I remember reading somewhere that those “sailor suit” uniforms in anime were actually designed by a woman.

hmm… I better look that up again. Preferably before I get hit with another jet plane…

edit: Go figure. Wikipedia says they were adopted from European-style Naval uniforms and that they were easy to sew…

Red Bank Catholic HS had the Oxford shirts and plaid skirt like the uniforms in Ikkitousen. The skirts really were that short.

At the turn of the 20th Century school girls the world over wore sailor suits. There was a fashion of wearing sailors collars on all kinds of woman's dresses. See images of Theodore Roosevelt's daughters.

OK, sailor suits:
Back in the late 19th century Great Britain was one of the most powerful countries on the planet, this power was perceived to have come from navel superiority so this made navies very popular the world over and very desirable. The navy had THE cutting edge of technology…

From this navel fashion made its way into childhood fashions and things… Kids had toy battleships and sailor suits for boys and girls came in. But I believe what started it was a young Prince of the British royal family being photographed in one. (can't recall his name- all I know what it was in the late 19th century and I think he died young)
The royals loved their military outfits and were trend setters in those days since it was very desirable to imitate them.

It started before there was anything like the all steel Battleship. Kids had toy sailing ships and played at being Nelson. Then there was the Victorian romance from the Crimea and the Mutiny with sailors in their straw hats with tallies and sailor collars saving the day.

There were nautical military schools for boys and accompanying girls schools followed the trend. Then it really took off after Alfred Thayer Mahan made all things naval popular the world over.

The little prince in the sailor suits was the very young Prince Edward around the time of the Americas Civil War, Crimea and the Indian Mutiny. Remember all three happened within ten years. All three had lots of pictures if guts in sailor collars and the sailor caps. And a decade later came Mahan and that set off the huge naval arms races with the steel ships of the 1880s. And by then even cousin Nickie and cousin Willie were in sailor suits. (The czar and the kaiser)

Or at least that's one version from various works on military science and civilian fashion before the Great War. Alfred Thayer Mahan got everyone to worshipping all things Naval outside of Britain. Bibliography available. Due to the centenary of The Great War there have been a recent spate of works on military thought and culture in 1914.

So I've noticed a few comments on comics around that were just one number..
What does it mean?!
Is it like a ranking? like “5” would mean 5/5 or 5/10 ?

Bruno Harm wrote:
So I've noticed a few comments on comics around that were just one number..
What does it mean?!
Is it like a ranking? like “5” would mean 5/5 or 5/10 ?

Always, *always* wondered this.

My understanding is there used to be a ratings system where you could rate a page on a scale of 1 to 5. It fell by the wayside, but people still post a number as a sort of homage to it. While 5 is supposed to be ‘the best’, I've seen people post a 6 or even a 7 to say your page is REALLY over the Top!! Funny I've never seen a post of 4 or lower - I guess the thinking is, if you don't have a perfect number to post, don't post at all *shrug*

KimLuster wrote:
My understanding is there used to be a ratings system where you could rate a page on a scale of 1 to 5. It fell by the wayside, but people still post a number as a sort of homage to it. While 5 is supposed to be ‘the best’, I've seen people post a 6 or even a 7 to say your page is REALLY over the Top!! Funny I've never seen a post of 4 or lower - I guess the thinking is, if you don't have a perfect number to post, don't post at all *shrug*

I think that's what happens with those kind of ranking systems. It just feels rude to give someone a bad rating unless you absolutely disdain their work, so it becomes 5 or nothing.
But I'm glad the mystery is solved!

It's also a way of commenting when you're at a loss for words. Not everyone has a team of writers feeding them a stream of pithy one liners 24/7.

I used the formula “comic > 5” a couple of times.

Back in pre-Internet days with amateur press associations one would use abbreviations like RAEBNC. (Read and enjoyed but no comment)

It's basically a Facebook “like”, before there WERE Facebook likes :)
DD is older than Facebook. :/

Currently at a Steampunk Time traveler's ball in full hussar gear. I am THE best dressed here… Which was always the point if I'm honest hahaha!
I can't stand the music though. Why is everything techno? Everything… Fuck. Play classical music, it'd fit with the theme. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart. Come ON! So obvious.

Amateur Press? As in Independent Comics? Or are those two different things? Before the internet I always found indies to be the most interesting comics to read as they dove into things the mainstream comics companies wouldn't touch. Until years later maybe…

Lonnehart wrote:
Amateur Press? As in Independent Comics? Or are those two different things?

Two different things but a lot of the same people. It was stuff shared between artists and writers looking to break into indies and getting some critique from peers before submitting. You printed up for one central member to bind and distribute to the other members.

This was back in the 1980s. Computers had just started using 5 inch floppies for programs.

Heh… I was a teen in the 80's. Would've been nice to own a computer at the time. However, the things were expensive. I had a Famicom in the late ‘80s though and it was fun as heck. Well… ’til the adapter connection broke anyway…

Gotta love work. Had to keep kids out of my post. They kept wanting to come in to catch Pokemon… I'm probably mean for saying this, but I'd love to see them try and catch a Crash from Subnautica…

http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Crash


I know it's a fictional sci fi creature, but what would be the biological bases for the thing committing suicide to take out any nearby threats? Near as I can tell it's probably trying to protect its eggs which would be hidden nearby…

Remember when there was a choice between a fully functional word processor or a computer? And you got the word processor because it could do more?

bravo1102 wrote:
Remember when there was a choice between a fully functional word processor or a computer? And you got the word processor because it could do more?

I still find it amazing that a computer that is outdone thousands of times by an ordinary pocket calculator got us to the moon and back. :)

Lonnehart wrote:

bravo1102 wrote:
Remember when there was a choice between a fully functional word processor or a computer? And you got the word processor because it could do more?

