Quick Update: Hiatus For October 2nd-8th!

As a one-man operation I know it’s not necessary to announce quick breaks. It’s somewhat assumed free blogs will occasionally go on hiatus, sometimes for months or years on end!

That said, I am taking a long overdue vacation the day of my usual uploads, and while I have something prepared for next week, I decided to focus on the trip preparation instead of an article for this week.

I shall be back on the 9th, as long as the jetlag does not kill so much energy I cannot even edit an already written-in-advance article!

What Was Special About Rare

I’ve been tackling my backlog this year, harder than usual. I planned it out back in January, but it’s been May and June when I really started crossing off game after game. The biggest reason for this is that I suddenly felt like going back to Rare Replay.

Jetpac Refueled is surprisingly pretty fun for how limited and arcadey it feels. Perfect Dark is incredibly fun to skate around blasting the enemies away, and honestly, I feel it’s disappointing sequel PD Zero is more mediocre than outright bad. I was stuck in Grabbed by the Ghoulies many years ago but somehow I picked it up again this year and managed to beat not just that level I was stuck on, but made it to the end that same night. A bit of an odd game but a gem that needed better sales. Kameo turned out to be fairly average, but still a fun enough game with interesting gameplay concepts.

I still need to jump back into Blast Corps, and Jet Force Gemini, but I somehow found time to play the ancient games like Gunfright and Jetpac original.

And okay, you likely just care what I think of Banjo-Kazooie. The original was beaten by me a long time ago and it’s pretty much Rare’s most competently made game. Not my personal favorite, but the one I think has the least issues. Can’t say the same for either sequel, but don’t get me wrong, I’m actually in the camp that finds Nuts & Bolts to be pretty good! The vehicles are fun and the open choice in how to win the puzzles is a great change-up to the formula even if hardly anything else feels like classic Banjo.

Of course, Tooie is also classic Banjo, and I’m sorry but I did not have a good time with it. I think every idea offered is a nice addition and I think the story and jokes are a step above the first game, but the ideas don’t gel with each other and instead just drag the gameplay down by a lot. It probably has Rare’s best final boss but honestly, that’s not saying as much as you might think.

Rare, or Rareware, (or Ultimate Play The Game if you wanna get really retro), really are one of my favorite developers for the classic games scene. Sure Insomniac offered great gems but Rare I did not grow up with and yet still find charm when I play their back catalog.

So if I could explain Rare games in just a few words, what are the phrases that come to mind?

Well for starters: Unfair difficulty!

Credits: Microsoft, Rare, Bandai Namco, Fromsoftware

Heed my advice on this, when you play any of Rare’s older games, either play a game where you have infinite lives by default, or open the options menu to give yourself infinite lives. And even then, good fucking luck my guy. I cannot for the life of me beat Snake, Rattle, and Roll. The bullshit final boss, (who’s just a hopping severed foot by the by, which is also a standard enemy type so hello there blatant recycling), is programmed to instantly fully heal back all health after a set time of not taking damage. That time frame seems to be a second or so. Rare Replay lets you rewind time and I still somehow magically miss or go just too slow and the damn foot goes back to full health. It’s asinine even for the NES, the kind of thing I’m positive a play tester told them was bad and got promptly ignored. If you can beat this thing without the cheat codes, I think you’re made of crack.

Don’t know how I would have beaten Gunfright if not for the rewind feature, either. You have to win twenty duels with AI that just moves around randomly and shoots whenever. And yes, it’s random, because when I would rewind they’d move to entirely different patterns than the last time. You just have to guess better than a fortune teller if you want to beat it “correctly”.

Banjo-Kazooie is a pleasant breeze, part of the reason I consider it Rare’s best-made game. I won’t ride on Tooie’s harsh difficulty too much as I already said I don’t like it, so let’s continue with pointlessly hard Rare games I do like.

Well, Nuts & Bolts does sometimes break its own rules and expect you to roll with it, such as how I only earned three Jiggies in Terrarium of Terror because I’d just had enough of that level’s BS. Ghoulies like I already said I was stuck on, but frankly that game’s just hard because there are a lot of rules you can suddenly have to obey, and the camera controls take a bit to get used to, not to say it’s the worst camera Rare ever made.

