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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 21, 2011 19:06:55 GMT -5
I'm reminded of the little crimes that children in England and Ireland would deliberately commit - stealing a single nail, over and over - so that they could get deported to Australia where there was at least a hope of being able to own land and run a farm. In the absence of affordable transport, sadly, the convict ships looked promising in those days.
But choosing jail as the better option for survival... it's quite sad. Not the least because I doubt you could find pleasant company there, and I hear that rape is a big problem.
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 18, 2011 7:38:53 GMT -5
Hmm, I can see what you mean there; Livy did treat that mass kidnapping quite seriously. But then again, he's more of a historian than the rest of the sources which tell us the myth. Ovid in particular makes the Rape of the Sabine Women into a writhing spectacle of terror, lust and fright... actually Ovid has a really awful sense of humour when it comes to rape.
And I have to say that rapio (the verb used by both Livy and Ovid in the Sabine episode) can imply rape. It doesn't have to, but it can. It would depend on the context, naturally. (Granted, raptio, the noun, does mean "abduction", but I didn't find it in either Ovid or Livy.)
But if anyone thought the Roman founding story was all right until the Rape of the Sabine women, then I should probably grudgingly point out the rape of Rhea Silvia, mother of the twins Romulus and Remus. Mars just happened to take a fancy to her when she was sleeping, and--
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 18, 2011 6:51:35 GMT -5
;D Woot!
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 17, 2011 9:02:11 GMT -5
Ugh, I just read a Simpsons short comic book (there was one lying around in my newsagency and I wondered if it'd be as good as the animated series), and the sheer idiocy of how it used rape as the punchline of a passing joke really got to me.
Edna: Class, the kid whose assignment is the best will win this coupon for a year's supply of squishies at the Kwik-e-mart.
Bart: Egads! That's a huge coupon! I thought it was only legendary! (Ok, I'm bad at paraphrasing the sound of Bart's voice.)
Milhouse: How did she ever come into possession of such a token?
Edna: Heh heh. (to herself) No one will ever know that dirty little secret. eheheheh.
Cut to a panel where she is literally thrusting herself bodily on top of an unwilling Apu in the Kwik-e-mart. (I mean, both are clothed, but the implication is there.) He protests weakly, saying that he is in an uncomfortable position, but she ignores this.
Next page: the story resumes, and the Apu incident is never mentioned again.
*headdesk* I don't even know what to make of it. Did Edna just rape Apu, and he gave her the coupon to... to make her relent? Or was that somehow not rape, because obviously Apu must have secretly wanted it because a man would never not want sex, even if it were thrust upon him and he was married and he protested. Meaning that he just gave Edna the coupon in gratitude. And this is... funny? And it's an even greater headdesk because the incident had absolutely no relevance to the rest of the story. It was simply thrown in for a laugh. (Yeah, the Simpson comics are certainly not as good as the Simpsons animated series. More's the pity.) |
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 16, 2011 9:57:47 GMT -5
What is this please tell me JKR D: *can't stand suspense*
I doubt it's more books. If anything, it'll be a dump basket for all the juicy notes that she's taken over the years about all her canonical characters. Ooh that'd be awesome... from what I gather she has a tendency to give her minor characters an incredibly rich set of backstories. Which hardly ever make it to print. And then this would be a place where she finally releases all the sweet info.
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 14, 2011 1:39:10 GMT -5
Oh man, I just wrote an essay about this. For Classical Mythology. Rape scenes were a big part of their stories back then too, although the treatment wasn't always drawn out and lengthy... it's clear from the ancient sources, though, that at least some of the women in the audience of Roman pantomimes found the scenes titillating. As much as I gag about thinking of rape scenes as entertainment for either sex.
I won't write too much. But I remain skeptical that explicit rape scenes can be handled appropriately... as much as I'd like to kid myself that onscreen rape can serve a supposed higher art, there still remains the sheer spectacle of it. The feast of the eyes. If rape is needed at all, it's far, far more tasteful to keep it off-screen.
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 13, 2011 10:46:22 GMT -5
Oh yeah, and Komori, I forgot to mention it before, but I really found it cute that you remembered Joey has a thing for ice creams. (Even though it's pretty obscure because I still haven't found time to work it into an NT comic... and some time ago I tentatively roughed out a story plot based on his ice-cream fascination, not that it's going anywhere yet.) Just seeing him with the cone in the first panel made me smile already. <3
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 13, 2011 0:47:29 GMT -5
xD Mad with the cleft chin is the FUNNEST DARN THING to draw. Especially when his chin turns normal again in the next panel. But seriously, I was cracking up every other time I looked at the sketch for this panel. |
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 12, 2011 23:45:36 GMT -5
Okay, I've sent mine in... I'm so pumped for this issue 500. ;D
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 12, 2011 22:48:15 GMT -5
Phew. I'm done. And I don't need to draw any more rows of chairs in the background, most of which are blurry and invisible after the file compression. xDD Why did I set this in a movie theatre again?
And here's my title and tagline:
Team Squad Force: Movie Night!
Will Blindside Boy be rescued in time by his loyal, persevering friends?
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And Fish, that was awesome. I love that panel where Tombstones and Joey are a little bit less than enthusiastic about saying, "Team Squad Force.. go...?" 8'D
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Wow, Komori, that comic was huge! xD But it's great that even with 8 colours I think, you made it look so colourful and vibrant. And I love what happened to the bad guy at the end.
