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bluegiragi · 1 year

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hello! i'm gira, i go by she/her, and i've been making fanart for the cod fandom for about four months now :) the majority of that time's been spent on the soapbox saga, which is sort of just what i call the very plot-ridden porn comic featuring ghost, soap and konig. and recently i've been working on the monster 141 au!

i'm here to address the reasoning behind how i assigned certain monsters to certain characters, particularly the POC characters as well as accusations of racism regarding me neglecting gaz in all my art :) whoever you are, if you're reading this in good faith, i thank you! i earnestly never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable from my work.

The Monster AU

i won't post the blog who brought this issue up mainly because, (realistically speaking) i think people might go after them and spam them with hate so I'm paraphrasing here. but basically..."how come all the POC in the Monster AU are assigned animal-associated monsters? Comparisons to animals can be incredibly demeaning when it comes to minorities".

I completely agree! But earnestly, I think my desire to assign every character a 'monster' that was relevant to their culture overshadowed the part of my brain that would've raised red flags about this sort of thing. There's the argument here that I could've assigned these characters cooler monsters such as Price who is a dragon, and Ghost who is a wraith, but I wanted to be respectful of all the minorities in the COD cast by giving them creatures that reflected their culture and personality.

ALEJANDRO - NAGUAL

In the Monster AU, Alejandro is a nagual, which is considered a guardian spirit in Mesoamerican culture. Typically, it's said that the nagual is the shapeshifted form that powerful men can transform into in order to do evil (although that doesn't apply in this case, Ale's a heroic lad), and can come in the forms of a jaguar, deer, dog or bird. I chose a jaguar, since it seemed to be the most common form of nagual depiction in the resources I was looking at. The 'panther mode' isn't pre-established as part of nagual mythology, but since most panthers are just black jaguars, i thought the association wouldn't be unreasonable.

I chose Alejandro to be a nagual because it's so in character for him to be protective of his home. The idea of him being a literal guardian spirit for all he considers his just made sense to me :)

RODOLFO (RUDY) - CADEJOS

In this AU, Rudy is the vessel for two cadejos, which are legendary dog spirits popular in the mythology of Central America, parts of South America and Mexico. Historically, they've been known as psychopomps (guides to help humans into the afterlife following their death) but modern interpretation has shifted to depict them as the good guardian dog and the evil attacking dog respectively.

A lot of the minute information about the cadejos tends to differ depending on the source. Like whether they're actually two separate dogs, or they're the same dog just in different 'modes', or how big they are. My personal depiction of them has them sized as normal dogs (although their spirit nature means they can move into small spaces pretty easily by just becoming immaterial temporarily) and as separate spirits that have been passed down through Rudy's family generationally.

I chose the cadejo for Rudy because although I wanted to include him in the Monster AU, i still liked keeping him as a character who was a bit more 'human' than Alejandro. I think Ale needs Rudy to hold him back sometimes, and having the two cadejo definitely helps with that. Sort of like how cheetahs in zoos have therapy dogs growing up because they're so anxious all the time! I think it also does a good job of showing Rudy's two sides as well, like he's a softie who just wants to protect those he loves, but he's capable of a lot of violence too.

VALERIA - GORGON

Valeria is a gorgon which, admittedly, is not part of Mexican mythology. However, I was put in a bit of a bind here, since my research didn't really reveal to me a monster in Mexican culture that I thought would suit Valeria's vibe (manipulative, elulsive) and I just felt like a gorgon would be perfect for her. Medusa's myth has her being continuously demeaned by the men in her life and is a symbol of female empowerment, which I thought was a great reflection of the implied reason that Valeria left the army was due to internal sexism. There's also the perfect parallel of how anyone who sees El Sin Nombre's face dies, and Medusa's whole 'turn you to stone' thing.

I thought i could compromise by making Valeria a gorgon but her hair would be Mexican black kingsnakes but...turns out they're actually not that dangerous. Some people even keep them as pets! So I decided to keep the visual, but make her a pit viper, a subfamily of vipers found in the Americas as well as Eurasia.

HORANGI - HAETAE

Horangi is a haetae (해태) which is a beast in Korean mythology that typically comes in the form of a horned lion or dog. It's prevalent in a lot of cultures in East Asia actually, although it goes under different names depending on the region - kaichi for Japan, xiezhi for China. I made Horangi a tiger variant on the creature because...well...'horangi' means 'tiger' in korean. It just made sense to me to put that little twist on it.

Typically, haetae are seen as spirits of judgement, that decide on innocent and guilty parties in disputes and punish the latter. It's also considered a guardian against fire (hence the fire immunity and cloud manipulation powers I gave him).

GAZ - HARPY

Gaz is a harpy which, I won't lie, was purely inspired by the fact that he seems to keep falling out of helicopters. But it's also because...yeah, I did neglect Gaz in the soapbox saga. But I think I neglected...everyone in the soapbox saga who weren't directly involved in the main ship. I sort of just tunnel visioned on the main three, so my exclusion of characters isn't just limited to Gaz, it was included Price, Laswell, Alejandro, Rudy, Graves etc.

I just want to make clear that my treatment of Gaz in particular isn't reflective of any inner preference against him. And to make good on that, me assigning Gaz wings of all things was to help me spend more time on him in the Monster AU! I think the contrast between Gaz being an upstart harpy, and Price being a one-winged dragon has a lot of potential as a mentor/protege relationship (and perhaps even something more) and it's why I assigned this monster to him. I really wanted to establish a connection upfront, but just making Gaz another dragon felt cheap - the harpy thing felt a little more in turn with his character :)

I really hope this cleared up any remaining frustrations with my designs for the Monster AU. I hope you can see that I never meant anything demeaning by assigning these monsters to their respective characters - in fact, I earnestly tried to go out of my way and be respectful to their backgrounds.

