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Post by ResidentTsundere on Aug 14, 2018 2:10:05 GMT -5
Another mark against abridged series is... Well, there is a gray area regarding the legality of fanfic/fanart /fancomics. But abridged series? It feels like the media equivalent of someone wearing someone else's skin. On one hand, getting chased by copyright bots has got to suck -- but I also sympathize with the original rights holders. They are entirely within their rights to pursue actions against abridged series. (I used to be a lot more lawless when it came to copyright issues like this. I can barely believe I even typed this post.  ) |
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Post by Allie on Aug 14, 2018 11:27:32 GMT -5
.... I probably already mentioned that I'm not a huge fan of Angry Reviewers in this thread, just in case I haven't... while I like James Rolfe's work itself, most of the others (including basically everyone who ever worked at Channel Awesome) come off as whiny people who either (if they're film reviewers) can't follow basic storylines that even a child could comprehend or else (if they're game reviewers) hate any game where victory isn't handed to them. That's not to say I hate reviewers in general though. Some like Caddicarus are pretty good (you just gotta remember they're more skit shows than reviews) and then there's the really technical guys like LGR and Ancient DOS Games, the former being more history-focused and the latter having a lot of experience with actual programming. In other words, the magic formula for reviews is you've gotta know what you're talking about. Wow, way to go off-script, Edmond, especially since I thought I was just gonna comment on Abridged Series.... Now, I'm going to drive the intellectual level down a few miles into the dirt, so bear with me. I'll keep it (extremely) short, though. I just find that way too many people who do internet videos in general have horrendously obnoxious voices that I can't stand listening to for more than 20 seconds. |
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Post by toei on Aug 14, 2018 12:26:55 GMT -5
.... I probably already mentioned that I'm not a huge fan of Angry Reviewers in this thread, just in case I haven't... while I like James Rolfe's work itself, most of the others (including basically everyone who ever worked at Channel Awesome) come off as whiny people who either (if they're film reviewers) can't follow basic storylines that even a child could comprehend or else (if they're game reviewers) hate any game where victory isn't handed to them. That's not to say I hate reviewers in general though. Some like Caddicarus are pretty good (you just gotta remember they're more skit shows than reviews) and then there's the really technical guys like LGR and Ancient DOS Games, the former being more history-focused and the latter having a lot of experience with actual programming. In other words, the magic formula for reviews is you've gotta know what you're talking about. Wow, way to go off-script, Edmond, especially since I thought I was just gonna comment on Abridged Series.... Now, I'm going to drive the intellectual level down a few miles into the dirt, so bear with me. I'll keep it (extremely) short, though. I just find that way too many people who do internet videos in general have horrendously obnoxious voices that I can't stand listening to for more than 20 seconds. This is a valid point, actually. I don't think it's stupid. Youtubers (and so on) use their voice as part of their work / hobby, so of course it matters whether you like them or not. So many of these videos feature that slow, hesitant, bored nerd monotone. "Huuuuum... it's... well, as you can probably see, it's a very fun game..." |
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Post by kaoru on Aug 15, 2018 1:09:41 GMT -5
It doesn't help that the other half are doing the constantly pumped, overly excited, half-screaming-all-the-time voice.
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Post by Allie on Aug 15, 2018 14:01:22 GMT -5
Or (and this isn't limited to let's-players, but also "did you know?" types who talk about AV technology and such) that whinging, uptalk-y "stereotypical nerd from central casting" voice.
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Post by edmonddantes on Aug 22, 2018 2:02:16 GMT -5
Wow, way to go off-script, Edmond, especially since I thought I was just gonna comment on Abridged Series.... I swear the internet is making me dumb. The above quote? I keep looking to see who the hell is snarking at me like this... only to realize "Oh, right, I snarked at myself." Should I seek help? |
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Post by edmonddantes on Sept 4, 2018 20:24:12 GMT -5
I'm not sure if this makes sense or fits the topic, because its very specific.
I love Sherlock Holmes. Reading the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories when I was 14 was when I realized I could never go back to Goosebumps (as anything other than a nostalgic pleasure or an ironic read, anyway) and started getting into serious books, and I used to religiously watch the Jeremy Brett TV series when it would play on A&E. The Holmes bug bites me every couple of years and I wind up reading the books, watching several older movies and episodes of TV shows, and sometimes even playing Holmes games (of which I own two: Consulting Detective Vol. 1 on Sega CD and the Infocom text adventure game for PC. I need more).
Before we proceed... yes, I remember LOVING the Robert Downey Jr. movies, especially the first one.
However, those same movies introduced a trend that carried over into other adaptations, such as BBC's Sherlock, which I find a little questionable.
It's basically this:
Deduction has been turned into something of a superpower.
Now, Sherlock Holmes thing has always been that he has a wealth of knowledge and an eye for detail (though he's not infallible). In the Downey Jr. movies (and, I've been told, in the BBC series Sherlock) this tends to translate into him doing an almost computer-like "scan" where the camera will pause and give a voice-over analysis of every detail in action. This was fine at first--a theatrical way to get the point across--but where I had a bit of a problem was that then they started doing what a friend of mine calls "Scan Fights" where Holmes and Moriarty will be scanning each other, "deducing" what each other is gonna do.
