Monthly Archives: August 2011
One Can of Green Body Paint
“Here at the Renaissance Festival, we are one can of green body paint short of a con. I can not tell you how many shows I have looked out at a back row of Klingons. One time they were joined by a group of Stormtroopers, one of whom was wearing a kilt. Another show I looked out at the front row and was faced with Eleven Doctors Who. They kept shouting, ‘We’re in chronological order!’ Believe me, I know exactly who I’ve got in my audience.”
So said Zilch the Torysteller—a professional Renaissance fair entertainer—during a performance at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. The Festival is the largest in the United States and people come from all over to attend. Yet despite attendees’ far-flung origins, one quickly gets the sense that the Festival attracts a very specific clientele.
Maybe it’s the WoW-inspired weaponry in the sword shops. Or maybe it’s the handmade Firebolts an Nimbus 2000s sold besides wizard staffs. The way the Danger Committee (as seen on America’s Got Talent) calls people to their show by blowing a horn and shouting, “It’s the Horn of Gondor! The hobbits are in danger!” The teenagers dressed in cloaks and tunics discussing which Assassin is coolest (“Al” beat out Ezio and Desmond).
Whatever the reason, one quickly gets the feeling that we’ve fallen in with the nerd herd.
Zilch and I can't imagine what gave you that impression
By comparison, the perfect Captain Jack Sparrow lookalike swaggering past the pub looks hopelessly mainstream.
Of course, a Renaissance fair cannot encompass all of nerdom, but as nerd gatherings go, only anime conventions and the internet can beat it for variety. After all, Vulcan ears double as elf ears, Hogwarts robes are always in style, and time travel is always an excuse. Even those dressed in Renaissance grab cover a wide spectrum. There are the guys who make “armor” our of duct tape and sports equipment, the guys who spend hundred if not thousands of dollars on leather or steel armor and enough swords, daggers, maces, etc. to defend a decent-sized keep . And then there are the guys who make a living jousting in full plate armor.
However, if we set spectrums and fandoms aside, Renaissance Festival nerds all have one thing in common: a love of escapism.
“But Lizy,” you may be thinking, “surely you can’t say all the nerds love escapism!”
Well, I just did. And I say it with some confidence. Because the people at the Festival that we would identify as nerds are the people who have put time, energy, or at least a great deal of thought into it. They put resources into getting away from what is apparently called the “real world,” a world which has little love for nerdery. But this brought up an interesting chicken-or-the-egg type paradox: is a person a nerd because they like escapism, or do they like escapism because they are a nerd?
Let me flesh out that question a bit. Does a love of stories/puzzles/other worlds/etc. draw a person away from the “real world?” Or is it wanting to be away from the real world that leads to a love of forms of escapism?
I’d be willing to accept both answers as true—I think they both explain different parts of my own experience—but I’d like to hear from other nerds. What has been you experience with the cycle of escapism? Or if you think my entire question is offensive to you as a nerd (who am I to say you shun the real world?) feel free to threaten me with a throwing ax or whack me over the head with a lance. Won’t be the first time either’s happened.
And if at all possible, check out the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Capes not required but highly encouraged.
Space Core Wallpaper
All this talk of space (and the Space Core) inspired me to make this:
Click to see full size image. Made with GIMP using stock images from night-fate-stock and character images copyright Valve. Took 2+ hours. I listened to “Exile Vilify” and “Want you Gone” the whole time to put me in a Portal 2 mood. Feel free to use!
EDIT: Looks like uploading may have distorted the full-size version of the image. If you want a clean version, let me know.
Win a trip to SPACE!!!
In honor of its fiftieth anniversary, Seattle’s Space Needle is holding a contest, the grand prize of which is a ticket to SPACE.
There’s a lot of fine print, of course. One thousand people are chosen thorough a sweepstakes and must then participate in a competition to see who will finally get the ticket. I assume the “competition” is actually meant to see who is fit enough for the journey. So the odds are high, the chances are slim, but I figure…why the hell not? It’s space, people. SPACE! At this point I could hand my argument off to Portal 2’s Space Core and still get my point across.
