#i have so many pixelated images of george

[ringosmistress]

#smh so true #i have so many pixelated images of george #classic rock fans are kind of unhinged so they don't care #btw is that ringo #omfg he looks so adorable in that 😍 #the beatles #ringo starr #george harrison #paul mccartney #john lennon #beatles #classic rock #bands #memes #rock memes #classic #rock

[most-normal-eccles-cake-ignorer]

Darkness Lane by Joan Hassall [ x ] - the piece that most inspired my recent woodcut-style piece.

When I found out I was drawing for @gorgeousundertow's regency AU fic, Half Agony, Half Hope, as part of the @ineffableidiotsbigbang, I started looking up Jane Austen novel illustrations for inspiration and ended up finding some really cool art and websites! I'm posting about some of the images and resources I found because I think it may be interesting to others too (and even if it isn't, I'll have gotten the infodump out of my system haha).

Illustrations from Mansfield Park by Joan Hassall [ x ]

The link above points to a gallery on pemberley.com which has deliciously old-school DIY website HTML and a wealth of Jane Austen illustrations, as well as references for regency clothing. This was where I discovered Joan Hassall's work and decided I wanted to do a woodcut style piece (and then subsequently regretted it many times during the process of making it because I had no idea what I was doing). The detail, visual texture and dramatic lighting in her work is so cool and I just got more obsessed the more I saw.

See more Joan Hassall on tumblr via @uwmspeccoll (a very cool account!) here, here, and here.

The gallery on pemberley.com also had a bunch of Charles Edmund Brock illustrations, which I could not get enough of and so returned to the searchpage and found Molland's Circulating-Library. SO COOL! Jane Austen fans have bought illustrated editions of her novels and uploaded scans of them and oh my gosh they are all so beautiful.

Northanger Abbey watercolour illustrations by C.E. Brock [ x ]

Side note about Henry Tilney (Catherines' love interest in NA), I also came across this old fan page for him from a mostly-broken-links-now site called THE CULT OF DA MAN and um it's great haha, check it out. (reviews of artists representations of him, more delicious HTML, and pixel art (!) of da aforementioned man)

There's also an article on Molland's about Charles and Henry Brock and their Jane Austen works that I found interesting. Charles is better known and did far more JA illustrations, but I do really enjoy Henry's tinted line pieces! (the article also dunks on some bad reproductions of them haha)

Pride & Prejudice tinted line illustrations by H.M. Brock [ x ]

C.E. Brock also did really cool title pages and when I found out that fic banners were a thing I knew what I wanted to do! (with the help of the symmetry tool and undo haha, so much respect for traditional art)

Title pages illustrated by C.E. Brock [ x ] and my banner - the banner design uses elements of both of the Brock images.

So, research in hand/bookmarks folder and banner completed, I decided on a scene from Chapter 10 where our beloveds are standing beside the Thames in the moonlight after walking around London for hours together and talking (CUTE). I wasn't sure what buildings to include in the background, so @gorgeousundertow gave me a few suggestions: Old Southwark Bridge, London Bridge, Southwark Cathedral, and Clink Prison. I realized after a bit of sketching that bridges would be hard to show with the straight-on view I wanted to do, so I decided on the Cathedral, partially because I had also considered drawing a scene that takes place in Salisbury Cathedral in Ch. 7.

OK BUT HOW? I struggled finding reference images for a while until I realized this was LONDON and would be very Google Earth-able. Big ups to Frank Cosgrove, whoever they are, for uploading this haha. This was also where I found out that all the suggestions were from a very small area!

View of Borough High Street, London, 1830, by George Scharf [ x ]

The building in front of the cathedral looked too new, so I went searching for an older image and found the second image. It's a completely different angle but it was enough to get me past the 'oh no idk what do'.

the much brighter concept vs the much darker finished product, featuring a barely-visible Southwark Cathedral

While looking for images of the Thames pre-Google Earth, I also found this website called Dictionary Of Victorian London which has a whole bunch of old images and excerpts from newspapers, etc on a variety of topics. One of the categories, Sex > 'unnatural offences', had this excerpt from The Times (1863), which reads:

Thomas Lane, a coffeehouse keeper, No.9, Love-lane, Eastcheap, city, and James Mortimer, a seaman, were charged with unlawfully meeting each other to commit an unnatural offence. ... The Magistrate committed both prisoners for trial.

Ugh. I hate that so much. Some sexy stuff happens right after the moment I'd chosen, and reading that reminded me that such things would be much more comfortable and safe in darkness (or if ppl just stopped being homophobic, but barring that). I wanted them to feel alone, like the whole world was asleep and it was just them, outside of time.

With that in mind, the iconic Thames Walk Lamp had to go bye bye, and when rendering the background I tried to minimize any light - it's just the suggestion of buildings. I also added tree cover! I tried to imitate how Joan Hassall does trees in some of her artwork, but when she rendered trees like this they were usually farther away/smaller, so my version looks more stylized with how prominent they are.

The ribbon border and book quote presentation is of course more Brock, but by making it black and having the interior image use it as a border instead of a fade-out inside it, I made it a bit of a reference to the very cool foliage edges you see in the very first Hassall image at the top.

I used the procreate brushes from this post on the Procreate Folio forums if anyone wants to try them!

Also fun fact! The font for the quote is called Chanson D'Amour <3 (I initially downloaded it when making the banner before changing the banner font to one called Dark & Black)

------

That's all I have to say about the process for the piece, but here's a comic from Dictionary Of Victorian London, Thames > Sanitary condition that I thought was cute (and gross ig? but also cute):

a Punch comic from 1850, I can't link the page due to how the website URL system works but it's from the Thames > Sanitary condition page

#lol anyway back to reading fanfiction from the bang! #joan hassall #charles edmund brock #henry matthew brock #art process #eccles makes #ineffable idiots big bang #jane austen #illustration

[jaylikesrainbowtigers]

Harry Potter as Incorrect Quotes

Harry: Schrödinger’s cat is overrated. If you wanna see something that’s both dead and alive you can talk to me any time of the day.

*Ron is cooking* Fred and George: Any chance that’s for us? Ron: It’s for Mum. I’m planning on making some bad choices tonight, and I need her on my side. Ginny: I never realized the forethought that went into being a disappointment.

Sirius: So are we flirting right now? A random Death Eater: I AM LITERALLY STABBING YOU! Sirius: That doesn’t answer my question.

*Squad reactions to being told ‘I love you’*  Harry: Thanks fam!  Ginny: oh no. Luna: *cries* I love you too! Ron: Sounds fake but okay. Hermione: *A flustered mess*  Draco: can i get a refund?

Hermione: English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though. Ron: You need to stop.

Harry: I’m kind of crushing on someone, but I’m worried about telling you who it is, because you’re not going to like it Ron: Just rip the bandage off. Harry: It’s Malfoy. Ron: Put the bandage back on.

Blaise: I’d like to offer you moral support, but I have questionable morals.

Pansy: Poison is a magic transmutation potion that turns people into corpses.  Blaise: This knife is actually a magic wand.  Goyle: Meet me in the Denny’s parking lot for a wizard duel.  Crabbe: *cocks gun* Magic missile.  Draco: What the fuck is wrong with you people.

Hermione: Ron and I don’t use pet names.  Harry: I see. Hey, what do bees make?  Hermione: Honey?  Ron: Yes, dear?  Hermione:  Harry: Don't ever lie to my face again.

Snape: How many kids do you have? Remus: Biologically, emotionally, or legally?

Ginny: *Posts a super low-quality image to the group chat*  Harry: If I had a pound for every pixel in this image, I’d have 15 pennies  Ginny: If I had a pound for every ounce of rage I felt in my body after I read this text, I would have enough money to buy a cannon to fire at you  Hermione: Actually I did the math, Harry would have £225, not £0.15.  Harry: Fam I’m right here....  Ron: If I had a pound I would buy a can of soda :)  Neville: while you’re there could you buy me an apply juice please?  Ron: Sorry I only have a pound. Neville: :(  Hermione: Hey I just realized my friend is right, Harry would have £22,500 because it's a pound for every pixel, not a penny. Ron: If I had £22,500 I would buy a can of soda and an apply juice. Hermione: You can buy anything you want with £22,500. Seamus: Yeah and he wants soda and apply juice. Hermione: Apply juice to what? Dean: Directly to the forehead! Harry: Great chat everyone.