Its sort of like the Baseball episode of Clannad After Story (IE the first episode of that season), where Kotomi tries to calculate how to perfectly hit the ball for a home run... only for the anime to go realistic and show that all the brains in the world are useless if you're too nervous and/or clumsy to actually follow through. Sherlock these days though kinda plays it straight, and then expands on it. The BBC show even has this one villain who has a "mind palace" and Sherlock is able to explore it--as if its a tangible place and not just some tortured metaphor. At this point, he basically is psychic.
I dunno if I explained it well, but I honestly find this portrayal of Sherlock Holmes' analytical ability rather iffy. Doctor Who is in a similar boat of intelligence being a superpower that lets you do the impossible, where they portray it less by having the character do something smart and more by having the character do something blatantly impossible and then say math did it. It's the difference between solving a puzzle in Myst, and solving a puzzle in Myst by throwing a rock at it and a Rube Goldbergian-series of events just happens to make everything work out your way.
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Post by X-pert74 on Sept 10, 2018 15:17:58 GMT -5
I'm not sure if this totally fits this thread, but I can't think of a better place to put this:
If I never again hear someone criticize something (literally anything; whether it's a movie/book/game or a speech someone gives or whatnot) as being "too political", it will have been too soon. "Too political" is one of the most vapid, nonsensical complaints anyone can make. Usually, "too political" just ends up meaning "something I disagree with", without bothering to go into any real detail as to why you feel that way. I'm really tired of hearing people say that.
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Post by edmonddantes on Sept 11, 2018 2:52:10 GMT -5
@x-Pert74 .... I agree to an extent. That statement without qualifiers is dumb.
The problem is there does really seem to have been a trend since the 2000s (probably earlier and I just didn't realize it until then) of movies that are clearly political in some degree when you went in expecting mindless fun. The most obvious example to me (which is probably just because I watched it recently) is the live-action Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, where an opening plot point is a kingdom being invaded because its suspected they have weapons of mass destruction. Gee, that doesn't sound like anything at all, and certainly didn't mirror the Bush administration in an incredibly obvious way.
This, based on a video game where the events were set off by this being a time period where kingdoms were invading each other and needed no bigger reason.
It's a double-edged sword. The thing that annoys you happens because movies that warrant that claim are indeed a legit phenomenon (and it happens in the worst places), which I find just as annoying.
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Post by Woody Alien on Sept 22, 2019 9:32:10 GMT -5
So... there's this recent meme I've been seeing around on the internets, called "Ugandan Knuckles". It consists of a deformed 3D Knuckles model that says "Do you know the way?", often written in a thick Ugandan accent. Is there like, anything at all to this meme, aside from making fun of Ugandan people? I don't see what's supposed to be funny about this. Sorry for quoting such an old post and for necro-ing the thread, but that's how I feel about meme culture nowadays. Maybe I'm just getting old but I can no longer get into it; it's not only for the allegiations of being co-opted by the Neo-Nazi and such things, but it just seems more and more useless and nonsensical. "Rage Comics" at least were useful to tell stories, but new meme formats and styles are just cringey and bizarre to me. It doesn't help that, unlike before, you can create and diffuse them in the blink of an eye, so a couple days after a new meme comes out there's already a ton of permutations and it loses its original meaning, and then one week after it's already everywhere, and one month after everyone is already sick of it. Just think about Bowsette, it seemed that it conquered the world, even getting its own personal fan conventions in Japan, and now nobody gives a shit about it anymore.
Do you think that "meme culture" will evolve further, or it will go back to what it once was, or will it eat itself and implode in a vortex of post-post-ironic weirdness?
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Post by kaoru on Sept 22, 2019 9:55:05 GMT -5
Memes are only funny if they are clever or have some kind of joke/punchline to them. A lot though are made by shitty people with no sense of real humor. Like the "attack helicopter" or "assuming one's gender" ones. There's no joke there, they've never been funny, it's just mean spirited assholery.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Sept 22, 2019 12:18:13 GMT -5
The word meme is completely meaningless these days, and it has been for nearly a decade. There's no 'meme culture' because literally any joke or image or anything that gets any traction online can be classified as a meme. Literally the only difference between something like Bowsette and 'I've fallen and I can't get up' is that the former came to be in the internet age.
And them fading away quickly is only better. I'd hate to go back to the days where people kept reiterating the same 'arrow to the knee' or 'the cake is a lie' joke over and over and over. It's great that people can get all their, say, 30-50 feral hogs joke out of their system in 24 hours and then move on. Of course, there's always going to be some jokes that last longer (classics like loss.jpg live on).
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Post by Woody Alien on Oct 31, 2020 9:57:17 GMT -5
Not that anyone cares, but I can't really understand the recent trend of "virtual youtubers". Basically people (usually streamers and let's players) who don't want to appear but play the part of 2D anime characters thanks to face rigs and such things. The first one to really become popular was "Kizuna AI" who faked being an advanced AI, and then it became a trend and now there's dozens upon dozens of them, usually based in China and Japan. But there's several English-speaking ones too.
I have no problem admitting that the obsession people have with streamers to the point of considering them friends and part of their lives (a more insidious form of celebrity culture) disturbs me, but having the streamers being cartoon characters makes everything even more alienating IMO, especially because the characters "are" the celebrities since the people behind them cannot reveal their identities.
What do you think? I'm always reminded of Black Mirror and the episode "The Waldo Moment", and I don't think it is a good thing...
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