BBBB, A New Book, and Cynical Styles

I have now read two stories---possibly by the same author---that are driven by time travel.  The time travel is a crucial feature in the stories, but they also contain lots of---what some of my friends call---magical reality.  Let me give you an outline of the plot, to illustrate.

A war champion from the middle ages is about to complete a secret mission to destroy an enemy, but is magically transported to the present day.  Once she is in, let that us say, NYC of 2015, she is taken into the home of a friendly historian, where she learns that, many centuries ago, a particular skirmish went the wrong way.  She befriends a powerful magician, who returns her to the precise place, and point in time from where she was brought forward, but she's now armed with new skills and information that enable her to make things turn out differently.

There are lots of logical problems with these sorts of stories, but they're fun to read.  Furthermore, they acquaint us with little-known characters from the past.

Now for my gripe with BBBB: big-breasted blonde blue-eyed girls.

Behind the fetishes of some artists (let's not even talk about AI for this post), is the fact that modern fashions are cynical in their very nature.

I first came to notice the phenomenon that I'm trying to describe some decades ago.  In the past, those of us who wear bras were anxious to keep the bra-straps hidden.  We basically had to constantly push them into our tops.  A few years later, they began to sell blouses that were designed so that the bra-straps were quite visible.  Of course, some gals kept fiddling with their bra-straps just to draw attention to them.  Soon, though, 'strappy' outfits were invented, with many more straps than the garment actually needed, because it was observed that guys found straps that went over the shoulder very sexy.  Of course, what guys find sexy is what (clothing manufacturers think, or know) women want to wear!

I have to confess that I too, to some extent, feel a certain thrill when a girl's bra is visible.  But it just feels wrong when girls intentionally wear a translucent blouse, designed to show off a lacy bra beneath.

To top it all, girls tend to scowl at anyone they catch eyeing the more salacious features of their costume.  The message is: yes, I'm dressing sexy, but it's not for you.

Kay

Global Warming Impact on Clothing

At least on DA, the site for amateur artists to post their work, women and girls seem to be wearing more skimpy clothes.  Even depictions of well known fictional characters---Cinderella, Tinker Bell, Supergirl---have them wearing very skimpy clothes.

As I have observed before, the membership of DA is mainly young male artists with very adolescent tastes, which results in some of the art being the sort of thing that teenage boys would reputedly scribble in the margins of their notebooks; only now it is put up on the Web.  These pictures have always been scantily clad.

But on Instagram, and other places where girls upload photos of themselves, I wonder whether more skimpy clothing is the norm?  And what about guys?  I see a lot of pictures of guys in shorts, but that could be because it's getting to be summer.  We've got to study this for a full year before we jump to conclusions.

"Hot!", "Hot!", "Hot!". Aaargh!

I've been regaling you with complaints about the site DA (DeviantArt), or rather the artists who are members of the site.

When an artist uploads a piece, he/she is allowed to fill in a text field to describe the work.  Actually three fields: a title, a longer description, and a list of keywords.  In each field, the goofy artists often describe their work in (what they think are) glowing terms; e.g. "Hot young girl, with large breasts!", or "Beautiful, nude young woman, relaxing in the forest."  The word 'hot' appears so often that I need to turn on the fan.

To be fair, many of these artists are foreign, or: let me be precise: non-native-English speakers, so one wonders where they have learned English.  Some of them actually are native English speakers, but all through their school years have been so focused on artwork that their language skills are very rudimentary, and they manage to get by using words like 'hot' and 'beautiful' and 'sexy' because, after all, many of them are imitating the artwork found in comics, manga and anime, much of which can be described---by fans---using those three words alone.

There certainly are members with better language skills, but they're swamped by the 'hot / beautiful / sexy' boneheads.  Their intellectual age, on the average, seems to be about 12 ... OK, maybe about 16, which is not much more than a couple of decades younger than I am.  But I'm not primarily---or even at all---a graphic artist.  If I had gone into Art (which usually means 'drawing'), I suppose my language skills would have remained at the primitive level.

Kay, making devilled eggs for visitors.

Art That Pushes Our Buttons

When watching a movie, have you ever got the feeling that the director (or producer, or screenwriter) is getting a cheap reaction from the movie audience with a scene, or a plot twist that is guaranteed to get a desired reaction?

Westerns, for instance, have been made for nearly a century, and movie buffs know really well how certain types of scenes get the audience cheering.  Chases, for example.  Even car chases work really well.  I was watching Conan the Barbarian, and in the first couple of minutes we see Conan's mother brutally killed.  In The Beastmaster, similarly, a woman brutally has her child extracted from her womb.

In these sorts of situations, I'm firmly convinced that the movie producers intentionally insert certain elements to provoke a desired reaction from the audience.  They are being manipulative.  It is a cheap technique, because they have a captive audience.  Instead of a story developing organically from the initial circumstances and the characters involved, it moves from engineered reaction to engineered reaction.

This sort of movie could be extremely successful, but at the cost of the audience manipulation being visible.  In Avatar, for instance, there are a couple of scenes that are very manipulative.  In Star Wars (A New Hope), there are many manipulative scenes; some of them intended to elicit a chuckle, others intended to make us mad.  The destruction of Alderaan was definitely intended to underscore the evil nature of the Empire.  Similarly the murder of Luke's uncle and aunt, though the latter made Like homeless, which was an important plot requirement.

Well, guess what.  I'm finding that, on the amateur art site I often report on: DeviantArt, artists are beginning to insert picture elements that have gotten favorable receptions, just to guarantee success.  This is pandering.  The girls have large, pneumatic breasts, very long hair, sometimes a girl is depicted nude, with the caption saying: ready to go exploring.  Give me a break.  I have already complained about girl fighters wearing platform slippers.  But girl fighters with long, flowing Rapunzel hair? I think not.  My problem is that I was partly trained as a scientist, and inconsistencies really grind my gears.