Sithel

There’s an obsession in art with making female characters “pretty” that frequently leaves cartoon women with facial features that would scare the crap out of us if they belonged to an actual human being. What makes it worse is that it tends to be the same face over and over again (tiny nose, giant eyes, and round), so Tumblr user TheNamelessDoll decided to see what they’d look like with more realistic features.

This is what Elsa from Frozen would look like—in motion—as a cartoon of an actual person instead of a cartoon of weird animated beauty standards:

The impressive alteration was achieved with After Effects, which took a lot of work (“Jumped from Photoshop to After Effects and it was MUUUUCH harder to do this edit while the character is moving! … I’m not doing that again any time soon!”) but TheNamelessDoll’s other Photoshop adjustments get the point across just as well:

Frozen‘s Anna.

Tangled‘s Rapunzel.

Big Hero 6‘s Honey Lemon.

Big Hero 6‘s Cass Hamada.

Ratatouille‘s Colette.

Brave‘s Merida.

Rio‘s Linda.

Hotel Transylvania‘s Mavis.

You may have noticed that some of them also got slight body edits, and there’s even more where these came from. However, TheNamelessDoll is quick to point out on each that they’re just a bit of anatomy practice for art and not intended to be a judgment on the original work:

These edits were created simply to give me a chance to practice my manipulation/anatomy skills. Nothing more, nothing less. They are NOT meant to be ‘better than the original’ or ‘what it should have looked like’, or serve as a general negative critic on the respective movies’ animation styles!

But we can all certainly talk about whether they’re improvements. What do you think?

(via Boing Boing, image via TheNamelessDoll)

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I’ve always felt a strange fascination with romance novels. There’s no genre that the general public will associate with bad books faster than romance, with their bawdy covers and superficial plotlines. Of course, that’s an enormous generalization. In truth, romance has its good and bad books just like any other genre. Some are brilliant and some will make you feel ill. But there is something special to be said about bad romance novels: they illustrate gender roles better than any other form of media. It’s the books where the authors aren’t trying to do anything special that really show the ideas about gender that are most engrained into our society. Here are just a few of the insights romance novels have given me.

Men Have Power, Women have Spunk

Many romance novels draw their appeal from playing with power dynamics. It can make the starting premise more interesting when one person unexpectedly has power over another. Maybe it’s an unconventional boss, a new social or business rival, or just that one person who can somehow get under the stoic loner’s skin. One common setting with inherent power dynamics is in any books set in the past, often regency or Victorian England. There the women may have pretty dresses, but their social status is always limited and secondary to men.

It’s the men who are the wealthy dukes, lords, and viscounts. They have money, land, and the power to do whatever (and often whoever) they want. The women, on the other hand, are put in the position of needing to somehow win these men. How do they do it? The same way Elizabeth Bennet won Fitzwilliam Darcy: with spunk! You see, while the woman may not have money, land, or power, she’s generally quirky in some way. She’s willing to be unconventional. She’ll get her skirts dirty and not care. She’ll try to get out of an arranged marriage. She’ll think a man is rude and tell him to his face. What pluck! What scandal! No wonder Male Hero feels such a burning in his loins for her. She sure is a great character…who will inevitably need Male Hero to save her from something by the end of the book. Because no matter how much spunk Female Hero has, it’s never the same as having the power to solve her own problems.

Men Are Stupid About Emotions, Women Are Stupid About Everything Else

Because of the commonly unbalanced power dynamics in romance novels, Female Hero obviously has to bring something else to the table to give the illusion of equality to her relationship with Male Hero. Once they’re close enough that she doesn’t have to be snarky anymore, she can start showing off how emotionally sensitive she is. Perhaps then, just maybe, she’ll be able to heal Male Hero’s hidden pain.

Male Hero always has hidden pain. It can be over a dead best friend, a dead wife, a dead baby, centuries of loneliness because he’s a vampire and everyone he knew is dead, or because he’s an angel who in life was forced to have sex with his mom. Those are all real scenarios in actual romance novels. These things get weird. Anyway, no matter what male hero’s secret pain is, he’s never able to deal with it on his own. The men of romance novels never seem to think of going to therapy, opening up to friends and family, or even just meditating on healthy ways to deal with grief. No, only that special woman can get this manly man to admit he’s sad. Then true love is really born because Female Hero has managed to heal him.

On the other hand, the men tend to have the responsibility of taking care of the women in every other regard. He’ll be the one to make sure she knows how to present herself in society. He’ll leap to pretend he’s engaged to her so her reputation can be protected somehow. He’ll make the arrangements so she can finally have the bookstore/baby/sword-fighting lessons she’s always wanted. The only thing he can’t give her is a smart enough brain to get these things for herself.

