your work made your heart skip a beat.

"Yeah!" He grinned, now looking more at you than the painting "It's...beautiful." Although, he wasn't really referencing your painting at this point. He snapped back into reality "How much for it? I'd like it. £300?" You, Roger and Freddie all went wide-eyed.

"Yes!" Roger went to take the money from Brian's hand but you were quick to swat his hand away.

"No!" You glared at Roger before turning to Brian. "For you it's free."

The three boys looked at you as if you had grown a second head. "No, no, no! You've got to take something for it. It's incredible!"

You looked to the painting and then to Brian, a smirk forming on your face. "Alright then how about this- I give you the painting and you take me on a date." Brian could never refuse that offer.

"Deal."

Back in your bedroom, you moved the canvas to different places. If you moved it to a spot where the light was different or spotted something, you were hoping to get some inspiration. You placed the canvas on the floor and sighed before sitting beside it then putting your head in your hands. You didn't even hear the front door open but you soon heard Brian call out for you. "In the bedroom, Bri!"

"Hey, you okay?" He asked, shaking off his jacket. He could smell fresh paint and spotted a new flower painting drying in the corner.

You looked up and sighed before lying down on the floor. "Just stuck."

'Just stuck' were two words Brian dreaded to hear you utter. Sometimes you'd be up all night trying to find some inspiration and Brian would always worry that you were going to burn yourself out. He looked between you and the blank canvas on the bed. "What's the subject?"

"Love." You simplistically replied. "For the gallery exhibition."

Brian walked over and lay down beside you "What are you thinking?" He turned his head to look at you.

You mirrored his action and smiled. "Everything." You whispered "Especially when I look at you." Brian blushed and gently pecked your lips. "That's why it's so difficult to think of something to paint- there's too much going on in my head and I'm finding myself drawing a blank." You sat up and ran a hand through your hair, you had bits of dried paint stuck to your skin. Bringing your knees up to your chest, you wrapped your arms around them and looked down to Brian. "How was your day?"

"Better now that I'm beside you." He boyishly smirked and you playfully rolled your eyes. "I can see you thinking..." he whispered while his hands found themselves rubbing soothing circles over your tense back. He was still lying on the floor "Do you want to paint it out on me before using the canvas?"

As soon as he asked you nodded with a thankful grin. Brian was your biggest inspiration. His smile, his eyes, his nature, his amazement and wonder for space and everything beyond always lit a fire of inspiration inside you. He was more than happy to let you paint out an idea on him before your brush touched canvas.

So he was your canvas. Or rather, his bare back became your canvas.

He sat up and took his top off and grabbed a pillow while you grabbed your supplies. He lay face down on the floor and you sat crosslegged beside him. You passed him a hair bobble so you wouldn't get any paint in his hair- it was always a beautifully odd sight seeing him with his hair tied back. He gasped feeling a stroke of cold paint touch his back. He turned his head to watch you. Watch each intricate eyebrow crease and raise or see an idea burst in your head that would soon make an expression on your face. You were a moving piece of art in his eyes.

A masterpiece.

He watched you bob your head back and forth before you stroked the brush right down the centre of his back. Brian couldn't help but let out a relaxed moan- it was like he was getting a massage. "Feel good?"

"You always make me feel good," he murmured with shut eyes. Brian was in a blissful bubble- it was pure relaxation. "Can I get a kiss?" He asked.

You had done a fair amount on his back, a mix of bold reds and pinks and yellow- as well as a few other colours. You put down your brush and Brian raised his head a little to meet you halfway. You grinned and cupped his face with paint kissed fingers, smearing a little on his face by accident. That only encouraged Brian to deepen the kiss, his tongue swiping over your bottom lip like a brush against a canvas. As soon as his tongue slipped into your mouth you let out a soft moan. Brian reached down and gripped your hip before gently pushing you to lie down. You lay down allowing him to get on top of you and making the passionate kiss even more wild.

Brian tugged at your jumper and you put your arms above your head so he could pull it off. He kept his eyes locked with yours, freckles of paint were scattered over your cheeks and noise. He groaned at your bare torso "No bra?" He said almost teasingly. "So beautiful..." he murmured kissing down your neck and your breastbone before twirling his tongue over your nipple and pressing open kisses to your breasts. You moaned and arched your back, silently encouraging him to continue- which he did. Brian grabbed a handful and almost whimpered in delight at the noises you were making.

Brian's lips found yours again before he sat up on his knees, then standing and pulling you up off the floor. He cupped your face and pressed delicate kisses over your lips and cheeks. "Brian," you sweetly murmured with a growing grin "I need you."

"I'm all yours, Y/N." He passionately locked lips with you and fell onto your crisp, white linen bedsheets. In the moment of heat, you completely forgotten about his painted back. You pulled back to catch your breath and stood up, peeling off your jeans and underwear. No matter how many times Brian saw you stripped bare, it always took his breath away. Brian sat up and traced the very tips of his fingers over your thighs and then over your hips and up to your waist. "You are a masterpiece." Brian was in a trance but managed to let you know that fact in soft and sincere tone.

You blushed and walked forward to hug him, his face was pressed against your stomach. You saw the bedsheets and sighed under your breath, but that didn't matter right now. So what if your night was going to get a little messy?

You gasped and gripped his shoulders tightly feeling his fingers brush against your clit. You looked down and Brian looked up with a devilish smirk and slipped two fingers inside you and began to pump them in and out almost teasingly before he picked up his pace. Your face contorted as a wave of pure pleasure washed over you "Bri..." you moaned and felt your knees go weak.

He supported you by wrapping an arm around the back of your thighs "You're soaking, baby. Tell me what you want, tell me what you need." His gravelly voice sent a chill through your whole body.

You gasped, little bursts of oxygen quickly flew in and out of your lungs. "You Brian! I need you!" You moaned and looked down, managing to cup his yellow and red painted face. "I don't want to cum just yet...mhmm want you to be inside me."

Brian loudly moaned and slowly removed his fingers from you, drawing a long gasp and groan from you. "God, that's so fucking hot, baby. Okay. You want me- you got me." You stood back a little and Brian stood up, expertly taking off his belt and jeans with one hand while sucking off the remnants of you on his fingers on the other hand. "You taste so good." He smirked and kissed you, brushing his tongue against yours so you could have a taste.

You moved to lie down on the bed, Brian followed you with his eyes before gasping. You turned your head hearing his sudden burst of shock. "What? What is it?"

"Your bed! I've got paint all over it!" He pointed to it and you smiled.

"It's alright, Bri!" You reassured "Anyway, afterwards we can have a shower together..." you winked and in a blink of an eye, Brian had pulled his boxers off and pounced on you. Paint was getting absolutely everywhere. It was on both your arms, Brian's chest, your hip, in yours and Brian's hair- despite you tying it back. The sheer volume of his hair made the bobble snap and was now somewhere on your floor.

There was so much paint you were both convinced that soon there wouldn't be an inch of skin that wasn't spattered with the stuff. Your both giggled, Brian tried to hold you but you kept slipping out of his grasp.

Brian's laughter fizzled down while you continued to laugh. He was looking at the finest piece of art ever created. You.

"You are so beautiful," he pressed his lips to yours and managed to hold your hip before completely sheathing himself inside you. You were taking off guard slightly feeling him completely fill you up and loudly moaned right into his mouth. "The noises that leave those pretty lips of yours drive me fucking insane!" He growled and buckled his hips forcefully, your legs completely turned into jelly as your arms clung to Brian's back for dear life. "I hope I'm inspiring you," he cockily smirked.

"Yes! Fuck! Bri, baby! You are!" You moaned and let a string of curses fly out of your mouth when his pace picked up. He looked down on you almost hungrily, as if he'd never be satisfied until he had you crying out his name while cumming on his cock.

"What do you want, Y/N? Fucking tell me how good I make you feel!" He roughly kissed you, the paint colours swirling and merging together as you both rolled around in the bed.

"S-so good Brian! God!" You roughly groaned "Can I cum? Please?" You said, albeit very softly as all the air was vacant from your lungs and replaced with sheer bliss.

"Course you can, baby." He kissed you and cupped your cheek, longingly looking into your eyes. "Cum for me, let it all go." One of your legs wrapped itself around Brian's thighs while he held onto the thigh of your other leg as he drew an orgasm from you. Your whole body trembled under him as he fucked you through your high, his name loudly leaving your mouth.

You desperately caught your breath just as Brian stopped moving his hips. Tiredly grinning, you tucked some of his hair behind his ear. "Let me ride you," you murmured and softly kissed his lips, your fingers now resting just under his jawline.

"You're tired. I'm alright, honestly." He assured but he was still rock hard.

"Brian," you didn't have to push him that hard to get him onto his back. You straddled his legs, he could feel the heat and wetness radiating from you on his thighs- it just turned him on even more. "Do you want me to ride you? Do you want to cum all over me?" You asked, innocently batting your eyelashes.

