Mismatched Face and Figure

This is just one more complaint in my never- ending series of complaints about popular graphic art as exemplified in uploads to Deviant Art (DA).  The DA site has hundreds of members ---it doesn't cost anything to join--- possibly thousands, and generalizing is not reasonable. 

The latest phenomenon I have observed is: some of the AI- generated images of women have young- looking faces---some looking as young as eight or nine years old--- and mature figures, with full breasts.  Unless one is on the lookout for this feature, one will not notice it.  The image looks quite attractive to the layman, but looks strangely wrong.

I personally don't like art depicting heavy- breastfed women; I'm not immediately happy to see D cups on fantasy art.  This is in contrast to what average young males prefer, which is 'big boobs'. Both types of mammaries are attractive, when the behavior, and the body motion and the expression and the personality are added in.  But whether you tend to prefer slim women,  or voluptuous women, neither kind is improved by giving its image the face of a juvenile. 

Writing Fiction About Elves

Writing (fiction) about fantastic creatures is not easy, if you want to be consistent.  I guess some authors just write any old how, without a care.  But this leads to contradictions. 

For instance, suppose in one chapter, your elf was able to become invisible.  If you forget this ability, you might have your elf get in trouble, getting cornered in an alley, for instance.  (If the elf could turn invisible, he could evade his attackers more easily.)

In my imagination,

• Elves of both sexes are a little taller than humans, about seven inches on the average.  They're a little slimmer, and none of them are really heavy.  (So sue me.)
• They can read your mind, if one happens to be touching you.  And you can read their mind, too. 
• I made the elf in my story (I expect there's going to be more than one, but at the moment there's just one) a lacto- vegetarian; that is, she's strictly vegan, except that she eats milk products. 
• My elf could change her appearance--- very slightly.  For instance, she could change the apparent length of her hair, how tall she appeared to be, her skin color, and the color of her eyes.  She changes her eye color from grey-green to brown, and her human companion had to warn her not to do that when humans are watching. 
• They do have 'elf ears', but they don't stick out so long that they can't be hidden under hair.  (I think it's more exciting to imagine that there may be elves all around us, than to think that their ears are so huge that they can't be hidden!)
• They are fascinated by infants, and love seeing them.  Some elf criminals kidnap human babies and there's a brisk underground traffic in human babies among elves.  This is because, for some reason, elves do not have many offspring. 
• They love old things, such as old trees.  Just like humans, they love baby animals, and they can exchange thoughts with them--- with some difficulty.  They can also talk to trees.  A very limited exchange of ideas. 
• They live twice as long as humans--- about 200 years.  They bond with a life partner, and it's a permanent bond.  If one partner dies, the other partner dies within a day. 
• They have most of the fabrics common on earth; all the natural fabrics, except silk.  Somehow, they were careless with silkworms, and they all died off. 

I think I'll need more basic facts; I've already used some ... oh, I forgot; they can run faster, and jump higher than humans.  Also, occasional, intense exercise is better for them than regular daily exercise. 

So that's the basis of my story, Pretty Eyebrows, and I have some 72 pages written, and I have to get back to it.  Come to think of it,  the number of pages doesn't tell you much; I should tell you how many words!  I'll let you know. 

Kay H. B.

Time to Bring Back the Natural Look in Popular Art

When I was a kid, the Natural Look was all the rage.  Women were abandoning the excessive eye makeup up of previous decades, and going without much makeup at all: just lip gloss.  The one place where makeup seemed to have a strangle hold was: comics, especially Manga. 

I have never visited Japan, and maybe I should.  Perhaps makeup lingered on there, as well; maybe Japanese women never abandoned makeup at all.  In their efforts to look more European, perhaps eye makeup was the biggest tool in their arsenal; even today, young women--- and even guys in the neighboring nation of Korea--- in Kpop bands, use tons of eyeliner, eyeshadow, and false eyelashes. 