Men Are Sex Psychics, Women Are Unconscious Dick-Exploders

A lot of people like to say that romance novels are porn for women. I’d disagree. We have actual porn for that. But there’s no denying that there are some very basic gender-based fantasies that romance novels seem to try to fulfill. Many women have mixed feelings about sex. We might want to enjoy it, but we’re also constantly faced with messages about how bad it is to be a slut. And, of course, ‘slut’ is a word with such a broad definition that a woman who even thinks about sex can be in danger of being labeled with it.

So, in order to be tantalizing without upsetting anyone’s sensibilities, romance novels give us some bizarre sexual dynamics. Male Hero is almost always a sexual god. He’s slept with dozens of women and has a reputation for more than pleasing them all. Naturally, he’s also never caught an STI. Why would you even think that? When he finally gets Female Hero into bed it’s often her first or near-first time. Certainly she’s never been with someone who’s at all satisfied her before. I’ve read stories where the woman doesn’t even know what sex is before she has it. I’ve also read ones where the woman is thousands of years old through magic, but doesn’t even know that women can orgasm.

With all this, Female Hero obviously has no idea what she likes in bed and has no suggestions to make. Luckily, he already knows every perfect thing to do, every tiny maneuver to bring her to pure ecstasy. Now, I’m not blaming romance novels for leaving out the sex scenes where one person accidentally elbows the other in the eye, or the man can’t get it up, or the woman’s been getting fingered for an hour and it’s just not working. I’m just saying that these men are magic. Every touch they give is perfect. Every kiss, lick, bite, and thrust is exactly the thing to send their lovers into new levels of sexual abandon.

Luckily, Female Hero has her own weapon. She may barely know what sex is, but she is still the sexiest person in all of creation. When she walks into a room, she is a danger to every man around her. Male Hero will inevitably get hard no matter what she’s wearing or doing. And then she’ll do something else and he’ll get harder, and harder, and harder until he might as well call himself Titanium Cock. I’ve yet to actually read a story where a man’s penis explodes from being too aroused, but it always seems like a possibility.

What’s really intriguing about this situation is how often the narrative really emphasizes that the woman is completely unaware of how attractive she is. On the one hand, this plays into the whole “good girls don’t think about sex” thing, but it also seems to be about self-esteem. To paraphrase One Direction: Female Hero doesn’t know she’s beautiful. That’s what makes her beautiful. Romance novel authors know that their books are often a means of wish fulfillment that can allow women to project themselves into a wild romance. This narrative device reassures the reader. “Don’t worry. No matter how negatively you feel about your body, you’re actually so sexy that you’re constantly in danger of killing men with their own raging boners.”

Men Are Terrifying and Women Have No Idea What A Healthy Relationship Looks Like

By far the worst part about bad romance novels is what they think is romantic. In these stories the couple-to-be usually starts off with some sort of conflict between them so that there’s tension to overcome before they get together. The trouble with these conflicts is that they lead to the men doing terrifying things to the women. I’ve seen the women in these books get kidnapped, held hostage, be psychologically manipulated, forced away from friends and family and even their whole culture, forced out of career opportunities, forced into sudden engagements, manipulated into sex, accused of attempted murder, and set on fire, all by the men they are destined to fall in love with. Most of the time the men never even apologize for these actions and it’s passed off as more silly shenanigans. By the end of the book Male Hero and Female Hero are still happily in love, joking about the odd circumstances that brought them together. You know, all that quirky abuse.

And the worst of it is the rape. You wouldn’t think it. You’d really think that romance novels would be a place generally free of rape scenes, particularly between the romantic leads, but they aren’t. In fact, rape scenes in these books are depressingly common, so much so that it’s noteworthy when there aren’t any.

But what makes it even worse is that these scenes are never acknowledged as rape. Remember how the men are stupid about emotions and their secret pain? Well, in many a bad romance novel there’s a scene where the couple is sexually active and Male Hero is feeling his secret pain but trying to be manly and secretive about it. Then Female Hero tries to get him to open up and he forces her to have sex with him.

These scenes aren’t hot and they clearly aren’t meant to be. The man is angry. The woman is scared and in pain. She cries a lot. When it’s done the man often doesn’t even apologize to this woman he supposedly loves. Instead this is supposed to be the low point that the couple overcomes together, the place where Male Hero realizes he has to open up about his secret pain. Somehow the woman always understands the internal angst that led him to these actions and they never talk about the matter again.