He groaned and tightly swallowed "G-god y-yes!" His words trembled out his mouth. You took his length in one hand and guided him back into your dripping pussy. "F-fuck! Fucking hell!" He moaned in pure ecstasy while his head sunk deep into the sheets- but not as deep as he was inside you.

You leaned down and pulled his hair a little to expose more of his neck, letting your teeth sink into his sensitive skin, leaving a mark there to remind him tomorrow morning of what was happening right now. He sounded melodic. You wish you had every little sound and whine that left his mouth on a vinyl record to play to your hearts content. You sat back up and Brian dug his fingers into your hips, his own were thrusting into you and the sound of moaning and slapping skin was getting too much for Brian. "Bri...fuck!" You gasped.

"I'm so close...so close! Fuck!" His eyes screwed shut and his mouth made an 'O' shape as a heavenly scream left his mouth. He pulled out and streams of white hit against your painted skin- only adding to the messy masterpiece. The sound of heavy breathing filled the room and the smell of paint and sex lingered in the space the four walls had created around you. You smiled down at Brian. He was like a newly painted piece of artwork. "Shower?" He suggested with paint all over his face, strands of bubblegum pink in his dark hair.

"Most definitely!" You giggled and helped him up. Brian hugged you from behind as you made your way to your bathroom. You got into the shower together, helping each other get bits of paint off the places you couldn't reach and tenderly rubbing each other's worn out muscles. While Brian was religiously washing the paint out of his luscious locks, you wrapped yourself up in a fuzzy dressing gown and made yoursef and Brian some tea.

You took the cups back to your bedroom, you were going to make an attempt to clean up the mess the two of you had made. You placed down the cups and turned to the bed, raising a curious brow seeing the messy masterpiece on your linen. Brian walked through drying his hair with a towel while another rested on his hips. "Sorry about the bedsheets...I'll buy new-"

"No." You cut him off, still staring at the explosion of colour. "No...that's it." You whispered with a growing smile before looking up to a confused Brian. "I love it."

"What?" He crinkled his nose. "Messy, paint stained bedsheets?"

You shook your head and quickly unbuttoned the sheets from the duvet- which was just as stained- and put it over the canvas, creating a piece of art. "My piece on love! This is it!" You motioned at the sheet the two of you just had sex on that was now covering your blank canvas. It was dawning on Brian that you were going to let everyone see your sinned and stained bedsheets as part of an exhibition being held in the middle of a museum.

"Why?" He asked, not quite understanding the concept yet.

"Because that's what love is to me and to us! Hell! To anyone!" You passionately exclaimed. "Love is messy and unpredictable and things merging together!" You gestured your hands at the paint soaked sheets. Brian felt his heart wildly flutter. "It's untameable, unpredictable, it's something you can't imagine because it just happens!" You lightly chuckled. "It's chaotic, funny, something that you tilt your head back and forth from side to side at while looking at it in wonder! It makes you smile, brings tears to your eyes! It makes you feel every emotion and others that you didn't even know existed inside of you. It's...It's...beautiful." You looked over at Brian who had tears in his eyes. "Nothing short of a masterpiece."

"Just like the woman who created it," Brian kissed you while admiring the work.

"And the man who helped me create it...who inspired me." You smirked and wrapped your arms around the back of his neck while Brian's wrapped around your waist, picking you up a little off the floor.

"Truly a unique piece of art..." Brian winked.

You looked at it again "Nothing but pure, raw, passionate love."

•••

"What's the piece called?" Roger asked, squinting his eyes at the piece of art on the wall.

"'The mess caused by love'," you smiled and looked at Brian who had a soft smile on his face. "What do you think?" Roger, along with Freddie, Jim and John all murmured positively. They had came along to support you on the opening night of the exhibition at the museum.

"I think it's amazing," Brian leaned down and perched his chin on your shoulder before you turned and shared a small kiss.

"Y/N!" George, the artistic director and curator of the exhibition, approached you. Brian stood back a little so you could give the man a quick hug. "Marvellous piece! It's one of the best I've seen! It's simply exquisite!" He gushed. "How did you get the inspiration for this marvellous work of art?"

You and Brian both glanced at each other "Well it just really...came to me." Brian had to turn away and restrain himself from bursting into a fit of giggles at your appropriate yet inappropriate pun.

"Well I absolutely love it! Thank you for taking part! I'll see you later!" George waved and left to speak to more artists, the boys disappeared to look at the rest of the exhibition.

Brian wrapped his arm around your shoulders "Very funny," he smirked and kissed your forehead. He then looked up to your sheet on the canvas on the wall. The sheet that he had slept on countless of times. The sheet that he had tickled you on. The sheet that he had made love to you on...multiple times. The sheet where he held you in his arms after a rough day. To the world it was a piece of colourful art- people could interpret it however they wanted. But to you and Brian, it was so much more. "You know, that's a work of art..." Brian turned to you and you looked up to meet his gaze. "But you, Y/N Y/L/N, are a masterpiece."

———————–————

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[boltstuck]

There’s already artistic standards for the use of references and even collages where there has to be X number of differences from the original to denote the new work as unique onto itself.

This is an interesting question though - how IS an AI generated image different from a collage?

For one, a person creating a collage knows where all the original images in it came from (at least in the sense of “I saw the full original unaltered image” regardless of if they know the original creator) and they know how much of that image will be present in the new work.  Will the new work use the entire photo of Michelangelo’s David or just the hands?  This is a decision made by the artist.

Unless you’ve trained the AI yourself, you don’t know all the images it’s referencing.  You also have no control over how much those images are reflected in your new work.  This creates situations where you can put in a prompt and get a picture that looks very original to you, but is actually a barely-modified copy of artwork you’ve never seen in your life.  Maybe you’re ok with it being a near copy or maybe you’d prefer more variance from the original, but in either case, it’s not something you have control over.  You do have this control when making a collage or using reference or even tracing a picture.

For two, there’s a difference in the experience itself.  This is the part of the AI debate that actual artists get the most steamed over.  Picking up a magazine and taking a pair of scissors to it, making decisions about what parts you’re going to glue-stick together into the pages of your scrap journal and where each piece will go to enhance the other, or saving a bunch of digital images and copy, pasting, resizing, rotating and re-coloring parts of them into your new art program canvas -- the process is a much the art as the final product.

...if you’re into that.  Some people aren’t, which is fine!  I think AI generators can be great for people who want to do some low-energy, high-reward art creation or have an idea they want to make a quick inspiration image of and that’s a perfectly fine niche to fill.

But honestly, the major problems with AI generators are actually just -- problems with society as whole. 

If artists weren’t massively under appreciated, underpaid, and exploited in literally every industry or could live comfortable lives without having to sell their art, they wouldn’t have to be so possessive over their intellectual ownership.  If most industries weren’t all but pissing themselves in excitement at the prospect of getting to replace their artists and designers with an unpaid AI, artists wouldn’t feel so defensive.  If some of the people creating and using AI generators weren’t going like “haha, now I can kick those smug artists to the curb and make millions” --- you get the picture.

i guess the big thing thats giving me pause re AI art is i dont see how its meaningfully different than like. an artist who does collages? and wouldn't any law around AI art also punish them too, and any artist that uses references they didn't make themself?

[gvbejvmes]

Drabble: K-I-S-S-I-N-G (Pt 3)

Title: K-I-S-S-I-N-G -- The sad ending Rating: R (For language mostly) Relationship: Gabriel James/Jonathan Michaels (Trigger) Warnings: Mpreg, referenced spousal abuse, alcohol abuse, major character death, parents have sex lives, too. Brief Summary:  First comes marriage. Then comes love. Then comes a baby in a male uterus. Wait. What? Notes: This was the depressing ending that I wanted to write, but also that I didn’t want to be the real ending.

"Has he come out at all?" Kale murmured out to Cesar. He was sitting in the living room of the James-Michaels home, baby Gigi asleep against his chest. As terrified as he'd been about suddenly having a friend with kids, Gigi had immediately warmed up to him. Now the other child, the toddler, that was a whole other story. He couldn't handle the brat that was Gabe's godson, but the baby he could handle, surprisingly.

Cesar shook his head. "Not really. Rocio leaves food outside and it keeps disappearing so he's eating, but the only time we really see him is when he runs out of whiskey. He hasn't touched the baby at all. He didn't react when he told him we named her Gigi because they wouldn’t let her leave the hospital until she had a name. So Gigi Maria - after his mother, not my wife, don’t let her tell you otherwise - Palmer James Michaels. Had to get his family names in there, and only white people hyphenate." He sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face as though that would help him get back on track. "He's in mourning. He let Mama plan a Catholic service. If that's not a sign, he's not okay, I don't know what is."

