FWIW, "mauve" was one of the coal-tar dyes developed in the mid-19th century that made eye-wateringly bright clothing fashionable for a few decades.

It was an eye-popping magenta purple

HOWEVER, like most aniline dyes, it faded badly, to a washed-out blue-grey ...

...which was the color ignorant youngsters in the 1920s associated with “mauve”.

(This dress is labeled "mauve" as it is the color the above becomes after fading).

They colored their vision of the past with washed-out pastels that were NOTHING like the eye-popping electric shades the mid-Victorians loved. This 1926 fashion history book by Paul di Giafferi paints a hugely distorted, I would say dishonest picture of the past.

Ever since then this faded bluish lavender and not the original electric eye-watering hot pink-purple is the color associated with the word “mauve”.

Oh! Just like the Victorians did to the Gothic, where actual Gothic cathedrals which had been built to be bright and full of light were portrayed as dark and gloomy places, because that's what happens after a cathedral is filled with candles for several hundred years.

Holy shit, they got Voyager 1 working again!

15 billion miles away and NASA was able to tweak code packages on one of the onboard computers and it worked and Voyager 1 is sending signals back to earth for the first time since November.

Incredible!

[Gifset shows man yelling “Space” in an overacting sort of way.

End ID.]

I just want you all to know, that if and when this site does experience a real exodus and/or get sunsetted for good, even if we don't keep in touch I'll remember you so fondly. You're the online equivalent of the other kid on the beach where we built sandcastles together; the girl at the campsite where we explored the trees. You're the drunk person who shared kind words in the bathroom at the club, you're the talented artists at the life drawing class or the poetry night in a city where I don't live anymore. It makes me sad that maybe in the future our paths won't cross so easily, but even when we leave this little shared piece of cyberspace, carried away on our briefly intersecting trajectories, just know I still love you

Thinking about how Cass's OG artist draws her in the Batgirl run and how there's just something about it that no other Cass artist has been able to replicate. The way she's so clearly 16/17, the youthful playfulness in her eyes, the unique features and expressions on her face, the casual clothes she likes to wear (and the lack of whitewashing but that's more the specific colourists). The way she doesn't look perfectly glamorous but instead looks human, like a teen who's been homeless and on the run since she was a child and is only now rediscovering happiness.

I don't hate Cass's features maturing as she gets older, and since she should be around 23 in canon it's not that relevant anymore. But when it comes to teen Cass, no artist has come close to this. When I picture teen Cass I am always thinking of Damion Scott's artwork.

Also minor nitpick, I miss when she had that sort of gangly/sinewy Bruce Lee build that made her actually look like a fighter. Way too many artists just draw her with the 'comic book woman' body type.

[First image shows three panels of Cass. Her mouth is wide and expressive. She has brown skin, a broad, flat nose, and large eyes. She has a square chin, high cheekbones, a large hands.

In the first panel she looks down as Babs asks, "So why is the dreaded Batgirl so smiley today? Something happen last night? What? Tell me."

Cass looks at Babs and replies, "Mmm ... "

Then she gives a big shrug.

Babs trails off, "You know ... "

The second image is Cass in her Batgirl costume. She is skinny but muscular. The third is a shirtless Bruce Lee with similar musculature.

End ID.]

I love how her face really looked like she relied on it for communication! Her expressions are usually larger than those of the people around her, and drawn by someone who can actually communicate emotion visually. When I see isolated panels, half the time I think, "she looks like she's Deaf or autistic" - ie. someone who relies more heavily on facial expression than many speaking people. (I'm thinking of some nonverbal autistics). That's how it should be!

And her whole body is usually in poses! Communicative poses. In the shrug panel, her hip juts to the side, her whole arms get in on the shrug, and her head tilts. No part of her body is neutral or posed to be attractive.

The art style is really exaggerated, sometimes in ways that make it more work than I'd like to follow. But it's RIGHT for Cass. In an understated art style, she wouldn't come through as clearly.

I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them

I love the sorrow in which you wrote this

The tragedy of growing up british & left wing is realising all your beloved childhood animals in waistcoats were monarchists to the core

I feel like in many ways "How'd he manage to grow up a middle-aged middle-class British man in Peru, anyways?" is the wrong question but it's still the one I am hung up on, years later.