This is where bad romance novels cross a line. They go from being misinformed and silly to being visibly dangerous. When I read a bad romance novel, I do so because I think a lot of them are funny. I like to laugh at the impossible sex positions, the contrived plots, and the ridiculous characterization. But the fact is I can’t open any romance novel without a hint of dread. I know with each book that there’s a high chance that I’m about to read something horrifying that will be passed off as romantic.

Is this really our “porn for women”, our romantic fantasy fulfillment? I think it’s actually a regurgitation of some of the basest forms of sexism sugar-coated with the guise of romance.

It frustrates me when people dismiss romance as a genre. There are very good romance novels in the world and there is nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy a love story. But what frustrates me more is that those who dismiss romance novels often don’t even realize the worst parts of the genre.

There is nothing wrong romance novels as a general concept. People deserve to read stories they enjoy, but also stories that make them grow. We deserve to read love stories without feeling guilty about reading something “trashy”. But what we deserve most of all is to have a romance genre that actually respects women.

Alex Townsend is freelance writer, a cool person, and really into gender studies and superheroes. It’s a magical day when all these things come together. You can follow her on her tumblr and see her comments on silver age comics. Happy reading!

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Stop the presses! Hold the phone! Shut! Up! Just when I thought I was blindsided by a stamp rate increase, turns out there's a stamp rate decrease right around the corner. Back in January 2014, when regular letter stamps went up to 49 cents, the U.S.P.S. explained that it was surcharge pricing to help them with the recession. The three-cent increase was approved, but only until the Postal Service could gain 3 billion dollars from it. They will hit that amount this summer and courts have ruled that they will have to roll-back the "surge" pricing. 

To quote the article in The Washington Post:

“The Commission sensibly concluded that the statutory exception allowing higher rates when needed to respond to extraordinary financial circumstances should only continue as long as those circumstances, in fact, remained extraordinary,” Circuit Judge Patricia Ann Millet wrote on behalf of the appeals court. “The Commission permissibly reasoned that just because some of the effects of exigent circumstances may continue for the foreseeable future, that does not mean that those circumstances remain ‘extraordinary’ or ‘exceptional’ for just as long.”

So... what will regular letters be priced at? No idea. They've yet to determine that and when the new rate will go into effect. Furthermore, the U.S.P.S. argues that the 3 billion dollar amount was arrived at arbitrarily and wants it re-examined by the Postal Regulatory Commission. 

This brings us back to the debate about non-denominated postage. "Forever" stamps purchased will be bought at a higher price than stamps, say, six months from now. It will still purchase the same service, i.e. delivery of a 1oz letter anywhere in the United States, but at a lower cost. I never even considered that prices could go down. Research showed me that this won't be the first time stamps have decreased in price; they went down by a penny in 1919. There was a higher rate used during World War One. Here's a neat chart I found tracking the increases and decreased over time.

Personally, I don't care. I think mail is worth it and that 49cents is a bargain. Still, it raises interesting questions.

P.S. Thanks to all of the members who tweeted and emailed this to us!

This is the BART Advisory for today

BART is recovering from an earlier problem. There is a 10-15 minute delay on the Daly City Line in the SFO, Millbrae, Daly City and East Bay directions due to an equipment problem on a train.

There is a 5-10 minute delay system wide due to equipment problems on the track caused by hot weather.

But the bigger news, reported in the Chronicle, is that BART plans to park all trains running from San Francisco to the East Bay  over the three-day Labor Day Weekend and in August. 

We saw clips of the Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard-starring Macbeth following the film’s premiere at Cannes, but this trailer gives us our first broad look at director Justin Kurzel’s adaptation.

I’d love to see more Weird Sisters action here, but otherwise I’m extremely on board. Thoughts?

(via JoBlo)

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That rose throw at the end, though:

God bless the Magic Mike franchise and its dogged devotion to spectacle (aka Channing’s penis). You know what I like.

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Only the best, of course.

And perhaps the goth-iest?

I’ll admit, it’s been quite some time since I sat down to watch Disney’s animated spectacle Fantasia. Though I know in 1999 I definitely watched Fantasia 2000. But that aside, there’s one portion that has always stayed with me and that’s “Night on Bald Mountain” because, um, this guy.

Chernabog is one of the coolest Disney characters ever any I will fight anyone who says differently.

The Hollywood Reporter says Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are going to write and produce a live-action film based on this segment of the classic film. They’re sources are telling them this version will be similar in direction to the Angelina Jolie-starring Maleficent.