Kale nodded. "It's only been a week. No one prepares for losing the love of their life after only two years of marriage." He stood and gently moved the baby into the carrier next to the couch. "What are we going to do about it?"

"What do you mean what are we going to do about it?" Cesar asked him warily.

Kale waved his arms around the room. "The funeral is tomorrow, and at this rate, he's not going to go. He's going to drink himself into a stupor, and if he does show up, he’s gonna make a drunken idiot of himself and cause a scene in front of hundreds of artists. Do you know what artists do? Record everything." He rubbed his hands together. "We need to think like Gabriel. WWGD?"

"What would God do?"

"No." Kale smacked his arm. "What would Gabriel do?"

There was an awkward cough from the other end of the living room. Lupe and Alejandra popped up from where they had been hiding behind the couch eavesdropping. "If Uncle Gabe gave us instructions on what to do if this happened, would this be the time to initiate plan Kick Jay's Ass?" Alejandra asked, raising an eyebrow, a smirk playing on her lips.

Kale rolled his eyes. "Yesterday would have been a good time for plan Kick Jay's Ass, ladies." He gestured towards them. "Well, do your thing. Whatever Gabe told you to do."

Lupe nodded. "Tio Cesar, you might wanna take Gigi outside for a couple of minutes. It's about to get loud up in here." And the way she said it almost made her look like an evil mastermind.

Cesar looked at his nieces and looked at Kale before making the sign of the cross. "I hope you know what you're doing." He asked, head tilted up, towards the ceiling, talking to Gabe, before picking up the carrier and smacking his hand on his thigh. 

"C'mon, George." He called out to the dog, who was at his new permanent place, laying at the door, waiting for his master to come home. At night he always slept next to the baby, but during the day he was always waiting for Gabe. "Time to go outside."

Once Cesar, Gigi, and George were outside, the girls ran into the kitchen. They came back five minutes later with their grandmother. Alejandra held a bucket of water, Lupe held what look like a gong, and Mama Rodriguez held a burning bundle of sage. "Go to the nursery in five minutes." Alejandra instructed, and with that the girls were gone.

The nursery had been a point of contention since Gigi had come home. The door was locked, and the last person who had been in it was Gabe, which was probably why no one had gone in there since. Johnny refused to go anywhere near the nursery. Just like he refused to hold the baby. For all of Kale's teasing, the entire situation broke his heart. He'd already lost his best friend; now he was watching his best friend's husband have a breakdown. It was hard.

Suddenly the oppressive quiet that had become the James-Michaels house was replaced by the sound of the gong, followed by loud cursing, followed by what sounded like a person being rolled off a bed. At that moment, Kale was glad he was on the good side of the Rodriguez women.

Remembering his instructions, he went up to the nursery in time to see Johnny standing in front of the door, very much looking like he'd been drinking for a week straight. He also looked like the bucket of water had been poured over his head. And he smelled strongly of sage.

"You ready to do this, handsome?" Kale asked, nodding to the door.

Johnny made a face. "No."

Alejandra gave Johnny a light shove. "Well, tough titty. You promised Uncle Gabe. Now get in there." She pushed him again when he didn't immediately jump to.

Slowly Johnny unlocked the door, and walked inside, only to freeze in the center of the room. Kale followed him into the room, and immediately understood why Johnny had stopped. Stepping into the nursery was like stepping into one of Gabe's installations. The entire room looked like Wonderland. Each wall depicted a different scene from the animated cartoon, or at least inspired by a scene from the movie. It made Kale sick, seeing the type of creation the art world was going to miss out on now, the legacy Gabriel James would have had. 

One wall had a table painted onto it that looked like it stretched into infinity, hundreds of cups, saucers, and teapots stacked precariously on the table, and on the plush green grass next to it. Kale's hand traced the wall, finding that the textures even looked different. The tea cups had been covered with epoxy resin, and looked real.

The wall with the windows that looked out into the backyard had been painted to look like the forest Alice got lost in. The flowers climbed the walls, and surrounded the windows. They didn't look like the bad acid trip Kale remembered them being. They looked... happy, kind, approachable.

On the wall in front of the crib (which was looked like it was made out of gold, but was actually wood), he'd painted the Queen of Heart's garden, croquet court and all. Half the roses were white, and half the roses were red. And the thing that got Kale the most was that there were no characters drawn, but he knew exactly where he was. It was all the good parts of Wonderland with none of the bad.

The room also had a book case painted with playing cards all over it. There was a changing table that looked like a house. Kale hadn't seen the move in awhile, but he figured it was the house Alice must had overgrown when she grew too big. There was a toy chest with hundreds of pocket watches embedded inside and epoxied over, and a changing table painted in the scheme of Alice's dress, little frills on the edges to add to the theme.

Gabe must have been working on the room since the moment he found out he was pregnant. There had to be at least 200 hours of work put into this room. This was not a quick project. He had to have planned, and plotted, and designed exactly how he wanted everything laid out. He’d built his daughter a living piece of art to grow up in -- a guaranteed way that her Daddy would always be in her life. Even if he wasn’t there physically.

Johnny made a pained sound, and Kale turned to find him collapsing into a rocking chair. It looked like a standard rocking chair. Nothing that made Kale understand why he reacted the way he did. Sure, it was beautiful. Gabe’s piece tended to be beautiful. Then, he saw what Johnny must have seen. The rocking chair was nestled under the large tree Alice fell asleep under. The whole wall the door was on actually looked like the opening scene of the cartoon, a gorgeous tree next to a babbling brook. From the chair, was the perfect view of a Cheshire moon. Below the moon and in Gabe's loopy cursive were the words: I love you always.

"That's how he always signed his letters to you, isn't it?" Kale asked, sitting on the ground next to Johnny. When the other man nodded, Kale nodded, too. "Jonathan," He pressed his hands together as he tried to figure out how to phrase this. "The last time I talked to Gabriel he told me I needed to remind you of your promise."

It was quiet for a long moment before Johnny pulled himself to his feet. "Where's the baby?" And with that he was out of the room.

Kale slowly got up and followed him downstairs to the patio. By the time he made it to Cesar, Johnny was holding Gigi. It was the first time he'd held the baby of his own free will. "I need to show you what your Daddy made for you." Johnny murmured out softly.

Before Johnny could go into the house, Kale grabbed his arm. "Are you okay?" He asked, feeling Cesar's eyes on him, too.

"No, but I made a promise to my husband."

Kale smiled softly. "I think we all did."

[pulp-diction]

The first thing you should know about "Never Look Away," Germany's Oscar-nominated film (for both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography, though it won neither), is that it has a pretty wide berth.

That includes both run-time (clocking in at about 188 minutes) and subject matter, tracing the lives of two men and their families through the end of World War II in Germany: Carl Seeband, a Nazi doctor who sterilized women against their will for the Reich; the other, Kurt Barnert, the nephew of one of those women – and, eventually, the artist boyfriend of the doctor's daughter Ellie.

Their stories weave and wind around each other, with plenty of the three-plus hours spent on how the war shaped their respective prospects.

The result is sumptuous — as Kurt rebels against the socialist values that guide his budding art career, and Carl tries to outrun his past without abandoning his beliefs, writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck pits art and history against each other in an earnest sentimental way, building a world around these two men's approaches.

Though the story's shadow looms large, it's more like a Chuck Close painting, obsessed with the small points that make up the arm of history. Kurt's family chuckles over how oppressive the Third Reich's standards are as they attempt to visit his committed aunt; we meet characters who were merely referenced as they are bombed in Dresden. "Never Look Away" traces just why people defected to West Germany, even if (on paper) they were doing just fine in the East. It is a grand saga, but on a small scale.

Often times characters repeat what feels like the touchstone for the film, with various applications: "What is true is beautiful." And yet, by using too wide a brush, it feels too tidy, too kitsch by the end (without even getting into how the alleged inspiration for the film, Gerhard Richter told The New Yorker that it was an "abuse and grossly" distoriting of his biography).

What was building to a face-off between the two men, with plenty of explorative fun of avant-garde art movements, becomes an exercise in syrupy-sweet resolution, without providing much resolution beyond achievement anyway. Put another way, what's beautiful isn't always true, and it sometimes seems as if "Never Look Away" doesn't know the difference.

This is not to say that the movie isn't rewarding in some way; Caleb Deschanel's cinematography nom is well-earned, as he uses shots to explore how art and the creation of image fall together and apart. Tom Schilling, Sebastian Koch, and Paula Beer often embody the aching loneliness of their roles, while Saskia Rosendahl as Kurt's aunt Elizabeth is hypnotically good.

But there's a sense that either the story stumbled into what poignancy "Never Look Away" does have, or else it just takes the easy way out of attempting to make grand pronouncements. With the movie, Donnersmarck touches on something true about how biography and history swirl around to make inspiration in a way that is both alchemic and ineffable. In the end, however, is deeply meditative but without anything truly to say.