(This is a topic for another day, but I have seen photographs of scores of Japanese girls wearing no eye makeup at all, who look wonderful, but maybe they have Caucasian ancestry, and maybe the makeup is used so cleverly that it's hard to spot.  I have had immense crushes on Japanese girls, who did not wear makeup; these were my buddies, and I could inspect them personally, so I knew.  But I was attracted to them because of their personalities,  which were deliciously quirky, but also very forthright but without being abrasive.  How I miss my grad school days!!!)

Eye makeup is huge among the very young: the post- millennial generations; sometimes the only makeup young girls wear is eye makeup.   But when young artists create images of their ideal girls, they often have incredibly heavy eyeliner.  A lot of the artists are guys, something I have deplored earlier, and---I don't want to start a gender war here, but in my experience guys often overdo things that girls have done with taste and restraint for years. 

On a side note: what's up with red eyeshadow???  Why do girls want to look like vampires?  (And do vampires wear red eyeshadow?  Given that they don't exist, it must be a convention, nothing more. )

Okay enough of this; makeup is kind of close to my heart, especially the makeup others wear.  I myself don't wear any, or just a touch of lip color. 

Mary-Kay Hemlock Brown

Why Princesses Are Underdressed

We don't know how this pattern of alien princesses being dressed in very skimpy clothing came about, but an early example of an author---who may have invested in "nubile" princesses as an easy way to increase sales---was Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In Tarzan and The Jewels of Opar, our boy Tarzan finally faces the princess of the--- well, the Opar gang---and she wants to sacrifice him, because, you know, she's also a priestess.  (They had no notion of separation of religion and state.)  But he gazed at her like John Belushi, and she just couldn't do it. 

Then, over to Mars, with John Carter.  The princess Dejah Thoris.  Her princessly livery was designed to display all her charms, and once John laid eyes on her, he forgot everything else.  In the book, she goes about wearing only jewelry.  In the movie, they put clothing on her.  But the ideas of princesses, on the one hand, and revealing clothes on the other, are now inextricably tied together, so that even the Lords of Anime feel obliged to have their female royalty show a lot of skin. 

If the original creator of the princessly character did not clothe her in minimal togs, the artists at my favorite 'art' site repair the omission, and clothe Zelda, the demure princess of the Zelda game, as sluttily as possible.  Generally speaking, most of the skimpiest costumes on the site are worn by the princesses; to be a princess means to be half naked.  The Union of Princesses ought to go on strike over this travesty.  (Are they unionized?  I doubt it.)

Kay

A Realization Long in the Coming

I joined DeviantArt long ago; initially I just wanted to find an artist who could deliver cover art for my ebooks, and meanwhile I would just enjoy the pictures.

Easier said than done.  Before long, I was criticizing the daily panoply of new art being uploaded by the members, and I soon began to appreciate the difficulties that serious critics face.  A big step in the right direction would be not to see the artwork in a personal way, which being pretty women 9/10 ths of the time is hard for me, and I just could not be objective about them.  I would see an image that was not very artistically done, but where the model was close to my personal ideal, and I would go gaga over it!  The right thing to do would have been to just skip it, but I just couldn't do that!  I just had to make some response. 

And that was before AI reared its goofy head.   Now practically all the images submitted are created by AI, and I don't even know exactly whom I'm reviewing: the software, or the software jockey?  I think I take myself far too seriously as a reviewer.  (Some of the other reviewers analyze the images at length; I certainly don't have the training for that.)  At this point, clearly, all I can do is to say: I like the image, or I don't like the image, and all they do with the information is sort of rank the image, so that they throw high-ranking images at people for longer than low- ranking ones.  That's all. 

In addition, some of those who upload images to DA promote their work so hard, it's offputting.  A true artist never says "Look at my absolutely fantastic image of this beautiful, sexy, cute girl!"  That these young artists feel they have to say things like that says something about the setup, and not a good thing. 

----------------

[Added later:]  Another problem I've encountered is this: suppose someone uploads (to DeviantArt) a quite good representation of Anne Hathaway.  I'm not obliged to say anything; I would normally only say something if the piece is awesomely good.  Would I buy a canvas with this painting on it?  (Of course, now with almost every single image produced with AI, it's not worth buying any of these images.)  But it's Anne Hathaway, whom i like so much!!!  In short, should my feelings about the subject affect my rating?