#harry potter #incorrect Harry Potter #incorrect hp quotes #draco malfoy #hermione granger #ron weasley #fred and george #ginny weasley #luna lovegood #blaise zabini #pansy parkinson #drarry

[thebanterboys]

Okay so I think I managed to watch the majority of the Banter panel (the livestream on the Vidcon YouTube channel had way too many ads but it got better for the last thirty minutes or so if anyone wants to watch it there in HD) I mostly watched it through a fan's livestream on Twitch lmao

My thoughts:

Sapnap and George need to go to therapy man (or "marriage counseling" as Karl said) It was interesting to hear the perspective of Larray, Skeppy, and Kreek in regards to SNF fighting (Larray was on George's side, Skeppy and Kreek were on Sapnap's side...Karl didn't really take a side he just relayed a fight from the airport and gave his perspective) It seems like Sapnap gets really sensitive at perceived slights from George and it escalates whenever George makes snarky replies back but George doesn't try to "de-eslcate" it as Sapnap said. I really hope they can actually work on this because hugging it out isn't a permanent solution but since this was a panel being livestreamed to an audience of thousands I understand they couldn't really get into it lol

Lot of Pixel Playground shout outs from Karl which I guess makes sense since Kreek was there. Its so crazy to me how popular that channel is and the growth it has had over just the two months since its first upload. It has double the amount of Banter subscribers.

I kinda felt bad for Kreek and Skeppy because they didn't really get to talk much it was mostly the Banter boys and Larray talking the whole time lol

All the zodiac sign talk was pretty funny though lol

I was surprised there weren't any audience questions but there were still at least a lot of audience participation with everyone shouting out video games, Sam & Colby, and their verdict on whether Sapnap or George were in the right about their fights (I think asking the audience to raise their hands about this was a misstep because its not like any of them have actually seen SNF fighting irl like the people on the panel) This is a case where I actually would like to know Dream's perspective on SNF and their fights because he knows the most besides Karl but I don't think he would ever get into it cause he wants to portray the Dream team as one big marketable plushie family and discussing how much they fight would hurt that image.

#Banter boys be bantering #Banter panel review #I could talk more about this because there is probably stuff I am forgetting or I missed #also I didn't watch the Dream team panel so maybe if some anons could fill me in on how that went that would help

[joytraveler]

60. Sunny Spring Mornings

(This chapter divided into two parts for your reading convenience.)

The title screen shows a large office complex at dawn, with a line of glowing car headlights entering the security gate. (Not exactly exciting video game material.)

Then the game begins and you're informed that it's your first day at your new paid internship at the world's biggest tech company, but there are so many handsome men here you hardly know what to do! It's a dating sim!

"Are you serious?! OhohohohOHOhohhohoo, here we go, this could result in pixel porn!" (she goes around making small talk with potential suitors!) "And you look good, and you, and you.. and YOU have yaoi hands!"

The first one is a tall, blond surfer dude with a shiny smile. ["Welcome to i.O Technologies. What did you say your name was?"] This is followed by a name entry screen! The default name in the field is JOYCE, but you can put in anything you want, in English or Japanese.

"Joyce, huh? I like it, that was my grandma's name too" ["Joyce Walker? Nice to meet you, I'm George. First day too? It'd be nice if there was orientation, but I think we're just supposed to wing it!"]

aroseahorseboy: wow, you're not going with QUEENIE? must be a special occasion Baconnaise: Bea pick mr bighands, trust me Llord_Kuruku: make them all line up so you can see who has the longest arm

The next one is a very tall, skinny black guy with glasses who seems very officious.

["Ms. Walker? I'm Keith Moed. I'll be your direct superior. I relay your research to Dr. Ryder. He can be a little intimidating but don't be afraid to approach either of us if you have questions."]

"Joyce Walker! Ahhhh, I get it! That's cute! Oh, I think I'll be approaching you fellas anyway but, soon enough.."

DueyDecimal: Wait, what's the joke behind the name? aroseahorseboy: joyce walker = joy traveler indicating that her true husband is Mr. 1*67

The third prospective husband is a small, geeky but cute fellow, who greets Joyce with a huge goofy smile. He's a person of color, but not Black; there’s a bit of debate in the chat what his ethnicity is, but he explains it immediately.

["Joyce? Hi! Call me Woody. Actually my name is Edward Yellow Pine, I picked the name up in college, it's a funny story-- well, not that funny, people picked up on the name Yellow Pine and that was that. Cause I'm, um, I'm Nimmo Indian, actually. Went to college with George. Yeah. You?"]

"Read that, guys? That's the same tribe that tells a story of certain dreadful, competition loving beings... Probably not a good way to break the ice, though. 'Nice to meet you, let's talk about corpse demons'."

GlockRoach: Can you date a spanunko tho That's what I wanna know Syrupentine: Find out, ask Woody out! He's my husbando

Once Joyce has met the three of them, a menu of things to do opens up: visit with the boy of your choice, go home (which refreshes your charm stat) or do your work (which increases your money stat).

"Work before pleasure, because money's probably important in case he tries to make me pay. Then let's talk to Woody again"

Upon choosing WORK, the scene fades out, and we fade in on... the image of the astronaut and the box.

[WILL YOU PLEASE LET ME OUT NOW? Y/N]

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" "............is this her job"

HNV: THIS IS YOUR JOB??? aroseahorseboy: you get paid to beg to be let out of a box

Upon answering 'no': [ALL RIGHT. I'LL ASK AGAIN TOMORROW. GOOD NIGHT.] The game returns to the office. "Well working was fun but let's never do that again!! Time to go see the mens. What are we working on besides nightmare box technology?"

Keith is busy with work but replies politely. George is busy with work but replies politely. Woody is SO EXCITED to see you, he's bouncing in his chair. He ignores his work and sits backward in his chair to talk, getting a bit motormouthed!

berg_snerdler: bea this guy likes you a lot. he's gonna make you his spununko bride, look out

Depending on your answer, he gets more excited, and eventually he does ask you out on a date! The date, however, is not played in dating sim style: it's more like Pong... with Breakout bricks between the two paddles.

"Huh? Oh. Oh I get it! It's a metaphor!" she bobs her eyebrows at the camera. "If he likes me now he's REALLY gonna like me when I get that laser power up"

It's an easy win for Bea, and Woody is shyer and more tongue-tied than ever! If you keep pressing him like this, something's bound to happen... and in two more dating rounds, it does: the third match has a ring box in the middle of the blocks. Who'll get it first??

"Date meter maximum, POWER UNLEASHED! GO!" A well-angled bounce hits the box at last. "For ME??? Well I don't know about that but OKAY IF YA SAY SO! Why can't more dating sims be like WarioWare, I wonder"

The screen fades to Woody's overjoyed smile, and a shot of the wedding... and for the first time we see who it is that Bea has been playing all this time (since the game was in the first person).

aroseahorseboy: called it! HNV: It's Redmom's origin story!

"My goodness things happen fast around here don't they! So THIS is our mom after all! Hello Joyce! We've met a few times, in your future, and you gave me the coolest present ever!"

HNV: but her name in POP was Joy RIDER... sounds like there's a 'true ending' to this!

After the wedding scene, there's a few screens of epilogue.

[Joyce and Woody were happily married.]

[They remained at i.O Technologies to support themselves, but could not afford to start a family.]

[With their help, Dr. Ryder completed his research.] [HAPPY ENDING!]

Klickitat_Street: ??? HNV: So... nothing changed, the end. Huh.