[gemsonaresources]

🏐3rd Year Anniversary Event: Gemsona Summer Vacation⛺

Get your swim suit, your towel, and sunglasses- we’re going to the beach! Or, maybe we’ll just watch TV. It’s too hot outside...

On July 25th to August 1st of this year 2018, gemsona makers will be asked to post and submit their gemsonas enjoying summer vacation to @gemsonaresources���​​ to celebrate the blog turning THREE YEARS OLD on July 25th!

How do I participate?

Create art, literature, videos, playlists, animation, or use any other medium to show us how your gemsonas enjoy their vacation! How do you picture your gemsonas partaking in the warm weather?

Where and how do I send in my work(s)?

Two ways:

1) Post your works on Tumblr, use the hashtag #gemsonavacation within the first five tags on your post, and tag me @gemsonaresources in the description or the first five tags so I know where to find your works.

2) If you do not have a Tumblr blog or prefer to submit your works on another website (deviantArt, Twitter, etc), please send me a link to your work and I will post it onto my Tumblr page.

Are early and late submissions accepted? If you are unable to be online during the event week, you may send in your work(s) to me early and I will queue them for the date. However, I will not be accepting late entries since this event is a week long.

**If you have any questions or wish to send in your work(s) early, feel free to send in an ask, fanmail, or chat message to @gemsonaresources​ or @macbeth-macdeath​ (my main blog)! Click the “Read More” for restrictions on submissions as well as prompts to inspire you!

Restrictions on Submissions: -All creations must be made specifically for the event. -Works must be G or PG rated (think of what is shown on Steven Universe). -No cursing/swear words -No blood, gore, violence, death -No nudity -No NSFW/sexual content -No ships with Steven and/or Connie (or other background characters their age) with any gems (they are minors). -Please avoid relationships deemed unhealthy/abusive/manipulative/etc. This art event is to celebrate loving, healthy relationships with others. -No traced or recolored work of someone else’s art (unless it’s a base); we want your original content! This includes photoshopping another person’s work to fit the theme of the event. -Canon gems are allowed, but all works MUST have at least one gemsona referenced. -No roleplay threads -Playlists are allowed, but make sure the songs do not have sexual references and curse words/slurs are censored. Prompts: -Some summer activities:   +Swimming (beach, pool, lake, river)   +Playing Sports   +Beach Day (swimming, sunbathing, boardwalk, sand castle building, playing games)   +Carnivals, County Fairs, Street Fairs   +Camping (alone, with friends, at a structured summer camp)   +Hiking, Sight-Seeing, Day Trip, Road Trip   +Visiting Landmarks, Monuments, and Museums   +Arcade, Aquarium, Bowling, Movies, Concerts, Planetarium, Theater/Plays, Sports Arenas   +Going out to Restaurants   +Library   +Arts and Crafts   +Lounging around and relaxing, Reading, Watching TV   +Working a Job   +Cruises, Boat Trips   +Trivia/Game Night, Meet-Ups, Karaoke, Jazz Night, Open-Mic Night -Does your gemsona like the hot weather? Why or why not? -Does your gemsona have any traditions associated with summertime? -Did your gemsona join a summertime activity because of other gems, because of humans, or just out of curiosity?

[aion-rsa]

Is Wario the Ultimate Nintendo Fanboy?

https://ift.tt/3lcJUma

WarioWare: Get It Together! not only revives one of Nintendo’s most enjoyable pick-up-and-play experiences but reminds us that Wario has managed to become far more popular over the years than Nintendo seemingly ever intended. We don’t want to remind you of SNL episode where Elon Musk dressed as Wario, but here we are. 

Indeed, it’s doubtful Wario was ever supposed to be little more than Mario’s “Star Trek-esque” evil doppelganger. I mean…just look at the guy. His trademark symbol is essentially an upside-down “M” and the origins of his name roughly translate to “bad Mario.” He initially appears to be little more than the most obvious villain you could think of. 

Yet, a deeper dive into Wario’s strange history reveals that he might be more than that. Actually, there’s a popular fan theory that suggests Wario is not only secretly an obsessive Mario fan but that he might just be a sly piece of commentary on the entire fanboy concept. 

Wario’s Mysterious Origin Story Suggests He and Mario Were Old Friends

Wario was created to play the villain in the 1992 Game Boy classic, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. As mentioned above, he was pretty much seen as “bad Mario” or “anti-Mario” at that stage, with some reports suggesting that he was viewed internally as the Bluto to Mario’s Popeye. Indeed, it’s easy to see a lot of Bluto in Wario’s physical design and generally unappealing characteristics. 

Interestingly, though, the motivation to make Wario the “anti-Mario” may be based on more than a simple visual way to convey his villainous nature. In fact, it’s been said that the creation of Wario was partially inspired by the Mario Land 2 team’s initial hesitancy to develop a game based solely on another team’s characters and worlds. The creation of Wario gave them their own character to work with.

Interestingly, the spirit of that idea is echoed somewhat in an old Club Nintendo magazine comic which suggested that Wario is essentially a clone of Mario that was accidentally created by Dr. Light of Mega Man fame. It’s an amusing theory, but since Nintendo has never referenced it again, we’ll just ignore it for now.

Officially, Nintendo used supplementary materials to suggest that Wario and Mario were once childhood friends who became bitter rivals. That idea has been disputed by some in the past (as well as contradicted slightly by subsequent Wario stories), but it again leaves you with the basic idea that Nintendo saw Wario as a familiar rival to Mario who represents different (even opposite) characteristics. 

It was a simple enough idea that would soon become complicated by Wario’s “growth” as a character and how fans and developers chose to interpret what they saw when they looked at him.

Wario’s Mario Obsession Is One of The Character’s Most Consistent Traits

For the moment, let’s put aside a debate over whether Wario is best described as a rival or a fan and simply focus on the one Wario characteristic that unites both ideas: Wario’s obsession with Mario. 

The first time we ever see Wario in a game, he has essentially hijacked Mario’s castle, established residence there, and redecorated the whole thing to better reflect his own image. While that certainly seems like classic villain behavior, there’s still the question of why Wario would go to such lengths. After all, he didn’t seem to be in it for the money (that would come later), a princess, the kingdom, or even simply the castle itself. So…why bother?

This is where the supplementary material would lead you to believe that Wario did all of this out of his bitterness towards Mario. That theory is seemingly supported by a Nintendo Power comic called “Mario vs. Wario” in which it is “revealed” that Wario is angry at Mario for mistreating him as a youth (Wario believes he was bullied by Mario) and does indeed want to get revenge on him in any way he can.

It’s a simple enough explanation that still doesn’t quite answer every question fans had about Wario. For instance, if Wario hates Mario so much, why does he dress like him and mimic so many of his actions and goals? If this is all about hate and revenge, why does he seem to almost want to replace Mario like he’s Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female?

Well, the simplest explanation revolves around the idea that, in some way, Wario is indeed obsessed with Mario and has seemingly devoted quite a bit of his life to getting Mario’s attention however he can. Call it jealousy, revenge, or whatever you’d like, but it can all be traced back to some kind of obsession.

What about the fanboy theory, though? Well, it turns out there is certainly no shortage of evidence to support that idea. In fact, a deeper dive into that possibility may reveal some potentially uncomfortable truths about the Wario character…

Read more

Games

Why Nintendo Abandoned the Game Boy Name

By Matthew Byrd

Games

How Old is Mario? The Many Mysteries and Myths of the Character’s Age

By Matthew Byrd

Wario’s Bitterness, Obsession, and Bad Hygiene Make Him A Tragically Appropriate Fanboy Caricature

The idea that Wario is an obsessed Mario fanboy is most often traced back to a reinterpretation of the character’s first appearance. What if Wario didn’t put Mario through everything he went through in Super Mario Land 2 simply out of revenge but rather because his obsession with Mario turned him into a Mario fanboy? What if he grew up thinking Mario was the coolest kid in the world and then watched Mario become Mushroom Kingdom’s biggest celebrity?

That would certainly explain Wario’s looks, desire to mimic Mario’s actions/motivations, and even the idea that his first big move was to invade Mario’s home. Wario even keeps a few of the Mario statues spread throughout that castle, which is kind of an odd thing to do if he simply hated the guy.

For the moment, allow yourself to buy into the idea that Wario did morph into a Mario fanboy at some point. If you reexamine elements of the character’s evolution through that lens, then you also may start to see some of the ways Wario isn’t just a hardcore Mario fan but the ways he strangely represents fanboys in general.

For instance, Wario apparently has notoriously awful hygiene, which is certainly a characteristic commonly associated with the worst of the worst fanboys. He’s also brutish, arrogant, often portrayed as being quite stupid, and even constantly obsessed with money in the way that some fanboys are whenever they use a company/product’s fiscal success to justify their love of the thing itself. 

