T. rex arm jokes

I came across a picture the other day that was a cartoony T. rex character trying to pick up a cup of water off a table to drink it, but couldn't because small arms, and I caught myself thinking it's an overrated, lazy joke. Which is a little odd, because I happen to find T. rex arm jokes hilarious and never get tired of them. This wasn't the first version that's made me think that, though, so what's the issue?

After some overthinking I've come to the conclusion that there's an easy way to miss the point of why, at least to me, T. rex having small arms and as a result difficulty doing some things is funny. Small arms or difficulty doing things aren't funny on their own, the joke needs the T. rex in it to work because the contrast is what's funny. Tyrannosaurus rex, the most iconic of dinosaurs, a huge, scary carnivore with big, sharp teeth and an unbelievable bite force, terrifying enough even millions of years after its extinction to be named "the king of tyrants"... has tiny, useless-looking arms. Badum-tss!

I mean, T. rex arms weren't even all that useless, they're considered to have been pretty strong for their relative size. They just couldn't be bigger because of the animal's massive head, or you'd end up with a creature so front-heavy it might as well be a quadruped. But it's the visuals that count there.

Making the rex cuter doesn't necessarily ruin it, it's still presumably a fierce beast by standards of cutesy dinosaurs. Anthropomorphizing the rex, on the other hand, kind of takes away the contrast. A T. rex who uses tables and cups and as I recall wears clothes, too, is bound to all kinds of boring conventions of human society - probably doesn't hunt and murder to eat, and instead buys its meat in neat little packages at the supermarket. What's funny about this creature not being able to do things?

The more humanlike you make the rex the easier it also starts to get for the punchline to accidentally be at the expense of actual humans unable to do some things. A joke about someone having difficulty with the seemingly simple task of picking up a cup and drinking from it isn't funny, it's just ableist. Even when keeping the rex as an animal, I wouldn't find the struggles with arm-related tasks funny if the species usually had no problem with those, and this individual just has had an injury or was born with smaller arms than usual. It's funny because the small arms are the standard for the species.

Phenomenal bone-crushing power vs. itty bitty forelimbs, that's the stuff.

Lightnings

Bookshelf Dilos

Some photos of my bookshelf raptor pack's neighbors.

I painted the two smaller ones a bit. The bigger JW Dilo (first from the left) just got her claws painted. I actually really like the mini's colours, but thought they could use a bit more camoflage, since being this small compared to the other figures they're obviously still a nestling (regardless of whether the figure is originally intended to be, which I'm pretty sure it's not).

Here's the minifigure before repainting:

And here's after:

101 Dragon Age questions

A fandom question meme made by gentlelarkspur on tumblr, here's the original post.

1. How did you get into Dragon Age?
Someday I'll write a book about how it happened, perhaps, except make it sound actually interesting, and then admit the at least alleged true course of events under interrogation. I... actually just can't remember.

2. Have you finished all three games?
I've finished DA:O and DA2, but I still haven't started DA:I.

3. How long did it take you to finish the series?
A long time. I'm thorough and slow, and like to stop to take screenshots at every turn. Like here, for example, is a mid-fight Justice with a floating shirtless guy.

No, it's not a staff, ser templar. It's a selfie stick.

Schrödinger's JP Dilophosaurus maturity

(Spoilers for the Jurassic Park/World movies, Jurassic Park: The Game, and various other JP/W media)

Though it must be frustrating in terms of getting people educated on the actual science on the the actual animals, since movies like Jurassic Park and its sequels play such a big part in the idea the general public has of dinosaurs, I think it's also kind of neat the franchise has basically made its own version of the Dilophosaurus and then just run with it. The frill and the spitting venom are completely made up traits (venom for the novel already, and the frill added for the movie). Yet it’s what the JP Dilos are best remembered for, often even referred to as simply “spitters”. The frill and the venom are still there in 2018 in JW Evolution, as are the same vocalizations heard in the first movie (and very briefly in the opening scene of Fallen Kingdom) as well as their being smaller than real Dilophosaurs would have been.

Peekaboo!

The one that killed Nedry looks even tinier, and I always kind of assumed that she might have been still a juvenile. Whether that is the case has rather conflicting evidence throughout the franchise.

Onto the next raptor canvas

She looks so grumpy about having to stand still and hold her arms out to the sides to let her stripes dry.

Screenshot

This morning, apropos nothing, I remembered one of my early attempts at the simple act of taking a screenshot of a frame you like in a movie or a TV show.

The movie in question was Land Before Time, and I was fascinated with the different faces Littlefoot makes as he says "The Great Valley" at the end, you know the scene, and I wanted a picture of one of those faces. But how to go about that in the early 90's?

Well, I did have the movie on VHS, so I could have multiple tries, but when I paused the VHS it would have all kinds of messy static on the image, and maybe even a big "paused" symbol in the middle, so I did have to take the screenshot while the movie was running and hope I caught the frame I wanted. The only screen I had was the TV screen, and that or the VHS player didn't have a system in place to capture an image of the thing you were watching, so I had to take a photo of the screen with a camera. The TV was one of those big boxy ones with a glass screen, so I had to turn off all lights in the room for that or they would reflect on the screen. Because the TV was in the living room, I had to do this when turning the lights off for a while wouldn't inconvenience the rest of the family.

After I'd taken the couple of photos I was allowed to use up film for with my mom's camera, I couldn't check right away that I'd gotten photos that looked any good, because the film had to be developed first. And first I had to wait for mom to finish the film roll by finding enough photographable things. Then we took the film to be developed, paid for that, and eventually got our photos from the shop (the photoshop!), and I wondered if the person developing our photos had found it weird that there were several shots of a TV screen showing a cartoon dinosaur making faces in there (they probably hadn't, they had kids too, but yeah somebody had to see each of your photos in order for them to get developed).

And then I finally got my screenshot to hold in my hands and maybe put on the wall of my room if I wanted! But alas, none of them were the animation frame I had wanted. I didn't get to try again, because it cost to get each photo developed, and there are more fleeting moments to capture on limited film than frames in a movie that's still going to exist and look the same decades later.

But anyway, here you go, tiny me:

You won't get to see it for a couple of those decades, of course, but hey that's almost as long as it felt like it took to get your photos developed anyway, and I guess better late than never. And surprise surprise, when you're a big and old adult with Responsibilities, you're going to be no less fascinated with cartoon art and dinosaurs or even combinations thereof.