The game returns to the title screen, but when you choose "Continue" it brings Bea right back to the Visit/Work/Home screen.

DueyDecimal: Now the big question, does Bea have the determination to get all the endings?

--to be continued.

#jtnuggets #mar 6 #bea #hnv #klickitat street #dueydecimal #baconnaise #box baby #llord kuruku #glockroach #syrupentine #aroseahorseboy #berd #redmom #woody

[thefrogtheme]

The Mysterious White Wire!™ —A James Woods Conspiracy

Or as others might call it... 

A Shirt Crease!™ —A Frogman Reality

I have sooo many questions. As in, I have like... four questions. 

What is it connected to? What would that device even do? Why not use wireless tech? Why isn’t it under the shirt?

Sadly, this blurry video of another video was enough to start a trending hashtag and myriad other cheating conspiracies. 

Let us take a journey together. A trek into the #JoeWired hashtag where you will see firsthand the smoothbrain’d conspiracy-mongers in action. 

Shall we?

The Case of the Magic Eyeballs!™ —A LindaF Ocular Machination

Unnatural eye movements? Reading the air? Smart lenses? Neat! How very sci-fi we are getting already. But do smart lenses even exist?

Yes, this is a real technology being developed, but there are no working prototypes and the R&D phase is expected to last for several more years. The picture above is a prop and the concept lenses are bulky and very noticeable.

So smart lenses are out. Though that would have been really cool.

Moving on to the next conspiracy...

Intravenous Adrenaline!™ —A SoulFliesFree Reminder

Ah yes, I almost forgot about his performance enhancing drugs. Taking a pill before the event wasn’t good enough. He needs Adderall STRAIGHT INTO HIS VEINS. Without it, he will drift into a coma. His Odinsleep could last for hundreds of years. Don’t fall asleep, Sleepy Joe!

Wait, I’m sensing alternate theories from the BonkoSphere...

The Redundant Microphone!™ —A GMom Nonsensical Notion

So, it’s not an IV.  It’s... a microphone? 

Because it’s not like his voice is being amplified and broadcast to everyone already. He needs a secret special secondary microphone... for reasons.

Next up we have Corey Lynn... an “Investigative Journalist.” 

First some background on our intrepid reporter extraordinaire.

She thinks AIDS was engineered in a lab and people were purposely infected so that Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and George Soros could make billions of dollars.  

Corey is a fact finder and truth seeker through and through—as evidenced by her merchandise. Something all good journalists have.

I don’t know how she crammed so much wisdom onto a $20 iPhone case (free shipping available). 

As you can see, Corey is highly attuned to detect anything suspicious. And she may have broken this Biden debate cheating thing wide open.

Look at that investigative effort. She went all the way to the C-SPAN YouTube channel to get a good peep at this mysterious thing poking out of Biden’s sleeve. She took high definition screen caps and zoomed in—just like a crime scene investigator might do.

Corey thinks the IV drugs and secret microphone theories are silly. Obviously. 

Clearly it is... 

ELECTRODES MAYBE!™ —A Corey Lynn Paradigm Shift (Women’s Flowy Tank Top, Only $26.99)

Yes, electrodes are much less silly. Because electric shocks are a proven way to keep “Sleepy Joe” from his permanent slumber. Makes perfect sense! 

Case closed.

Wait, she has another theory. It’s some kind of... hypnosis triggering device? 

Corey, your paradigm is shifting a bit much. 

She can’t say which for sure because she’s “no expert.” And I am always comforted when investigative journalists say “if that is in fact true.” 

Still, brilliant investigative work!

Sayyyy... I wonder what would happen if instead of staring at pixels and wildly speculating, Corey did like... 8 seconds of research. (Or, as some might call it, “investigating.”) Just to see “if that is in fact true” before jumping the gun and blasting misinformation out to over 100,000 followers. 

The Super Sad Sentimental Souvenir!™ —A Bojo Fact That Can Be Verified Via Multiple Sources

Pssh, likely story! 

Have you considered his dead son’s rosary is a perfect place to hide a combination IV/microphone/electrodes maybe/hypnosis device? 

Eh? EHHHH??

Next up, we have...

The Mystery of the Missing Ear Canal!™ —An Anonymous (Yet Patriotic) Observation

Wait a sec... where is his ear canal? 

HIS EAR CANAL IS MISSING! OMG!!!!

Though I think American Patriot Anon70768033 has trouble telling right from left. That would be his right ear, friend. But don’t fret, Elaine from NorCal has the left ear covered. She even circled it! Just in case you forgot what ears are or where they are located. 

She compared both ears! She’s 99.5% sure!  Large red circles don’t lie!

The problem is, all of these pictures are taken at different focal lengths from different angles under different lighting. Meaning each photo has different lens compression, distortion, and angle of view. This can cause features to appear wildly different.

Not to mention shadows can change appearance quite a bit too.  

Does she have nostrils or not? If you can’t see the nostril holes, do they even exist?

But Elaine from NorCal is 99.5% sure and I trust her forensic analysis.

New questions... Does the shirt crease wire attach to the secret earpiece?  Does it go into his body up through a neck vein and plug into the earpiece from the inside?  Do all of the pieces connect together? Is this all a single connected conspiracy!!??

The wire, the rosary, the drugs, the smart lenses, the earpiece... they must be part of an elaborate technological system designed to help Joe Biden cheat. Without this system he wouldn’t have been able to deliver epic verbal blows such as... 

“C’mon man!” “Will you shut up?” “It’s hard to get any word in with this clown.”

That doesn't sound like him at all. He didn’t say malarkey once. They probably had Patton Oswalt parked in a van outside on zinger duty. 

This is getting complicated. I think I’m going to need a diagram or something. 

Oh, good... Eugene has me covered!

The MS Paint Diagram of Doom!™ —A Eugene Exhibition Extravaganza

Welp, this looks very official and the science certainly checks out. I’m 99.5% sure. 

Also, in EXHIBIT C & D, Eugene is positive there is an earpiece in the RIGHT ear. I’m glad we cleared that up as well.

Uh oh... I may have done another 8 seconds of research. 

I found this photo from the debate looking straight down his ear hole. 

Hmm, that looks pretty ear canal-y to me. 

I’m gonna need a closer look to be sure. TO PHOTOSHOP! 

The Great Ear Hole Enhancement!™ —A Frogman Earvestigation

WAIT! DON'T LOOK AT THAT! ERASE THAT IMAGE FROM YOUR BRAIN!

Sorry... I didn’t mean to alarm you. 

I’m such an idiot! I forgot to circle the area in question. I mean, without a circle you probably didn’t even know what the heck you were looking at. Is that a Martian crater? Is it a Sarlacc Pit? 

OKAY, YOU CAN LOOK NOW!

HIS EAR CANAL IS BACK! WHAT. IS. HAPPENING?  IS ANYTHING REAL?

I... I just don’t know what to believe anymore. 

Eugene! I think I need another diagram!

I realize I have conclusively proven Joe Biden has ear holes and all of these theories have come crumbling down. But I still think there is something to this earpiece business. I refuse to believe the president of these United States would make something like that up. I refuse to believe this is all a bunch of... malarkey. 

Which is why I thought I would join in on the spurious speculations.

SKULL SOUND!™ —An Original Sir Frogsworth Conspiracy (And Cool Idea for a Band Name)

If it were me, I would have gone with bone conduction tech. You can transmit and receive audio directly through vibrations in the skull. Basically your own skull becomes a speaker and microphone. It’s a proven technology that really exists and was even used in the short-lived Google Glass augmented reality spectacles. 

Theoretically, you could place the speaker under a false flap of skin on the temple and hide the bulkier electronics under a hairpiece. Something any competent special effects makeup artist could do. 

Now, I’m not a professional diargram-ologist like Eugene, but I imagine it could work something like this.

In real life, it might look something like this random photo I found of no one in particular. 

Technology like this is quite advanced and very expensive to develop. 

If I were to estimate, it would probably cost something like... $70,000. 

