One year from the end of your life

[zustifer]

Well, once again our culture's calendar system has screwed us out of an opportunity to dress up silly and eat sugar. Thanks so much, weekday. As a concession, I gothed up by about 20%, and almost immediately felt lame about it. Fortunately it fell just within my normal clothing parameters anyway, so I could sort of justify it. The job placement lady dressed up as Sally from Nightmare Before Hmas, in a homemade costume that was pretty good. She said she wasn't getting a lot of recognition, which is honestly fairly depressing.


This study has a bit of a goofy hat on, but it does display the concept that kids (before a certain developmental point) have a hard time excluding what they know from their mental models of what others know. The kids were asked if Robin is a fictional construct in Batman's mind, essentially. Their knowledge that Robin is in fact fictional interfered with their ability to mock up Batman's perspective on the subject. The kids were a range of ages, at which some children would have the ability to mentally inhabit a character's perspective, and some wouldn't. Then the researchers were smart enough to continue the study with more empirical, hard concepts: can Batman interact with Robin? And the kids knew that was possible, as well as knowing that Batman couldn't interact with Spongebob. They're from two different worlds [/comic book guy]. Good stuff, fairly clever. I wonder how young you have to go before kids lose their concepts of different character universes, and you have no reason to exclude Batman from Bikini Bottom (yuckers).


I have finally found my Achewood usericon (even though the original resolution was almost too small to read and I had to recreate it with a pretty close font). I am well pleased. The rite of passage is complete.


PS: Here's that picture of the baby next to the graves. It's not that great, really the concept is all it has going for it, but, hey.

Comments

[wasta.livejournal.com]

I _still_ have a hard time when comics/movies/books meld their different universes. Especially when it's done for marketing purposes. But I also have mental/emotional difficulty with the whole Taco Bell/Pizza Hut & KFC/A&W combo fast food restaurants...

I AM OLD!

Why would Batman make Robin up? It's not that the kids are confused, it just a STUPID question.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

I think Batman's potential or actual insanity is enough to cover Robin being imaginary. Not really a great plot device, but possible.

[twillis.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I think it would be kind of a cool idea.

Especially if maybe the villians don't know Robin's a figment of Batman's imagination, and waste time trying to catch him.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Or if Batman expects things to be done by Robin and is continually disappointed! Poor imaginary Robin.

[twillis.livejournal.com]

Or maybe Alfred does the stuff Robin is supposed to, because confronting Bruce with his delusion makes him go BATS.

Yeah.

[ziptie.livejournal.com]

In NYC It's Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins in the same pink storefront.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

When I was 4 or 5, I remember idly musing about how it would be very strange for Disney characters to show up on Sesame Street.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...of course, now Disney has at least partial rights to Kermit the Frog.

[anti-cyclone.livejournal.com]

The internet exists so there can be a place for Batman to interact with Spongebob, thus providing entertainment for those five adults who said their friends were made-up.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

I was curious about that as well. I think this could have been a much more hilarious study, is what I think.