I love the inclusion of modern technology into the scene. It’s wonderful.
Yes, this is exactly what I’m trying to do with secret project number one.
Yes, perfect. Good.
sudden flashbacks to Everworld
This is a thing that I’ve been dwelling on: the alternative development of aesthetics.
The short and sweet version is that we tend to associate certain patterns of clothing, decoration, and ritual with different kinds of behavior. It’s a worldwide thing, and mostly unconscious. Men around the world wear European suits when they’re doing business, unless they have a particular reason not to. Facial tattoos are for ‘primitive’ tribes and members of Western countercultures. Essentially the same furniture and building styles are seen throughout the wealthy parts of the world, and showing the different methods used by other cultures is meant to show how primitive they are.
This is all, of course, horseshit. Art, fashion, motifs—they’re all just the window-dressing of a culture, and say little about how advanced or worthwhile it is. The prevalence of European styles in architecture and clothing isn’t because they’re just better than the rest of the world’s styles, it’s because European culturally brutalized the rest of the world and other cultures had to change to blend in.
What if things had turned out differently? What if some culture had stood as another example of what could be? What if more and more advanced technology had been molded into those alternate aesthetics? What might the world have seen?
(Slightly tangentally: This is why I’m okay with Zecora in MLP. Her aesthetic is indicative that there are cultures in that world that haven’t been homogenized by imperialism. That seems like an excellent thing.)
(Source: digitallydelicious, via nocturnalemisson)
