#i kinda just. am disgusted with the way these mega franchises work

[secretmellowblog]

So much internet analysis of media feels like……. if people were trying to criticize Chick-Fil-A, but refused to talk about anything other than the quality of the sandwiches. All that mattered was whether the product was good. So people just debated endlessly over whether the products were Good or not, and no one discussed how Chick-Fil-A donated to conservative homophobic hate groups.

“Is this Disney product Good and does it have good gay representation?” Does Disney still donate to homophobic republican politicans!!!??? Do they still actively censor any queer content during production, cancelling gay projects and actively forcing their writers to cut gay content, to the point where every sad scrap that makes it onscreen is a miracle? Can you meaningfully make any statements about “gay rep at Disney” without bringing in that larger context?

It’s not a perfect analogy— because art shouldn’t be a product, and a movie is theoretically trying to Say something in a way that a sandwich is not. But Idk I feel like the reason we fixate so much on media analysis is because it is Fun. It is fun to talk about lord of the rings and the owl house and Steven universe. It is not fun to talk about the horror and exploitation that is baked into the “entertainment industry;” it’s not fun to research and analyze the systems that created the horrifically expensive movies you love.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because amazon is releasing the most expensive tv series ever made, a spin-off series based on lord of the rings. I have no interest in watching it despite my lifelong love of lotr but the thing is—

I have no doubt the series will be good! It will be fine. Lots of money has been thrown into it, and I have enough friends in the entertainment industry to know that on every massive corporate product there are hundreds of writers and artists sincerely trying their best to create good meaningful art. The Amazon series will be Fine. It will be good.

But my question is: Does it being good actually matter? Does it matter if a chick-Fil-a sandwich is good? Does it matter if this vile evil horrible media monopoly run by a villainous CEO that works its employees to death creates a good product?

I feel like I’m going crazy when most of the criticism of Amazon’s lotr is conservatives and people who act like conservatives ranting on about how “I can’t believe they gave Blorbo GenericElf a personality! That’s so out of character—he didn’t have a personality in the book! Tolkien, our lord and savior who we must worship as an authority, would be infuriated (because we still are bound to submit to this dead guy’s opinion apparently!) Everything would be better if everything stayed exactly as it was in the past, in the Sacred Original Canon. Any attempt to transform Tolkien’s work is morally reprehensible and a sign of the fall of the civilization.”

Sometimes I just want to shake those people and say “PEOPLE ARE DYING! people are dying in Amazon warehouses, and you’re treating your petty fandom opinion about blorbo genericelf’s personality as if it has this laughably enormous moral weight.”

I know that’s unkind, and that people can care about more than one thing; but I don’t know. I used to have this really naive idea that adaptations were a conversation with the original work, and every reinterpretation was a beautiful addition of meaning. I still believe that on some level. I think every author should be free to reinterpret stories however they want, should be able to argue with the original author and set their work on fire if they need to. there’s a lot about Tolkien’s work specifically that deserves to be disrespected, like his vicious racism and sexism. I LOVE transformative work—especially transformative work that meaningfully argues with the original author.

But like….you really can’t talk about these big media franchises without talking about the systems that created them.

Yes, people can sometimes create great beautiful sincere emotional art within these exploitative systems! I love the original lotr films and books. The new Amazon series is so expensive that it will be perfectly Fine.

But creating good art doesn’t change the fact that these giant media monopolies do so much real, constant, tangible harm. Warner Brothers caused massive harm to New Zealand while making the lotr/hobbit films, essentially strong arming the country’s government into changing their film industry laws to benefit massive foreign corporations. And Amazon is a vicious violent exploitative mega monopoly that is literally overworking its underpaid employees until it kills them.

It’s hard because I believe that good art can be very meaningful to people, and that media analysis can be important and valuable.

Its just that— not to swing a bat at a hornet’s nest— sometimes I wish people would stop hyperbolizing about how [petty fandom opinion] will cause lasting harm to the world, while not engaging with the things about the media property that are causing immediate tangible physical objective harm.

[kathuichithouda-archives]

Hi! I'm Eros! My nickname is Strawberri (or just Straw or Berri lol) and I also answer to Kaz/Souda! Cuz why not!