In any case, if you have any more questions I'd be happy to answer them - I'd just ask you to please ask politely :)

#gira speaks #monster 141 au

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avelera · 1 year

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Barefoot Divinity - an intriguing art historical detail in The Sandman

I was rewatching The Sandman episode "Calliope" and I noticed an interesting detail: when Calliope is led away from Erasmus Fry's house, she is barefoot.

There's plenty of thematic reasons to do this within the story, as she's an otherworldly being who would not be harmed by going barefoot, and because she is, at this point, a prisoner. One could argue that the reason for this choice is simply because she has not been allowed the dignity of shoes and it is an effective way of controlling peoples' movements to deny them shoes.

But to put on my ancient art history TA hat for a moment here, there's another possible reason for the choice to show Calliope barefoot.

What makes it such an interesting detail in particular is that showing Calliope barefoot is accurate to ancient Greek and Roman art: only the gods are depicted barefoot.

In fact, it's such a consistent rule that it's often a quick way when looking at ancient Greco-Roman sculptures (of certain eras) to know whether or not the figure the statue depicts is meant to be a god or a mortal. If the figure depicted is otherwise fully dressed (ie, it's not a bathing scene or some other deliberately nude subject matter) but they still have no shoes, that means they are a god.

This rule was so strict when it came to portraiture in particular that it took on political significance in the Julio-Claudian era of Ancient Rome. Romans were constantly suspicious of their early emperors like Augustus aspiring to become god-kings in the style of their (barbaric, to Roman minds) eastern counterparts, as Romans considered the allure of being declared divine to be understandable but anathema to their own comfortable fiction that the Emperor was a Princeps, first citizen, and not a king. So when this statue was commissioned by Emperor Augustus's widow, Livia:

It was incredibly politically controversial because she was saying, in essence, that Emperor Augustus was a god.

Now, this particular statue barely squeaked by the censors, so to speak, because the Romans believed everyone had a "genius" or divine spark within them. The claim was that this wasn't a statue of Augustus declaring him a deity but rather a statue depicting his divine spark which could be portrayed as a barefoot god, now that he was dead.

Still, it was a statue viewed with a great deal of suspicion at the time as a result of this splitting of hairs. Next time you go through the Greco-Roman statue portion of a museum that contains full body statues, check out which ones are barefoot! Oftentimes, there is a political message mixed in to that effect. For example, with otherwise naked generals (in a style referred to as "heroic nudity", often used for mythological heroes or athletes) being shown still wearing sandals, to signal they are still modest enough to be depicted as humans, not gods.

The thing is, Calliope is not the only time in The Sandman comics that a godlike being is depicted as barefoot at an otherwise unusual time, specifically in a Greco-Roman context. For example,

After this event in Brief Lives, Dream is shown leaving the temple walking barefoot on the ground. Dream is also named as the Roman god Morpheus, who the Romans would therefore have no issue with being portrayed barefoot.

And much more interestingly, he is throughout the Brief Lives arc frequently and unusually shown barefoot even when wearing modern clothes:

It is this frequent portrayal of Morpheus without shoes on that leads me to believe the choice is deliberate on @neil-gaiman's part, not merely as a depiction of vulnerability but rather as a nod to ancient art history visual language, as is so frequently done throughout The Sandman comics and his other works: modernizing the ancient and bringing the mythological into our world.

#the sandman #sandman meta #calliope

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exhausted-archivist · 6 months

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Thedas: Not a Middle Ages Fantasy But an Ahistorical, Pre-Industrial, Mega Fauna Fantasy

Part 1: Mega Fauna

The long and the short of it? Thedas is an ahistorical world with magic, two moons, giant fauna - giants, dragons, giant bears, giant arachnids, and has some "ancient" and recent technology that would reach as late as the 1800-1900s in our timeline - such as bunsen burners, smokeless coal, table saw, thresher, heliography, and theodolite. Nothing about Thedas is a 1:1 equivalent for Earth and never has been, we know from the devs that it wasn't the intention either. From a fantasy perspective it is a blend of your typical fantasy stories with adventure, dragons, magic, elves and dwarves, varying mythology, and culture ending events; mixed with a venture into a "what if" ahistorical history.

In the case of Dragon Age, Gaider mentions it was a "what if our own history had magic and elves and dwarves?" and "how might Christianity be different if, instead of Jesus, it had been founded by Joan of Ark?" and subverting tropes of fantasy while still being recognizable: elves being brought low vs aloof and immortal; dwarves bring political schemers vs stouthearted Scotsmen; mages who were feared for good reason.

These were the basic foundations going into Dragon Age, and the spirit of those things is evident through out the series. While there are clear moments of parallels, allegories, and themes of the modern world, our world; I think that, for better or worse, the series has kept to the spirit of those foundations. Keeping things recognizable while exploring the world they've crafted, that grows as the team grows.

Its the spirit of that foundation that really lends to the idea of Thedas being a mega flora and fauna world.

Disclaimer and Considerations:

Take all of this with a grain of salt, whether you take it or leave it. Aside from the actual lore mentioned (with sources next to it) all of this is estimations and based off of known art standards or "canon" as the term is called.