[betweengenesisfrogs]

Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

#homestuck analysis #homestuck #homestuck's influences #hypercomics #understanding homestuck #sprite comics #internet culture

[toongrrl-blog]

The Mommy Myth: The War Against Welfare Mothers (Part One)

This gif is from the 1970s film Claudine, a romantic comedy starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll about a garbage man and a welfare mother trying to make the relationship and where he helps provide for her home and kids without the social worker checking in. 

We check in with The New Yorker, who took a break from their cartoons to cover a welfare mother named Carmen Santana (not her real name): she is Puerto Rican American (and judging by the text’s descriptions of her “wide nose”, complexion, curly dark hair, and thick lips, she must be Afro-Latina) who weighs over 200 lbs and boy the writer was having a field day describing her heft and body. She has no interest in “national or international events” (common flaw that goes across class lines), she spends her day watching soap operas, cursing in Spanish and giving her many kids “a good cuffing” and they just throw the trash out the window. Her kitchen is filthy and her philosophy is “what will be, will be” (a common thing) and sits all the time even when she is cooking while her kids’ bedroom is decorated with obscene graffiti; she had her first child at age 15 and went on to have eight more kids by three different men and her mother had three children by different men and now Carmen’s daughter is also on welfare. She spends the money from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) on makeup and perfume and hair (honestly wasn’t that a thing at some point? Like Midge Maisel and her mother make sure their husbands never see them without perfect hair and makeup) and junk food for the kids and she also plays the numbers where she spends her winnings on “jewelry , beer, and liquour” and “trips to Puerto Rico”. I guess we are not supposed to sympathize with this woman. 

Carmen was an example of a stereotype that was used to represent and demonize welfare mothers. Johnnine Tillmon, the first chairwoman of the group National Welfare Rights Organization saw welfare and the stereotypes as a feminist issue. 

I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. In this country, if you’re any one of those things---poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare---you count less as a human being. 

She even said that the biggest reason that people believe the stereotype of the welfare mother is that they are “special versions of the lies that society tells about all women”, sadly she wasn’t listened to in the mainstream media where welfare mothers were deviants in a culture that valued the rugged individual, relentless hard work and sacrifice, slim bodies aided by Bowflex or Thighmaster, and shiny blond hair with perky smiles. Yo because of this stereotype, women of color with several children are considered suspect. It was also another way to pit moms against moms, the resentment of packing the kids’ lunch and work at a dull 9 to 5 job or scrub the kitchen floors while this stereotype gets to have sex with whoever and drink booze with tax dollars. Even Time magazine went in:

Here’s a few facts: the average welfare family in 1994 had three members, the mother and two children. 39% were White and 37% were Black, African Americans numbered 12% of the national population but were about 35-37% of the welfare population and African Americans were three times as likely as White Americans to live below the poverty level. Only 10% of AFDC mothers had four or more children and 80% had one or two kids and figures in 1993 shown 75% of adults left welfare within two years and 1/2 of single mothers worked while on welfare and 1/3 were working to supplement the minuscule allotment and get off from unemployment. But that was lost on the media that focused on families with two or more generations on welfare (a tiny fraction of welfare recipients) even focusing on unwed teen welfare moms because they were...SHOCKING! Only 1% were teen mothers. Welfare mothers were known only by first name and she lived in the urban decay of New York, Camden (New Jersey), Chicago, or Detroit; they were black and unmarried and had a bunch of kids who don’t share a common biological father and she smoked and painted her nails and gave soda to her baby (OMG imagine 2010s soda freaks) and her face was pixelated in the media. Some of them were depicted as cynical about life and motherhood, it wasn’t sexy for them and at least they felt ambivalence (which was soooooo disco era). 

Then came the 1990s where the moderate Democratic Clinton administration introduced “Welfare Reform” where President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” and he was just following his predecessors: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush (the first) regarding their attitude towards welfare recipients. The Welfare to Work program who were being trained by job placement programs that prepared them for low-paying jobs in retail and in service and the resources for job training were limited (also if your hours took you away from your kids?). Also it was hard for welfare to work moms working to move up in their jobs and often mostly got gigs like seasonal retail. 

The depiction of welfare mothers was different from the celebrity mom: she wasn’t ascribed emotions where her eyes welled up with tears or laughed, she wasn’t well lit with a light or a rosy focus, never seen holding her child up or clutching the child and magazines like Redbook or McCall’s never did a cover story with a welfare mom and her kids done up and showing the readers fun things they do with little or no money or touring New York City on $10 for a day or games to play while waiting in long lines (honestly that is a good idea, someone pay Susan and Meredith if the magazines do that). Also if you were a woman of color, especially a young one or a poor one (or both) you weren’t supposed to have the “baby lust” so gushed about in celebrity mom profiles; trust me I grew up a Latina kid in Central California and many older women like my mom would worry about the girls that want to have babies so bad or fall in love hard and fast, a young Karen Wheeler in 1967 can give all to family and babies and staying home but it is more precarious for a young girl of color. 

The media depiction of poor people wasn’t always so negative: political scientist Martin Gilens found that when the “War on Poverty” began, where the Lyndon B. Johnson administration focused on eliminating poverty and started programs like Head Start rather than piss on poor people, coverage focused on poor white people in rural areas like Appalachia or in the Rustbelt where mines or factories closed down, these were the faces of The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family who fought against hardship on their way to a better life. After Michael Harrington published his book The Other America, public support for ending poverty was strong. But then came the riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit (just a few) where mostly people of color fought back against law enforcement and the media used images of African-Americans to illustrate their pieces on welfare, which reinforced stereotypes about welfare and as the coverage became more negative, the skin color got darker (even though statistics then and now showed many more white recipients of welfare)

How about how the face of welfare became so feminized? In the 1930s, when the Welfare program and Social Security began under the New Deal by President FDR, a lot of women of color were barred from welfare because of discriminatory practices, this changed with the Civil Rights Movement which opened up some doors for women of color to get assistance for their children and households. Before the Welfare recipient was faceless or usually a man, who got rich off welfare and bought Cadillacs with the money, something that Richard Nixon really clung to and he asked Johnny Cash to perform the song “Welfare Cadillac” at a White House event sparking controversy. Indeed when Cash met with Nixon, he gave him a private concert with songs that were more compassionate and less reactionary than what Nixon wanted. In the early 1960s, magazines like Look or Reader’s Digest wrote to readers about women who sent their many children to beg for money while the mother ate steak with their boyfriend, or worse, spent the money on narcotics and kept giving birth to more than 10 kids. The image of poor, fertile mothers on taxpayer money was more infuriating than that of a able-bodied man getting the money, but making welfare moms work was shocking (as the system was designed for widows to stay home with their children and not worry about money), even a stinging David Brinkley chafed at leaving kids at a daycare center...it would cost the taxpayer more.

Ronald Reagan coined the term “welfare queen” (look it up) and made exaggerated anecdotes and given how people were drawn to him (looking at you Mike and Nancy’s parents), he was believed despite him not citing sources or studies. Reagan voters fell for the image of a welfare mother who spent money for fancy cars, vacations, designer clothes, and played the system (there were a  few like Dorothy Woods, but again if this were common, the landscape of the inner city would look a lot different...) It was a dark time, the Religious Right took control, Proposition 13 in California put a limit on property taxes and started many tax revolts to limit government spending, and let’s not forget Ronald Reagan opposed the following:

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Fair-Housing Legislation in California

Legislation to declare Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday

How does that Reagan/Bush ‘84 sign look Ted and Karen?

Stay tuned.....

#The Mommy Myth #susan j douglas #meredith michaels #women in media #motherhood #motherhood in media #1970s #1980s #1990s #2000s #Welfare Mothers #women of color #racism #sexism #fat shaming #classism #The New Yorker #Johnnie Tilllmon #Time magazine #Aid to Families with Dependent Children #Unemployment #sensationalism #Sensationalization #Teen Moms #Clinton Administration #Bill Clinton #reagan administration #bush administration #Nixon Administration #Ronald Reagan

[picturebookmakers]

ATAK

In this post, ATAK talks about his fascinating creation process and he shares illustrations and development work from some of his wonderful books – including sketchbook pages for his forthcoming picturebook ‘Piraten im Garten’, which is due to be published in 2020.