Also, I had sworn to keep a firm lid on my hormones, and not gush like a fangirl over every beautiful image that is posted.  But just give minutes ago I did exactly that; I said something like "OMG, this girl is awesome!!!". Right on the website!  I'll never be able to show my face again, unless I take down that comment.  Do they let you take down your comments??

Kay H. B

Tanya Huff and Her Keepers

The title of this post sounds as though Tanya Huff belongs in a cage, but nothing's further from the truth; she's a perfectly respectable author from Eastern Canada, who has written a score of stories which have been very well received.  I'm in the middle of one; I seem to often be impelled to write about these while I'm just halfway through them, I don't know why.  One good consequence of that is that if the story ends unsatisfactory, at least I won't be discouraged from reviewing it.  (I don't review stories I don't like; it's not worth the effort.)

The present story---"Summon the Keeper"---is the first in a set of three (?) about the same characters.  It is about a youthful woman, who has paranormal powers, Claire, and her talking cat, Austin.  Austin comes across as the straight man, though that's not obvious, and Claire as the comic, though that's not obvious either.  A lot of the humor is the author's editorializing on the ongoing events, which is absolutely hilarious!  There is also an extremely sweet young man from Nova Scotia---or is it Newfoundland?--- who is so wonderful (and people from the maritime provinces are often the absolute salt of the earth, to begin with),, that I'm honestly scared to keep reading, for fear that the young man might be the Devil in disguise. 

----

(Added later, after I finished reading the book)

No such luck; Dean remains true-blue to the end.  I have to say that the setup is fine as a springboard for at least three stories, with a host of characters with potential for hilarious cameos in future books!

I found my head spinning with all the Canuck jargon and inside jokes (and possibly 'Canuck' has a pejorative---er--- thing, when it is used by non-Canucks).  (Connotation!  That's the word.)

Anyway, two thumbs up, and all that.  And all the intimate moments don't just fade to black, they start out black, and get even blacker, which I appreciate. 

Kay

Doorjambs

I had always been taught that the vertical parts of a door frame---the thing you lean on, casually---is the door jamb.  And when I first learned the word it was from a book, so I assumed that the terminal 'b' was actually sounded, not silent, as in 'bomb', for instance.  I'm increasingly seeing the word spelled as 'jam', as though it were a preserve made out of doors; and I'm going to address the issue as though my prejudices were rock solid fact.  So that's another weird entry for our list of homonyms.  (Actually, it isn't.  A spoonerism?)

I'm reading a promising book about a young lady who has magical powers, and an assistant who is a talking cat 🐈: Summon the Keeper, by Tanya Huff (1998 or thereabouts).  Tanya has a fun sense of humor, and I'm going to finish this one. 

Promotional

Well, as many of you know, my stories on Smashwords are essentially free, except for a couple of them.  Well, they're having a sale, so the whole lot are free now.  With great forbearance, I refrain from taunting you as tightwads!  If you download any of these books, all will be forgiven.  The sale begins on July 1st.

Kay

My Feelings About My Creations

This is a subject I haven't talked about very much: what do I feel about these stories I have written; these characters I have invented?

For the longest time, I felt a little embarrassed about revealing too much about these things, because I felt that my anonymity was sort of fragile; would people recognize me from what I said?  Now it is clear that few if any readers have identified me, and the few who have aren't confronting me with it.  Anyway, as time goes on, I don't really care; I'd love to be able to be out and proud of my achievements (even if my fiction isn't as great as some other stories I have read).

Just last night I was reading something from Concerto*, and I was thinking how much I loved Helen Nordstrom.  Actually, it was the love for Helen that drove me to make the manuscript publishable in the first place.  Once it was published, I began to believe that Helen was not an easy person to love.  She was so focused on music, that ordinary readers--that is, those who were not as crazy about music as I was--would find Helen boring.  Well, I have done as much as I'm going to do to make her approachable; and now it's up to her. 