Wario has also consistently been portrayed as being quite vain which strangely contributes to the idea that he is actually selfish and ultimately projects his obsession with himself through superficial relationships and surface-level fascinations with others. Let’s also not forget that Wario has followed Mario’s career nearly every step of the way (Wario has been a Mario spin-off fixture for years now) and even eventually found a “brother” for himself in Waluigi: another potentially obsessive fan who may have contributed to Wario’s obsession by giving him a community that bolstered the validity of his viewpoints.

You could even see the WarioWare games as evidence that Wario is a bit of a parody of the fanboy concept. After all, the game is based on Wario creating cheap and simple games that sometimes mimic Nintendo’s own titles, and you know what Nintendo’s attitude towards fan games has been like throughout the years. 

However, the most compelling piece of evidence to support the fanboy theory may be the idea that Wario was created partially out of spite of the entire Super Mario concept. What if Super Mario Land 2 developer Nintendo R&D1 were especially resentful towards being asked to make an entry into someone else’s franchise and, on some level, created Wario as a sign of their bitterness towards being asked to lose themselves in someone else’s creation?

It’s an interesting idea that offers something fun to chew on, but it doesn’t necessarily hold up under close scrutiny. In fact, the idea that Wario is a Mario fanboy sells the character’s evolution and modern purpose a bit short. 

Wario Has Been Adopted By the Internet and Reshaped Into An Antihero

While the Wario is a Mario fanboy argument can’t completely be dismissed, it is easy enough to weaken some of the theory’s pillars. 

First off, Wario’s Mario-themed attire was seemingly explained in Yoshi’s Island DS (Wario’s first chronological appearance in the Super Mario timeline). There, we see Baby Wario in his trademark attire (complete with a “W” hat). That seems to suggest that’s just how everyone in the region Mario, Wario, and Luigi grew up in happened to dress. That’s a bit odd, but I’m willing to accept it as a canonical explanation. 

As for Wario’s desire to take over Mario’s castle…well, just about every aspect of that plan can indeed be attributed to the idea that Wario was just out for revenge and decided to go full Count of Monte Cristo by not only taking everything his rival had but aspiring to live a better life in the process. You’d probably be pretty sore too if the weird kid you grew up with suddenly lived the better version of your dream life. 

Wario’s greed could also help explain a lot of his Mario-esque characteristics. Why buy a castle when you could take one? Why come up with your own moves and characteristics when you could just copy something that works? We know from WarioWare that Wario isn’t above putting in the least work possible to maximize profits, so it makes sense that he would just fake it until he makes it. 

More importantly, the public perception of Wario has evolved over the years in a way that may not completely dismiss the fanboy origin theory but does suggest that the character has grown beyond those origins (if that ever was the intention in the first place). 

In fact, the team at Good-Feel (developers of Wario Land: Shake It!) previously said that they didn’t even see Wario as a villain. Instead, producer Takahiro Harada stated that, in his mind, Wario was “so uncool that he ends up being extremely cool.”

That statement really gets to the heart of who Wario is today. Maybe he was created as a kind of sigh and groan towards the very idea of being “forced” to make a Mario game, but Super Mario Land 2‘s developers eventually embraced Wario as their own platforming mascot and went on to make some truly great games starring him. 

Wario is kind of like the Stone Cold Steve Austin of Nintendo characters. Yes, he’s loud, gross, foul-mouthed, and unconventional, but in the buttoned-up and tame world of the Super Mario games, he feels like an only slightly rancid breath of fresh air. Wario is the consummate outsider who made a name for himself by being different (even when he was copying others), so it’s easy enough to understand why he’s been adopted by the internet as this kind of antihero whose worst qualities oddly make him that much more likable.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Maybe Wario isn’t really an obsessed fanboy, but he has certainly become a rallying point for Nintendo fans who like to point out that they ultimately get to determine what they love and that they’ll probably always find a way to rebel against Nintendo’s occasional reliance on traditionalism as well as their clean, family-friendly image.

The post Is Wario the Ultimate Nintendo Fanboy? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3E4OEDe

[snuffysbox]

How do you feel about the idea of someone being inspired by your art style? I know some artists consider it a kind of theft; Your art style is eye candy and I was curious

Every artist gets inspired by their peers, imo, we all take a bit from each other and incorporate it into our own styles. That's been my artistic growth journey anyway, I've probably taken countless elements from other artists and used them in my art without even thinking about it. I would never claim that my art is wholly original, it's really an amalgamation of lots of stuff I've enjoyed over time.

I just think there's a delicate balance to it. You can be inspired or you can actively reference other artists' works and that's where I think the slippery slope happens. I've had another artist reference my work so heavily that it veered into copyright infringement territory (with poses and expressions being lifted straight from my drawings), but that gradually got rectified as they settled into their style and stopped referencing me directly.

What I'm saying is that taking elements from other artists is crucial to artistic development, but direct referencing/tracing should really stay in the drafts. I have sketchbooks upon sketchbooks filled with straight tracing of artists I admired when I was younger, but I would never post and claim those drawings as my own creation. There just comes a time where if someone looks at your art and goes 'that looks like [insert artist here] drew it, not you', you've probably gone a bit too heavy on the borrowing.

But yeah, in general there's absolutely nothing wrong with style inspiration, that's how art styles happen in the first place. It's just a balance of incorporation.

[hallowed-delights]

I've been drama clean in this fandom for a year but yk what i deserve to respond to this

First of all i wanna correct your original post, disney OWNS Marvel entertainment, same goes for Lucas films, Fox and so many other companies, media etc.

So your Marvel example was wrong from the beginning

Tracing is bad. No argument there don't trace.

Following your logic.. Yana doesn't own the Disney movies either? Yana just works for Disney, i don't understand the logic from your Black butler example because Twisted Wonderland characters' whole point is that they are INSPIRED/TWISTED from others, Black butler doesn't have the same thing?

Also fun fact did you know Sebastian shares his name with a real life inquisitor? Who wrote about demons! Interesting :)

Maybe Bungou stray dogs, an fandom where they make OCS based on REAL WRITERS would be a better example, i mean you don't own Jane Austen or William Shakespeare- Oh wait they are dead woops their works are public domain too!

Anyways! Disney doesn't own the original fairy tales either, they are written down by people like Grimm brothers, Charles Perrault etc. So did Disney steal their characters by that logic? Winnie the Pooh was created by Alexander Milne, Disney still made their own Winnie the Pooh. Again did they steal for Milne? Hunchback of Notre Dame was a book by Victor Hugo, Pocahontas was A REAL PERSON who's story was terribly romanticized by Disney (now that's a twst oc you probably shouldn't make)

But also there's the real thing: We're just artists on tumblr, we're not multi million corporations PROFITING out of our creations, we're not talking credit from the original studios or creators. Design wise yeah I'm a little guilty of that i admit but i can always change and tweak the designs, make them more unique because they aren't a consistent part of a series they are FAN creations. I can change them however i please (even though some of twst characters themselves look like their original inspirations, just ✨anime-ified✨ looking at Idia)

John Carpenter isn't gonna fly to my country just to sue me over my silly little anime Michael Myers, Bram Stoker or Roald Dahl aren't going to leap out of their graves to beat the shit out of me, the ancient Greeks aren't going to get me because i gave Dionysius huge boobs (if they did they'd probably come for Disney too), THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME ISN'T GONNA BE OFFENDED BECAUSE I MADE AN ANIME BOY.

I doubt anyone claims they own Nintendo or Universal, i certainly don't, my friends don't, no one is taking credit from these famous companies or media. I'm not taking credit from Behavior studios (who have inspired and taken inspiration from other studios and media, Identify V sound familiar?) because i made an silly Disney game oc based on their very popular game Dead by Daylight. Disney themselves didn't consent to anyone making ocs within Disney to use their movies either its all just fan work.

I think that's all i want to say, the gist of it is no one is profiting, no one is stealing credit and you have no right to insult (your very rude and proudly insensitive tone in your original post i,calling it plain plagiarism), let people have fun, no one's oc is hurting you. Block button is free.

if you don't want drama don't make posts like that and put it in the main tags it really is that simple

Links to more topics i wanted to discus but couldn't find a right place to mention:

Public domain, movies in public domain

Is fan art illegal/legal? Anne Rice

Sam Raimi and Wes Craven referencing each other even

Disney's very scummy practices, attempt to copyright day of the death, oh hey my old friend Public domain!

Edit added silly comparison image

Just something I wanted to say in general...

Don't let others in the fandom tell you how you are supposed to make characters... do what is the most fun to you. If you wanna Twist something outside of Disney but are unsure, Just do it as long as it's fun.

Hourglass Station academy to me was the most fun project I had and got me so many people to talk about similar interests... and I do want people to go wild and interpret characters their own way so.