Sazama and Sharpless are a good fit for a dark fantasy tale as they’ve been building up a solid career based on work that fits into this genre, and have recently grown into a go-to team for this sort of world creation. The duo wrote the script for Universal’s Dracula Untold starring Luke Evans, which hit theaters in October. Along with Cory Goodman, they wrote the screenplay for The Last Witch Hunter, Summit’s upcoming action-adventure fantasy starring Vin Diesel which hits theaters on Oct. 23. They also wrote the script for Gods of Egypt, the Summit film starring Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Egyptian gods Set and Horus battle for control of the Nile River Valley. It hits theaters on April 8, 2016. They’re repped by ICM, Artists House Management and Stone, Meyer.

I should also note here that ABC’s Once Upon a Time has worked in some Fantasia characters into their storylines as of late. But this news is certainly more interesting to me than Disney’s other live-action projects — Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, Tinker Bell, The Jungle Book, or Pinocchio. Though the Mulan and The Haunted Mansion films probably come pretty close.

All that being said, I’m super excited to see where this one goes. My body is also ready for a modern take on Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” piece. I nominate Florence Welch accompanied by Nine Inch Nails.

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On Thursday, June 18, the north side of Dolores Park will be hosting a silent disco party to celebrate its reopening after years under construction.

“The date has been set, the flowers are in, the grass is down, the cement is set and we are ready! Thursday, June 18 the ‘all -spiffed -up’ North half of Dolores will be turned over to the people and yes Lord we are ready,” wrote Dolores Park Works co-founder Robert Brust in a blog post Monday.

The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department is organizing the silent disco party, taking place from 3 till 7 p.m. on Thursday the 18th, to kick off the re-opening, with headphones available for free by emailing rpdinfo@sfgov.org. They also advertise a new website for the park, though it is currently under construction and instructs visitors to “Please continue to love Dolores.”

The $20 million Dolores Park renovation has run into considerable trouble over the years, from months-long delays to a $100,000 joyride by “two idiots” that damaged some sod turf and drainage infrastructure.

Additionally, trash accumulation has been a major concern owing to the popularity of the park: More than 7,000 gallons of trash are generated at the park every weekend, 65 percent of which could be recycled or composted.

And though Recology set up a recycling center in April to deal with the trash issue, the fact that the south side of the park will be undergoing renovation after the north side reopens makes Dolores Park Works co-founder Brust concerned about the persistent trash problem.

“It’s going to be a bit of a learning curve,” he said by phone. “They’re switching over right before Pride week, right before Fourth of July — it’s all coming up, and I heard that they were worried about this [trash problem].”

Brust added that there’s a program to have ambassadors in the park ensuring people know about the new Recology recycling station and that he hoped that would help.

Despite the possibility of future headaches, project manager Jacob Gilchrist is excited about the end of this phase and looking forward to the party.

“It is great to be at this moment in the project,” he wrote in an email to the press. “I hope to see you at the park on the 18th so we can celebrate our hard work together.”

The north side of the park will feature new restrooms, renovated tennis and basketball courts, new pathways, improved ADA access, and more.

Way back when I was planning my Craftsy.com class Sketching People in Motion, I gave myself a challenge to draw 100 people in a week. I carried a small book ( a 3×5″ Moleskine Cahier Journal) and two pens in my pocket everywhere I went for a week. (Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen, Super Fine and a Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen).

If you commit yourself to sketching every time you see someone holding still for a few minutes – it’s actually fairly easy to get 100 drawings in 5 days.

I was getting the most out of riding the subway, but just going shopping or to a restaurant will give you good opportunities. Bookstores turn out to be great. People in there are usually moving slowly and distracted with their browsing. Perfect subjects!

I used inexpensive little books, so I didn’t care if I messed up a page, or if the subject walked away in the middle of a drawing. I would say I had about a failure 1 out of 5 times – mostly from the person abruptly leaving – sometimes from overworking the drawing.

I think of these self assigned challenges as play time. Drawing as a sport. It’s like trying to beat your personal best time doing a marathon. Can I do this? How fast can I do it? If 100 was possible – could I get 500 in a week? That’s about 16 people an hour over a 6 hour day. It might be possible! I’d have to spend all day downtown for 5 full days – sticking to places with lots of people around. Maybe I could arrange a week in New York and do it in Times Square. I’d need to have enough paper and pens with me to never run out. I’d have to plan breaks in good sketching cafes. See? I’m already getting excited.

That’s a ridiculous example – but even if you failed, it would be a glorious failure.

Why not try your own drawing challenge? Set a time/quantity goal – and use that to break through any obstacles of perfectionism or ‘sketchers block’. Make it something short – one week is a lot – and have fun even if you don’t reach the goal – it’s the doing that matters!

And – if you’ve been debating taking my Sketching People in Motion online course <<< that link there will give you approximately 50% off the registration!

