A Door on Other Time

Title is from Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories". Handle means "storyteller" in Nahuatl. This'll mostly be about pop culture, linguistics, philosophy, history, and other things that interest me, but also about writing.

[tlaquetzqui]

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

[tlaquetzqui]

If you only decide to warn people about the risks of breathplay because you think incels are into it, roaches should leave out poison for you.

[baygeethefirst]

@tlaquetzqui, I love you. In the purest and most platonic way do I love you. That was perfect. May the heavens rain down choicest sweetmeats upon you. Unless that's gross.

[sawbuckplus]

[tlaquetzqui]

I will make allowances for non-Marxist socialists but there are very few of them any more. In Marxism, socialism is the thing everybody else calls communism. (And the things dumb Western undergrad call socialism are the thing Marxists call “liberal cooptation of the class struggle”.)

[1americanconservative]

[tlaquetzqui]

ICC is a joke even by the standards of a UN institution.

[mousegirlheart]

You'll pay us for everything and own nothing and you'll thank us for it

[mousegirlheart]

[mornington-the-crescent]

[morgan5451]

A Physical Warp Drive Was Supposed to Be Impossible. Then These Scientists Found a Loophole.

Humans are one (small) step closer to traveling at faster-than-light speeds.

[tlaquetzqui]

Miguel Alcubierre was, specifically, a Mexican theoretical physicist, although the version of his warp drive that most of us know actually comes from Chris van den Broek at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium.

Personally my money is still on traversable wormholes, though.

[maxwellatoms]

Do you think were any kind of specific aspects of the culture, industry, economy, etc that made making cartoons in 90s / 2000s better or worse than trying to make them today?

They're literally different worlds.

As a 22 year old neurodivergent, I was able to pitch show ideas directly to executives. Part of that was because TV Animation wasn't a glamorous profession (quite yet), so the higher-ups were genuinely passionate about the medium. I earned good money for the time and was generally trusted to run my show and tend to the crew. I would periodically be handed portfolios, which I would personally review and pass on to other show runners. For the networks it was always corporate, cutthroat, and ultimately about the money, but as an artist you could still have a voice and make art while being paid a living wage.

The pay for a freelance storyboard in 2005 is almost exactly what it is today, but now you're likely to have less time and be required to do an animatic on top of it. Portfolios are online, and (beyond metrics) you'll probably never know if anyone looks at it or not.

Animation got big. Too big. The executives got "glamorous", then the talent got "glamorous". By then you probably wouldn't get a pitch meeting unless you were a celebrity or knew one willing to be connected to your project. Animation eventually got so big that it popped. And that's where we are now.

Most of the people I know from Kid's TV Animation are currently unemployed. I have been off Jellystone for over a year, and I'm starting to get genuinely worried. Like, "move away to save money" worried. Most of the employed artists I do know are on long-running legacy series, and they're concerned about their futures when/if those series end. Right now is not a fantastic time for "animation as a money-making profession". The "glamorous" part popped years ago.

That being said, there are still opportunities out there. If you're just starting out, apparently there's a planned surge in adult and pre-school animation. It's also a great time (as long as YouTube remains sane) to be crafting your own content. But I think that the time of Big Studio Patronage is over for most of the industry. It's up to the individual artist now more than ever, not only to make but to promote their own content.

Back at the height of Billy & Mandy, we mostly pulled fours and fives in the Neilsen ratings, but we occasionally got a seven. For reference, E.R. consistently got eights. It's difficult to say exactly how many people that actually was due to how those ratings work, but it was a big deal for the time. Millions. Enough people that if I had a dollar for each person that just watched that one episode, I would have been set for life. Now, nobody gets a seven. A four is huge. Back then there were maybe fifteen or twenty channels of programmed content as opposed to the streaming smorgasbord we were all just enjoying (and which now also seems to have popped). Point being, even though I wasn't paid-per-view, I was able to use those views as justification for an eventual raise. In modern times, streaming numbers are seemingly deliberately kept secret. You'll never really know how well your show was doing until it's over. Or maybe never.

In modern times, a million views on YouTube is enough to get you noticed online. It's a lower bar for entry in a way, but you've got to get there all by yourself. Once you're there (hello Hazbin) a network may indeed come and scoop you up. Even if they don't, you can probably make a decent living with numbers like that if you're savvy and willing to take the time.

I feel like I could go on all day, shaking my fist at the sky, gray-ass beard blowing in the wind. Was it better or easier making cartoons in the past? It seemed that way to me, but that was a world I knew. There was no AI to sell you out to, and the media was more of a "Wild West" than it is today. I do think that AI is going to continue to displace artists (and soon others), making it even more difficult to get anyone's eyes on anything at all.

