While Japan had limited trade and contact with the West for much of the 17th through 19th centuries, things opened up in the mid-1800s. [Yōdō jizu]contains a number of interesting depictions on this modernization period, including these illustrations of famous westerners. Utagawa Kuniteru and Utagawa Fusatane are the artist listed, and there isn’t a date but it’s presumably from the 1870s. In looking for more information on these images, I came across this @publicdomainreview post that includes many of these same images, with translations. Turns out, they were from the Japanese Ministry of Education!
Curious how the furniture is drawn with such precision, in contrast to the people. And in the first two illustrations, those seem to be two different families, but that is clearly the same chair, in identical perspective.
I think that the artists must have had some good reference pictures of furniture. Possibly a catalog, since all of the furniture seems to be drawn at the same angle, with the same vanishing point, regardless of where it sits in the room.
Also, it’s cool to see how the artists’ preconceptions of “how a human looks” informed their illustrations. I don’t know that they were drawing from life. They clearly got the memo that Europeans have big noses, may have red hair, and the men are beardy, but the facial hair patterns are more Asian, and everybody has epicanthic folds on their eyelids.
Man I know emulators are technically considered piracy I guess, and I can see why it would be an issue with newer games (not that most emulators are advanced enough for that anyway), but I just… hhhhhh the way the video game industry operates in regards to old games is so fucking stupid. It’s like
Gamers: Hey, I’m really interested in this game you made a long time ago! Can I play it? Game companies: No. Gamers: But I’ll give you money! Game companies: We no longer manufacture, support, or distribute that game or the console it’s available on. There’s no way for you to buy it. Gamers: Well, what about this slightly-newer-but-still-outdated game that was never released in my region? Can I play that? I’ll give you money. Game companies: No. You’re only allowed to play games from your region. You can’t buy it from us. Gamers: So, you don’t provide any way for me to purchase these games from you, or to play them in any form? Game companies: Correct. We don’t care about these games anymore. They might as well not exist. Some guy on the internet: Hey, I found some old and foreign games that aren’t sold or available to play anywhere, so I fixed them up so everyone can play them now for free! Here you go! :) Game companies: ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT. HOW DARE YOU STEAL OUR PROFITS. PLAY THE GAMES LEGALLY OR DIE. Gamers: But you just said there’s no way to play them- Game companies:FUCK YOU
A commie wrote this.
I’m fucking crying I cannot tell if this is meant to be an insult or a joke. Out of every single comment I have received on this post in the months since I made it, this is the funniest fucking one. “A commie wrote this” ok thank you 1950s American government that is very insightful thanks
Even from a capitalist perspective it’s shitty. Why wouldn’t they capitalize on that market?
If some fans on the internet are emulating your old games…hire those people and start selling subscriptions to PlayOurOldGames.com.
I also wanted to point out that there are institutions archiving games for pop culture research (I mostly know the one at the University of Michigan), and though they of course buy the old discs and cartridges and consoles, emulation is vital to their work! Sometimes the hardware is impossible to find or make functional, even with a university’s budget, and emulation is the only way to get the content at all!
(As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy. LONG POST so press “J” to skip or start scrolling because I can’t make cuts work for Moblie, sorry.)
Back in 2004 I went to a cousin’s wedding and my mom got into Fandom.
Ruth, my Mom’s-college-roommate’s-daughter was getting married to a man of mixed reputability in what had been for several months had been the primary sitcom of the family- mushroom vs. champagne draperies, the bride wanted a small ceremony and the mother of the groom wanted to invite every business contact she had, and then there was the problem of the Rabbis- Ruth’s rabbi had mostly retired but had promised to marry her in her youth, David’s had promised the same and the current Rabbi of Ruth’s synagogue wanted in too, so they agreed to be married by all three Rabbis. Furthermore, any Jewish wedding requires a Chuppah- a canopy under which the ceremony takes place. Mom agreed to make one for Ruth and David’s wedding, (MUSHROOM-colored of course, not champagne) and escort it there personally as we were attending the ceremonies.
Alas, the wedding was in Columbus, a terrible place.