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Ooh yeah, and I fixed a very glaring typo in my comic. Team "Sqad Force", honestly...
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 10, 2011 22:29:38 GMT -5
Ohcrap ok I'll try to get my comic done by this weekend. It's a holiday weekend in Australia so it should get me enough time. Once I get this done I won't have to worry no mores.
And Abra, your comic looks awesome and spectacular. xDD
My comic's title will be "Team Squad Force: Movie Night!", but I haven't thought of what the side comment should be.
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 8, 2011 9:09:27 GMT -5
Ooh, they look awesome. And you've got a great range of colour combos, I wasn't sure which one to dibs  But if it's fine with you, I'd like to dibs the one that's got the blue-green background and letters and a red-orange shield. And regarding your comic filesize: whoaa, that sounds huge, how could it get like that...? I thought if you only had a few colours then the gif format would make it all pretty small. But I guess I haven't tried optimising large comics as gifs in a while. *goes back and retries saving a long comic as a gif* Ooohaaarrggh that is painful. I actually think the fuzzy yucky jpeg compression works better when the file gets too big.  If only superhero print comics were all done in pixelart, then I could have referenced that style to save compression. xD Aaanyway, I guess I'll have to cross this bridge when I get there. *still drawing* |
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 3, 2011 4:02:12 GMT -5
Yeah, I really liked the look of Komori's first TSF with the black shadows and all. ^_^ Now I think I could take on a compromise... instead of having the halftone effect all over the comic, I could apply it only to certain patches of it. Like the way some black-and-white print comics make grey using a whole lotta dots. I didn't have the right pattern on my computer so I just substituted a similar pattern (will fix it in the final), but you get my drift. I like having those nice bold black shadows, and then the dotty bits can add a bit of texture here or there without overwhelming the comic. And hopefully the file size won't explode on me. And... *checks dates and winces* I have three essays to write in the next 10 days. I'll be chipping away at drawing the comic in between the assessment, but I think I might end up being the last one to finish and submit. ^^;; |
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 2, 2011 9:26:45 GMT -5
You make a good point. I guess whether something is respectful or not respectful really does depend on how it is done. I wasn't really familiar with how it can work, but if the Seminoles are happy and involved, then of course I can find no problem with the use of Osceola as a team representative.
And I guess I probably rambled a bit too far about that whole authenticity thing. I have to stop using discussions like this as an excuse to procrastinate between writing uni essays >.>
But whoa, didn't realise how tacky that very red looking caricature of a featherwearing native is. Somehow the massive grin and those acutely triangular eyes don't seem right... certainly not the most neutral depiction I've seen.
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Post by Pacmanite on Jun 2, 2011 5:16:40 GMT -5
I agree that the atrocity of bringing black slaves over to replace natives who died as a result of European invasion is deplorable. But I don't see the textbook as treating it rudely. The text just sounds bland and plain, which is misleading because it doesn't betray any tone of voice. So it's not hard to read it the wrong way.
Of course, if your teacher taught on this section, and read it out to you with the tone that said, "Oh, those silly natives died too much to let us enslave them, pah how pathetic, now we gotta get us some African slaves, they're tough stuff" then I would worry that the school is treating the tragedy of it really poorly.
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As for the mascots: the way that images spread messages is complex and subtle. A person does not turn up at a game, see a cheesy mascot, and think, "Haha Indians are stupid. I'm gonna be racist now." But the implicit message can be very harmful even just because it is not really consciously opposed. Take an example, there's this famous image of an ape walking and turning into a human. What you might realise is that the various middle forms look vaguely African, and the final form is a white man. Accepting the image as a classic, evidently true representation of the way things went means implicitly accepting the notion that African peoples are more primitive, less "finished" evolutionarily. Ony the white man is a Homo Sapiens. Actually, I think there's been a movement to remove or alter the image as it appears in textbooks now. Rightly so.
But - and this is my big but - I think the very act of removing Native American images from sports can also be seen as potentially harmful. I think someone said before that they knew some Native Americans who supported that team specifically because it was the one with the Indian as its mascot. And I've heard people commenting on just how invisible Native Americans can feel, how little they are represented in politics, and so on. If you were to remove a cheesy, caricatured, image of an Indian, and take it away because it is not accurate or authentic... it sort of sends the message that when it comes to Indians, only the authentic counts. That if an icon or art or product displays a mixture of Indian and non-Indian elements, then it's better to be removed entirely and wiped from the record. Only "genuine" Indianness counts, Indians are not allowed to compromise or change. They are either to stay exactly the way they are, the way we say they ought to naturally be, or they will just have to disappear entirely. Surviving only as a museum exhibit. They are a historical people, not a current people.
I recently did a bit of uni work on how folk customs in South America have ironically suffered from the burden of needing to be "authentic". So I'm not sure if it's just me, or whether any others will agree that trying too hard to impose standards of authenticity can do more harm than good, for an icon which some people take pride in as a symbol of their ethnic identity.
But since I don't live in America, and haven't met a Native American... I think I'd really need to hear more of what the Native Americans have to say about these mascots. Even something as basic as an opinion survey would be really helpful, if enough Native Americans took part in it. Not just a few anecdotes, but the voice of many peoples of different age groups of different tribes.
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But if it's fine with you, I'd like to dibs the one that's got the blue-green background and letters and a red-orange shield.
If only superhero print comics were all done in pixelart, then I could have referenced that style to save compression. xD