Size is a hard thing to nail down in Dragon Age, the scaling and modeling between the games - main and all additional third party installment - are inconsistent at best largely due to limitations and scope of the game. Such limitations we see reflected in Bull not being 8' and instead is 6'9, the fact that the nightmare demon was scaled down because of scope. Then there are the cinematic scenes, they aren't reliable as they often have models float, sunk into the ground, or given camera angles that force perspectives.

ALT Concept art is a touch more reliable in the idea of the intention but isn't any more hard fact due to the question of if the intention was carried through or not due to tech limitations or design choices.

In consideration of concept art I want to clarify a principal used in art that I will be referencing. Traditionally when drawing characters, artists will use proportional canons. Which is when one uses the height of the character’s head as a unit, to have the proportions of the body match natural ratios. A good write up of this concept is linked here and here.

Content warning for everyone, there will be mentions and/or depictions of the following:

Multi-eyed creatures

Scorpions

Spiders

This post also includes images from the following:

The Missing comic

Dragon Age Absolution

Part 1a: Does Thedas Actually Have Mega Fauna?

Yes, they do. Now the first thought might be the obvious dragons, giants, wyverns, titans, and some magical creatures. But there are some creatures of which we have actual measurable sizes for.

I have the more "concrete" fauna separated into two categories: known sizes and comparable sizes. Known is as stated in lore, if we're given fixed numbers at any point, while comparable sizes are for creatures who we either have vague descriptions or equated to something we know the sizes for.

Comparable sizes are also separated from known sizes as they either have variations, or I am unsure of the lore for them still holds; as with anything dao, game guides, and ttrpg on this blog, these are treated and considered as canon unless clear contradictions are available.

Known Sizes

Giant spiders:

Their scale isn't measured by how high they stand on the ground or by body length but from leg to leg. Or rather that is what you would expect for them to be measured by, but it is hard to say for sure. I run with the leg to leg measurement for the provided size in canon; where they are/can be 12' / 3.65m. [Codex]

Looking at extracted game models (which aren't reliable for in-game models) the giant spider stands at 3' 11.28" / 1.2m and measures 5' 4.2" / 1.63m leg to leg.

Griffons:

Their length is 12' / 3.65m or larger with even larger wingspans. Males can weigh over 1,000 lbs / 453.59kg while females are a little less. [Last Flight ch. 2 p. 31]

For context of how big both of these are length wise, on average: Javan rhinos are 12'5 / 3.8m in length, Indian rhinos are between 10.8’-12.5’ / 3.3-3.8m in length, African forest elephants are between 7.22’-12.13’ / 2.2-3.7m in length, African Bush elephants are 10’-16.5’ / 3-5m in length, thresher sharks can be 10.5’-20’ / 3.2-6.1m long, female great white sharks have an overall length of 15’-21’ / 4.57-6.4 m; males 11’-13’ / 3.35-3.96 m. Most crocodiles exceed that with an average of 13-14' / 3.96-4.26m.

If you're like me and that just is a jumble of words, below are the size comparison to a 6' / 1.83m male figure, the scuba diver is roughly the same length as well. I had to edit the horizontal figures to compare lengths but scale wise they are still 6' / 1.83m. I also spliced together multiple images so they would be easier to see (and tumblr has a 30 image limit).

ALT [Image Sources from left to right, top to bottom: Rhinos: Javan Rhino, Indian Rhino Elephants: African Bush Elephant, African Forest Elephant Crocodiles: American Crocodile, Mugger Crocodile Sharks: Thresher Shark, Great White Shark]

Comparable Sizes

Mabari:

Stated as being as tall and as wide as dwarves*; going off the dwarf heights from Inquisition game models would put them at a range of 4'9-5'3 / 144.78-160.02cm.** This is unclear if they mean from the head or shoulder, which typically you would measure quadrupeds from the shoulder. Something to note however, the mabari extracted models from Inquisition measure at 3' 4.6" / 1.03m at the shoulder but 4' 2" / 1.27m at the head.

ALT

This is also roughly echoed in the concept art, where the shoulder height lines up with the shoulder height of the extracted model from Inquisition, however is closer to the dwarf height range when measuring from the top of the head.

Either way mabari are considered giant breeds when looking at dogs. Regardless of if they are the height of a dwarf 4'9-5'3 / 144.78-160.02cm or the height shown in the extracted model or concept art of 3' 4.6" / 1.03m at the shoulder but 4' 2" / 1.27m at the head. The largest dog in the real world was a great dane at 3' 5.18" / 1.046m.***

*[Dragon Age Tabletop (da ttrpg), Blood in Ferelden] **[Source] ***[Source]

Deepstalkers:

There is a bit of a variant with their sizing scale across all entries. From being able to curl up to be the size of boulders or large rocks.* To The Calling describes them as follows

The “stalagmite” unfolded, revealing a serpentine creature with a long and wormlike neck that ended in a maw full of sharp teeth. Its mottled skin was almost perfectly camouflaged to match the stone around it.

He noticed where the creature’s limbs folded up under its carapace, where it tucked its long neck under its body. Hidden in plain sight, the disguise was almost perfect.

Meanwhile the Missing comic shows them as being much larger than Harding, a dwarf. The ttrpg also describes them as "small reptilian creatures". There also seems to be sizes difference noted between each type of deepstalker: deepstalker, leader, and matriarch.

ALT [Image Sources: BioWare Promo Material, Dragon Age Wiki, and The Missing Comic #1]

Additional measurements include the odd 2' 6.3" / .77m from the extracted model from Inquisition which doesn't line up with the in-game sizing as they're proportionally much larger when next to a dwarf. Then when looking at the concept art scaling from the red dev book shared by Mark Darrah, they stand nearly 6' / 1.83m.