Southeast Ohio is generally a rather nice place- on the far northern end of the appalachia it has lovely rolling hills of deep hardwood forests, a spectacular zoo and many other things a scientifically inclined teenager might enjoy but I was not going to those, I was going to a Wedding, where I had been guilted into being a flower girl on account of being the youngest available cousin, along with my sister. I spent most of the drive from Colorado in a state of spectacular teenage misery, which was almost entirely obliterated when we got to the hotel.
The guests of the Hotel consisted thusly:
My family (4)
A small herd of fancy-suited businessmen there for some obscure finance meeting (30ish)
A jolly and boisterous horde of Gamers, Cosplayers, Geeks and Freaks present for the World Of Warcraft convention immediately across the street (several hundred)
I didn’t actually know a damn thing about WoW, other than it was something my geekier friends in middle school played, and that it had elves with ridiculous eyebrows, but I know how to make friends with the kind of people who wear nothing but bodypaint and prosthetic ears in public and started talking to the gang of Blood Elves at the breakfast bar while the businessmen huddled together at their table like a group of musk oxen forming up against a pack of wolves.
Eventually mom wandered over and joined in the conversation- after years of making Halloween costumes, stage props, miscellaneous fabric constructions like the Chuppah and so forth, she’d gained an extensive knowledge of what fiber can be made to do, but wanted to know what marvelous things these people were doing with plastics. She hit it off particularly well with the Troll over his teeth, and they decided to confide in her.
“Hey, here’s a fun thing to do-” Said the blood elf, before trotting over to the edge of the mezzanine overlooking the lobby.
“LOK’TAR OGAR!” she bellowed as loudly as her tiny, corseted frame could manage.
“FOR THE HORDE!!!” Roared back several dozen Warcrafters, shaking their con-safe weaponry and causing several of the businessmen to duck for cover.
“Yeah, if you need anything, just yell that.” she nodded, before we parted ways.
Later that night, Mom slipped in the shower and sprained her ankle, which resulted in a moderately panicked but ultimately boring visit to a clinic to get it X-ray’d and acquire a wheelchair. The next morning, however, we had to proceed to the wedding, and discovered that the elevator was out of service.
A Chuppah, if you’re not familiar with one, is roughly the same dimensions and weight as those pop-up tents they use at gentrified outdoor craft fairs, or about 9 feet long and close to 60lbs when folded up. This one was closer to 100 once all the memorial images and sentimental fabrics and special tent poles had been added on. Mom was stuck in the wheelchair, Dad was in a state of near panic at Mom being injured and also having to be somewhere On Time, and my sister and I were liquefying in the summer heat and the bride-mandated mushroom-colored seven goddamn layers of itchy-ass tulle flower girl dresses, barely able to lift the chuppah between us.
In short stairs were not happening and three quarters of us were about to riot but Mom is definitely the smart person in the family because she remembered-
“LOK’TAR OGAR!!”
“FOR THE HORDE!!”
“I NEED SOME HELP!”
Instantly the cosplayers from the night before were there, along with a dozen more. Two beefy trolls carried Mom down the stairs and clean out to the parking garage, someone else got the chuppah, and the Blood elf managed to get concierge to bring our car around to the curb with our destination already programmed into the (VERY PRIMITIVE) gps. I thought my dad was going to cry with relief.
“So [Gallus].” Mom asked me on the way to the wedding. “People who like videogames. Do they all have Magic Words?”
“Yeah most of them have some kind of phrase like ‘may the force be with you’ or ‘live long and prosper’. Why?”
She just nodded, storing that fact away for later.
The wedding turned out to be an event in and of itself- The mother of the bride fainted when they kissed, the rabbis nearly got into a fistfight, the mother of the groom fell off the chair and needed stitches, uncle Larry tore his pants on the dance floor then elected to remove them and keep dancing- and I managed to forget entirely about Mom’s question.
*
Last year, we were doing theater set-in at the same time the local theater and culture complex was hosting the small city convention. It was July, hotter than satan’s own asshole, and the stage pieces were too large for both of our 5’2-and-under asses to move.
