Comment by esperent

Comment by esperent 3 days ago

14 replies

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Every representation I've ever seen of Anubis - including remarkably well preserved statues from antiquity - are either a male human body with a canine head, or fully canine.

This anime girl is not Anubis. It's a modern cartoon characters that simply borrows the name because it sounds cool, without caring anything about the history or meaning behind it.

Anime culture does this all the time, drawing on inspiration from all cultures but nearly always only paying the barest lip service to the original meaning.

I don't have an issue with that, personally. All cultures and religions should be fair game as inspiration for any kind of art. But I do have an issue with claiming that the newly inspired creation is equivalent in any way to the original source just because they share a name and some other very superficial characteristics.

account42 3 days ago

It's also that the anime style already makes all heads shaped vaguely like felines. Add upwards pointing furry ears and it's not wrong to call it a cat girl.

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ksymph 3 days ago

> they share a name and some other very superficial characteristics.

I wasn't implying anything more than that, although now I see the confusing wording in my original comment. All I meant to say was that between the name and appearance it's clear the mascot is canid rather than feline. Not that the anime girl with dog ears is an accurate representation of the Egyptian deity haha.

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SnuffBox 2 days ago

It's refreshing to see a reply as thought out as this in today's day and and age of "move fast and post garbage".

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qwery 3 days ago

I think you're taking it a bit too seriously. In turn, I am, of course, also taking it too seriously.

> I do have an issue with claiming that the newly inspired creation is equivalent in any way to the original source

Nobody is claiming that the drawing is Anubis or even a depiction of Anubis, like the statues etc. you are interested in. It's a mascot. "Mascot design by CELPHASE" -- it says, in the screenshot.

Generally speaking -- I can't say that this is what happened with this project -- you would commission someone to draw or otherwise create a mascot character for something after the primary ideation phase of the something. This Anubis-inspired mascot is, presumably, Anubis-inspired because the project is called Anubis, which is a name with fairly obvious connections to and an understanding of "the original source".

> Anime culture does this all the time, ...

I don't know what bone you're picking here. This seems like a weird thing to say. I mean, what anime culture? It's a drawing on a website. Yes, I can see the manga/anime influence -- it's a very popular, mainstream artform around the world.

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  • esperent 3 days ago

    I like to talk seriously about art, representation, and culture. What's wrong with that? It's at least as interesting as discussing databases or web frameworks.

    In case you feel it needs linking to the purpose of this forum, the art in question here is being forcefully shown to people in a situation that makes them do a massive context switch. I want to look at the linux or ffmpeg source code but my browser failed a security check and now I'm staring at a random anime girl instead. What's the meaning here, what's the purpose behind this? I feel that there's none, except for the library author's preference, and therefore this context switch wasted my time and energy.

    Maybe I'm being unfair and the code author is so wrapped up in liking anime girls that they think it would be soothing to people who end up on that page. In which case, massive failure of understanding the target audience.

    Maybe they could allow changing the art or turning it off?

    > Anime culture does this all the time >> I don't know what bone you're picking here

    I'm not picking any bone there. I love anime, and I love the way it feels so free in borrowing from other cultures. That said, the anime I tend to like is more Miyazaki or Satoshi Kon and less kawaii girls.

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    • celphase 3 days ago

      Hey there! The design of the mascot serves a dual-purpose, and was done very intentionally.

      Your workflow getting interrupted, especially with a full-screen challenge page, is a very high-stress event. The mascot serves a purpose in being particularly distinct and recognizable, but also disarming for first-time users. This emotional response was calibrated particularly for more non-technical users who would be quick to be worried about 'being hit by a virus'. In particular I find that bot challenges tend to feel very accusing ("PROVE! PROVE YOU ARE NOT A ROBOT!"), and that a little bit of silly would disarm that feeling.

      Similarly, that's why the error version of the mascot looks more surprised if anything. After all, only legitimate users will ever see that. (bots don't have eyes, or at least don't particularly care)

      As for the design specifically, making it more anubis-like would probably have been a bit TOO furry and significantly hurt adoption. The design prompt was to stick to a jackal girl. Then again, I kinda wished in retrospect I had made the ears much, much longer.

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      • Multicomp 3 days ago

        (wow another Only on HN moment, the designer of the topic's catgirl shows up with topical work)

        Thanks for sharing your design notes on the mascot!

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      • boneitis 3 days ago

        Hi there, thank you for chiming in.

        Viewing the challenge screenshot again after reading your response definitely sheds light as to why I have no aggro toward Anubis (even if the branding supposedly wouldn't jive well with a super professional platform, but hey, I think having the alternate, commercial offering is super brilliant in turn).

        On the other hand, I immediately see red when I get stopped in my tracks by all the widely used (and often infinitely-unpassable) Cloudflare/Google/etc. implementations with wordings that do nothing but add insult to injury.

        Thank you for the thought you put into that. I think you guys hit it out of the park.

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    • qwery 3 days ago

      What does all of this have to do with (depictions of, references to, etc.) Anubis though? You responded to a comment about the mascot surely being a "jackalgirl" as opposed to a "catgirl" because of the Anubis name and other references. It seemed like you had an issue with the artwork, that it wasn't Anubisy enough, or something. Why would the drawing being more like the statues improve the situation?

      Now you seem to be saying that anything that isn't what you wanted to find on the website is the problem. This makes sense, it just has nothing to do with what is shown on that page. But you're effectively getting frustrated at not getting to the page you wanted to and then directing your frustration toward the presentation of the "error message". That does not make sense.

      > I like to talk seriously about art, representation, and culture. What's wrong with that? It's at least as interesting as discussing databases or web frameworks.

      I don't have a problem with talking about art, you'll note that I responded in kind. When I said "I think you're taking it too seriously" I wasn't expecting that to be extrapolated to all subjects, just the one that was being discussed in the local context.

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    • Quanternion 3 days ago

      As far as I'm aware it is already possible to change the art displayed (don't know about turning off), most just seem to not care and use the default

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    • balamatom 3 days ago

      >I like to talk seriously about art, representation, and culture. What's wrong with that?

      It's no fun.

      For one, you pulled your original response out of your ass. That the mascot is not a "catgirl" as identified by OP, but a canine variant of the same concept, because the project is named after the Egyptian god, is both obvious and uninteresting. You added nothing to that.

      You're running around shouting "I get the joke, I get the joke" while grandstanding about how serious you are about art, one of the human pursuits helped least by seriousness, considering.

      If you've decided you also need to be silly about it today, then at least have the decency to make up a conspiracy theory about the author being in fact a front for an Egyptian cult trying to bring back the old gods using the harvested compute, or whatever.

      >massive failure of understanding the target audience.

      Heh.

      The anime image is put there as an intentional, and to my view rightful, act of irreverence.

      One that works, too: I unironically find the people going like "my girl/boss will be mad at me if they see this style of image on my computer" positively hilarious.

      >Maybe they could allow changing the art or turning it off?

      They sure do. For money. Was in the release announcement.

      Not enough irreverence in your game and you can end up being the person who let them build the torment nexus. Many such cases, and that's why we're where we are.

      >That said, the anime I tend to like is more Miyazaki or Satoshi Kon and less kawaii girls.

      A true connoiseur only watches chibi :3

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      • esperent 3 days ago

        > out of your ass

        If I wanted to be spoken to this way I'd make a reddit account.

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