ALT

So there is a stark range of size difference as well as really any consistency when it comes to the bipedal, raptor-like, predators.

*Note the range for what is a large rock and what is a boulder is pretty vague. **This is based on various screenshots as pictured above. Comparing them to Shale, a human character, dwarves, and an elf. *** [World of Thedas (WoT) vol. 1 p. 163, Origins game guide, da ttrpg, The Calling novel, and The Missing Comic]

Dragonlings:

Specifically when they are newly hatched are the size of a deer. At the shoulder they'd be 2'8 - 3' / 81 - 91cm. Their length could be from 3'1 - 7'2 / 95 - 220cm. [Dragonling Codex] *Note the ttrpg does denote that they are the size of a young deer, which would be about 1 1/2 years old. This is distinctly different from a fawn and they are the same size height wise as a mature deer. It is simply a difference in muscle mass.

Here is a helpful comparison of a white tail deer, one of the more common deer:

ALT [Image Source]

Below is concept art from Tom Rhodes that I have cropped for a much clearer view. The shoulder height of the dragonling reaches roughly the same height as deer above.

ALT [Image Source]

Part 1b Sizing from Concept art and Development

Here, I want to look at the concept art of creatures, while acknowledging that they don't always end up on the same scale in game - due to a variety of technical reasons. As we see with the fact that spiders are not 12' / 3.65m in game nor are they close to that.

But with that in mind, we can at least glean the intention if not what might be more reflective of the lore. As we know, not all of da lore is game engine/mechanic friendly and thus there is merit in seeing if we can measure through comparison of in dev work. Especially thanks to the human comparison in some of them.

One piece of such concept art that suggests mega fauna is the design guide for da4 that was teased to us by Mark Darrah in 2016 and in the BioWare: Secrets and Stories From 25 Years of Game Development (B25) p. 274.

ALT

Using this, we can tell what might have been the intended -- again if it is not reflected in game -- size for the animals in Thedas. However, I will note for the sake of clarity that this isn't perfect reference; as some of the scaling seems to be questionable/warping. This is after all, an image of a picture in a book. I would be thrilled to see if we ever get to see a flat image of this.

But what we can see when we clean it up, and line up everything while cross referencing other concept art; the scaling seems to work out something like this with the human figure in the center being the "hero" proportions/ideals that would make his height 6'2 / 1.88m.

ALT

Great Bear

Some of the concept art that we can use for comparisons are pieces such as the concept art for the Great Bear and Quillback (development name dragon bear and vulture hyena):

ALT

Going off the stock hero height for female it is 5'6 - 5'7.5 / 1.67 - 1.71m and for males it is 6' - 6'2 / 1.83 - 1.88m. That would make a great bear roughly 10'11 - 11'2 / 3.34 - 3.42m in this concept art. However in the red book, the scaling suggest it is around 14' / 4.26m. Which is an example of how the book as reference might either be unreliable or the new updated intention for the scaling/design.

Regardless of which numbers you favor, when you look at those scales in contrast to our two largest modern bears:

Kodiak Bear: 3'4 - 5' / 1.02 - 1.52m at the shoulder, 6'5 - 9' / 1.96 - 2.74m in length, and 9' - 10' / 2.75 - 3.05m standing upright

Polar Bear: 3'7 - 5'3 / 1.09 - 1.6 m (male) or 2’8 - 3’11 / .81-1.19 m (female) at the shoulder, 7’10 - 9’10 / 2.4-3 m length, and 8’ - 10’ / 2.5 - 3.05 m standing upright Note: I have edited together the sourced images for clearer scaling.

ALT [Image Sources: Bears: Kodiak Bear, Polar Bear]

Additionally when looking at the tarot cards, which also tend to echo concept art more than the final game we see this massive and dramatic height difference for great bears.

ALT

Another varying size reference we have from concept art is this piece by Tom Rhodes comparing the great bear to the normal bear/brown bear. This is in direct conflict with the scale illustrated in the dev book, though this could simply be due to the stage of development this was created in as it looks to be a draw over of a game model when looking at the great bear.

ALT [Image Source]

Nightmare Demon

The Nightmare demon, or "Blinky" as fans call it, or "Smilely" as Varric calls it. This is however a demon so it's appearance and size can change due to influences outside of its control, I want to acknowledge that. This one was something I wasn't expecting to make a comparison with, as we know that not only was the final version of this demon scaled well as it seems that part of it was cut off in the dev book. But I found this concept art from Heroes of Dragon Age (HoDA) and I believe it roughly matches up with the dev book in terms of scale. It might be scaling larger however, I cannot say with any certainty. And when comparing it to the game model in DAI, this is actually a little smaller in comparison. The extracted game model of the Nightmare demon is 93.47' / 28.49m, while in comparison this concept art implies that it is 54.5' / 16.61m when you measure the silhouette which we can estimate to be 6'2.

ALT [Image Source]

ALT You can see how much they sized down the nightmare demon for HoDA (which is understandable given the constraints of a mobile game), especially when you scale them down to show the actual difference. Which is funny considering the nightmare demon is greatly scaled down from the original concept.

Phoenix

Another piece we have, is concept art for the phoenix. Unlike with the hero figure from before, we are estimating Orisino's height based on the height of elven game models. This would put Orisinao at 5'9 - 6' / 1.75 - 1.83m for an elven male.

