Does Not Illustrate: Power At A Price

A Real Life example of Cast from Lifespan.

I don't really like the presidents one because I wouldn't have been able to tell that they looked like they had aged more than 4-8 years without it being specified in the post, and any extra wrinkles look more like they are due to lighting, angle or facial expression than aging to me.

Maybe put dates by the pictures.

Or before and after.

Here's a home-brew based on the feedback.

That's good.

I still prefer the current. There's nothing in that indicates these people have aged unnaturally in their eight years of office. People can reasonably be expected to grow older during eight years, that's nothing special.

And the criticism of the current stands; it shows a price with no power. If you can think of a second image to pair it with, or another one showing him with the hand and doing obvious sorcery, then it'd be well in line.

The presidents pic at least is addressing the cost and the power, it's a commonly observed effect that presidents and prime ministers regardless of country suffer accelerated aging beyond what the normal passage of time would imply. You asked for something that wasn't magic based, I made an effort to get it. We can't expect it to be as dramatic as Denethor hyper aging under Saruman's influence in The Two Towers.

Regardless, crowner time?

I have to agree; the change in Reagan isn't as pronounced, but the change in Clinton and Bush is striking, they each look at least 15 years older to me.

I don't really notice the difference.

Me neither.

I've found that when people are asked to guess somebody's age off a portrait, they're commonly off by ten years in either direction, or off by twenty if the person is of a different ethnicity. The age difference between those pics could be anything from 3 to 30 years, or even the effect of better makeup. I'm not seeing the trope here, sorry.

Here's one replacing Reagan with Carter.

How do you know they have aged unnaturally?

I have no idea, but looking at the facts we can clearly see it is false that presidents "age unnaturally": the last three presidents who died (Nixon, Ford, Reagan) lived to be 81 to 93 years old, and Carter and Bush Sr. are still alive at 89 years.

Well of course they all lived long lives, rich and powerful men tend to. The question isn't "did they die younger" it's "do they age faster while in office." And yes, the jury is still out on that one. Some experts argue it's typical of all older men. Others point out that there are already links of high stress jobs having negative health effects (of which I don't think anyone here would argue he US presidency isn't). And since there are mitigating factors in terms of good healthcare and usually coming from wealthy and healthy backgrounds, presidents do live longer. Some presidents don't even seem to age much at all while in office, so clearly personal genetics also takes a a role.

But lets get to the practical here. I'm guessing from the thrust of the above posts that you won't accept an image that isn't 100% backed by science. If I have your argument correctly, even if the science were 100% accurate you don't even really see any striking difference in the before and afters. So I guess we just have to agree to disagree on the presidents images.

Which means we're what? Back at the drawing board for a new image I guess. Or we could try a poll to see if any of the previous suggestions has approval, I mean we have been pretty vocal on the negatives, but the non-vocal readers may think differently.

Oh for the love of...it's not literally aging unnaturally, it's the stress causing them to look far older than what you'd expect 8 years to do to a person.

EDIT:

edited 1st Apr '14 10:50:47 AM by Willbyr

It's easy to say that they've aged naturally instead of knowing stress caused them to look older, especially if the people don't count the years they're in power by looking at the dates on when they started reigning and when they ended. (I'm sure at least one person would do it, even if just me.) Even then, people might assume they were already quite old to begin with, and only had their hair grow white when they reigned.

Anyway, most of the subtropes seems to be about a supernatural side effect instead of a mundane one, but there are a few mundane subtropes. (Pride, anyone?)

edited 2nd Apr '14 2:38:55 AM by KarjamP

Well, since there is a caption describing that Mozenrath got magic powers, I say the current image is good enough.

edited 2nd Apr '14 2:12:27 PM by Furienna

Yeah, a caption would be absolutely necessary at the least from this thread. However if we can get a picture that illustrates both sides of this it would be much better.

Thanks for the suggestions, is the following image clearer do you think?

That is nice work but I prefer the current page image and caption. It is a completely straight example and the Presidents aging in office thing is... not. Tropes are things writers use creating works, Real Life examples can be funny but they're not "real" examples of a trope being used and they rarely make good page images.

edited 3rd Apr '14 12:17:32 PM by rodneyAnonymous

What if we add a screenshot of his hand glowing?

edited 6th Apr '14 11:35:03 AM by Laukku

Still not a fan.

But still better than the current. If we have to keep it, I'd prefer the version with context to the one without.

Same. I'd rather we use 46.1 than the current.

That said, does anyone else think the panels should be reordered to skeleton hand at the top and then the glove?

I think 46.1 is good.