I still find it amazing that a computer that is outdone thousands of times by an ordinary pocket calculator got us to the moon and back. :)

You don't need calculating power to get to the moon but money and will. Computers do what they are programmed to do faster and more accurately than a human, not necessarily better.

No one has been able to sell a scientific expenditure like Apollo since. Military adventures, certainly, but not scientific ventures. If the money spent on Afghanistan was spent on space, we'd be on Mars.

Screw the war on terror, let's explore the stars. Solve poverty here by colonizing the moon. That's how daffy Sir Walter Raleigh sounded selling the Virginia colony to Elizabeth.

True enough I think. All the money spend on our conficts could be spent instead on improving space colonization technology. Then the U.S. could just leave the Earth and its problems behind and face new ones. Of course, Humans are not the most logical species out there. We have people who reject the notion that we earned our place on the food chain, saying that we cheated to get up there instead. And then there's those people who believe that Humans are NOT a natural part of Earth…

I wonder how much money, time and tech it would take to turn Mars blue so we can move there instead…

Hahaha, we don't need any of that, you guys are already space cadets ^_^


…I don't know what I mean by that either.

ozoneocean wrote:
Hahaha, we don't need any of that, you guys are already space cadets ^_^


…I don't know what I mean by that either.

I am not a space cadet. I graduated from the Academy and got my commision.

We can't go to mars, it's all a lie from NASA and the governbment. We need to cross the great ice wall that surrounds the earth to get to a new world on the other side.

Arnold's Voice: “Get yuhr Ass to Mahz!”

Or Pitface doing Ah-nold XD

I means as in his voice…
You dirty minded bah-steads!

And from Ah-nald to Shakespeare.

The past two years the BBC has done all the Wars of the Roses Shakespeare histories from Richard II through Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI to Richard III. And what a cast! Patrick Stewart doing John of Gaunt's “This Sceptred Isle” speech! And some faces one recognizes from Game of Thrones too.

I'm only on Henry IV part one but it's so much better to watch Shakespeare than to read it. Not meant to be read, but to be performed. And what performances.

KimLuster wrote:
My understanding is there used to be a ratings system where you could rate a page on a scale of 1 to 5. It fell by the wayside, but people still post a number as a sort of homage to it. While 5 is supposed to be ‘the best’, I've seen people post a 6 or even a 7 to say your page is REALLY over the Top!! Funny I've never seen a post of 4 or lower - I guess the thinking is, if you don't have a perfect number to post, don't post at all *shrug*

Yeah, it's become pretty much a shorthand for “Wow, that was awesome!”.

For some reason people tend not to bother posting “Meh, that was tolerably okay, I guess.” xD

or you could troll sprite comics posting 1's

Trolling sprite comics! Ah, that takes me back to my early days on the Duck: the excitement, the expectation, the endless possibilities, the anti-sprite flame brigade roaming the corridors…

People who trolled sprite comics were mostly other spriters. No one hates a spriter like a fellow spriter ;)

Ah the jealously and backbiting!
Back in the day when people had to report comments because they couldn't self delete them 90% of the time it was from spriters and most of the arguments and issues we had to deal with were from spriters bullying other spriters and rival spriter gangs. They were just a little trying.


With the ratings, at one stage that had a very real affect on your rank! So anything bellow 5 could sink you right down and you wouldn't go back on the front page for at least 4 or 5 days… So that had serious consequences! So THAT is the true reason that the 5 only rating trend started, not just social conformity.
The social conformity was a result of that already existing trend after the ranks become untied from the ratings.

The thing was that rating a 1 was downright evil… You could sink someone from ever ranking with enough of them. So nasty passive aggressive little shits would snipe a 1 deep in a person's archives just to get them.

ozoneocean wrote:
People who trolled sprite comics were mostly other spriters. No one hates a spriter like a fellow spriter ;)

Ah the jealously and backbiting!
Back in the day when people had to report comments because they couldn't self delete them 90% of the time it was from spriters and most of the arguments and issues we had to deal with were from spriters bullying other spriters and rival spriter gangs. They were just a little trying.


With the ratings, at one stage that had a very real affect on your rank! So anything bellow 5 could sink you right down and you wouldn't go back on the front page for at least 4 or 5 days… So that had serious consequences! So THAT is the true reason that the 5 only rating trend started, not just social conformity.
The social conformity was a result of that already existing trend after the ranks become untied from the ratings.

The thing was that rating a 1 was downright evil… You could sink someone from ever ranking with enough of them. So nasty passive aggressive little shits would snipe a 1 deep in a person's archives just to get them.

Wow.. sounds.. messy!

I personally am not a huge fan of rating, and am glad they are not a major part of the Duck. If someone puts any type of time and effort into their comic, it's a 5+ in my books. We all know it can be hard to crank out quality pages with IRL stuff; and someone who isn't maybe as artistic or a strong writer as the next person can still put everything they've got into thier work and be incredibly passionate and proud of it.. I would be loathed to give them a 1 (and also, to receive a low rating is just a sucky feeling!). But maybe I am just a big softy??

Perception of ratings is weird for me too. Let's say there's a 5 star rating. Three stars is supposed to mean that the product is okay. However, I've noticed that lots of people (myself included) see anything less than four and 99/100 stars as products to be avoided. Weird…

ashtree house wrote:
Wow.. sounds.. messy!

I personally am not a huge fan of rating, and am glad they are not a major part of the Duck. If someone puts any type of time and effort into their comic, it's a 5+ in my books. We all know it can be hard to crank out quality pages with IRL stuff; and someone who isn't maybe as artistic or a strong writer as the next person can still put everything they've got into thier work and be incredibly passionate and proud of it.. I would be loathed to give them a 1 (and also, to receive a low rating is just a sucky feeling!). But maybe I am just a big softy??

5.