that’s what I said.

It was this webcomic that put this idea in my head and I just can’t stop seeing it everywhere “I don’t like this because I’m a woman” comes up. The original commenter also slut shamed the model in the ad which is why I figure it’s either homophobia or sex negativity in general.

But yeah yeah I know homophobia is bad and you can’t accuse women of being bad.

I think libraries are still allowed to let people read the books, yes.

I can’t help but think of that episode of TNG with the following exchange:

Q: “What must I do to prove to you people that I’m mortal?”

Worf: “Die.”

Q: “Oh, very good, Worf. Eat any good books lately?”

have a bunch of books that are age appropriate to 12 year olds, let them wander around and read the first few pages of each, and go “I want to finish this one” and check it out from the library? I hope that’s what this is, that sounds the most sane.

I thought they’d have foods that were related to certain books, like a book with a prominent apple in it, here have some apple. But that feels more like something for 5 year olds.

Your homophobia/sex negativity is noted.

Given this is a print ad, I think the primary payload is just “SEX DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL” shouted as loud as it can to get the reader to stop flipping through the magazine and actually look at it, and then once it’s got the reader by the foveas it then says “Sony Playstation 2. Circle Cross Triangle Square.”

PS2 launched in late 2000 so this ad would be targeting tween, teen and young adult millennial boys and men, so the secondary payload here is to associate the PS2 brand with thoughts and imagery that demographic is interested in or curious about, such as clubs/raves/parties, girls, sex, party drugs, and sex with girls on party drugs at a club or rave and thus transfer some of that interest/curiosity to itself.

The tertiary payload would be to use association with more grown up imagery (also during this time were ads featuring four condoms in see-through packets bent into the Circle-Cross-Triangle-Square shapes among others) to set themselves apart from Nintendo, who generally maintains an all-ages friendly image, and especially during the GameCube era when they revealed The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to much fan backlash at the “childish, cartoony” graphics. The PS2 looked more like a piece of AV equipment than Nintendo’s Barney The Dinosaur purple box, and could play audio CDs and DVD movies, VERY important socializing tools for teens in the 2000s.

Bottom line is it FUCKING worked. The PS2 sold like toilet paper. Sony sold 155 million PS2s worldwide, Outselling the GameCube (21.7 million and the Wii (101.7 million) combined And they did it with ads that said “Hey, if you’re grown up and with it enough to recognize what this chick is doing, ours is the game console for you.”

I mean yeah that’s Battletech.

Early on they stole a lot of artwork from Japanese products, so the Phoenix Hawk, Stinger, Wasp and especially the Hatamoto-Chi are very much the Samurai with wings thing. Also, melee combat was a significant part of the game, mechs carried swords, axes, clubs, and those with fists could punch. Even the weirder 'Mechs of this time were described as more insectoid or bird-like, like the Locust.

They trended toward more mechanical, military machines as they hired artists and did their own designs, they trended in a more mechanical, angular, military vehicle direction and more often than not used backward-kneed legs. Look at the Timber Wolf or the Shadow Hawk. Even when the 'Mech was more humanoid and had forward bending knees they tended to be more angular and mechanical like the Summoner.

Pictured above is Clan Smoke Jaguar’s invasion of the Draconis Combine.

Not much can top the 3DFX VooDoo graphics card boxes.

And it is intentionally horrible. It is how the developers want it.

Lack of a user friendly art suite is a major barrier to Linux adoption.

Gonna rock out with my…

Notice how basically no one ever mentions Lost or Game of Thrones anymore?

These shows were HUGE during their time. “This is AMAZING. Television has never been like this before. You can’t be an adult in society if you haven’t seen last night’s episode because if you say you don’t watch this show the conversation will immediately end.” soon “What the fuck was that ending? The last season turned to shit! Never mention this shit to me again.”

It’s like VindictiveJudge says, these shows are designed to feel like they’re going places but never actually get there. The writers of Lost put shit in that they thought looked intriguing but they hadn’t thought of any way to resolve it into something. “What do the numbers mean?!” Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Those shows are built like big epic stories, they’re not Star Trek type adventure of the week that returns to the status quo, and yet they’re not designed to resolve. Of course you’re going to leave unsatisfied.

The original old show? It’s meh okay 70’s sci-fi TV. Not into the kid and his robot dog or whatever.

The 2000s remake? It’s basically what cured my television habit. I was never really into the “gritty realistic” heartburn drama shit anyway, so I gave up on the show itself pretty early, then spent the rest of my time as an SG-1 fan having Katee Sackhoff scream in anguish at me during every single commercial break for years on end. Then every TV show made from then on had to be a dark and brooding show about terrible people being terrible to each other and then I stopped watching TV.

There’s a certain kind of kid that grew up just eating shit like this up.

They did canonically build the Delta Flyer from scratch.

To be fair, Star Trek explained Star Trek with bar fights. Play domjot, hyew-mon?

I read my dad’s copy cover to cover as a kid, it’s a great bit of fluff for fans combined with a useful prop reference. It’s also fun that it’s basically all hand drawn, even the text pages look l Iike a draftsman hand lettered them.

I have a theory:

Star Trek fans were some of the earlier cosplayers. Trekkies were wearing Starfleet uniforms and Vulcan ears to conventions decades before the word “cosplay” was a thing. My father has a book called the Starfleet Technical Manual published in the 70’s that is basically an official guide for fans to build screen accurate costumes and props from, including sewing patterns for the various tunics and wrist-length dresses and a page of color swatches, plus dimensional drawings of tricorders, phasers and communicators.

And the public at large in the 1970s wasn’t ready for that yet.

“Mat” is a small rug usually for wiping shoes on. “Matt” is a boy’s name, short for Matthew. “Matte” means the opposite of glossy.

Untitled Pontiac Game.

I always had flip phones until the QWERTY keyboard era but I really do miss being able to text by feel.