Allow me to share with you my favorite Rare games. I’d place Banjo-Kazooie in third place really, and Viva Pinata is such a blast (even with its problems) that I have to give it the silver medal. And maybe you’ve guessed it, but my all-time fav is Conker. And while it is in my personal top ten games, boy do I have a hard time recommending it to people because it’s also one of the hardest games I’ve ever beaten.

If you’ve never played Conker, but have heard of it, I’m sure there’s one of two thoughts going through your head. Either: “How is the funny squirrel game hard?” or “How is the allegedly funny squirrel game hard?” Conker’s humor has aged poorly for some, but not everyone. Same for its story, I have seen people criticize how slapdash and random the plot points are but I think that works as a parody of 3D platformers since, well, that’s also how it works in those games. You just jump from one completely different area to the next, the only reason this time it’s a joke is because Conker’s just a sociopath alcoholic trying to get home.

But fuck me the difficulty needed to calm the hell down. The zombies are practically impossible, the war sections demand perfect platforming despite the controls being honestly not perfect themselves, I remember my high school theatre teacher had played the game too and complained about the electric eel but frankly, somehow I had no issue there.

As for my worst moments: I died countless times to the spinning underwater saw blades. Ugh, and the final boss, Jesus, if you ever want to send me into a spiral just put on the most monotone British accent you can muster and go “Throw out the alien, and shut the bloody door.”

And on top of that, Conker has another boss who may be the hardest in all of gaming: Its own camera. I hear a lot about FromSoftware setting the scale for hard games, but not a single person calls the camera controls hard in those games, so there is unironically a good chance Conker is harder thanks to the game actively fighting back at plenty of times. There is nothing harder than a tough fight where you’re looking the entirely wrong way and can't do much of a thing about it.

I still love the game, and I still want to play it again soon despite how much it grinds my teeth into dust. All that said, I should probably give the Live & Reloaded cut a chance. Less swearing but if the camera actually works then that’s a fine trade-off.

I think if you ask most people, (well okay most YouTubers), Rare was this incredible developer who delivered fun-first gameplay styles, with wacky and well-realized characters who often stack up to what’s currently out there. The kind of games that inspired the competition generations later. Many think it’s a shame they do nothing but Sea of Thieves now, but frankly well you’re “stuck” in your best-selling game ever and raking in more money than you ever did before, that’s the kind of horrible fate I think I’d wish on myself most days.

But Rare’s insistence on difficulty is the bigger talking point, I feel. It’s Rare who thought Snake, Rattle, and Roll should have an invincible final boss. It’s Rare who felt Conker needed a bad camera. And hell, if you think I’m only guessing or being overly negative, go check out two things.

In Rare Replay, there are loads of behind-the-scenes videos, and in one of them, a developer openly states how much fun they had changing Battletoads Arcade just for the sake of making it harder and harder. Even had the gall to admit it was just to sucker more quarters out of arcade patrons.

If that’s not enough, Chris Seavor had a short-lived commentary series for Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Where he notably struggled with the gameplay, and yet found the time to state how they were forced to change the camera controls for Live & Reloaded because “players like having control over that these days”. He then stated that he preferred the stiff and unresponsive camera of the original.

That’s Rareware, everybody! One of the greatest game developers of all time, who happened to love making players pissed off way more than needed. Some of the best of the best, truly, but my popped blood vessels have their own opinion.

Image copyright belongs Rare, Nintendo, and Microsoft, most images pulled from Xbox store page.

Can A Bad Adaptation Be A Good Movie?

Way back in high school I remember a class mate of mine (who's name and appearance I have long since completely forgotten) once told me, and I believe a few others who were also in the room at the same time, about her opinion on a movie she had seen. Apparently, she originally really liked the movie, may have even loved it if I'm remembering correctly. Then she said that after she read the book, she hated the movie because of how different it was from the source material. This statement immediately bothered me, outright confused me. For the life of me, I didn't see why something being different from it's source material should mean that it is automatically bad. It didn't bother her when she didn't know what the books were like, but suddenly, knowing it differed from it's source material meant that it must be bad.