To enter the sweepstakes and potentially win a suborbital space flight, go to the Space Race 2012 page (http://www.spaceneedle.com/spacerace2012/index.html).
Now…play’em off, Space Core Cat!
The Sounds of the Universe
Ever wonder what a star sounds like? How about a black hole? If you’re more literal minded like me, probably not. After all, in the vacuum of space, no one can hear you scream. But NASA— in all its nerdy, pocket-protected glory—brought in the magic of science, converted radio waves to sound waves and viola! Earthlings can now enjoy the music of the spheres, ala Doctor Who (http://youtu.be/ju6fvkKlCn8).
Admittedly, I’m a bit behind the times with this one. NASA posted this page of “Spooky Space Sounds” in 2007. But when you think about it, all space-generated music is out of date as most of it was released thousands of years ago.
Star sounds are oddly soothing. Here’s my favorite from YouTube. Just ignore the poster’s stupid comment about no sound in space. You know better than him.
And here’s our home sweet home, sounding remarkably like an old Star Trek sound effect.
This one’s going to keep me up at night waiting for a cosmic tornado to slurp up the solar system. It would probably leave Pluto, though. Nobody likes Pluto anymore.
Phoenix Rise – Angelverse Episode 2
[This story takes place long before "Sleeping Beauty" but still in the same world. I finally fixed the title and formatting!]
Assassin’s Creed: Beautiful Lies
Unlike some video game developers (here’s looking at you, Square Enix) UbiSoft treats its followers remarkably well. Regular posts to the UbiWorkshop website; responsive tweets on UbiGabe’s Twitter account; informative posts to the Assassin’s Creed Facebook page: just some of the ways UbiSoft demonstrates the value it places on its fans.
Of course, that value is monetary; they do it all because they want our money. But who said we have to feel like the cash cows we are? UbiSoft does not treat customers as automatons ready to snap up whatever half-baked product they send out next. Instead, there is actually an effort to listen and respond to the fanbase. It’s also the one of the few companies out there that embraces fan-made content.
When hamps19 posted his astonishingly good video “Assassin’s Creed: Beautiful Lies” on YouTube eight months ago, UbiSoft didn’t move to ban it as so many animation and video game companies are wont to do. No, they publicized it. Then this past Tuesday they posted a link to the making-of video and cheerfully reminded us all of hamps19’s work (the first I had ever heard of it).
“Beautiful Lies” uses the distinctive digital-yet-ancient aesthetic of the Assassin’s Creed franchise to celebrate the uniting factor of the three major characters: simple, time-tested, disciplined, ingrained, hard-earned badassery. Accept no substitutions.
UbiSoft has apparently grasped what other companies would do well to learn: there can be no better advertising than a fan’s genuine dedication. It screams the message, “This product is so wonderful, I will spend hours of my life creating something to express my love for it, without any prompting or payment from the company.” You can’t buy publicity like that.
Ouran…Again
I feel somewhat obligated to mention that episode 3 of the the live-action version of Ouran High School Host Club. After all, my posts about the show are the most viewed on Nerdflight, thanks to all the people searching “ouran live episodes” on Google. If you’re one such person: Hello and welcome to Nerdflight! Please come back and take a look around sometime! Now here’s the link.
Episode 3 is really deviating from the original plotline of the anime and–I’m fairly sure–the manga. Everything in the episode is familiar, but shuffled around a bit. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.
Honey continues to disturb me, and Mori is blandly disappointing, but Haruhi’s deadpan is charming and Kyoya’s smirk is delightful. I’m definitely sticking around for at least the next episode (Renge is going to make her first appearance in Episode 4…we’ll see what that does for the series.)
In other news…Hello Kitty and Ouran have joined together to create some sort of horrific love child. As a devout Hello Kitty-hater, I can only hang my head in shame.
The horror...
http://www.ken-on.co.jp/haruna/ouran/
Sleeping Beauty – Angelverse Episode 1
["Angelverse" is the name a friend of mine gave the world of my latest project. This story takes place in that world but does not include the main characters of the central plot line. My inspiration for this particular piece came from "Sleeping Beauty" by algenpfleger on dA. The artist wouldn't let me repost the artwork (understandably so; nothing is safe in the internet age), so you can check it out here. If you like this story, I promise there's more on the way!]