This blog is recovering from being mega untidy and a lot of breaks!

I apologize that my posts are often random and my work is sort of everywhere, I'm working to fix it!

I'm not very proud of this blog but I want to be! I want to try using more and proper tags, like how I used to! I gave up only out of laziness and I was unmotivated...

But! Hello! I'm still happy to have you here!

I ramble about random shit, usually things involving Fuyuhiko, Kazuichi and Gundham from sdr2! But I talk about other stuff SOMETIMES, I swear lol

I have a lot of shipping content (tho I'm not a pro shipper that's disgusting) and while I don't believe every single ship ever is unproblematic, nor do I ship everything in the book - I tend to be open minded!

Also, a majority of my content is strictly fanon (if it weren't obvious) and I would ask you nicely to not compare it to canon. (And by that I mean don't critique it in the value of it being unlike canon, or being off/not making sense in canon laws. It's clearly not meant to be sometimes. Yknow? Snobby remarks like that tend to get irritating.)

I will ask you not demand it be canon either... if... that sentence makes any sense. (Don't like, go around telling ppl what I say is Actually True Lore in a Literal Way plz lol so many ppl have got on my case about that before and its a weird situation so like. Yknow.)

This place is multifandom!! And it sometimes has spoilers!! I will try and tag them!! But be warned, for danganronpa specifically I usually don't tag spoilers (cuz everyone who follows me for dr usually already knows about it plus the franchise is over 10 years old so...)

and I will disclaim now that I'm not a huge fan of DRV3. (Killing Harmony) Nor am I a huge fan of a majority of "new" characters from the anime. Not that I have a burning hatred or anything for either of them, I just don't find them as interesting so I usually don't pay attention to them. (Plus a lot about DRV3 bothers me and the fandom kinda scares me away from enjoying it too. I do like some characters from both tho.)

I'm sadly the stereotypical person that likes sdr2 the best... I apologize if this disappoints!

if anything I do rubs you the wrong way so much so you can't stand it (even tho im literally hurting no one; ex. Me liking Kazuichi or ships like Soudam) Feel free to block me! I don't wanna discomfort you, but I also don't need you making rude comments at me! :3 do us both a favor.

This is a long pinned comment lol but it'll work for now!

Enjoy! Feel free to ask me anything, berries! 🍓

[blobsreviewsofgame]

Sonic 25th Anniversary Artbook by Cook & Becker

I think I should've wrote this maybe sooner but... the Sonic artbook by Cook & Becker simply sucks compared to stuff like the Japanese Splatoon artbook or the Mega Man Complete Works. And I love Sonic more than both of these franchises. So let me list the things about this book that really, really bothered me.

The size

I hate this size. It’s 32 H x 28 W cm. Who'd want to use this? It's heavy too; 2.2kg/4lb. Most shelves aren't even this tall. It can't fit in! I have it constantly laying there on my table, collecting dust. Why couldn't be the size of a book like the Japanese Splatoon one or the Mega Man Complete Works artbook. Coffeetable size is horrible.

Reference images

That's something a bit odd but I really would've loved to see. There's some reference art for the classic renditions of the characters... but the Adventure-style has no reference images (the reference image it does have is a Sonic X one). And I really hate that because there are some reference sketches floating online but all the Japanese notes are untranslated and it would've really helped me at figuring out how the heck I can draw these renditions.

Too much text, it's not a documentary, idiots.

Cook & Becker, hear me out. No one gives a crap about the history of a video game franchise in an artbook. Unless you got together the artists of these images and interviewed them to get some kind of information about the art, cut the text out. You're wasting ink and the writer's time here. People who bought an art book about the video game franchise they love, don't need to hear about what a particular title is about. Or what a fucking ring is. We already know that if we're such nerds to buy a damn artbook about it.

Take some notes from the Mega Man Complete Works artbook. That one does have some text but it’s actually kinda needed sometimes. It explains the game in a couple of short sentences and then quickly goes onto what the artists have to say about some of the art they made.