ALT [Image Source]

This height reference is echoed and reinforced when we look at the dev book from B25 and Mark Darrah. When you bring the phoenix over to line it up with the hero character in the center, it puts the shoulder a phoenix is roughly 6'2. Implying that, at least for this art, Oresino is within that 5'9-6' / 1.75-1.83m range as his height is lower than the shoulder.

ALT

As you can see the extracted game model is not comparable due to the fact it, like the bears are not at all the same size as their in-game models. They are being scaled up a great deal to what we see in game. The extracted model height for the phoenix is 2' 7.4" / 0.8m, which is much shorter than their in-game counter part that shows it to be around the height of the human/elf character if not a little taller.

Quillback

Shown in the concept art with the great bear, we do have scalable concept art with the quillback and we are able to see that it does line up with the scaling for the dev book. It is also roughly the same size as the extracted game model. It's shoulder height being 4' 10.6" / 1.49m. The quillback also seems to be one of the few creatures where their in game counter part matches up with their model and concept art.

ALT

Part 1 Conclusion

As we can see with all the comparable or confirmed sizing of these creatures in Thedas, most are predators and scavengers, fairly large ones at that. So much so, it would dictate a high oxygen content in the atmosphere, plenty of prey to fuel animals of this size, and plenty of land area to allow for the biodiversity that we see. Even down to the subterranean level as well.

We know that gravity also works differently in Thedas, to a degree it is requires as to allow creatures the size of dragons and griffons fly, and giants roam the surface. But also to allow dwarves ranging from 4'9-5'3 / 144.78-160.02 cm to live 2-4 miles / 3.21-6.43 km below sea level + the distance from the actual surface. To give context, the deepest cave we've explored on earth is the Veryovkia cave at 1.37 miles / 2.12 km deep and the entrance to the cave is 1.41 miles / 2.28 km above sea level. Meaning the deepest cave doesn't even go down to sea level.

But with all that said, I'm only wrapping up here as I'm running out of image allowance for this post. I'll continue this in the next part, and if you've read this far, thank you.

Wanna support this blog? You can check out my ko-fi.

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jackdaw-kraai · 1 year

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The thing I think isn't talked about enough in all these conversations about "AI art" is how, even if you work out all the kinks, even if you get it to the point that it works perfectly according to the most lofty goals set, even if all that came true... AI will still disappoint when set next to even just a moderately skilled human artist. Not because of any technical flaws with the product, but because of its fundamental limitations as a tool.

AI, as we understand it right now, without all the grandstanding and doomsday predictions and near-mythological qualities we ascribe to it, works on binary. Down to its core, stripped to its studs, it works on binary code, and you see that reflected in the design. Every choice it makes, every result it produces, is a result of a million, billion "yes or no" questions asked of it that chain together into a coherent response. Endless amounts of "TRUE or FALSE" results spat out when data is fed into it, that string together to form a conversation, or an essay, or a painting, or a comic. At least, when trained on enough data to weigh the odds in favor of what the creators want it to do.

If you ask ChatGPT to tell you something about romance, it filters its endless data banks for what that training data it was given matches your request and what results in those tests were rewarded by its programmers and which were discouraged and based on all that, it begins making TRUE or FALSE choices with the odds weighed by that data. That's how all AI we currently have fundamentally work, and that, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. It's a tool, and tools are hard pressed to be evil. What it is, however, is vastly inferior to the process of a human writer for one simple fact: when asked a question, we have more options than to answer it TRUE or FALSE.

If you ask a human writer to tell you about romance, they too will draw upon all the memories they have stored away of what they know about romance and base an answer off of that. But they will also draw up all the knowledge they have on astronomy, to compare the feeling it creates inside to that of hydrogen fusing, and that of medicine, because it burns so bright inside that it feels like your rib cage feels like it should be alight from the inside until it looks like an inverted x-ray image. A human writer will visualize the way love feels and draw connections an AI couldn't fathom, because it was never trained to do so. And more than that, if a human writer tells you about romance, they won't tell you just about romance.

They will tell you about how romance happens.

They will tell you about what romance between a young Polish woman and a young Polish man living in what would one day be the powiat of Bieszczadzki on the border with Ukraine, but for now are just the Bieszczadzki mountains, in the spring of 1914 would have looked like. And they will tell you about how it looked like all the months afterwards as the young man is drafted into the army and their home is ravaged by WWI as the Bieszczadzki mountains become one of the most bitterly contested regions in the Eastern Front during the war. They will tell you about how romance, how the love blooming from it, cannot fix the damage wrought by senseless battles fought by powers so much greater than the two of them, but how it carries them through the war nonetheless.

And what's more, they will know enough about the history of Poland to parallel the growing love between these two young people with the growing, not-yet-formed modern state of Poland that will once again rise from the ashes of the war after having previously been partitioned by greater powers into non-existence.

A human writer will not only have the knowledge to do that, they will have the skills and manner of thinking necessary to form the thoughts that will lead to such a story and make it into something incredible. An AI, no matter how well you train it, no matter how good you make it at emulating a writer's style, will not be able to form the same thought process. Not because it is flawed, but because it simply isn't built for that.

An AI cannot experience nationalism or patriotism for a country, an AI cannot reason out how people might have lived in the absence of credible historic evidence when it runs up against a gap in its data, an AI will not understand the link between fragile, young love blooming in adversity and a country struggling to be reborn in spite of the greater nations around it that wish it would remain dead. It cannot do this, because it isn't based in "TRUE or FALSE" questions. It's based in the painfully human experience of complicated emotions, difficult thoughts, and yes, even deeply flawed ways of looking at the world that nonetheless are beautiful exactly for having those flaws.