Shock to the System
We seem to be super-saturated with superhero movies at the moment. X-Men: First Class, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger all hit theaters this summer, and trailers for next year’s The Amazing Spiderman and Avengers movies are already popping up. All these movies have been prompting many of us to think back to the superheroes cartoons and comics we grew up with (and may still thoroughly enjoy).Caught up in all the nostalgia, I decided to look up my favorite superhero TV show from childhood: Static Shock. To my fangirlish delight, I found a YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/static9001) that has nearly every episode of the old KidsWB cartoon.
For those who don’t know, Static (real name: Virgil Ovid Hawkins) was an inner-city kid who developed electromagnetic superpowers after getting caught in a toxic explosion at a gang fight. Don’t worry, the show isn’t as racist as it sounds—in fact, Static was originally created to combat the racism previously found in comics.
One of the creators of the original Static Shock comic books, Dwayne McDuffie, helped found Milestone Media, an imprint of DC Comics, which has been called the industry’s most successful minority-owned-and operated comic company. Milestone’s characters come from many ethnic groups, including African-Americans, Asians, and Latinos. According to McDuffie,
If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren’t just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can’t be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn’t all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn’t do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that’s wider than the world we’ve seen before.
Static was one of Milestone’s big names from the beginning, and he was also their answer to Spider-Man: a much younger superhero whose insecurities make you want to hug him while his never-ending wisecracks make you want to punch him in the face. Like Peter Parker, Virgil was a good student and generally nice guy (he was only accidentally caught up in the gang fight that lead to his gaining superpowers). Virgil also just happened to be black—specifically: Ghanaian-American. Static was the first black teen superhero…ever. Of course, the new Spider-Man is biracial, but things were different back in the nineties.
You might be wondering who Milestone’s other “big names” are, and you’d be right to wonder. Maybe faithful DC readers have heard of Icon, Hardware, Xombi, or the Blood Syndicate, but I certainly hadn’t before I wrote this post. The only reason us laypeople ever heard of Static was thanks to the cartoon, which aired from 2000 to 2004. The show made its title character so popular that in 2008 Static was promoted to the mainstream DC universe, where he joined the Teen Titans.
A new DC series starring Static was planned for this year but was canceled after McDuffie’s death. However, a one-shot (which I would love to get my hands on) was released in June and a new title will be released in September.
Of course, when I was younger and watching the show on Saturday mornings, I had no idea of the significance of the show, the history of the character and how it was putting him on the map. I just thought it was cool (back when we still thought “cool” was cool) and funny. And the remarkable thing it, it still is. Sure, everything—and I do mean everything—is extremely dated. But the animation is decent (more Avatar than Yu-Gi-Oh), the voice acting is surprisingly solid and the dialog fairly clever. And it’s hard to beat childhood nostalgia.
I was worried that my fondness for Static came only from the vague memories I had of the show, but rewatching episodes has proved that the show really is as catchy and fun as I remembered. Also, doing all the research into the comics for this post (you didn’t think I knew this all off the top of my head, did you?) has reveled new sides of the character I never knew about. In the comics, Static defended his friend/sidekick Richie from gay-bashing (this was deemed outside of the scope of the kids’ cartoon). Also, he was a self-professed nerd, into gaming, fan-comics, table-top gaming, and Pokémon cards. Pikachu was his favorite. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to love this guy already.
Most of all, I was pleased to discover that Static’s cheesy “I’ll put a shock to your system” line actually was true: he rose up from obscurity and helped change the face of superheroes. McDuffie never got to see Static’s DC series released, but he did witness his creation’s rise to public awareness and I’m sure he was proud. It took me years to even realize that my favorite superhero was a black inner-city kid while I was a white girl from the suburbs. Honestly, I take that as a sign of Static’s success. Rather than being in-your-face about having a minority superhero, the show subtly and quietly changed viewer’s perceptions about who could be a hero, super or otherwise. A little difference at the time, but in the long run potentially quite a shock to the system.