All I wanna say it loosen Up, don't force yourself into guidelines others give you and just enjoy creating.

Original characters, things twisted from movies, Games and other Sources are as valid as Disney stuff.

[loadbags846]

Ragtime King

Overview

Ragtime Kings

The Ragtime King

Ragtime King Banjo

Supertone Banjo Ragtime King

King Of Ragtime Scott Joplin

This auction is for a real vintage USA made 1920’s or older Sears Supertone 5 string banjo, model 407, “Ragtime King”, 22 frets, 30 brackets, made by Lange. Condition is good for the nearly 100 years old that it is! No serious problems, sounds good, pretty loud! The metal parts are all tarnished and/or have minor surface rust from age.

In 1974, the academy award-winning film The Sting brought back the music of Scott Joplin, a black ragtime composer who died in 1917. Led by The Entertainer, one of the most popular pieces of the mid-1970s, a revival of his music resulted in events unprecedented in American musical history. Never before had any composer's music been so acclaimed by both the popular and classical music worlds. While reaching a 'Top Ten' position in the pop charts, Joplin's music was also being performed in classical recitals and setting new heights for sales of classical records. His opera Treemonisha was performed both in opera houses and on Broadway. Destined to be the definitive work on the man and his music, King of Ragtime is written by Edward A. Berlin. A renowned authority on Joplin and the author of the acclaimed and widely cited Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, Berlin redefines the Scott Joplin biography. Using the tools of a trained musicologist, he has uncovered a vast amount of new information about Joplin. His biography truly documents the story of the composer, replacing the myths and unsupported anecdotes of previous histories. He shows how Joplin's opera Treemonisha was a tribute to the woman he loved, a woman other biographers never even mentioned. Berlin also reveals that Joplin was an associate of Irving Berlin, and that he accused Berlin of stealing his music to compose Alexander's Ragtime Band in 1911. Berlin paints a vivid picture of the ragtime years, placing Scott Joplin's story in its historical context. The composer emerges as a representative of the first post-Civil War generation of African Americans, of the men and women who found in the world of entertainment a way out of poverty and lowly social status. King of Ragtime recreates the excitement of these pioneers, who dreamed of greatness as they sought to expand the limits society placed upon their race.

Image Credit: The “Scott Joplin 1911, The King of Ragtime Composers” portrait featured in this post came from NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, via the following Black History Month post: Slices of the Tenderloin #3: Scott Joplin. However you enjoy it, whether by playing it yourself on your instrument of choice or listening to others perform it, be sure to crank up.

Destined to be the definitive work on the man and his music, King of Ragtime is written by Edward A. A renowned authority on Joplin and the author of the acclaimed and widely cited Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, Berlin redefines the Scott Joplin biography. Using the tools of a trained musicologist, he has uncovered a vast.

Origins of Ragtime Music. Ragtime developed in African American communities throughout the.

Henry King, Director: The Song of Bernadette. For more than three decades, Henry King was the most versatile and reliable (not to mention hard-working) contract director on the 20th Century-Fox lot. His tenure lasted from 1930 to 1961, spanning most of Hollywood's 'golden' era. King was renowned as a specialist in literary adaptations (A Bell for Adano (1945), The Sun Also Rises (1957)).

The following book review by Jeffrey Chappell appeared in Piano & Keyboard Magazine, November/December 1994 issue.

Scott Joplin was a quiet, serious man who composed some of the liveliest, happiest music ever written. The unprecedented standard of excellence that he set and maintained earned ragtime world-wide renown. After the publication of “Maple Leaf Rag” he became known for the rest of his life as “The King of Ragtime.”

Ragtime fell into obscurity with the advent of World War I and with new developments in jazz forms. Its revival commenced in the 1940’s and gathered a momentum that peaked in the 1970’s, establishing its solid place in the repertoire. Contributing to this momentum was the 1950 publication of Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis’ book, “They All Played Ragtime.” This was the first biography of Joplin, and was accepted as the definitive text on its subject.

In his preface to “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era”, author Edward A. Logo design inspiration. Berlin makes clear the necessity of producing a new biography of Joplin. He honors the accomplishments of Blesh and Janis but points out that they were untrained in formal historical research. Much has been added to what was known about Joplin since their book appeared, but Berlin’s own investigations have yielded a significant wealth of new material. As such, “King of Ragtime” represents the best available current knowledge of this subject.

Some know Joplin only as the composer of “The Entertainer” and “Maple Leaf Rag”; they may even have heard his opera “Treemonisha.” These readers will be fascinated to learn about Irving Berlin’s alleged plagiarism of a tune from “Treemonisha” in his “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”; about Joplin’s first opera, “A Guest of Honor”; and about the origin of the terms “ragtime” and “Tin Pan Alley.” The chapter called “The Maple Leaf Rag, 1899-1900” will engross them with its step-by-step recounting of the creation, publication, and sensational reception of Joplin’s signature piece. They may be surprised to find that, in spite of the advanced level of difficulty of his piano pieces, Joplin himself was not always highly regarded as a pianist.

Ragtime Kings

The specialists will be richly rewarded as well. The origins of titles of pieces are ascertained; attributions of collaborative compositions are sorted out; and the chapter called “Freddie, 1904” tells of the existence of a previously unknown second wife. An entire page is devoted to the conflicting information about Joplin’s date and place of birth. Minute details of all kinds are provided, from the price of admission to a Fancy Dress Calico Ball in Sedalia, Missouri in 1898 to the address of Barron Wilkins’ older brother’s cabaret in Harlem in 1914.

Enhancing the author’s clear writing style and organization are numerous illustrations, including photographs of Joplin and other ragtime writers, street maps of places that he lived, musical examples, and newspaper advertisements. These appear throughout the book as their subject is mentioned in the text, which is satisfyingly convenient for the reader.

All but one of the musical examples were typeset for the book. The exception is a photocopy of one page of the printed score of “Treemonisha”, and it is startling. To indicate the sound of women crying, Joplin invented a graphic notation that one would expect of avant-garde composers decades later.

The one known existing letter written by Joplin, an application for copyright for “A Guest of Honor,” is among the illustrations in the book. As interesting as it is to see his actual handwriting, one would wish that a page or two of his music manuscript had been shown. The author relates hearsay reports of a trunk of manuscripts being lost during the “A Guest of Honor” tour; and in his final chapter traces the hair-raising saga of the manuscripts left by Joplin after his death as they shifted hands again and again before being lost. But is every one of them lost? Where are the ones that he sold to publishers? Do any exist in the Library of Congress? The author does not say.

The book also has a sub-text which appears periodically as inserts in a typeface different from that of the main text. This provides background information about side issues such as prostitution in Sedalia, minstrelsy, and theater segregation. One ongoing series compares passages in Joplin’s piano rags to nearly-identical passages in the works of his imitators.

Filezilla server service. In the main text, the author finds that Joplin himself recycled some musical material. Analysis shows that “The Cascades,” “Gladiolus Rag,” “Leola,” and “Sugar Cane” were based on the “Maple Leaf Rag” model. In each case, however, new elements were developed, giving every rag its own appealing identity.

Berlin’s methods of detection and deduction are impressive: no statement or source goes without rigorous cross-referencing and confirmation. Previously accepted “facts” are brought into question and reinterpreted. In his quest to present all the available information, the author at times produces material worthy of a reference book. An early chapter describes Sedalia, Missouri in 1883 as “a good-sized, thriving town.” The ensuing paragraph lists the exact number of public schools, private schools, churches, secret and benevolent societies, paramilitary organizations, newspapers, banks and loan associations, and saloons; as well as the number, names, and racial makeup of baseball teams that formed later on. This is much more than most people would ever want to know about Sedalia, Missouri. Curiously, the other main Joplin residences, St. Louis and New York, are not afforded the same exhaustive treatment.

The Ragtime King

As painstakingly complete as is this volume of research, one finishes the book feeling strangely out of touch with Joplin’s interior life. We know his addresses and what pieces he composed when he lived at each of them with some degree of certainty. But his attitudes about life and his own experience of living it can only be deduced from what others said about him. This is no fault of the author: there are no known surviving diaries or personal correspondence. Joplin’s own words occupy a total of half a page in this book, and most of those are excerpts from his music instruction pamphlet, “School of Ragtime.”

Ragtime King Banjo

Blesh’s writings provided earthier, if perhaps apocryphal, anecdotes. He relates that a friend of Joplin complained at lunch that having to wait for a phone call allowed his fried eggs to get cold. Joplin said, “Look, Sam, if they’re good hot, they’re good cold.” This shows a man with a sense of humor as well as a sense of practicality.