Needless to say I don't agree with this mindset. The point of this post is not to simply shake my fist in the air and proclaim that I believe adaptations are allowed to take liberties. What I would like to do instead is discuss just how common this really is, and how people don't really have as much of a problem with this as many say they do. Let's be real, we have all heard the same thing or similar to my example from a high school girl. Some of us may have even said it ourselves. I'm not going to point out your hypocrisy or try to change your opinion, I just want to talk about how many things we love are actually adaptations that differ slightly or heavily, some of them you may not even know are adaptations in the first place.

Also this is now the point where I tell you the movie she was talking about was one of the Percy Jackson movies. I don't know which one, I never saw any of them or read the books. I waited until now to mention it by name as I'm aware the movies were not well-received, my point would have been made muddy if I used a widely-considered bad movie as my starting point, so I waited until now. For the record, this is how you stretch the truth effectively. I never withheld anything from you, I just waited for the time it would be best to mention. Consider that if you ever run for political positions. It is much better than lying. It beats having the piss takin' outta you, if you get what I mean.

Now to get back on topic. Perhaps you noticed the picture I used above? The picture was taken by myself, and those are in fact all pieces of media with their adaptations above them. I did the traditional book to movie, then video game to manga, comic book to video game, and book to comic book. I thought it would be interesting to do as many fields as I could, and I really do think it's best to do adaptations not as many people are aware of. I could take all day telling you that Disney films are okay and it doesn't matter if they are too accurate or not. That doesn't help my point, as even the person with the hardest stigma against my point tends to let Disney slide by. Perhaps this is because they mostly do fairy tales, but just as a reminder they also did adaptations of full novels, such as Tarzan of the Apes, The Hunchback of Notro Dame, Pinocchio The Tale Of A Puppet, and Bambi: A Life In The Woods. 

Speaking of, if you work at a book store and you have in stock a copy of Bambi: A Life in the Woods, do not put it in the kids section. It's a young adult novel that's very dark and realistic for it's setting. If it has that subtitle, it's the original story and it's not meant for children. I've seen it in that section and it worried me about some innocent child reading it and being horrified. It's also one of my favorite books.

Let's start with the first two in the picture; the novel Nothing Lasts Forever and it's adaptation Die Hard. Nothing Lasts Forever was apparently popular enough when it was published to warrant a film, despite being obscure now. The book itself is also a sequel to the novel The Detective, which also got a movie, that is not connected to Die Hard at all. Die Hard is an action classic, and it's overshadowed the novel so much, that my copy literally tells you on the cover that it's the book Die Hard is based on. The back cover barely talks about the book, most of the positive things are about the film instead. I felt this was perfect to start out with, as this is more common than you think. Hellraiser, The Wizard of Oz, the aforementioned Bambi, many movies get so well-known that many do not realize they are an adaptation. For some, they only learn when they decide to read that fact in the credits, or when they go to a bookstore or library and find a copy like mine that proudly states the fact.

Now, as for the book, it's very similar but has some very notable differences. It is worth a read if you so feel, but I won't shed tears saying the movie is much better. There may be things that make the original book worth reading, but one is vastly superior, and I understand not bothering with the other if you don't care enough. If you feel you only have time in your life for one of them, and you've already watched Die Hard, you don't need to feel like you've lost something. They took some of the better parts of the novel, and ironed out what didn't work. This is something that some may argue is not too accurate of an adaptation, but that I would argue makes for a great adaptation. You have to truly understand your source material to be able to say "This isn't good" or "This is good for the book but it wouldn't work for a movie". We've entered an era where filmmakers try to be more faithful to the source than ever before. It's worked out for them for now, but I'm waiting for the day when film goers start asking for the adaptations to have more differences like they used to, and I'm very positive this will happen.