Visit ATAK’s website

ATAK: My process is like hip-hop. Mixing and sampling.

I have a big box where I put material that I’ve found on the street or in magazines. Then in the summer, when I’m sitting in the summer house, I stick everything into sketchbooks.

These are important books for me. I often use them when I’m looking for an idea. I like to make connections between this and that.

Sometimes I steal things. Here’s an example of where I used a painting by Caspar David Friedrich in one of my images. This is a very important painting for the German culture; it’s romantic. It’s the first painting that’s like a window. You see with him and you’re led into the picture.

‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’, Caspar David Friedrich, 1818.

When I take something to use in my own work, it’s more about the idea of composition and atmosphere. It’s not just a reference that people will know.

This is the sketchbook for my picturebook ‘Topsy Turvy World’. The publisher asked me for a book for children, and as I was tired of working with long texts, I thought this one should be a wordless book, where the images tell the whole story.

We have a German tradition from the 18th century of ‘bilderbogen’. This is like the origin of comics. They’re one-page stories. I was looking at some of these and I found some interesting ideas for ‘Topsy Turvy World’.

Here are some pages from the sketchbook.

Not everything made it into the final book; some of it was too heavy for my publisher, so he kicked it out. The smoking people had to go, otherwise we couldn’t have sold the rights in America.

Then there was a problem... My sketches had a lot of life and were fully-worked, so to transform them into the final artwork was very hard. After the rough version, I had this feeling that I was already finished with the book. Making the final ‘clean’ artwork felt like a kind of discipline.

My original paintings are always much bigger than they appear in the books. I never work to the correct size or format.

I often sell my paintings, but here is one I’ll never sell. It was done for the first children’s book I made, called ‘Comment la mort est revenue à la vie’ (How death came back to life), written by Muriel Bloch and published by Thierry Magnier.

It’s an important painting for me. I came from the comic world – black and white graphics – where I would draw out the whole scenes with all the details. In the middle of working on this painting, I had to go out to buy some food, and then I came back and thought, “Oh, it’s enough.” There’s a big difference when you work with colour. It’s like a sound, like a kind of music. This painting was very important for me in understanding colour.

Before I start working on an image, I often have a rough idea of what’s going to happen in the scene, but I leave a lot of space for other things to come in... And when I’ve started to work, I might see something in my studio or in a book, and it goes into the image.

I like this open process. And I like to be surprised. It’s very important for me that I don’t know in the beginning exactly what’s going to happen.

My way of painting is very old school. Traditional. Sometimes I paint over the top of something and you can see the trace of it behind. You can’t really fake things like this on the computer. For me, my original artwork is more important than the finished book. I once had an interesting discussion about this with Blexbolex. It’s completely the opposite for him: he sees his books as being the original artwork.

After ‘Topsy Turvy World’, I made a book called ‘The Garden’.

The original German edition was almost like a book for bourgeoise women... But for the French edition, they reimagined it for kids. It’s much bigger; you can really go inside. And the French publisher asked me to make some flaps to open up on the pages, which were not there in the original edition.

The sketches for ‘The Garden’ are almost nothing. It was very important that I didn’t repeat the process of ‘Topsy Turvy World’, where the sketches were very close to the finished artwork. I couldn’t work like this again. So the sketches here are very loose, but I knew exactly what was supposed to be in the pictures.

Working like this, you must have a very strong relationship with the publisher – one of absolute trust. I also have big problems with deadlines; I’m always late. With this book, my publisher Antje Kunstmann was so good. She phoned me every morning: “Hallo, here is Antje!” It was so important to know she was there, almost like a mother. It was a similar story with Wolf Erlbruch and his book ‘Duck, Death and the Tulip’. He was working for four years on this book. In the end, Antje came to his home and was waiting on his sofa for two days to take the last drawing!

The latest children’s book I made is called ‘Martha’.

I started working on it after reading an article in National Geographic about the passenger pigeon. I was fascinated. Because it’s a real story, it was not easy for me to make this book. It’s easier when I’m given a text because I have more distance.

Again, I worked very loosely in my sketchbook. These sketches are just indications – so I know something is here or somebody is there. It does help me that things are more open.

I don’t have sketchbooks where I draw from reality. I’m not good at this. You’ll never find me sitting in a crowd, making sketches. I watch and I observe instead. And I have books where I write ideas or note down interesting forms and shapes that I see.

Here are some pictures from ‘Martha’.

And here’s an idea for the dust jacket, where the kids could cut and draw on the paper, and make origami out of it to give a kind of rebirth. Martha is gone, but maybe she’s not gone if the kids could bring her back. The publisher didn’t go for this idea.

I went to art school but never finished. Just after the Berlin Wall came down, I was studying visual communication. There wasn’t a good atmosphere at my art school. I wanted to find like-minded people and work as a team, but it felt like most of the students were only interested in being artists, but not in working together. Then my daughter was born, and I never finished art school.

I’m now teaching art as a professor. The other teachers have diplomas, and I feel like I’ve come from the working class. I do like intellectual work, but when I work with students, I want to see something. I can only talk about what I see. I need it very visual. It has to catch me.

From when I was nine years old, I wanted to be an illustrator. In east Germany, illustration was a part of publishing. All the novels had illustration. It’s still unique now to see this, but in east Germany it was normal... So my plan was always to be an illustrator. This way I could wake up when I wanted, have no boss, listen to my music all day, and make my own work.

Speaking of music... The type of music I listen to when I work depends on the specifics of the book. For example, I made a book for Nobrow called ‘Ada’ (from a word portrait by Gertrude Stein). The idea for the artwork was to make handmade pixels, so I listened to a lot of electronic music; ping–ping–ping! It’s about energies. And for me, the music is also very important because I travel a lot and it can be hard to come back to your work – but when I listen to the music, immediately I’m back in the project, in the zone. It’s all connected – the music with the book.

Here’s my playlist for ‘Martha’.

Distortions – Clinic Go – Sparklehorse & The Flaming Lips VCR – The XX Song For A Warrior – Swans Avril 14th – Aphex Twin Quiet Music – Nico Muhly First Song For B – Devendra Banhart Last Song For B – Devendra Banhart How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? – Al Green Ash Black Veil – Apparat I Know They Say – Spectrum Opus 55 – Dustin O’Halloran Lost Fur – Karen O & The Kids Unfinished Business – The Go-Betweens Sometimes – My Bloody Valentine Lies – Sin Fang Bous Debussy: Suite Bergamasque, L 75 - Clair De Lune – Alexis Weissenberg Nimrod (Adagio) – David Hirschfelder Atmosphere – Joy Division Still Life – Elliot Goldenthal The Lake – Antony & The Jonhsons Flying Birds – RZA

I used to make hardcore comics with friends. This was our first, which we made before the wall came down. My work has changed completely. I can’t understand this now; it’s like another man made it! And they are not funny. It’s a very small humour; you really have to look for it.

Then, after my daughter was born, I did my own comic series called ‘Wondertüte’. In the comic scene, everybody told me that this wasn’t a comic. But for me, it was totally a comic. I liked the comic medium, but I didn’t see why there had to be only one way. From all my old comics, this is the one I like the most.

The idea comes from the ‘learn English’ books we had in school. It’s a bit like a poem, but with a more open structure. I think my older work was very closed, and this comic is where it really started to open up. I made it for me, not for the mainstream. I got no money for it. But you could find it in kiosks. Somebody told me he saw it in a kiosk in a very small village. He said it was very important to see this comic displayed in-between all the nice, fancy stuff... My audience is not many people, but they are passionate.