In the earliest (Helen) story, she was an innocent, naive kid of 15 (a little too young to be attending college, I know, now that I've taught college for a couple of years), who had fallen head over heels for Janet.  Once she got to college, she gradually began to notice other girls.  At first, she related better to kids younger than herself, as she was an assistant to Janet on the weekends, for when Janet conducted a summer tennis clinic. 

After a while, she made friends with Leila, a young dancer in Florida, and their relationship became physical; the first physical relationship outside Janet.  

The following year, Helen began to form physical relationships with several girls, which Leila could not tolerate, and I thought that this wasn't a good thing.  Then came Lalitha, a freshman from India, and that relationship became very serious, and lasted over twelve years, through amnesia, and adopting Gena and Alison.

Once Helen was in graduate school, her sexual adventures became a little embarrassing to me. I was torn between writing a permissive, promiscuous lifestyle for Helen, and a more restrained one that I could really get behind.  This brings us to Westfield, where Helen battles her instinct to give physical comfort to girls whom she likes, or loves, on one hand, and a more responsible conduct, suitable to a sedate college professor.  Still,  Helen winds up setting up a menage a trois, which I thought the plot needed, but I was embarrassed more than before.  This promiscuous behavior comes to a head in the summer of Helen's second year at Westfield, and then the Press turns on her, Helen has a terrible accident, and announces her retirement.  At this time, I felt more sorrowful about Helen than admiring.  The outrage in the story was over trivial things; Helen was behaving moderately well. <to be continued.>

Avatar: The Way of etc.

Some friends and I watched the new Avatar sequel last weekend.  I realized how confusing it would be for someone faced with a large crowd of protagonists all at once (which I inflict on my readers sometimes); most of Jake's offspring-- Jake is the main male character, an earthman-- look like him, which means they're hard to tell from each other, except for the girls, and the youngest one (who is cute).  I just decided to stop worrying about the identity problem, and to go with the flow.  That simplified things for me a lot, except that one of the sons tended to need to be rescued pretty frequently. 

Of course, in the post- Star-Wars world we live in, movies need to have visuals that are suitably mechanically fancy, and when the Earthmen come barreling in, they come in vehicles that are big and frightening.  Meanwhile, the landscape has to be depicted as suitably alien, which results in occasionally crowded visuals.  The overall impression I got was of a movie that was both threatening (which the designers will be happy about), and cluttered.

I'm still battling my confusion about the characters, but I've become quite fond of the littlest Sully (Jake's little half-Navi girl), so I'm committed to watching the whole thing.  By the way, we decided to watch the movie over four days, not successive days either.

The native fauna--including whale-like creatures, who're very endearing--are just delightful, though they do contribute a lot to the clutter factor.  And of course, there are the dragons!  So much potential!  I hope some of it is realized!

More as we watch the rest. 

Kay

Illusive, vs. Elusive

Another pair of homonyms, that need to go into our list. 

Transphobia

I have always been uncomfortable about the T in LGBTQ+; I keep thinking it isn't time to slide them in with the remaining Queer folks, and their rights and privileges.  (J.K. Rowling's discomfort about Trans folk is a cousin of my own, but I'm not ready to discuss it.). But I'm reading a book about a Trans lesbian, and I'm so sad that I might be lumped in with the people that this girl has reservations about.

In fact, in the story, she says that, growing up she was terrified that some homophobe would come at her with a baseball bat.  No, it isn't just trans people that I'm uncomfortable with, just for being trans.  I'm unhappy with parents who support their minor children in their insistence to become trans. 

Since I've formed my opinion, I'm reading that it's difficult for a person who has undergone puberty with the "undesired" gender, to successfully get hormone therapy once they're adults.  I'm still puzzling over how to reconcile this fact (if it is a fact, and a truly insurmountable problem) with my reservations.  But you can be assured that I'm not going to assault trans people (except possibly in self defense, if they get fresh with me).

I just wanted to put that out there, before I went back to reading my book.

Kay