The layout

I hate this layout. Sometimes, they made the art often span across 2 pages which might sound cool for one second until you realize that you can't see the flipping middle of the art! Yeah! Great! Who cares about looking at the art without troubles? Making the user have a hardtime seeing the art is way better than looking at it without problems on one page! And sometimes they just decide to overlay one image on top of another so all that time finding the rare art was for nothing because some moron thought that this layout was a great idea.

Sometimes they go with a chronological character art layout, then they'll switch to art from games. Have some consistency here! Oh, what am I talking about? This is something Sonic related from 2016, it won't have consistency. Even if it's an artbook!

Wrong facts

Sonic 3D Japanese art dates

Hey, guys, you goofed up. Knuckles' page lists dates and the Japanese Sonic 3D art says "1996". Yet the Tails one says "1997". And both are wrong. Sonic 3D released 1999 in Japan. That's why they have their Adventure artstyle here. You could've looked this up in 20 seconds by googling "Sonic 3d release dates".

Sonic X being on the same page as Adventure Sonic

They accidently put Sonic X-Sonic on the same page as Adventure Sonic art.

Stuff missing (X-Treme? Saturn?)

The book mentions the cancelled game title "Sonic X-Treme", yet it never shows art from it. I don't get why, it's not like there's no concept art from other cancelled games in there, like Crackers. And why isn't there much Saturn era stuff? I know that Sonic didn't have many games during that but there's a lot of stuff missing. Like the Sonic Jam pre-rendered models or the wallpaper art. Heck, throw in some Sonic the Screensaver concept art too. It's like they gave up at archiving the art one third-way through.

Other missing stuff

Chao concept art

During the unveiling of Sonic Adventure, there was concept art of the Chao shown. Why is the only thing on there 3 very common Chao artworks?

Sonic Adventure art in general Yo, Sonic Retro has a ton of Adventure art archived. Why don't you guys put that in the book? Or that weird looking Sonic art from the front of Sonic.

Sure, it looks kinda bad but it's very rare. Something that you guys said was that you were looking for a lot of rare images to archive in that book. I only see a couple of them here. Most of the time, it's either stuff I've seen 100 times before or something rather recently discovered.

Environmental concept art I would've loved to see more concept art for Sonic's levels. Things that happen in the level, what the level looked like, level design sketches... That should've been in the book.

Rare art I'll just put a ton of low quality images on there that are pretty much either lost, uncommon or rare which you guys could've put in the book. For shame, for shame! https://imgur.com/a/IDc3r

"What the actual shit"-part

This is the part where I can just go "What were they thinking?!". I can't find a reason why they did this and it makes no sense why they did it.

Pages that fold out which are just screenshots of the fucking games

Do I have to point that out why this is such a bad idea to begin with? If I want to look at the game, I'll play the actual game. And why do these pages fold out? None of the other pages do this, heck, the art that spans across pages would've needed that instead of these images.

Anyways...

Transparent pages that don't line up with the art on the other page

Just look. This is a transparent page... where you can look through it to view another page... And it doesn't line up or has anything identical in the slightest. So... why make it transparent?

Sonic 2's Japanese box art

You photoshopped American Sonic and Tails on top of the Japanese Sonic 2 boxart. That's disgusting, you know that?

Pages that show sprites Look. Pixel art is still art. I get that, it takes time to put something complicated in a restricting format. But... you can look up sprite sheets online and you'd get the same expierence as looking at this book. I bought this book to look at rare or even unpublished art of Sonic. Some may have bought it to see high quality images of Sonic's art. I doubt that anyone bought this to look at pixel art because you can look at that online for free. Wasting pages with something that you can look up online for free in 20 seconds is not a good thing in your artbook to have.

Even Mega Man Complete Works artbook has 0 pixel art. The franchise known for being in the 8-bit pixel form for 8 out of 11 games.

A page about the ring

This page is pure filler. How did they get away with this? Someone at SEGA and at Cook & Becker had to look at this and think "This is great. Ship it.". I now should either have no faith in SEGA in Quality Assurance checking now or won't trust Cook & Becker as a company ever. Maybe both.

With that said, I wouldn’t ever recommend this book to anyone. This artbook is the Sonic Forces of artbooks. I bet if a lot of fans would come together and find and scan all the Sonic art they could find, they’d make a much better artbook than this atrocity. So get the Kirby artbook instead, I guess? Ugh...