Now for video game to manga. The Kingdom Hearts games are beloved by fans like myself. The first game has a storyline that is still considered wonderful to this day, and even with later installments getting far too complicated, we still do our best to understand them. The manga takes the basic plot and turns it into a complete farce, and I'm not the first one to say that. I can understand this being a turn-off for many people. Taking a game series that they love so much, and basically making fun of it. Well, personally, the first game is one of my all-time favorite games, and I adore the manga adaptation. There's a very strong "so bad it's good" vibe that I get from it, and I don't think I could have it any other way. Case in point, the one I chose for the picture is the manga for Chain of Memories, which takes itself more seriously and tones down the wacky jokes and atmosphere without getting rid of them. It makes the quality better, and means I do not lose the moments that I loved from the original manga productions. It cuts out more of the plot than the last one, the only Disney world left is Agrabah from Aladdin, meaning it keeps itself self-contained arguably better than the game did.

I can still play the games until I die, and they will remain unique experiences that cannot be replicated. In a way, I think that is what the manga is going for. Doing it's own thing because it knows it would just be an inferior copy if it tried being a regular copy. What this manga series is, is a comedy to the point that it may as well be a parody of the games, and I appreciate and love it for that.

Now for the third. What I love about Sam & Max is that no matter what version you are currently enjoying, it has the same characters in completely different situations. There was an original comic strip series, many video games, and a cartoon aimed towards children. By this point, it is a franchise, and every iteration is a cult-classic. If you like one, you will like the other as well, for similar and different reasons. I think that's something to remember. When you become a franchise, many of your installments are in fact adaptations. They should be held in regard to the other installments, but they are still products that need to be judged on their own for what they are. If you don't know Sam & Max, I have no problem saying you can start anywhere. If you do try, and you like what you got, then I say you may as well keep going even if it seems like a big leap.

And the last was  Lost on a Mountain in Maine and it's very recent comic book adaptation Lost Trail. I read the original book in middle school, and a few years ago I came across the comic I did not know existed at the time. I purchased the comic, reread the book, and then read the comic. I think both are quite good, and are on equal playing field with each other. If you don't know the story, it's the real-life story of Donn Fendler, who as a boy became lost from his family on Mount Katahdin. In Maine it is considered a classic that we read in schools, so I'll forgive if you have never heard the story. For us it's a personal thing, Maine is very big on fellow Mainers. The book was written by someone who simply wrote down what Donn told him, and the comic came decades later, with Fendler still having a part in the process, although admittedly I don't know how much. The book is a great read because you are just reading a child retell a harrowing experience that had happened recently. The comic is a great read because Fendler himself admitted that he remembered more about the event when age let it stew in the back of his mind.

I don't just recommend either, I recommend both. I think they compliment each other. They are great alone, but if you read the original first and immediately follow it up with the comic, you have a winning combination.

So all in all, I have talked about adaptations that overshadow the original, adaptations that decide to just do their own thing and damn the consequences, the power of franchising, and an adaptation that fills in some of the blanks the original couldn't.

All of them, to me, are just as valid.

Maybe it is nice to know exactly what you are getting into. Honestly, I could sit here and argue the fact that sometimes a good adaptation leads to a bad product. All I ask for in an adaptation is one thing, and I think it is best we all consider following this.

The only thing I ask from an adaptation, is that it is good. I don't care if it's faithful, I don't care if it's ridiculous, I don't care if it has almost nothing in common with the original. I just want a product that I end up enjoying. I think that is all I need to ask.

So, yeah. A good movie can come out of a bad adaptation. Or a good manga, or video game, book, or comic book. It's happened before, and it will happen again. Whether it's a slight variation or a completely different take. Anything enjoyable can be taken as it's own product.

Is The Commercialization Of Christmas Really A Bad Thing?