I came back out from wresting a Magic tree into the complex to find mom squinting calculatingly at a group of Marvel cosplayers.
“What are their Magic Words?”
“Huh?”
“The words you say when you want to summon them- ‘Use the Force’ or something?”
I blinked a few times, as my heat stroke-addled brain translated that. “…Avengers Assemble?”
“HEY AVENGERS!” Hollered Mom. “ASSEMBLE!!”
INSTANTLY, an Iron Man and three Captains America sprinted over.
“What can we do Ma’am?” asked one of the captains, sticking rigorously to character.
“We need help moving these set pieces in and you have muscles.” she explained, and without question everyone pitched in to move a magical forest, the front half of a castle and a dragon’s cave into the Children’s Theater backstage. The Iron Man politely answered questions about painting metallics on Cardboard for her and all three Captains America lines up and saluted her upon emptying the truck.
“You’re dangerous.” I teased her as they returned to Con.
“Tell me more Magic Words- I need that tall one in purple to help with the lights.” she said, gesturing to a Waluigi that was about to become familiar with the Children’s Theater Lighting System.
_________________________________
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Since people in the notes are asking:
-i didn’t know what to tell her beyond “that’s Waluigi”. Props to him tho he did not break character the entire time he was helping with the lights.
-Mom got into EVA foam for a wearable art project and a friend recommended looking up cosplay blogs for videos on how to work with it. She follows several cosplay vloggers and refers to Hollywood SFX legend and Mythbusters guy Adam Savage as “the cosplay guy”
“I’m going to send him an email.” She tells me, last time I was up there. “There’s a spider in the background of his videos and I want to know how he did the legs.”
Pigeon steals poppies from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia in order to build a nest beside a stained glass window.
My art history teacher is like “there were ZERO women artists during the renaissance well there was Sofonisba but that’s it” and I’m STEAMING bc there WERE more female artists during the Renaissance and I KNOW this bc I spent hours researching women artists in the Renaissance so I could figure out what to name my girl ninja turtle oc when I was 11
Boring, realistic explanation: Male characters in Star Trek: The Original Series are wearing visible eyeshadow in some shots because 1966 was right in the middle of the transition from black-and-white to colour television in America, and TV makeup artists were still adjusting to the fact that stage makeup is easier to see in colour broadcasts.
The truth we know in our hearts: Male characters in Star Trek: The Original Series sometimes wear eyeshadow because the future is fabulous.
Not to derail a
perfectly nice, succinct post, but I’ve wondered about the makeup
on TOS for some time now and this made me want to look into it some
more. Screen makeup interests me in general, but the makeup for TOS
is such a particularly common point of discussion/parody that it’s
especially piqued my curiosity. That it has to do with airing for
black-and-white sets and TOS generally being filmed for much poorer
viewing conditions than we can watch it in now is what I’ve always
heard and assumed, but I wondered if there was any more thorough
information out there.
Well, I was really
hoping I would find some source out there from the production team
saying “yes these are the particular makeup choices that we made
and here’s why we made them,” but sadly, I did not; the rare few
things I did find about the makeup on TOS were all focused on things
like Spock’s ears and the other alien makeup. (Which is cool, just
not what I wanted.) So instead I went digging around the history of
makeup in film and TV to piece together some sense of context for
those makeup choices. I can’t say I uncovered anything particularly
shocking or unexpected, but I still think there’s some interesting
things there, if you’re into this sort of thing.
A disclaimer: I am
not remotely an expert on any
of this, and certainly don’t
have any personal experience with it either, I
just did a few hours of internet research and then made some
small deductions from that. I’ve
done my best to be accurate, but I may well have missed something. If
you’d like to go looking for yourself, my sources are at the end.
Superheroes that are like “if we kill them we’re just as bad as they are uwu” ? Micro dick energy
The only exception is Aang, whose whole “I’m not gonna kill him if i can find another way” thing is less false moral equivalency and more “I’m twelve and I have been through way too much bullshit this year to add ‘commit my first murder’ to the list.”