Hold on let’s do this properly:

Paddington - regrettably a monarchist but in that specific immigrant way. The only actual immigrant on the list. May possibly just be a monarchist as part of the processing stage and is also canonically a child.

Winnie the Pooh - is canonically a stuffed animal, I genuinely don’t think he has this level of thought/agency and is not written as such. The real living breathing animals (owl, rabbit) are not just monarchists, but actively and cruelly bourgeois.

The Velveteen Rabbit - doesn’t wear a waistcoat but not a monarchist either.

Angelina Ballerina - a monarchist and a bit of a little bitch tbqh

The Brambly Hedge mice - really unclear. But like worryingly unclear. Clearly some kind of caste system in operation (lords and ladies) but not capitalist or explicitly feudalist either, it seems a thin overlay over their real political intentions: incredibly intense cheesemaking forming the backbone of a post-scarcity economy.

Beatrix Potter / Peter Rabbit - monarchists.

Richard Scarry - actually I can’t make a call on this one

Animals of Farthing Wood - I … don’t know.

Wind in the Willows - Toad’s a fucking Tory, but I feel like the Water Rat is kind of a comrade

Watership Down - unfortunately many of these rabbits are fashy, even the ones you like. Ursula le Guin said it, not me. They wouldn’t walk away from omelas. However, they touch a lot of grass - enough grass to not be interested in the house of Windsor - which is a point in their favour.

Redwall - monarchists, though not for the British monarchy. and also, somehow, Mouse Anglican verging on Mouse Catholic. Worrying, fascinating.

Oakapple Wood - monarchists

Hobbit - not a woodland creature but wears a waistcoat and is sympathetic to Thorin, Aragorn. Provisionally extremely monarchist and the very earliest interpretations of hobbits appeared to think they are somehow bipedal rabbits, which pissed Tolkien off.

Rupert Bear - British bear in clothes attributed partially for the decline in the usage of the name Rupert - but I don’t know a thing about him

The Highway Rat - all Julia Donaldson creatures lick the boot that crushes them, even the highway rat. Possibly not the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo however is the most naked that anyone has ever been, thus not an animal that would wear clothes.

The Narnia creatures - don’t all wear clothes, but THE definitive monarchists

Fantastic Mr Fox - not a monarchist. and in the wes Anderson film is not even British although the farmers and setting are (brilliant artistic choices, especially including an excellent but fucking random possum that calls the entire ecosystem into question: ultimately these are North American animals subverting and undermining the British landowners in a strange political statement whose intentions and direction are unclear.) Not monarchists, but what?

Viruses - possibly monarchists, wear coats, and present in children’s literature as exemplified by the Usborne “See Inside Germs.” Ultimately more data is needed.

Thoughts on Toad and Frog?

They’re American

Trying to learn phonology as a Canadian is HARD.

Phonology is the study of how languages organize sounds. And most of it involves matching the sounds of whatever you're studying to this mental framework of possible sounds that you learn. But since most western teaching methods involve written texts, you have to be able to map those texts to your own dialect, so that the symbols used actually have MEANING.

There isn't a lot of guidelines for mapping things to Canadian English. Most sources tell you it's similar to American English. Sometimes, one or two exceptions will be highlighted.

But, in 15 years, NOBODY HAS EXPLAINED CANADIAN 'A' TO ME.

You see, Canadian English doesn't really HAVE an 'a' sound. We have a spectrum.

General American has three sounds here, nicely grouped. Charts of English dialects split up 'ham', 'bad', 'lad', 'pass', and 'father'. (Most dialects group these into either 2 or 3 distinct phonemes.)

But in central Canada,where I live, (and which is most likely to use weird in-between sounds), there's no real GROUPS. Everything blends into everything else. Trying to figure out the difference between /ɛ, æ, a, ä, ɐ, ɑ/ was SO HARD.

Anyways, I am very grateful to Charles Boberg for ACTUALLY RESEARCHING CANADIAN ENGLISH. Things make a lot more sense now.

¹ 'ä' is the greyed out 'a' in the picture.