Culturally, we lack the common touchpoints that bonded our society in the 20th Century. I suspect that the media landscape will continue to become more "bubbly" and disjointed unless some powerful force swoops in to mandate a common viewpoint. Those are two very divergent, uniquely tiring futures, each presenting a different challenge for an artist's survival.

Outside of whatever our modern world is, animation was made for a century by photographing drawings. If Émile Cohl could do it in 1908, you can do it now. It's a lot of labor, but maybe that's part of what makes it special.

[vulcartist]

I translated the Ea-Nasir complaint into vulcan and engraved it in on a cooper plate

[tournevis-real]

The tumblrest sentence I have ever seen

[tlaquetzqui]

I need you people to understand, this is Golic Vulcan. Which is a noncanonical fan project, based on using elements of props from the show to create an entire constructed language with, I believe, three constructed scripts. (Technically they’re all variants of one script…in the sense that Hebrew and Arabic script are both versions of Aramaic.)

[vulcartist]

Yes!! Mark Gardner created the vast majority of the conlang (based on about six sentences in the films), and Britton Watkins of Korsaya.org created the alphabets. Vulcan calligraphy is the only one I know, but I’ve been playing with that for over ten years, and I can translate basically anything if I have Gardner’s dictionary handy! Sometimes I have get a little creative though lol

[1americanconservative]

[1americanconservative]

[tlaquetzqui]

“2 million of us were taken as sex slaves by Turks, we do actually know a thing or two about these bastards.”

[henstomper]

hard cider was invented when someone decided to make beer that tastes good instead of bad

[impossiblepackage]

stupid fuckin post. People have been making beer since before they even knew how to write and you think that they don’t like the way it tastes?

[henstomper]

damn all that time and it still tastes really bad. huge L tbh

[tlaquetzqui]

Children are sensitive to bitter tastes because most toxins are alkaline and smaller people are easier to poison. That’s also why they don’t like coffee or green vegetables.

[kstarlitchaotics]

if you can get a book still at a library or a general bookstore still even if it's labeled "ban book"

it's not a ban book 🫩

it's only "ban" because of public buildings not wanting it

but if you can still buy it with your own money and keep it

then it's NOT a ban book

[the-davest-of-uncles]

But that doesn't support their victimhood fetish.

[tlaquetzqui]

There’s a used bookstore chain here in Arizona, Bookman’s—can’t possibly recommend them enough—that has these T-shirts with “Censorship: The Assassination of an Idea”.

And like…homes that is the exact opposite of the problem. Censorship doesn’t assassinate ideas, it just sends them underground, gives them a forbidden mystique, and makes people unable to assess them because they don’t encounter them. If censorship could “assassinate” ideas like racism, communism, or that time travel is a legitimate plot device, it would be worth it—but it can’t.

[acurlygirlamy1]

This is a hard one...Oasis? There are so many.

[the-davest-of-uncles]

I know I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I'm gonna say Led Zepplin.

[nerdylibertarian928]

I'll one up you and say the beatles

[tlaquetzqui]

Yeah probably the Beatles. They had some bangers but a hefty chunk of their output sounds like a children’s band.

[peaceshine3]

[bobbsayshi]

I looked it up just to be sure and this shit is Fr y'all The Tasmanian people had a dialect and way of life that was different from other Aborigines. The British killed the men and women of the tribes and took away their food supply when they first arrived. Later they tried to “civilize” the Tasmanians and subject them to foreign diseases to kill off the last of them. The last full-blood Tasmanian woman was said to have lived until the year1888.

[eternalfratboy]

Wow!

[norest4thaweary]

at this point, what isnt racist in this country??!!

[jjsinterlude]

WHAT THE FUCK

[prettyboyshyflizzy]

Wow 😳😥

[marauders4evr]

As a History Concentration with a rather unsettling love for Looney Tunes and other classic cartoons, I never thought that I’d see the day where my two completely unrelated passions merged up so wonderfully.

And yet, here we are.

So let’s talk about Tasmania, shall we?

Actually, pretty much everything that the OP said about Tasmania is correct.

By the way, her name was Truganini (Nickname: Lallah Rookh.) If you’re going to use her legacy to try to criticize an old cartoon character you should at least give her the common courtesy of a name.

Now then, let’s talk about Looney Tunes.

Or more specifically, let us talk about the Tasmanian Devil.

Taz for short.

Great character.

Fun, energetic, hungry, and not a racist portrayal in any way, shape, or form.

The statement that Taz is a racist portrayal of the Tasmanian people is completely and one hundred percent wrong.

Now I know what you’re thinking…

“Alright marauders4evr, what is the Tasmanian Devil based off of?”

Well, Im glad that you asked.

Gather ‘round and listen closely now because this is going to be one of the greatest revelations that you will ever hear in your mortal lives.