Are you excited about Hannibal‘s Season Three premiere on June 4th? Well get ready for it with this First-Look trailer for the new season. It may contain some spoilers (like who lived or died from last season), but as Lawrence Fishburne says, “Even if [viewers] know what’s coming, they don’t know what’s coming.” (via The AV Club)

• Check out the coverage of this awesome interview that our own Jill Pantozzi did with Felicia Day at BookCon in support of Day’s upcoming memoir, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). (via Nerdist)
• Love Tomb Raider? Check out Lara Croft: Relic Run, a new way to play your favorite character on iOS, Android and Windows devices. (via Square Enix)

Seriously, what’s an action movie without a one-armed catch? This supercut gives us 101 of them – to the tune of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” of course. (via Death and Taxes)

Lest you have any doubt that there are girls who actually love sciencey toys, here is this hashtag to prove you wrong. #GirlsWithToys proves that women and girls have a place in STEM. (via The Huffington Post)

In Whose Bright Idea Was This news, scientists in New Zealand are teaching an AI anger – apparently to assist with customer service calls and detect the anger of customers to better assist them. But…haven’t they heard of Skynet? (via io9)

And in awesome parent news, one geek dad made his geek daughter a functioning Honey Lemon Chem Ball purse from Big Hero 6! (via Nerdist)

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Fury Road‘s practical effects have garnered a lot of deserved praise (actual flames shoot from an actual garbage guitar!), but George Miller also used complimentary digital effects to bring some of the movie’s most badass scenes to life.

FxGuide has released some comparisons between finished visuals and earlier footage that demonstrate how digital effects influenced Mad Max‘s world—take a look at the befores and afters:

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

For a more in-depth look at Fury Road‘s VFX, head over to FXGuide.

(via Nerdist)

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STAMPS! STAMPS! STAMPS! Oh my gosh, you guys, stamps. All of these stamps are available now. These issues were a complete surprise to me until about two weeks ago when I followed a little link about stamp increases that I hadn't heard anything about*. In short, as of today, postcards are a penny more at 35 cents, International mail is up a nickel to $1.20 for the first ounce, and the additional ounce postage went up a penny as well.

As part of a move to across the board "Forever" rates, the denomination is no longer printed on these stamps. Wanna mail a three-ounce letter? Use a "Three Ounce" stamp. (I hereby propose that we refer to all three-ounce letters as "Flannery". Example: "Oh, I sent her a Flannery.") Got something of an odd shape? To the "Non Machinable Surcharge" stamp! And I like all of these. The penguins and butterfly are part of continuing series/artists, and thus aren't really that exciting, but I still like them. Those postcard stamps though! Wow.

*I am mildly annoyed that I didn't know anything about this increase until I stumbled upon it through a series of other links. I follow the USPS on Twitter. I read their blog. I'm constantly on the website. I know they don't exactly want to tell me that rates are increasing, but that is important info. This is why people don't know how much it costs to mail a letter. There needs to be more transparency about this, and frankly, not printing a cost on a stamp compounds this problem. I think it's sort of disingenuous of them. Now, only the USPS computers will know the price. 

How do you guys feel about this? Should I be worried about this? Does it worry you? Do you like these stamps? Let's chat.

cemeterywind:

The fierce, fabulous, dramatic, iconic Virginia Oldoini, better known as La Castiglione, 1860s.

Jan Wandelaar, Clara the rhinoceros and a human skeleton, Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum Corporis Humani, 18th century

punchingart:

Evolution

by Matthew Day Jackson

More skulls here.

darksilenceinsuburbia:

Julian Calverley

Faroe Islands

David Hasselhoff music. Time travel. Kung Fuhrer. Dinosaurs. These are the only things you need to know. Please enjoy Kung Fury.

(via Our Friend Rebecca Pahle Who We Miss Greatly)

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Cut Video has previously highlighted the fashions of Mexico, Iran, The Philippines, and North and South Korea. What do you think, hair and makeup history nerds?

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Other girls:

Me:

i-am-an-adult-i-swear:

Being an adult is scouring the Internet for blueprints of the perfect pillow fort and being absolutely delighted in seeing that they actually exist

camwyn:

blueelectricangels:

pipistrellus:

clayorey:

Wonder what happened to the dinosaurs? This is a baby Blue Heron.

camwyn i think you have a tag specifically for this eventuality

Yep.

eternallybeautifullyblack:

‘Dandy Queens’: A New Editorial Points A Lens At The Female Black Dandy

Recently, a new editorial from French magazine Blackattitude turn its lens towards a trio of female dandies, shot by Prisca M. Monnier as a collaboration with Nadeem Mateky…  [Continue reading article and view additional images at OkayAfrica.com.]