I just thought all vowels in this province were pronounced "uh"

alexalexalexalex

it gets more complicated when you take french immersion into account, because I'm pretty sure there are a few words I pronounce *ever so slightly* differently because of it ("vague", for example, goes more like "bag" than "beg", which is apparently how most people around here pronounce it)

-

Don't worry. There's so little stability in this area that most people can't tell. Like, it needs to have rules to be complicated. Otherwise, it's just random.

Some quotes from the article I was reading:

Translation: Americans have rules about how to pronounce 'a's from foreign sources. (Ie. any word that doesn't come from Old English.) Canadians are currently still figuring that out.

Translation: There was no pattern to which pronunciations Canadians assigned for certain words.

Translation: Some Canadians never use in-between pronunciations. Some have in-between pronunciations for HALF of the words from foreign sources they say. (Ie. any word that doesn't come from Old English.)

-

So yeah, French immersion, speaking English as a second language, Aboriginal English - those all affect pronunciation. But while Canadians can be really good at picking out people sounding 'wrong' in many ways, we are unlikely to notice with 'a's. Because there isn't a 'right' to compare to, yet.

Trying to learn phonology as a Canadian is HARD.

Phonology is the study of how languages organize sounds. And most of it involves matching the sounds of whatever you're studying to this mental framework of possible sounds that you learn. But since most western teaching methods involve written texts, you have to be able to map those texts to your own dialect, so that the symbols used actually have MEANING.

There isn't a lot of guidelines for mapping things to Canadian English. Most sources tell you it's similar to American English. Sometimes, one or two exceptions will be highlighted.

But, in 15 years, NOBODY HAS EXPLAINED CANADIAN 'A' TO ME.

You see, Canadian English doesn't really HAVE an 'a' sound. We have a spectrum.

General American has three sounds here, nicely grouped. Charts of English dialects split up 'ham', 'bad', 'lad', 'pass', and 'father'. (Most dialects group these into either 2 or 3 distinct phonemes.)

But in central Canada,where I live, (and which is most likely to use weird in-between sounds), there's no real GROUPS. Everything blends into everything else. Trying to figure out the difference between /ɛ, æ, a, ä, ɐ, ɑ/ was SO HARD.

Anyways, I am very grateful to Charles Boberg for ACTUALLY RESEARCHING CANADIAN ENGLISH. Things make a lot more sense now.

¹ 'ä' is the greyed out 'a' in the picture.

I just thought all vowels in this province were pronounced "uh"

Think you're so superior, Mr. Former American!

(But we DO pronounce schwa/unstressed vowels [ə] VERY similarly to the 'run' vowel [ʌ]. And then some of the 'in-between' 'a's are also pretty close. Which makes for a lot of 'uh' sounds. You're not wrong.)

Saw a sibling poll and needed to expand it because I fit, like. Mid youngest, youngest in theory only child in practice, and adopted. And I think they all have their own unique parts in the sibling ecosystem.

For the Cass-as-next-batman deniers.

Batgirl (2000) #57 / #58 / #59 / #67

I suspect that it may be a common Asexual experience but when I imagine something as "sexy", I imagine something that makes your heart beat fast, that gives you goosebumps, that captures all your focus and puts a hitch in your breath and an odd tingle on the back of your neck, that is exciting and enjoyable to think about.

By extension, things that I believe are "sexy" include:

Yeah, nailed it.

A fanfic idea:

Bruce was able to rescue Jason before he died, and after this experience, Jason stopped being Robin.

He became afterwards the golden child, he goes to college (with a scholarship), helps out in the city library, teaches children (helps with their homeworks and helps them to study), works part time in a car garage in crime alley, and is a supportive brother.

And it pisses his siblings off.

Because there has to be something fishy because no one, really no one, is that perfect.

And there is something fishy.

He is also Red Hood.

No one knows, and the vigilantes never talk to Jason about "the family business" because he needs to concentrate on his studies and other stuff.

So imagine, Batmans suprise when the JL was able to catch Red Hood.

Someone takes Jasons helmet off in front of Batman, Nightwing, and other members

And Jason, who wears also a domino mask, doesn't look Batman in the face even as he says :

"Hey Dad. I can explain."

And Dick loses his shit, he laughs so hard because, Jason, The golden child, the one who gave up on being a vigilante, who reads to children in the library, is a goddamn crimelord.

