• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Sign in to follow this  
ChronosCat

Sketchbook Thursday Nov 29, 2018

Recommended Posts

5 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So why all the cursed antiques?

Is the presence of some sort of energy of malevolent intent a requirement for a device to be preserved beyond the lifespan of the person who builds, purchases, or uses it?

A competently "blessed" item will probably have safeguards so it doesn't go off at a bad moment or, if no one knows how to use it safely, ever. An incompetently blessed item is for all practical purposes a cursed one anyway.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So why all the cursed antiques?

Is the presence of some sort of energy of malevolent intent a requirement for a device to be preserved beyond the lifespan of the person who builds, purchases, or uses it?

I think it's because normal items breaks or get lost eventually, while the corrupted ones keeps appearing. Remember that one ring, which totally wished to be found?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
19 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So why all the cursed antiques?

Is the presence of some sort of energy of malevolent intent a requirement for a device to be preserved beyond the lifespan of the person who builds, purchases, or uses it?

Actually, I doubt there's anything malevolent about these scales; it seems to me to just be a magical tool doing what it's designed to do. It's not the scales' fault their instruction manual was lost centuries ago.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
On 11/30/2018 at 1:22 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So why all the cursed antiques?

Is the presence of some sort of energy of malevolent intent a requirement for a device to be preserved beyond the lifespan of the person who builds, purchases, or uses it?

Actually, I doubt there's anything malevolent about these scales; it seems to me to just be a magical tool doing what it's designed to do. It's not the scales' fault their instruction manual was lost centuries ago.

18 hours ago, Haylo said:

An incompetently blessed item is for all practical purposes a cursed one anyway.

Good point, actually: many cursed items are perceived as cursed just because without manual you don't know what they do OR how to turn it off.

Like, that cursed item who turns wielder into eldritch horror:  you can transform back by turning THIS bit around ... but noone knows that anymore. It's not cursed, it's just something like carnival mask.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
18 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Actually, I doubt there's anything malevolent about these scales; it seems to me to just be a magical tool doing what it's designed to do. It's not the scales' fault their instruction manual was lost centuries ago.

Reversing the effect appears to be more difficult than expected, with each use resulting in a different effect. Might become increasingly frustrating for some who aren't as into transformations.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, Scotty said:

Reversing the effect appears to be more difficult than expected, with each use resulting in a different effect.

That's either really badly designed user interface or malevolence, yes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That's either really badly designed user interface or malevolence, yes.

Or else "everyone knows" that the order of changes is size first, clothing adjustment second, and so on, but you can always change the order with the dial. There used to be a little rhyme to remember the order.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
9 hours ago, Haylo said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That's either really badly designed user interface or malevolence, yes.

Or else "everyone knows" that the order of changes is size first, clothing adjustment second, and so on, but you can always change the order with the dial. There used to be a little rhyme to remember the order.

Still badle designed user interface if the dial is not labeled with obvious pictograms and doesn't rotate with audible "click" drawing attention to the fact it moved.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Still badle(y) designed user interface if the dial is not labeled with obvious pictograms and doesn't rotate with audible "click" drawing attention to the fact it moved.

Obvious and audible to whom?

The operational details may be easily apparent for the intended users.  If the intended users were not human.

Humans don't bother to put Feline and Canine understandable instructions and warnings on the potentially dangerous things we build and use.  Why should another species bother designing their tools for our safety?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
36 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Still badle(y) designed user interface if the dial is not labeled with obvious pictograms and doesn't rotate with audible "click" drawing attention to the fact it moved.

Obvious and audible to whom?

(Trying to imagine how would someone manage to make "click" noise not audible to humans ... )

38 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The operational details may be easily apparent for the intended users.  If the intended users were not human.

The item exchanges BREAST SIZE (assuming it's the same item as in previous sketchbook). That considerably limits list of potential users. On Earth, just mammals have breasts, and humans are quite specific in how big they are even when not lactating.

The artifact being scales in first place is anther point that the creators of it thinks in similar ways as we do ; you can argue that form of scales follows their function, but these are not ACTUAL scales ... aaand you can similarly argue that those pictograms would "follow function", that is be understandable simply because they would depict something which must look similar because they would otherwise not work.

Aaand, the size of scales matches human size.

47 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Humans don't bother to put Feline and Canine understandable instructions and warnings on the potentially dangerous things we build and use.

We are not putting smell-base warnings, which would be likely chosen method for Canine. As long as we limit ourselves to visual symbols, I would still say there is quite low number of things we label in way which would make harder to understand for Felines and Canine, assume they would evolve bigger intelligence.