From other reports we can tell that Joplin had a reticent manner. He spoke seldom and softly, but with a refined pronunciation and vocabulary that impressed those whom he met. He was regarded as a kind, pleasant, modest, and inspiring man. Nonetheless, he knew that what he produced was of excellent quality, and in an enterprising way sought the acceptance that he believed was deserved by him and his music.

The excerpts from “School of Ragtime” present Joplin’s defence of ragtime as a music with staying power and high class. He responds to the scurrilous perception of ragtime as being light and trashy by distinguishing it from lesser kinds of music, and by asserting that genuine ragtime was endorsed by cultured musicians. He goes on to admonish players of ragtime to be scrupulously exact with rhythm and tempo when playing “Joplin ragtime.”

Supertone Banjo Ragtime King

This shows a man who was meticulous about his work, who knew how good he was at it, and who took pride in it. It also shows how he struggled to gain respect. Joplin met with opposition to his chosen art form throughout his life. The fact that Joplin was black does not account for all of this opposition, since the black clergy crusaded against his music. Ragtime was seen as degenerate and even dangerous to the moral health of the nation. It was, in fact, music that was performed frequently in brothels. Joplin’s reaction to all of this was an apparent rejection of organized religion, although he was not an atheist, and he seems never to have been married in a religious ceremony. He believed that education was the key to the advancement of Afro-Americans.

King Of Ragtime Scott Joplin

Joplin died of syphilis in 1917 at the age of 49. At the time, he was at work on his “Symphony No. 1.” Among the lost manuscripts supposedly was a piano concerto. Blesh and Janis saw some of the manuscripts; one was “Pretty Pansy Rag”, which Blesh said was unfinished, although Berlin reports that a pupil of Joplin had studied it with him. Will we ever get to hear “Pretty Pansy Rag”? Only time and future research will tell. As Berlin notes more than once, many questions remain unanswered. Until they are answered, we can safely say that “King of Ragtime” is the benchmark in Joplin research.

[nephyartis]

“The Right Frequency”

Our Archaic Age

I see lots of conflation and ignorance surrounding the topics of Power Words, Runes, Glyphs, Sigils, Wands, and Wyrdstones. I hope this text will help clarify some of it.

First, some terms. Rune. Glyph. Sigil. Runic Languages, which to say, languages associated with a script (often in addition to a non-runic script), are also often called Languages of Power. A rune in-and-of-itself is a sort of pictogram, representing related physical and meta-physical ideals. It’s a building block. Glyphs, on the other hand, are like compound words, or more nuanced building blocks. A glyph referencing the Tiger animal would be derivative of the basic rune for Beast, as an example. So for what runes are the basic words, and glyphs are the compound words, Sigils are the slang. A sigil will contain elements of runes or glyphs, but expressed in a personalized manner, often for the sake of identification. Different runic systems (languages) do exist, though, which presents some important distinctions.

Primordial, Supernal, The Elder Language, the Language of Creation. Call it what you will, they are all the same. There are vibrational patterns that comprise the nature of existence. They bear personality--mental traits. By mimicking these vibrations, and mental states, we may illicit changes in the world, all working through The Medium--the field of interaction between physical and meta-matter, that so many call the Weave. All languages of power are derivative of this original system. To glimpse it is a task of great difficulty, which is why divination is often used to expand one’s mental faculties, just to grasp the concepts wholly. On the conceptual, abstract, and divine, there is the Dethek Language Branch. On the mechanical, definitive, and arcane, there is the Iokharic Language Branch. Of special note, there have been systems that attempted to mix the two, such as the Seldruin, an arcane system composed with respect for the divine, but that is not the topic I hope to address.

The cultures and creatures that popularized these languages lend credence to the ideals they represent. The origin of species: warring elementals of crude matter, before the specialization of complex life--these creatures, such as Djinn with their reality warping wishes--they warred across the cosmos seeking places of higher potential, creating form from chaos. Crude, raw, powerful. Then in time complex life formed. The creator races were born. They grasped The Language, and further complexity, but they did not create worlds, like the elementals did. Great empires forming afterward, ever more derivative of the last. More complex, but in complexity, one sacrifices potential. Giants, Dragons, then Elves. Each came and created their own derivative systems, yet only two flourish to this day. The Giants and the Dragons. Of those two, it seems to me global culture has strayed, perhaps too far, into the arcane--the material--the Dragon--and in its cry for more--subconsciously aware of its own shortcomings--it has accepted falsehoods and niceties in place of reality and hard truth.

While scholars have debated whether Iokharic was influenced by Dethek, or if it were the other way around, I will posit that this is the wrong question. They share commonalities because they are inspired by--derivative of--the same root system. The universal language. As language has progressed, however, ever more nuanced, it has gained the ability to express more-and-more complex ideas, at the cost of its potency, much like the races that practice it. Each one branches out of those that came before, in a great tree of life. This is not to say that I believe movement along the branches is impossible, but that’s a topic for another time.

Compare both Iokharic and Dethek runes. Knowing their script will greatly assist. For that matter, compare the runic forms of any language. Those two are simply the most widespread. While there are differences, their similarities are key to understanding the pervasive narrative of our universe. Lake, Water, Ocean, Tide, Mutability, Longing, Gulf. A nuanced rune (also called a Glyph, or Hanzi) will appear visually similar to other like-minded runes, because their meanings are related. Shark will resemble Fish, which resembles Water. This holds true with all runes. They represent things, which in and of themselves, contain mental traits. These mental traits correspond to a certain vibrational frequency. Now compare the vibrations. The sound. The practice. Follow it up the linguistic tree, and watch it evolve. You will start hearing very familiar phonemes while on the same branch. It’s not until one reaches the Big Three, that language diverges greatly. Dethek, Draconic, and Elvish, respectively. Despite these apparent differences, though, their runes address and link the same ideals and frequencies.

Still, their differences are not unimportant. Dethek runes, like the cultures that popularized them, are grounded in the divine. They focus more on the intent, meaning, or associated mental traits, rather than physical measurements. The giants’ Ordning, dwarven paragons, human belief. There is a narrative beneath it all. Old churches of yore were cautious of science (read, arcane), and the pride of intellect. It was for good reason, even if it became misguided. One need not look far to see its dangers displayed in Dragons. Even the most noble among them face temptation in the face of ignorance or wealth. Primates in particular have evolved with a phrenology primed to notice serpentine figures, for the danger they pose is legendary. It is a story that our very blood cries out.

One can look at the spread of human language to see its influences, and trace its lineage along these branches. Often, mixing the two properties. Chessan, Raumtheran, Thorass, and Waelan, all take influence from dwarves (who took influence from Jotun), from the gods, or directly from Jotun. For some it’s harder to follow, such as the Untheric, Han, or Rauric languages (for that matter, any influenced by Netheril or Imaskar). The Netherese, first introduced to the Art by elves, then later for themselves with the great golden scales, became increasingly Iokharic. Likewise, their people, arcane. Independently, the same can be seen with Kara-Tur, and the Rauric (Imaskar, Thay) languages. Their cultures, while divine at first, made course along the arcane, increasingly adopting Iokharic methods.

Time for a closer look at Iokharic. The methodical. The measured. The arcane. These are focussed on what physical phenomena are represented, by the universe’s pervasive narrative. Iokharic is to Dethek, what Alchemy is to Herbalism, and what Intelligence is to Wisdom (Seldruin is the Charisma of the group, which muddies the picture a bit). Yet look at the great empires that rose in its wake, each pragmatic and worldly. The Dragons. The Elves. Netheril. Thay. Each has contributed greatly to the advancement of the sciences, and revolutionized the way we live. But left unchecked, history shows that innovation will be its own undoing. I do not intend to say arcane magic is wrong, or that it should not be practiced. Merely, that there is a balance in all things. Even the divine, and the arcane. Their balance--their synthesis--is godhood. It’s otherworldly. It is true divinity. It is that which lay closest to understanding the universal system. Magic Circles are often a good example of this, combining both practices.

At this point, let’s point out various ways these concepts can be utilized. Take Wyrdstones, for example. Primordial and awesome in power, they are still crude. While it cannot be said precisely, I would place their original creation prior to the divergence of language. One need only channel their intent to realize the potential held within Wyrdstones. Any symbols they hold are lost on the limited perspective of our minds. So following the route previously stated, this would suggest Wyrdstones to be very near the universal language, as one does not need to infer a narrative, nor discern a practice. Wyrdstones are more whole. Intrinsic. Dwarven runestones, on the other hand, tell stories, and those stories often possess a weaker, but more nuanced power. The corresponding flow of mental traits are their key importance. While on the other hand, Iokharic runes are measured and precise, constructed meticulously, and often with more material affect. They pay less heed to the overarching story, and more to its physical events. The reliable power achieved in this way is often very attractive to aspiring mages, which likely goes without saying. To which I point out again, and caution against, the Pride of Intellect.