Bruce just stands there frozen because wtf Jason?!

And Dick takes selfies with Jason being tied up and calles the other Batkids in because they should definitely not be left out of it.

(Edit: As someone who doesn't really write (or can write good stories), I want to say, feel free to use this prompt for a fanfiction. Just please give credits to me (because I don't know if someone else had also this idea and posted it) and please inform me if you publish something (because I want to read a fanfiction like this too))

A Tiger and His Boy

[Blue watercolour image of a realistic tiger holding a stuffed human doll that looks a lot like Calvin from 'Calvin and Hobbes.'

End ID.]

Discussion thread on reddit

My favorite example from there is Tinkerbell, but it also points to “Gods Need Prayer Badly” on TVTropes

Most of the responses in that Reddit thread are talking about the idea of gods deriving physical sustenance from sacrifices made in their honour, rather than the modern literary trope of gods gaining their miraculous powers from the strength of their worshippers' faith; the former is, of course, an ancient notion, but uncritically conflating it with the latter may result in misleading conclusions.

I had been thinking that in response to the original prompt, because it's an interesting difference, right? Modern religions often focus on orthodoxy, believing the right things; but ancient polytheisms didn't care about that. They cared about orthopraxy, which is doing the right things.

Ancient polytheistic religions were fairly functional and transactional. They didn't spend much if any time thinking about "belief"; at least in the Mediterranean, atheism basically didn't exist, and the closest you got was believing the gods didn't care about you. (Bret Devereaux writes about this, and other differences between D&D religion and real historical polytheisms, here.)

Cultures do ritual sacrifice because "it works". (Yes, it doesn't "work" in reality, but it "works" in the sense that the cultures are performing these sacrifices and surviving, therefore the sacrifices are at least compatible with surviving as a culture.) And that comes before the theory, honestly; but the purpose of ritual is to make things happen. They're tools. And "just as a hammer and a wrench do not very much care if you think the ‘right things’ about hammers and wrenches, so the ritual does not care if you ‘believe’ in it, or have the ‘correct’ doctrine of it, so long as – like the wrench and the hammer – you use the tool properly."

And then the sacrifice is an exchange.

So then we can ask, what was the theory for why this stuff worked? And that varied.

Now you can see how e.g. the Aztec take relates to the "gods need belief" thing, but it's also very different, because the Aztec gods needed sacrifices. They don't care about the belief, they care about the stuff and the actions.

So the "gods need belief" thing is sort of a weird fusion of ancient polytheisms, which posited gods who needed or wanted sacrifice, with modern religions, with their focus on belief and orthodoxy. So it can basically only happen in a modern-invented pagan or polytheistic religion—which is, presumably, why we see them popping up in mid-century sword and sorcery stuff. It's a vague recreation of the shape of ancient polytheisms, but filtered through a very modern take on what religion is and how it works.

I wonder if this is interrelated to the idea that speaking true names grants their bearers power?

Like, societies not saying the word for bear, because it might call a bear to them, or grant strength to bears.

-

There's also ancestor veneration, where one's ancestors are a sort of god that need to be fed or they will fade away.

-

And, during the classical Roman/Greek eras, there was the idea that being defeated in battle meant your gods had lost, as well. They didn't necessarily DIE, but they could be abandoned by their followers, or merged with the gods of their victors.

(This isn't the same thing as the Romans assuming every pantheon they learned about was just a palette-swapped version of their own. Though they're related.)

A lot of the bewildering 'this god is ALSO the god of X unrelated thing' is because a community renamed the local god but kept their original powers, and suddenly Artemis is a goddess of marriage and childbirth, while still being a virgin goddess.

There's this undercurrent of 'might makes right' to Cassandra's worldview that I've always been interested in. I don't think she's really consciously aware of it but she was raised in such a way that her strength is literally what dictated her value as a person and it's reflected a lot in how she understands problems. 'Stephanie can't be a superhero because she's weak and therefore must be protected.' 'I have to shoulder the responsibility of the world because I am the only one strong enough.' 'If others want me to stop they'll have to stop me and they can't.' It comes with being a character who lives her life solely based on instinct. She's really bad at examining her own preconceived notions about the world and well, her dad was David Cain which left her with some pretty bad ones.