I don’t really consider myself as a children’s book illustrator; it’s not like this. But it gives me a lot more freedom. Some of my friends find themselves working on one comic for years! I respect this, but for me that’s like a jail. With comics, you have to take such care with narration. You go from one panel to the next panel to the next... The comic medium is a question of time. In a children’s book, the reader looks at one page for perhaps two minutes or ten minutes. They go deep inside. It’s a completely different work. Also in a children’s book you have a stage; it’s really like theatre.

I also think it’s very important in children’s books that you read the book again and again. You read a comic maybe once and then you kick it out or you give it to somebody. But a children’s book is like a ritual between parents and kids.

This is a cover version of the German classic book ‘Der Struwwelpeter’.

The stories here are new and full of humour. I made this book with Fil (Philip Tägert). It was after ‘Topsy Turvy World’, and for me it was so important that I could be free with the pictures. The publisher said make what you want. And it felt so good.

There are hundreds of different versions of ‘Der Struwwelpeter’. As with the ‘bilderbogen’, this was like the beginning of comic stories.

I once found an old version of the book from Denmark with an extra chapter. They didn’t trust all that dark stuff and they made up new stories. So in our cover version, we had this idea to make one chapter where literally nothing happens! We tried to make it as boring as possible, with the pictures saying exactly the same thing as the words. It was so hard to make a boring illustration! It’s really not easy!

My new book will be published next year. It’s for my little son; he’s three years old. You could see it as a connection between ‘Topsy Turvy World’ and ‘The Garden’. It’s called ‘Pirates in the Garden’. The German title is ‘Piraten im Garten’, so the title is like a poem; you hear it and you don’t forget it. I like this title very much.

This book will will be very simple, a bit like Sesame Street. One word on each page, so you make associations between the word and the image, and the parents can talk about it with their kids.

I’m working in the sketchbook at the moment, and I want to make the sketches really good. For ‘The Garden’ and ‘Martha’, I kept the sketches really open. But for this one, no. I know this is going to be my last book for children. And it’s for my son, so I’m going to make it special. In the future, perhaps I’ll make art books in small editions, more paintings, stuff like this, but not books in a commercial way again.

When I made ‘Martha’, I was thinking, “who needs this?” It wasn’t mainstream and I was so confused. It’s different from when someone asks me to make a cover or a painting; I’m never thinking about who needs this. But this was different. Sometimes you just don’t know if what you’re doing is important or not. So I was kind of depressed working on that book. This is the main reason it took me such a long time.

I sometimes feel very alone working as a children’s book illustrator in Germany. My style is not at all mainstream and I always just made my books for fun. It was never a big passion of mine to make children’s books for my whole life. But I always liked the roots.

So for my final children’s book, ‘Piraten im Garten’, I will make it for myself and for my son.

Illustrations © ATAK. Post edited by dPICTUS.

Buy this picturebook

Verrueckte Welt / Topsy Turvy World

ATAK

Jacoby & Stuart, Germany, 2009

A fantastical picturebook where mice chase cats, penguins live in the jungle, and cars fly! There’s few things that children enjoy more than catching grown-ups telling fibs. Discarding what’s obviously wrong is how they find out what’s right.

It’s a time-honoured children’s game; ATAK’s just given it a new twist, using lots of classic tall stories, and adding a few new ones as well.

German: Jacoby & Stuart

English: Flying Eye Books

French: Editions Thierry Magnier

Spanish: Fulgencio Pimentel

Italian: Orecchio Acerbo

Norwegian: Magikon

Slovak & Czech: Baobab

Portuguese: Planeta Tangerina (Portugal)

Portuguese: Companhia das Letras (Brazil)

Dutch: Boycott Books

Chinese (Simplified): TB Publishing Ltd (Everafter Books)

Buy this picturebook

Der Struwwelpeter

FIL & ATAK

Kein & Aber, Switzerland, 2009

Like a rock band covering their favourite songs, ATAK and FIL tackle the classic stories of Zappelphilipp, Hans-guck-in-die-Luft & Co.

And just as a Heavy Metal cover might sound harder than the original, you’ll also find tighter morals, harsher imagery, politically incorrect humour, and that ever-so-subtle touch of evil that has been pervading this book for more than 160 years.

German: Kein & Aber

French: Fremok Editions

Buy this picturebook

Der Garten / The Garden

ATAK

Verlag Antje Kunstmann, Germany, 2013

In silence, the garden wakes up. Thus opens this picturebook by ATAK, as an invitation to walk in a garden with a thousand surprises – a haven of peace, populated with animals and strange characters.

You’ll discover with wonder, the treasures and the tranquility of the garden, and you’ll observe the seasons and the passing of time.

German: Verlag Antje Kunstmann

French: Editions Thierry Magnier

Spanish: Niño Editor

Portuguese: Companhia das Letras (Brazil)

Korean: Bear & Cat

Buy this picturebook

Martha

ATAK

Aladin Verlag, Germany, 2016

Martha tells the tale of the extinction of North America’s native Passenger Pigeon – its shockingly rapid decline caused directly by humans – and is told from the perspective of ‘Martha’, the last of the species who died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. The story begins with a feeling of greatness and awe, describing flocks of birds that were once so numerous that they would darken the skies for days, their beating wings as loud as motors.

German: Aladin Verlag

French: Les Fourmis Rouges

Korean: Sanha

#germany

[americangoulash]

Sample Lunch

Growing up, one of my favorite things to do with my family was “sample lunch” at Costco, even though I don’t think my family ever had their own Costco membership.

For those of you who are not familiar with Costco, it’s a wholesale warehouse store where you can get a mega-size of anything from storage sheds to a year’s supply of emergency food to actual coffins ( (if the apocalypse prep doesn’t work out for you.) I think the coffins are regular-sized, not mega-sized, but I digress. The deal with Costco is that you have to pay a small annual membership fee in order to access their extraordinary savings/10-pound tubs of butter. I was told that you had to also be a business owner - which is why my family pretended to be our business-owning neighbor. Honestly, I think we were just frugal. It was easier to commit these small crimes back in the ‘80s/’90s. Early digital photo technology was so bad that my mother, Anyu - a perpetually worried, statuesque brunette Transylvanian woman - somehow managed to pass herself off as Humberto Jose González-Villaseñor - a barrel-chested, long-haired Latino man with an infectious grin. If questioned, she’d say that the picture was of my grandma, Nagymama, who had not smiled since 1955. Anyu said that the picture was just really, really old. At 24 pixels-per-inch, either the Costco greeter either couldn’t tell the difference or did not want to risk angering my Nagymama.

I have included a rudimentary illustration to indicate how ridiculous this was:  

I’m the little one in the hat dancing because Costco had ice cream samples that day.

I’m not actually sure what the heck we bought at Costco. We were a small family, so I doubt we would have been able to go through five gallons of 100% Pure Vegetable Oil or afford the 10-pound bag of fish sticks. “Vild caught!” Anyu would say, “Just like your fadder and the po-lice, ahahaha.”I’m pretty sure that the number one reason for going to Costco was for Sample Lunch. You see, Costco has vendors come in to do product demonstrations, which usually comes with a free sample. We could have smiled, thanked the vendor, and enjoyed one sample per item per person like normal humans.  The thing is, there is no limit on how many samples you can take. So per usual with my family, there was always some kind of scheme.

Here’s how it went - my mother would “distract” the person handing out the samples. Meanwhile, I would pull out my oversized sweatshirt like a sort of parachute so Nagymama could load up sample after sample into my shirt. (Though unrelated to the scheme at hand, it's worth mentioning that she’d always check first to make sure that my undershirt was tucked into my underwear so no torso skin would ever be exposed to refrigerated air, lest I catch a “kidney cold.”)

When my mother was done being distracting, we would combine the samples into a piece of tin foil that Nagymama had been saving since the war and go for a loop around the crate of frozen peas. I’d usually eat a few before they went into the tinfoil and Nagymama would yell at me for eating too fast because the sample was too hot/too cold. Only room-temperature foods were safe. Then, Nagymama would put on her glasses, thinking that she as a 5-foot-tall lady who looked exactly like George Washington in a babushka wasn’t enough of a disguise, and we'd round the sample aisle again. And again. 