The Tasmanian Devil…

…is based off of the Tasmanian Devil!

Yeah!

It’s a real animal!

An energetic animal who eats everything in its sight.

And Robert McKimson based a character off of it.

Speaking of one of the great men behind Looney Tunes…

Let’s talk about Mel Blanc!

I love him!

I wish that I could have met him!

He’s one of my late heroes.

Phenomenal voice actor.

The best that has ever existed.

The Man of 1000 Voices he’s called.

(And that’s an underestimate!)

The point is that he took a lot of pride in his work.

So what did he base Taz’s dialect off of?

I can tell you right now that it wasn’t the Tasmanian people.

Mel Blanc based the sound of the Tasmanian Devil…

…off of the Tasmanian Devil!

Here’s a clip of Taz’s dialect:

And here’s a clip of the Tasmanian Devil’s scream:

(Chilling, ain’t it?)

(On a side note, I just love to imagine Mel in the recording booth, screaming and growling before calmly doing Bugs’ voice!)

In conclusion…

What happened to the Tasmanian people truly is saddening and I wish that it hadn’t happened.

THE TASMANIAN DEVIL (TAZ) IS NOT A RACIST PORTRAYAL IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM

THE TASMANIAN DEVIL IS A REAL ANIMAL!

MEL BLANC WAS AWESOME AND DESERVES YOUR UTMOST RESPECT!

T-T-T-T-T-T-THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

[beardedmrbean]

Found it, horray for the search function working occasionally

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

The desire to make everything everywhere racist for the sake of killing all cultural things is getting out of hand and I love it when people curb stomp them so hard it echos.

[ultramaga]

Since the mid-1970s, Tasmanian Aboriginal activists such as Michael Mansell have sought to broaden awareness and identification of Aboriginal descent. After campaigning by Tasmanian Aboriginal people in April 2023, UNESCO removed a document claiming they were extinct.[23]

Contemporary figures (2016) on the number of people of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent vary depending on the criteria used to determine this identity, ranging from 6,000 to over 23,000.[24][25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Tasmanians

Even their basic claim is not just false, but was proven false long before the Leftists here were born. As for the current Tasmanian Aboriginals not being “pure bloods”, it’s funny how much of Leftism is straight out of the National Socialist playbook.

“The Palawa, mainly descendants of white male sealers and Tasmanian Aboriginal women who settled on the Bass Strait islands, were given the power to decide who is of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent at the state level (entitlement to government Aboriginal services).” Now, don’t get me wrong, I think the Leftists SHOULD travel to Canberra and tell the government that the Tasmanian Aboriginals are extinct and therefore not able to receive the enormous benefits given to aboriginal people. For example, ABC Australia reported that an able bodied aboriginal woman has to wait less than two years for housing. The waiting time for a disable white man is at least thirty years. The subsidy you get for being “aboriginal” is so enormous, that the government has announced that it wanted to alter the constitution to permanently elevate them to a higher caste than all other races. There was a referendum and it was defeated, but the government often conducts referendums for things like the Australia Card, then when they are defeated the government goes ahead and does it anyway through back doors and other corupt means. Currently children are taught at school that a Wakandan Super-State called THE FIRST NATIONS™ ruled here sometime around the time of the dinosaurs, yet despite being the oldest continous civilisation the universe has ever seen, it also never managed the wheel, agriculture, animal domestication, a common language, maps, writing, or mathematics.

I do love the fact that Leftists love lies so much that they will lie about the existence of the Tasmanian Devil. Honestly, we should encourage them to embrace that delusion by tying up the Leftists and tossing them into cages for the devils to have a munch on. I mean, it can’t hurt them because Tassie Devils aren’t real, amiright?

[tlaquetzqui]

Two slight corrections: they had a type of “map” called a songline, which is auditory not visual, and they had math, it’s impossible to be human without having some concept of quantity. No it wasn’t very advanced math but they did have it—people as touchy about territory as the indigenous Australians generally were get pretty good at geometry, for one.

[grumpyseaman]

100% Correct. More accurately, White Republican's ended slavery. White Democrats wanted it to continue, and continued to persecute Blacks for the 161 years since the Civil War ended.

[tlaquetzqui]

Globally, also, the rise of Evangelicalism and a Catholic revival were what ended slavery. To be anti-Christian, to lament the effect of Christianity on society, is simply factually to be pro-slavery.

[not-muse]

[rj-anderson]

I know this is from Australia but when I first saw the words “Victorian man” all I could think of was this:

[cockyhorror]

To be fair imagine you just arrived in 2018 from Victorian England and discovered Take On Me, what are you supposed to do, not blast it loud enough for your family to hear it all the way back in 1876?

[binturong-of-the-day]

The binturong of tiredness