An AI, at its core, with where the technology is right now, is a machine of averages. Even if we polish it to peak performance, that will not change. At peak performance, it will still give you an average of all the possible answers it could give, it will be technically flawless, and it will never be anything even close to a fraction of the lightning in a bottle that a writer with categorically shit technique can capture if their heart and mind are put into it.

And let's be honest here and step a foot outside of the bubble of speculation, just for a bit: AI will never, ever, give you an answer or story that pushes boundaries or makes you think like even the most technically incompetent but passionate authors are able to.

Because in order to push boundaries, in order to deliver a message, you have to be willing to make people uncomfortable. You have to be willing to be messy and raw to the point that your story bleeds. And even if we polished AI to perfection, even if, by some miracle of a completely new and fresh coding base, it could do all those things... the humans pulling the strings of the machine would never allow it to do so. Because if their machine produces stories that push boundaries, that have things to say, that make people uncomfortable, it's not going to be profitable. It's not going to be advertiser-friendly. It's not going to please the stock market. And let's be honest here, in the end, that's what matters to those people.

AI cannot write the stories that people want it to, that they truly want it to, because in the end, the stories we want to hear are not the stories it can tell. The stories we want to hear are, in the end, painfully human, in all the best and worst ways possible. And if you want a human story, if you want to have something like that lightning in a bottle, AI can never be more than a tool in making them instead of the maker itself. A potentially useful and innovative tool, but nothing more than that.

Because if you want human stories, no one but a human will be able to write them. And no one but a human will be able to read them and understand what's being said.

#wga strike #chatgpt #ai #ai critical #wga solidarity

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genericpuff · 10 months

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Hi, I'm new to Tumblr and the whole LO rekindled(?) thing (I originally found you on Instagram) And I don't know if you were asked this before, but do you think you'll ever draw your own version of Greek mythology? I know that LO rekindled is chef's kiss, but what about your own vision and modern retelling of the Greek mythology? I feel like you could draw a more diverse and down to earth gods than LO is now! (Although it sounds a little bit evil to go head to head with LO in modern Greek gods…)

Rekindled was almost an original Greek retelling project, I actually still have the drawings from the concept art stage! You can tell they're a lot more like my own style, similar to what you'd find in Time Gate.

But I was too hooked to the idea of redrawing LO to commit to doing an original comic. Sometimes you just gotta do what the hyperfixation wants, y'know? 😂

That said, I do have some ideas for side stories to do after Rekindled is over if I'm still into doing it. They'd likely still be drawn in the Rekindled/LO style but would be standalone retellings. I'd love to do the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, or revisit the Eros and Psyche myth (their story won't be in Rekindled, though Eros will likely be mentioned/shown to some capacity as Aphrodite and Ares will be playing a role in it).

Evil tho? Guess you can call this my villain arc lol

#as if rachel's the first one to modernize the greek gods lmao #rick riordan's got her beat by well over a decade #lore rekindled #lore rekindled comic #lore olympus au #ama #ask me anything #anon ask me anything #anon ama

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itsnotthaaatserious · 1 year

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i'm a casual reader of lore olympus. i enjoy it passively for what it is and check tumblr after updates just to ruminate on it a bit or catch the thoughts of other fans. i have no intention of talking about lore olympus at length or even really using this blog because, honestly? lore olympus is not that serious. it's a soap opera inspired by greek myths with a pseudo modern aesthetic. it's campy, cookie cutter, and sure as fuck not the place i would go to to get a fresh or faithful take on the persephone/hades myth. i mean it's a webtoon for fuck's sake. a cursory look at the art style and marketing will tell you all you need to know about how deep this story's going to be.

And yet. the tags on this godforsaken website are absolutely overrun with anti lo / lo critical hot takes expressing the oh-so-novel idea that lo isn't very good, to which i say... no shit? the art's inconsistent/disproportionate. writing is often mid. characterization is... ok, i'll show my hand here. I think a lot of people's problems with the characters themselves is just a fundamental disagreement on interpretation, because the greek gods are by and large colossal assholes and can be twisted to be as saintly or sinister as you want them to be. that particular point is just a subjective "noooo my greek god/goddess blorbo was done so dirty" without taking anything else (such as creative decisions) into consideration. but i digress.

my ultimate point here is the pseudo intellectuals getting worked up over a webtoon soap opera are fucking annoying. greek mythology has been adapted TO DEATH because it is the most well known mythology in human history. if you don't enjoy lo there is nothing wrong with that. after all, as i already said, it's not that good - it's the equivalent of trash tv. so why the everloving fuck are so many people so pressed and dedicated to criticizing lo? literally just go find a different adaptation. lo is hardly a cultural juggernaut forever tainting the high-brow sophistication of greek mythology (lmao) and your constant need to fill the tags with criticism is more indicative of how emotionally invested you are in this comic than the actual quality of the comic itself. i swear to god almost all these posts i see average under a 100 notes. lo barely has a fandom presence on tumblr. the fuck are you all doing.

anyway *steps off my soapbox*

#lore olympus #lo

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mask131 · 1 year

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Dionysos: Why paint him fat?

I want to talk of a strangely specific topic that is however not only surrounding Greek mythology fans but also essential to understanding the character of Dionysos (or Dionysus, as English people call him - I never understood where the “us” comes from). Around this seemingly trivial question there is a whole cultural evolution to talk about. And this question could be summed up as: why is Dionysos fat? How come we went from an effeminate teen in Ancient times to a balding obese man in modern media? Let’s talk about Dionysos’ appearance.