The differences between these systems also aids in understanding how to use more complex magical items. Arcane wands, for example, require practical understanding. How to stand, what frequency to embody, and how. Whereas with divine wands, empathetic understanding is necessary. You must respect, emulate, and believe, the energies being channeled. Posture and tone become much less important. Of course, one could also just practice through intuition how to use magical devices, but such a skill only gets you so far.

Last but not least, bringing this to an end, I’m sure some will have thought by now, “What about the planar languages?” It becomes very difficult to say. We could speculate, for example, that Infernal aligns more arcane than divine. The ideas they espouse, and association with Tiamat, along with present day cultures (such as Thay) align enough to suggest it is true. However, there are two important dynamics to note. The gods are shaped by our cultivated belief. I have little doubt that their language could be as well, and that their language might evolve over time. Moreover, as previously described, godhood is a state of existence both arcane and divine, so at the very least it cannot be said that planar runes are wholly one or the other. They surely emphasize both practices, which is what makes them deific in the first place. It’s with these things in mind that it becomes very hard to pin-down planar languages. Combine that with the fact that they are obviously very far away from us, studying them becomes difficult. This is why I have focussed on a more grounded history of language. The planar systems are undoubtedly very close to the universal system, as far as origins go, but to what degree they still resemble it, may be impossible to say.

What I can say is that it’s time we stopped living in an age of ignorance.

[mst3kproject]

313: Earth vs the Spider

First we had It Conquered the World, in which It failed to even conquer the town of Beechwood.  Now we have Earth vs the Spider, in which the poor Spider is badly outnumbered even when it, too, is only really menacing one small California town.  It's an incongruous title in other ways as well, but I'll get to that.

High school student Carol Flynn is worried when her father doesn't return from a drive, so she and her rather tactless boyfriend Mike set out to see what's keeping him.  There's no trace of the man, but they do find a huge silk rope across the road, which they follow into a cave, which turns out to be home to a spider the size of a house!  A giant dose of DDT appears to kill it (along with the entire rest of the cave ecosystem), so a teacher has the gigantic corpse taken back to town and stored in the school gym so that scientists from across the country can come and study it. Before that can happen, however, the spider is brought back to life by the Power of Rock N Roll, and soon it's off on the inevitable rampage!

The movie never tells us how they got the huge spider back to town.  Did they just strap it to the top of a truck?  Did they airlift it with a helicopter?  In either case, how did they first get it out of the cave?  Maybe they used whatever it was they did to transport King Kong to New York.

Other than that, it's kind of hard to find anything to say about Earth vs the Spider. It's another bland, by-the-numbers sort of movie that doesn't really have anything to make it stand out from the pack.  It's something to look at for seventy minutes, but it doesn't linger.  The most memorable thing about it is the scene in Lilo and Stitch where it's playing on the televisions in a shop window and Stitch finds it inspiring.

That said, the movie is not necessarily bad.  In fact, there are places where it pays a surprising amount of attention to everyday details that help make the silly story feel more grounded.  For example, Carol's father doesn't seem to have been a very responsible man, but at the same time we can tell he and Carol were very close and she takes great offense whenever anybody else refers to his poor reputation.  Yet in spite of her love for him, she knows she has no grounds to defend him, either, and is eventually forced to admit that his having run off to gamble his paycheque away is a very real possibility.  Her distress over the loss of the bracelet he bought for her would seem like an over-reaction under other circumstances, but understandable due to her grief at his death.

Other character also have nice touches like this.  The fact that Mike keeps putting his foot in his mouth, or that he doesn't have his own car but must borrow one from a friend, make the characters feel more like real teenagers even if the actors don't always look the part.  It's also nice to see that the kids actually have parents who can be supportive, worried, or strict by turns, as the situation demands.  The small town setting makes it plausible that the characters cannot consult with scientists or the military about their spider problem.  The closest thing they have is their high school science teacher.  He's not exactly on the cutting edge of research, so he uses what he's familiar with rather than coming up with some esoteric technobabble solution to the monster.

So the characters are fairly convincingly written (George Worthing Yates also co-wrote Them!, which is easily the best of the 50's giant bug movies), but unfortunately they're less-convincingly played.  I kind of have a thing for June Kenney (Carol), who looked awfully cute in her circle skirts and sailor collars, but she's not a good actress.  She always sounds like she's trying too hard, which makes her the opposite of Eugene Persson (Mike), who sounds like he's barely trying at all.  If they were both at the same end of this scale it might work, but the fact that they're equal opposites just emphasizes how much they both suck.  The Sheriff's skepticism when he first hears about the spider is understandable, but Gene Roth's overacting does neither him nor the movie any favours.

Special effects are a mixed bag.  A composite shot of Mike and Carol running along a ledge doesn't look bad – you can buy that they're actually in Carlsbad Caverns for the purposes of the movie.  A moment later, however, we see a tarantula move through the same image of the cavern, which has now been cut out so that the spider can pass behind the rock formations without an expensive process shot.  This looks terrible, and there's a spot where you can see the edge of the cut-out cardboard.  The dried-out victims that have been drained by the spider are amusingly gruesome, but the skeletons strewn around the cave are obvious plastic.  The huge strands of silk that make up the spider's web look quite nice, all filamentous and springy, but when we see bits of the spider in the same shot as the humans they always look hideously fake.

Come to think of it, where are all those skeletons supposed to have come from?  We don't hear about a rash of car accidents or missing persons along that stretch of road – maybe we should have, since it would give extra foundation to Carol's fears for her father's safety.  There's got to be a dozen or more corpses sitting around in there.  Who were these people?

The spider itself is realized (quote unquote) like all Bert I. Gordon's giant creations are – mostly through superimposed shots of a live tarantula, with a bit of very limited puppetry.  While the latter is, as I've already observed, pretty dreadful, the process shots here are about as good as they ever got in such movies.  Certainly they're a hell of a lot better than the bugs with holes in them of King Dinosaur or The Cyclops.  The angles are matched very well to the background footage, and the spider is never obviously transparent.  As long as it's not expected to interact with its environment or the characters, it's quite acceptable.  It seems that by this point in his giant bug movie career, Gordon had a good handle on what he could and could not get away with, at least as far as superimposition went.

(Incidentally, if you're wondering why you've never heard of a 'bird spider', that's because it's a species found mostly in the rainforests of Columbia and Venezuela.  Bird spiders are golden-brown in colour and about as big as a bread-and-butter plate, make poor pets because of their aggressive temperament, and never come anywhere near the southwestern United States unless a human brings them there.  The furry little spider the movie shows us, supposedly representing a normal-sized bird spider, looks like an ordinary Chilean rose-hair to me. Rose-hairs are half the size of a bird spider (also called a goliath bird-eater... because yes, they do) and not even in the same genus, though both are in the tarantula family.  Spider nerd out.)

Unusually for a Bert I. Gordon movie, Earth vs the Spider never delves into the question of why there's a giant spider running around.  His other movies all give excuses for embiggening things: Glenn Manning's cells were mutated by exposure to the plutonium bomb, the locusts in The Beginning of the End ate irradiated grain, Empire of the Ants blames a toxic spill, and Village of the Giants has the Goo.  None of these are very plausible, but they all make it over the 'just accept it' threshold so we can get to the story beyond.  Earth vs the Spider brings the idea up, but never bothers to do anything with it.  The teacher notes that while the spider may be dead, 'the principle that caused it to grow' is not, and it's important to study this so they won't end up with more giant spiders that could easily overwhelm human civilization.

This idea is somewhat reminiscent of Them!, in which the elder Dr. Medford fears that the ants, which breed faster and build more efficiency, will drive humanity to extinction.  Unlike in Them!, however, the plot point serves only as an excuse for bringing the spider into town so it can wake up and have stuff to wreck.  Nobody ever finds out why it was so big, and at the end the cave is sealed up with explosives while the mystery remains un-solved – it's never even referenced again.  In the other Bert I. Gordon 'giant creature' movies, the beastie's origin is frequently key to its defeat.  In The Amazing Colossal Man the scientists are able to find a cure for Glenn's condition after they realize what effect the plutonium bomb had on his bone marrow.  In Village of the Giants, Genius discovers an antidote to the Goo.  Earth vs the Spider?  Nothing doing.  Why did they even bother to bring it up? It seems like the best approach might have been to just not worry about the origin of the spider and hope the audience wouldn't think of it themselves.

This is the other place where the title seems very strange.  The idea that the spider is a menace to the entire Earth is merely an exaggeration, but the title Earth vs the Spider also seems to imply that the spider itself is from somewhere else, like the interdimensional spiders of The Giant Spider Invasion.  If you're gonna give us a Spider from Nowhere, fine, but don't do that after a title that seems to promise us a Spider from Mars!

I am not watching Giant Spider Invasion next week.  Fifty-foot spiders are something I have to pace myself with or I'll run out of things to say about them.