The WSJ article is behind a paywall, so here’s the relevant bits:
Walt Disney Co. DIS 1.67% has decided to reanimate scenes showing its only black princess in the coming “Wreck-It Ralph” sequel after facing criticism that the company had lightened her skin tone from previous appearances and narrowed her nose.
Princess Tiana, hailed as a breakthrough character for Disney when she first appeared in 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog,” is briefly featured in the “Wreck-It Ralph” sequel, called “Ralph Breaks the Internet.” After images of the princess were released by Disney over the summer, online users noted what they perceived as differences in pigmentation and facial features between the 2009 and 2018 versions of Tiana.
The social-media-driven backlash prompted Disney to begin reanimating the princess immediately after the images were released, according to a person familiar with the matter. The revisions—an unusual move given the yearslong process of making an animated film—come in the final months before the movie’s release on Nov. 21.
During the revision process, Disney animators weighed feedback from Anika Noni Rose, the actress who voices Tiana, and met with representatives from Color of Change, an advocacy organization that focuses on issues of racial representation and political inequality, including portrayals of black characters in Hollywood.
Brandi Collins-Dexter, a senior campaign director with Color of Change, traveled to Disney’s Burbank, Calif. headquarters last week for a review with the animators of the changes, which she described as darker hair and a wider nose and mouth.
In a statement Thursday, Color of Change praised Disney’s decision to “restore Princess Tiana’s image to that of an unapologetically black princess with full lips, dark skin and dark hair.”
This is called fixing it right. You screw up? Don’t blame the fans, or mock the people raising the issue. You reach out to the people your story represents and you ask for help to make it better.
Disney animators weighed feedback from Anika Noni Rose, the actress who voices Tiana, and met with representatives from Color of Change, an advocacy organization that focuses on issues of racial representation and political inequality, including portrayals of black characters
Animation isn’t cheap, and re-animation is even more expensive. I’m not going to hand out cookies for what’s still a token character — we have a long way to go — but it’s important to acknowledge Disney listened and acted.
That One Unnamed Extinction Event That Happened When Blue-Green Algae Discovered Photosynthesis and Started Pumping the Environment Full of Oxygen, Which Was Toxic to All Other Life on Earth at That Point in Time
This extinction event did result in the extinction of more living organisms than any other, whether you rank by number of individuals, number of orders/genera/species, % of life, or amount of biomass, but they were all single-celled organisms, so they don’t even register on the metal scale.
The Current Slow Slide Due to Anthropogenic Environmental Modification
Habitat destruction isn’t very metal.
Late Devonian
Some super-weird shit died out, which is totally metal, but we have no idea why, which isn’t. It might not even have been an extinction event, just a decrease in the speciation rate. Jawed vertebrates totally unaffected.
End Ordovician
Second-largest extinction event after the End Permian (not counting those blue-green algae fuckers). Caused by tectonic plate shifting (kinda metal) and resulting glaciation (mildly metal).
Deep Impact
Pros: Giant asteroid hitting the earth.
Cons: Fictional.
End Triassic
Probably caused by massive volcanic eruptions, which is pretty metal, but mostly just wiped out some weird looking amphibians, which is only mildly metal.
End Permian
Greatest extinction event of all time (with the exception of that blue-green algae fiasco mentioned above), wiping out ~95% of all species: metal. Only known mass extinction of insects: metal. Probably caused by the biggest volcanic eruptions since life began (metal) which ignited massive coal beds (metal) and caused the release of methane from the ocean floor (metal) resulting in a runaway greenhouse effect that raised the average ocean temperature to 40C for several million years, essentially boiling the earth alive (super metal). Paved the way for dinosaurs to take over the earth: metal. Known as the ‘Great Dying’: totally metal.
However, most of the extinctions occurred in sessile marine organisms, which are way too boring to be metal, and for the first ~20 million years after the extinction event, land was dominated by Lystrosaurus, which is the most un-metal looking reptile you can think of.
End Cretaceous, aka the K-T Event
A GIANT FLAMING BALL OF ROCK HIT THE EARTH AND KILLED ALL THE (non-avian) DINOSAURS. ENOUGH SAID.
I agree with most of this post (I’d swap Permian/Cretaceous because the Permian was freakin’ metal, yo, but no biggie) but you don’t get more metal than the GREAT OXYGEN CATASTROPHE
The entire surface of the earth was POISONED by a GAS that SHOULD NOT EXIST according to the basic LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS
It’s so metal that even billions of years later Earth has had to evolve entire ecosystems that METABOLIZE DEADLY POISON GAS. And survive by EATING EACH OTHER (which was probably not a thing pre-OXYGEN HOLOCAUST, you don’t need to bother eating each other if you aren’t trying to survive in a world full of IMPOSSIBLE DEADLY GAS.) Earth’s original inhabitants now have to eke out an existence in sealed-off channels in SOLID ROCK and similar places.
THAT IS AS METAL AS IT GETS.
(also there’s the nuclear fission reactions and stuff, that part’s fun. Did the dinosaurs have nuclear fission? NO.)
I DID NOT KNOW IT WAS CALLED THE GREAT OXYGEN CATASTROPHE THAT MAKES IT EVEN BETTER
single-celled organisms are still not metal, though, so it remains in last place
I mean, yeah, O2, what a fucker, how is it even still around, it’s reactive as shit and eats literally everything it comes in contact with but
when 99.999999999999999999% of life on your planet gets wiped out by algae you don’t go around bragging about it
I’m just saying
algae
don’t say algae
LIFE
LIFE was destroyed by LIFE ITSELF
can’t you hear the distorted guitar riffs in the background
I get that, on an existential level, life being destroyed by life itself is very meta
I just don’t think it’s very metal
*dies from the toxic fumes emitted by that stinker*
No, you don’t understand, the Great Oxygen Catastrophe is literally metalbecause we can track it by banded iron formations that were created on the ancient seafloor through the mass oxidation of dissolved iron in the oceans. Fun fact: before cyanobacteria started farting out oxygen and choking the life out of anaerobic bacteria/triggering a ‘snowball Earth’ phase, the oceans would have looked green, not blue, due to all the dissolved iron. This can be observed today in oxygen-deprived lakes!
thisacelovesheadcanons 