Of course, not counting things which would be already confusing for other humans. Using green for safe and red for danger, for example, is understandable for everyone with red blood who is not red-green color blind (... which dogs are ...) but using red for hot and blue for cold is pretty arbitrary, not universal for all humans and direct opposite to the energy of those colors.

More different species like the cheela from Dragon's Egg, medusas from Jupiter or Saturn's Rukhs would be another case, but, again, they are unlikely to use scales like this.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We use red for heat because objects glow red first when heated. Glowing blue-hot was not a thing until we got access to flames that burned hotter than natural gas in air. Blue is used for cold meanwhile because ice and water are bluish. Also, a mammalian body (especially human) will tend toward a redder skin color when overheated and a bluer skin color with hypothermia due to changes in blood flow.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
23 hours ago, ijuin said:

We use red for heat because objects glow red first when heated. Glowing blue-hot was not a thing until we got access to flames that burned hotter than natural gas in air.

There ARE blue flames in swamps. Although, being in swamps, people probably wasn't so eager to check their temperature. Or they checked and didn't returned to tell.

And, doesn't alcohol burn blue? That was also something which must've been discovered quite early ... hmmm ... ok, probably not convincingly blue, and it would depend on exact drink.

23 hours ago, ijuin said:

Blue is used for cold meanwhile because ice and water are bluish.

Ice is white and water is green. But, yes, water is CONSIDERED blue, although I'm not sure which water were our ancestors observing to get so solid opinion on that. Also, they must've have nice weather to consider sky blue.

23 hours ago, ijuin said:

Also, a mammalian body (especially human) will tend toward a redder skin color when overheated and a bluer skin color with hypothermia due to changes in blood flow.

Good point. That might actually be the reason - not (just) other stuff, but WE tend to be red when hot and blue when cold.

(Also, can't find it now but I remember I was surprised some time ago to find it's not completely universal.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There was a radio program on public radio recently all about color, and one of the things discussed was that ancient Romans described the sky as being bronze.  They didn't have a word that translates as "blue" at all, but they also don't seem to have minded the lack, or even noticed anything was missing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

There was a radio program on public radio recently all about color, and one of the things discussed was that ancient Romans described the sky as being bronze.  They didn't have a word that translates as "blue" at all, but they also don't seem to have minded the lack, or even noticed anything was missing.

Totally not true. See http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/01/colours-in-homer-1-bronze-sky.html

Quote

Homeric epic does indeed refer to 'bronze sky' three times: at Iliad 5.504, Iliad 17.425, and Odyssey 3.2. It's just that there isn't the slightest reason to interpret it as a colour term. This becomes a bit more obvious if you look at other uses of 'bronze' as an adjective in Homer. Iliad 5.785:

Στέντορι εἰσαμένη μεγαλήτορι χαλκεοφώνῳ
looking like the great-hearted bronze-voiced Stentor

(This is where we get the adjective 'stentorian'.) Iliad 18.222 likewise refers to Achilleus' ὄπα χάλκεον 'bronze voice'. Next, Iliad 11.241-2 describes the death of Iphidamas as follows:

ὣς ὃ μὲν αὖθι πεσὼν κοιμήσατο χάλκεον ὕπνον
οἰκτρὸς ἀπὸ μνηστῆς ἀλόχου...
In this way (Iphidamas) toppled and fell into a bronze sleep,
pitiful, away from his wedded wife...

And then there's Iliad 5.704, which refers to the war-god Ares as χάλκεος 'bronze'.

It should be pretty transparent that the meaning is figurative in all of these passages. That being the case, it'd be daft to assume that when it gets used of the sky -- and only in the case of the sky -- it suddenly starts being a colour term.

He might not mean color. Also,

Quote

And for reference, Homeric Greek did have two words that can mean 'blue': kyaneos and glaukos. Greek colour terms divided up the spectrum differently from how English and most modern western European languages do. Kyaneos covered the area of the spectrum ranging from black towards dark blue, and was also used for what in English would be called 'black' hair. Glaukos included light shades of green and blue with relatively low saturation.

... well, ok, so they didn't have word for exactly 'blue', but they DID have closer words than bronze.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hmm, interesting.  But the rest of that program is fascinating, and it gets into the color vision of various other critters, as well as nonstandard humans, so it's fairly on-topic for the last couple of weeks of this board!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
19 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

There was a radio program on public radio recently all about color, and one of the things discussed was that ancient Romans described the sky as being bronze.  They didn't have a word that translates as "blue" at all, but they also don't seem to have minded the lack, or even noticed anything was missing.

Before I read the article hkmaly linked/quoted, I thought maybe they were referring to the color of tarnished bronze. It is kind of bluish, and if the term encompassed more than the exact color of tarnished bronze I could see it standing in for the term "blue".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this