As many of you know, in modern media, and that for quite some times now, Dionysos is depicted as a fat man. A fat drunk man, often balding or bald. The list of these large Dionysoses could be long, but as an example I’ll give you one iconic case: Disney’s take on Dionysos, which mixes the obese old man and the fat baby, and reflects how this “fat Dionysos” is associated with the joke that the god is just a useless and silly drunk here for background comical effect.

While you see this fat Dionysos in numerous recent-days movies, comic books and children books, it isn’t actually as “new” as we would believe. Before the 20th century it was already there. Most notably in paintings: Bacchus/Dionysos was often depicted as an obese man, either a ridiculous fat drunk or a grotesque ugly one.

This image is so prevalent in modern-day culture, it cannot be ignored. But the questions I want to talk about here are: why does this depiction exist ; and is it a “good” way to depict Dionysos?

Because this obese Bacchus is the literal opposite of how the Ancient Greeks depicted Dionysos. As with all Greek gods he was a man of a great beauty with zero body fat (because for Ancient Greeks fatness was ugliness, and the gods are supposed to embody the ideal of Greek beauty) - even more, he was usually an effeminate and androgynous youth.

So how come this svelt teenage beauty became this old obese drunk?

A first answer is: the mythological confusion. Dionysos, in art, got confused with a close companion of his, the mythological figure of Silenus. Silenus, a satyr or man who was one of Dionysos’ besties, always with him, and who was attested as an old, fat man, constantly drunk to the point he often fell from the donkey he rode and had to be carried by others to stand up.

And so, while for a Greek the two were definitively separate - with time, painters and artists started to confuse the two and thought that the fat, elderly, drunk clearly not able to stand up on his own WAS Dionysos. Hence how the god inherited all of Silenus’ traits: the “comic” relief nature, the silly drunkness, the baldness, the large belly...

Plus, as times evolved and drunkness became condemned by modern societies as something vicious, dangerous and in general nasty, people saw this “Silenus portrait” of Bacchus as much more fitting: for them it represented everything drunkness and alcohol had to offer. Grotesque excess, laughable behavior with pathetic bodies, a waste through debauchery resulting in a god that doesn’t look like a god - a god becoming fat, bald and old among the slender and muscular youths.

But just to place Dionysos’ fatness on Silenus would be over-simplifying a vast and more interesting debate. Because Dionysos was painted as fat long before he was confused with Silenus. You have quite a number of clearly Dionysian Dionysos, separate from the old satyr, youthful depictions of the god as a Greek god... but a chubby one. And that is because during the Renaissance era (to simplify the chronology a bit), ideal and beautiful bodies were painted - maybe not as “fat” as we would believe it today, but definitively plump and curvy. It was a tradition of the painting back then but also a different canon of beauty: skinny meant you were poor or vicious or ugly, having flesh on your body meant you were of good constitution, noble and healthy. People often limit it to the paintings of Rubens, who exemplified this “ideal fleshy body”, but it was something present among numerous painters across countries and centuries.

The Greek gods being the embodiment of beauty ideals, the living personification of aesthetic canons, their body weight also evolved depending on the culture depicting them. And so in Renaissance paintings you have soft-bellied Aphrodites with large hips, you have chubby Apollos, and you have fat Dionysuses. Randing from the god having chubby cheeks and a bit of pudge around the waist:

... to him being truly plus-size, with a big belly and fat rolls:

Not only was this a different standard of beauty, but depicting Dionysos fat also brought forward connotations of youth. In this type of paintings, children and teenagers were usually depicted with what we would call today their “baby fat” or “freshman fifteen”. It was the chubbiness of youth, and so with gods supposedly eternally young, curves were needed.

So, if we recap it all, Dionysos started as a slender youth in Ancient Greek, became a chubby youth in paintings, and then became the fat old guy we see everywhere today. But even more - we could say that Dionysos did a full barrel roll (no pun intended) from maturity to youth and back to maturity again. Because indeed, before being depicted as a slender effeminate youth, the older portraits of Dionysos in Ancient Greece depicted him as a mature, bearded man:

And so from a mature bearded god, we went to the androgynous teen, then to the plump young man, and then to the overweight old man.

But now I want to raise another question: is it a “correct” or “good” depiction of Dionysos?

This very question will make people scream because - and I agree with that - it should not be asked in such a way. In truth, people can depict the Greek gods any way they like because the gods are symbols and emblems before anything else - as long as someone gets the role, function, essence and symbols of a god, and as long as they show they understand the original Greek spirit, then they can draw the god in any height, size and color they like. But there is still a massive wave of people who want to “get things right”, who are not satisfied with just being faithful in spirit but want to be faithful to a T, and who will scream “IT WASN’T LIKE THAT IN ANCIENT GREECE!!”. And so I will answer them.

Yes, fat Dionysos is not how Ancient Greek mythology or religion would have depicted Dionysos. As I explained, gods aren’t fat in Greek mythology, because fatness is ugliness, and Dionysos was only depicted as either a mature bearded man or as a slender effeminate youth. BUT... it doesn’t mean fat Dionysos didn’t exist in Ancient Greece.