We did this so often that the vendors started to get to know Nagymama. She even asked if she could bring the perfume sample vendor, Marlene, to my choir recital, even though I have no idea why she hung out in the perfume sample section since  Anyu was allergic to perfume. “Vrap them up in a plastic in case we can give them as a gift to somevon,” Nagymama said. As little as we had back then, Anyu and Nagymama were oddly generous about collecting as many things as they could so they could give gifts to other people. 

A part of me also thinks that Anyu knew that we could get as many samples as we wanted without all the trickery, but simply welcomed the time to commiserate with another adult human being. Sure, they were paid vendors, trapped behind a booth and forced to be nice to her, but isn’t that also what 90% of therapy is? 

Anyu: “Nobody appreciates how hard I vork.”  Vendor: “You do work hard. Why not treat yourself to Totinos Pizza Rolls™?” Anyu: “...and I told him, you get out!” Vendor: “The great thing about Totinos Pizza Rolls™ is that your deadbeat husband can take them even when he’s on the go!” Anyu: “...and you know vhat? He doesn’t even pay child support ” Vendor: “The Totinos corporation understands that money is tight sometimes. That's why it is just three dollars for 150 Totinos Pizza Rolls™. And yet, they technically qualify as food!” I poked fun at all of this even at the time, but flash forward 20 years and I am not any better. This is my food diary entry from today: 

Bibigo Steamed Vegetable Wonton (½) 

Kirkland Orange Juice (2 ounces)

Dark Chocolate Coconut Almond (3 almonds)

Organic Chickpea Puffs (2 & 1/4 puffs)

Haagen Dazs Vanilla Milk Chocolate Almond Ice Cream (like a thumb size?) 

An indeterminate number of sausage pieces (each skewered with ½ pretzel stick! This is a good idea. Remember to do this at parties so people don’t waste plastic forks. Add to a different list of things that I’m supposed to remember)

Weird Chicken Salad Thing ( ½ oz)… man that sucked, why did I even get that? I knew it was going to be bad but there wasn’t a line. Now I know why. Who wants to lap tepid chicken salad with low-fat mayo out of a cupcake liner? I should have gone back for another piece of wonton instead, but there was a lady standing there, causing a bottleneck, talking to the vendor about her sciatica and.... OMG! I think other people do the thing my mother did! Remember to write blog about this.

Etc.

At least I actually pay for my membership now, and I never take more than 2 at a time - one for me, one for my husband, who I swear exists (even though he refuses to wear an oversized sweater.) I may or may not do multiple laps.

Enjoyed this essay? Support through Cinevore’s Patreon and you’ll get these essays (and more of my creative projects) early! 

Costco samples photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images

#essay #short story #costco

[96thdayofrage]

For many of us—and particularly Black people across America—the murder of George Floyd symbolized a galvanizing breaking point in racial awareness. It became the catalyst for a 2020 summer of seemingly endless protests against systemic racism in policing. Floyd never intended to become a martyr, but in the eyes of millions, he became one all the same.

But for some of the racist and tasteless, Floyd’s death became an opportunity for cheap exploitation.  So now “Floydies” are a thing.

According to Input, “crudely drawn pixel art that caricatures Floyd, giving him bloodshot eyes—have sold to date, making their creator or creators just short of $5,000.” It’s unclear who the creators are, but their racist-as-hell series of white obliviousness displays was launched on the OpenSea platform on December 7.

Of course, we don’t know if the creators are actually white—but they’re definitely white in spirit. This is some white a** sh** to do. I mean, it just doesn’t get much more caucasified than this:

There’s even an image included that features Floyd in a police uniform, which is like “honoring” Nicole Simpson by photoshopping her in a Buffalo Bills jersey. It’s just disgusting, insensitive and decidedly bigotted.

And for some reason, the creators of the images think it’s a good look that the San Fransico Police Department has “liked” some of the images, which, by the way, the department is being investigated for.

Whether this person or persons really believes what they’re doing honors Floyd and shows allyship, or they’re just racist trolls pimping Black pain for profit (Hint: It’s definitely the latter) it’s clear what they’ve done and continue to do is hurtful and just plain dumb, and it’s really a shame that Twitter and other social media outlets haven’t done the responsible thing and banned this campaign into oblivion by now.

[nickacheson]

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[heavyarethecrowns]

WILLIAM AND KATE’S FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

WILLIAM AND KATE’S FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

LOVE, LOLA ♥ MUSINGS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, BEAUTY & ROYALTY

APRIL 29, 2016

Five years ago, Kate Middleton entered Westminster Abbey and emerged Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge, Countess of Strathearn and Lady Carrickfergus. After a near decade-long wait to become Mrs. Prince William, the woman who had been referred to in the press as Waity Katie, The Mattress, Her Royal Thighness and the Royal Doormat was repackaged as a perfect fairytale princess.

The royal love story was respun to sound a bit less stalkery. In “Kate, The Future Queen”, Katie Nicholls revealed that in order to increase her chances of becoming Mrs. Prince William, the Edinburgh-bound Kate decided to take a gap year and applied to be in Prince William’s class at St. Andrews. William and Kate’s first meeting wasn’t even at St. Andrews, in the summer 1999 they were introduced by Emilia d’Erlanger at “Club H” at Highgrove, but Kate failed to make an impression on William. Three years later, a sheer dress Kate wore at a charity fashion show finally did the trick.

In their eight years of dating before the engagement announcement, Kate reportedly found herself cast aside for Jecca Craig at William’s 21st birthday party, in 2004 before exams, Kate was dumped for “more space” which then took the form of Jecca Craig, in 2005 Kate was briefly replaced by Isabella Calthorpe who decided the princess life wasn’t for her, and in April 2007 William broke up with Kate for a couple of months, infamously jumping up on a table after dumping her via cell phone, shouting, “I’m free!” And yet, Kate still wanted to marry Prince William.

Kate’s wedding prep focused on the physical. In addition to having her teeth fixed and extensive beauty treatments, Kate lost so much weight that at an engagement in Ireland before the wedding, a woman expressed concern Kate was becoming too thin. Kate replied, “It’s all part of the plan!” The Palace Press Office tried to keep Kate’s comment contained, noting, “It’s a hugely private matter.” It’s too bad Kate’s plan didn’t also include preparing for her new duties.

By all accounts, Kate was calm and composed before the wedding. According to Marina Sandoval who did Kate’s manicure for the wedding, “She didn’t display an ounce of nerves. She was just happy that the day was here at last.” Her hair stylist Richard Ward noted, “She has been remarkably relaxed from the start… Everyone else was nervous, but not Kate. She just took it all in her stride and was calming everyone else down.”

There were no pre-wedding jitters or obvious nerves getting married in front of 1,900 guests and millions watching around the world. Waity Katie who had been dubbed “Princess-in-Waiting” at Marlborough appeared triumphant about waitying no more.

Kate wore a classically pretty but somewhat underwhelming wedding dress by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, her wedding veil was so flat, it looked like she was wearing a stocking over her face to knock over a liquor store and the makeup which Kate did herself reminded me of the similarly heavy-handed application of a transvestite hooker who once told me that my outfit was fierce.

The 20 foot maple trees that decorated Westminster Abbey in hindsight feel like a prelude to the massive amount of privacy trees planted at Anmer Hall but at the time they just seemed ridiculous. Kate filled the abbey with British flora, her Language of Flowers vision reportedly cost £50,000.

When Kate said “I do”, she became an official representative of the UK and the monarchy, a job she appears to have had no intention of doing.

In the engagement interview, Kate stated, “I’m willing to learn quickly and work hard,” and yet in her five years since becoming a duchess, Kate has only delivered 8 short shaky speeches, gone on four royal tours and has undertaken a combined 390 engagements to date, a grand total for five years on par with what the 90-year-old Queen averages in one year (in 2014, the Queen undertook 393 engagements).