I do respect superheroes who don’t kill, and I really think “we’re as bad as they are if we do it” is a terrible oversimplification of why someone would come to that moral conclusion.
Three reasons why a hero might not kill:
1. They are not granted by their society a “licence to kill.” Many (not all) people accept that a soldier or a judge might need to kill a wrongdoer in the course of their duties. Those people (should) act under strict rules and processes to determine when a death is just. A society, to be peaceful, usually functions under a guarantee that people won’t on their own judgement decide to off people. Vigilantes don’t usually have state-sanctioned authority, but they do rely on public goodwill to be counted as heroes and not menaces or even villains. A hero, especially an independent, self-proclaimed one, may lack the authority or judgement to serve as executioner. Most just societies require a trial before delivering a sentence.
2. They don’t need to. Paradoxically, or maybe not so much so, the stronger a hero is, the less they need to kill. One of the most common defenses for a murder is “self defense,” the idea that the person making the plea was in so much danger from the deceased that killing them was justifiable. But once you’re a swordsman swift enough to cut bullets or a muscleman strong enough to lift trucks, who’s that big a threat? As your control over your power and your ability to master an opponent both increase (and barring completely wild or uncontrolled abilities, these two are very linked) the easier it becomes to hold back, to subdue with the minimal amount of damage and to render even the worst villains neutralized without going nuclear.
3. The power to kill is bad for their mental health.Not everyone can perform even a “just” killing with a clean conscience. A hero might fear the trauma of killing, and seek to avoid the damage. Or a hero might introspect, and realize that, should they kill today, tomorrow the choice will be easier. Killing an opponent, rather than subduing them, is often the easy way out, and a hero who comes to rely on that solution might find themselves killing more and more, Even if killing isn’t addictive, a hero might still fear that mindset.
Now, a common version of this problem is Batman, who wouldn’t kill the Joker even if the Joker is at maximum edge, dealing out huge terrorist acts and body counts. The best reason for Batman not to kill him isn’t “I am as bad as the Joker if I kill,” but more, “I am a man who uses superheroism as a trauma coping mechanism, and if I start committing extrajudicial killings my mental state and my loose alliance with the police will both deteriorate.”
THANK. YOU.
4) There’s specific ethics/religious beliefs/cultural values at work and people have the right to have different ideas about those things. See, for example, how often in anime you get resolutions that aren’t about killing your enemy. The idea that killing is the only valid solution to problems is actually very extreme and nobody is obligated to agree with it or promote it in their stories.
5) A hero is being written as aspiring to or embodying really high ideals because they’re a hero and heroic literature is about people who move outside the bounds of the ordinary. It doesn’t mean everyone has to walk around with that level of extreme commitment to whatever their ideals are. So they’re more forgiving or whatever… it’s not the end of the world or an insult to anyone who isn’t so forgiving.
6) The hero has powers, and knows that power corrupts. Related to point 3, but with the addition that “with great power comes great responsibility”. Basically if the hero has powers, like super strength, super speed, magic etc., whatever stops them from abusing those powers is a moral code or conscience. So by killing, a hero may fear that not only will killing be easier in the future, but so will using their powers in a harmful manner especially by spite or even for personal, petty reasons. Once they start using these powers more selfishly is when they go on the path to being the villain. This may also apply to heroes with more social power than abilities. This often is brought up when the hero wants to kill a villain for personal reasons (such as killing or harming a loved one) and is full of rage (but doesn’t always highlight the hero abusing their power but it’s still kinda there).
7) Redemption
The hero believes anyone can turn their life around if given the right love, encouragement, see more of the universe, go to therapy, etc. Why cut off someone’s chance to be better?
Seriously, I’m so sick of the take that people not wanting to kill is somehow bad
Rivers Solomon’s new novella – based on a track by the experimental hip hop group clipping. – imagines a peaceful underwater race descended from pregnant slaves thrown overboard during the transatlantic slave trade. Our critic Jason Heller says that “ror all its complexity in origin and concept, The Deep is an elegantly concise and simple novel.” Check out his review here.