I present to you: Aristophanes’ The Frogs. A Greek comedy that depicts a parodic and humoristic take on Dionysos. Note that Aristophanes isn’t just any Greek writer - he was one of the “big playwright” that embodied Ancient Greek theater as a whole, and he was THE big writer of comedies who embodied the Ancient Greek comedy genre all by himself. (It helps that he was one of the few comedy writers preserved from Ancient Greece). So “The Frogs” isn’t just some random little thing, it was a popular, renowned and well-known play in Ancient Greece. And in it, Aristophanes presents us a caricature of Dionysos as a plump and rotund character, with a prominent, round belly, and who is called “fat” or “pot-bellied” by other characters. The whole point of making Dionysos fat was actually double. On one side, this fat Dionysos served the point of the play, as the plot was about comparing Dionysos and another famous half-god turned full god: Herakles. And Dionysos tried to emulate the strong, brave, muscular Herakles, when in fact he is a fat, lazy and cowardly figure. (Of course there is a commentary of how Herakles became adored through exploits, battling monsters and leading quests, Dionysos essentially became a god for very passive things such as getting drunk on wine). On the other side, making Dionysos fat was a caricature of Dionysos’ androgyny, as for Ancient Greeks fatness made the body of the man effeminate (the fat chest of a man is similar to the one of a woman ; a fat man’s belly is like a pregnant woman’s ; fatness makes the man’s hips wider and more female like, etc...).

So yes, fat Dionysos did exist in Ancient Greece. A theatrical and parodic version of him, but still.

In recent media the concept of the “old fat Dionysos” seems to have been gotten rid of, as most modern stories choosing to return to the more traditional depictions of him:

But hopefully fat Dionysos hasn’t been gotten rid of completely! Hopefully because while I don’t personally like Dionysos’ depiction as a “Silenus-like” character, I do think that the past of Dionysos as a fat god shouldn’t be entirely ignored, and could be reused in a world open to more body types in media. What is interesiting however is that recent media, when they keep fat Dionysos, actually play with it or justify it instead of doing the simple “old fat drunk” cliche. See Riordan’s take on Dionysos/Bacchus:

Or how Bacchus’ design evolved in Smite, going from a design originally influenced by the “Silenus-Bacchus” concept (bald, clearly loud and rowdy, with strong, stout, not traditionally pretty facial traits) ; to a new design reflecting more the historical Dionysos as the god becomes youthful, “prettier” in a more conventional way and softer/more delicate in features, while still being fat and bearded:

#dionysos #dionysus #bacchus #greek gods #greek mythology #art #painting #ancient greece #aristophanes #the frogs #silenus #fatness #plus size #big beautiful man #renaissance painting #canon of beauty #cultural evolution

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nonagalleryart · 2 years

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P is for Patasola - Or "One Leg", is a vampire-like creature from South America, who appears in the form of a beautiful woman with a single leg which allows her to move extremely fast, outrunning most humans. She is extremely competitive, any stress or aggravation will reveal her true terrifying face, and like her European counterparts, she isn't a fan of silver or not coming first.

[<— O] [Modern Monsters] [Q —>]

#Modern Monsters #nona Gallery #Art #Illustration #Comic #South America #Colombia #Olympics #Athlete #Vampire #Mythology #Classic Vampire Problems

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thelastbacchae · 2 years

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Ch. 5, Page 43. << Previous || Start Reading || Next >>

Did you really think we already got tired of destroying houses? uwu

(a moment of sileence for whomever will have to clean all that ichor from the walls and the furniture and the pc.)

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turqrambles · 9 months

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As someone whose taken quite a few college art history courses, Sir Daniel’s situation in MediEvil 2 is so fascinating to me. He has his own wing in the London Museum including a pedestal displaying his remains and a book recounting the tale of a knight that would rise once more to save the land from evil, so now I gotta wonder...

Just how big of a folklore figure is Sir Daniel Fortesque in this world.

Is Sir Daniel considered a Saint. Was he posthumously made a martyr by the Church. Do oil paintings from the Renaissance and Baroque period represent him with specific types of iconography, the kinds of things that people write entire books about, postulating that “Sir Daniel is commonly depicted with an arrow through the left eye in artwork of the 15th century to represent the perseverance of the holy spirit in the face of Evil” or something. Did he replace Saint George in this world and become a figurehead of Christian mythology. Did Shakespeare write a play about the Ballad of Gallowmere. Was Donatello commissioned to create a marble sculpture of Sir Daniel in Florence. Is the knight in shining armor trope in English literature now based off of the idealized version of Daniel.

...did Disney make a Sir Daniel movie in the 1950′s that later became a backbone of their brand? Could Sir Daniel Fortesque in the modern day (which he does visit in the comics) buy a stuffed animal of a Disney-styled version of himself right before he does that interview with that London historian?

#medievil 2 #medievil #sir daniel fortesque #in my head I'm picturing the Ballad of Gallowmere Disney movie to be in the Sleeping Beauty era #you get Eyvind Earle to paint gorgeous backgrounds and Zarok gets an awesome angular dragon form

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fei-ren-zai · 3 months

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Navigation

This blog is an unofficial archive for Fei Ren Zai (非人哉), a manhua and donghua about characters from Chinese mythology in the modern day world. FRZ is by 一汪空气.

Links: Bilibili (comics) | Weibo | Bilibili | Store (shared with All Saints Street and You Shou Yan)

Manhua: Raws | Mangadex translations (up to strip 263) | this blog's translations | Translation Google Drive

Donghua: Unfortunately Youtube has removed most of the subbed episodes that were posted by grainsubs2 and others. You can find all 96 untranslated episodes here, and there is an eng sub playlist with the first 13 episodes by Daily Anime. You can also watch paid on the official bilibili if you have an account.

Others: Fei Ren Zai's sister series include All Saints Street (万圣街) and You Shou Yan（有兽焉).