Ahead of the five year royal wedding anniversary, Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine suggested that Kate’s dismal efforts are born from a fear she’s going to screw up royally. Seward who must be suffering from amnesia noted, “She hasn’t made any mistakes, which is extraordinary when you think of how difficult it is for her. I suppose the only mistake she’s made is that she’s probably seen not always as particularly interesting but I think she’s absolutely terrified of not doing it right.”

Really, Kate’s only short-coming is that she’s dull? Just off the top of my head, Kate’s event totals are so dismally low, last year she only accounted for 1.66% of the royal family’s workload. She’s been criticized for frequent luxury holidays, selecting more glamorous events like film premieres, Wimbledon, galas, wine tastings and ignoring ones that don’t seem to interest her, like those involving her charities that aren’t connected to Ben Ainslie. Kate’s Received Pronunciation affectation has inhibited her ability to deliver the few brief speeches she’s attempted, causing her to mispronounce the name of the charity in one and struggle with words like “palliative” in others. The occasional comments she makes at events lack substance but still are dutifully reported by the press because she offers nothing else of substance. Actual Kate official event quotes include: “And can it… can you… um… test the… the smell by smelling it?”; “It’s very shiny.”; “Oh it’s actually not bad if you were desperately hungry.”; “I like your hair.”; “I like your nails.”; “No! Oh no, is that me? Is that meant to be me? Does my hair really look like that!” (in response to a doll a girl was holding); “Oh, I know now who you are. Although it’s very strange… now you have got facial hair. Some of the people who had facial hair in the film don’t have facial hair now.” (in speaking to actor Tom Hiddleston); and most recently, when told of street children being mutilated to make money begging, she responded, “Gosh, so interesting.”

In her five years since joining the royal family, Kate has offended many by smiling, laughing, and playing with her hair during balcony appearances on Remembrance Sunday, sparking outrage in 2013 as she dreamily gazed off in the distance while twirling her hair during the solemn event. Kate being a professed hands-on mother has been offered as the reason Kate puts in the fewest event totals each year in the British Royal Family and yet Prince George is most frequently papped with his nanny. When George was seven months old, Kate had no trouble leaving him behind while she took a Maldives escape (her second luxury holiday in two months) with Prince William while her mother oversaw the shift in his care from Nanny Jessie Webb to Nanny Maria. During the Cambridge’s controversial family ski get-away earlier this year, both Prince George and Princess Charlotte were left to the care of nannies while Kate and William took to the slopes because their children are obviously too young to ski yet. Five years into being a duchess and Kate has had wardrobe malfunctions in the double digits and the Royal Flasher still has yet to undertake one single official tour without exposing herself while acting as an official representative of the United Kingdom and the British Monarchy. That doesn’t sound like the actions of a “terrified” Kate.

As it turns out, there was another wardrobe malfunction in India on the final day of the royal tour. My brain was frozen over with boredom by then and I missed it, so this is brought to you by royal watcher, Julie RocketQueen. Apparently when Kate and William were recreating the iconic Princess Diana photo at the Taj Mahal, Kate flashed her undies.

Kate’s panties were white with a four-petal flower design. My apologies for the pixelation, but I don’t feel like hunting down a high resolution image since the pattern of the panties is visible in this pic, the flower’s outline appears to be dark blue with marigold centers.

So maybe this second wardrobe malfunction is actually encouraging. After five years of duchessing, the future Queen Consort is now finally wearing underwear.

Love , Lola

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All You Need To Know About Lisa Simpson Art | Lisa Simpson Art

ENGLEWOOD, N.J. — Faith Ringgold has apparent affluence of shake-ups and aberrant moments in her 89 catholic years. But the annoying Harlem-born artisan — who has confronted chase relations in this country from every angle, led protests to alter museums decades ago, and alike went to bastille for an exhibition she organized — has had no advertence point for the communicable befitting her in lockdown and creatively bedridden in her home in this abounding suburb for abundant of the spring.

“I’m aggravating to accomplish faculty of things, accompany some ablaze to the situation,” she said a few weeks ago, aback the aberration of the account kept her from aggressive the stairs to the admirable and aerial flat she had congenital aback she confused from Harlem 30 years ago. “The accouchement aren’t in school, and all over the world, the aforementioned situation,” Ms. Ringgold, a above art teacher, mused, while her two developed daughters hovered and MSNBC played.

“I’m aloof befitting my eyes advanced accessible so I can acquisition a point of appearance on all this,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve been cat-and-mouse for the afflatus that can advice me affect others.”

Then, with the afterlife of George Floyd on May 25, she begin herself starting to appear from her brume and to anticipate added clearly, alpha to anticipate how to get her thoughts down. She is, afterwards all, the abstracted abaft the painting of a chase anarchism in the aculating of the Building of Modern Art that, in the aftermost week, has been alleged a “gateway” to arduous accepted means of cerebration about amusing

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These free tools blur protesters’ faces and remove photo metadata – TechCrunch

Millions have taken to the streets across the world to protest the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis last month.

Protesters have faced both unprecedented police violence and surveillance. Just this week, the Justice Department granted the Drug Enforcement Administration, an agency typically tasked with enforcing federal drug-related laws, the authority to “conduct covert surveillance” on civilians as part of the government’s efforts to quell the protests. As one of the most tech savvy government agencies, it has access to billions of domestic phone records, cell site simulators, and, like many other federal agencies, facial recognition technology.

It’s in part because of this intense surveillance that protesters fear they could face retaliation.

But in the past week, developers have rushed to build apps and tools that let protesters scrub hidden metadata from their photos, and mask or blur faces to prevent facial recognition systems from identifying protesters.

Everest Pipkin built a web app that strips images of their metadata and lets users blur faces — or mask faces completely, making it more difficult for neural networks to reverse blurring. The web app runs entirely in the browser and doesn’t upload or store any data. They also open-sourced the code, allowing anyone to download and run the app on their own offline device.

i built a tool for quickly scrubbing metadata from images and selectively blurring faces and identifiable features. it runs on a phone or computer, and doesn’t send info anywhere.

process your images so that you and others are safe:https://t.co/GbQu5ZweDq pic.twitter.com/jKjABTgPRX

— everest (@everestpipkin) May 31, 2020

Pipkin is one of a few developers who have rushed to help protesters protect their privacy.

“I saw a bunch of discourse about how law enforcement is aggregating videos of the protests from social media to identify protesters,” developer Sam Loeschen told TechCrunch. He built Censr, a virtual reality app that works on the iPhone XR and later, which masks and pixelates photos in real-time.

The app also scrubs images of metadata, making it more difficult to identify the source and the location of the masked image. Loeschen said it was an “really easy weekend project.” It’s currently in beta.

Announcing censr: a simple camera app for protecting your identity!

available for iPhone XR and up

distributing to protestors and press through TestFlight. Send me a DM for the link! pic.twitter.com/J1Znd2ZKqN

— Sam Loeschen (@polygone_) June 5, 2020

Noah Conk built an iPhone Shortcut that uses Amazon’s facial recognition system and automatically blurs any faces it detects. Conk said in a tweet there was no way to blur images on the device but that he does not save the image.

The idea is smart, but it does mean any photos uploaded could theoretically (and if stored) be obtained by law enforcement with a legal order. You also need to “allow untrusted shortcuts”, which could open the door to potentially malicious shortcuts. Know the risks before allowing untrusted shortcuts, and keep it disabled when you don’t need it.

Helping protesters and others blur and anonymize photos is an idea that’s taking off.

Just this week, end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal included its own photo blurring feature, one that couldn’t come soon enough as its user base spiked thanks to the massive adoption since the protests started.

Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike said in a blog post that the move was to help “support everyone in the streets,” including those protesting in the U.S. and around the world, in many cases defying social distancing rules by governments put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

“One immediate thing seems clear: 2020 is a pretty good year to cover your face,” said Marlinspike.

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