Before I start with the content of this post, I would like to point out for those who did not know, that this year all three of the winter religious holidays happened at roughly the same time. The first day of Hanukkah was the exact same day as Christmas Eve, and the first day of Kwanzaa was the day after Christmas, or Boxing Day as some call it. Kwanzaa and Hanukkah also both end on January 1st this year. Kwanzaa is always from the 26th of December though the first of January, but Hanukkah does not have an exact date every year, and I think it is nice how that all turned out. In a way, it's almost as if all three holidays put aside their differences and came together this year. Something we more of in the future, and less of the kind of people who are still mad other holidays have a right to exist.

To get on with the actual content of this post, for years people have complained about how Christmas time has gotten more commercial and the important aspects of the holidays are being slowly removed. Now, I'm not going to waste my time talking about the religious zealots who would be complaining about their precious holiday going away even if nothing was happening at all. This is not a post about the anti-PC crowd that are thin-skinned in their hypocrisy and their misplaced anger, as I said above, that is not this kind of post. What I will be discussing is the actual commercial aspects that have found their way into one of the biggest holidays of the year, and debating how good or bad of a thing that is.

Should this post be read by someone somewhere how has never heard of the holiday known as Christmas, the basic idea is split into two ways. For the religious side, it is the birth date given to Jesus Christ, whom the Christians consider to have been the true son of God, and you celebrate his birth by buying presents and giving them out on this day to your loved ones. On the commercial side, the gift giving is made the important part, and you see many stores both local and corporate reminding you to go out and buy all of your friends and loved ones something very nice for them to show them how much you care. Christmas cards also exist, but for years I have personally felt like they are going out of style. They are always cheesy, corporate, and the mail service gets most of it's business through packages so I have a feeling Christmas cards are not doing them the business it used to. More power to you if you still have a Christmas card list and mail them out, but cards aren’t my thing and I’d rather buy my loved ones something nice, but then again I keep my list of close personal friends very short so maybe I’d like cards more if I knew thousands of people.

On both sides of this, there is also a fellow named Santa Claus who magically rides on a sleigh every Christmas Eve, who brings presents to all the good little girls and boys, and depending on your country of origin, he either brings lumps of coal to the naughty children, or he has his magical monster friend the Krampus come and kidnap them. There are other slight variations of the Santa mythos, such as some countries have the children leave out their shoes and some hang stockings on a wall, but it is the same magical figure flying around the world giving gifts. Supposedly the religious types don't like Santa, for the sake of "keep the Christ in Christmas", but this is something I have literally only heard on TV.

I won't pretend I'm in a super-duper religious state, but it is religious enough that I would have heard people say this if these kind of people exist. Mostly it seems they are okay with Santa Claus, as it means they too celebrate Christmas, if they are the kind of person who wishes everyone believe the same things they do as well. Honestly, the biggest complaint I hear about the figure is that many adults have begun to question if it is alright to let your child believe he exists, the argument being that you are feeding them a lie for many years knowing the bubble will have to be burst at some point down the line. It's an interesting argument, but I've already brought up enough topics for today.

Personally, I love Christmas and I celebrate it every year. I'm religious enough, and I do like taking one day out of the year just to make sure we're all happy and doing well. In my worst years, the entirety of December leading up to the holiday would be my favorite month. I like the feeling of joy and good will, and even if I'm aware of some of the worst aspects, I still do love this time. (For an example, those people who ring bells outside of the mall for charity money don't always give to who they say they do, and some are completely homophobic in their cause. Don't let that ruin your spirit, but do feel free to let that be a lesson in researching where you put your money).

Growing up I did also have a few Christmas books we read aloud for the season. I believe one was religious in nature and the other was just a book about American Christmas, straight-up called Christmas in America. Forgive me for not knowing more, even though we do pull those books out every year to stand up and look at, we haven't read them in over a decade because my mother was the only person who thought they were interesting. My Christmas experience is truly no more religious nor commercial in nature than anyone else's, so I think I can add an easy argument here.

Now for the religious aspect, this is still a religious holiday to many and there is nothing wrong with that. No one is truly trying to take that away from you, and chances are the majority of the people who celebrate the religious version already know that, and tune out the fanatics just as much as the rest of the world. The loud and angry ones are never the majority that they think they are, after all. Personally, while having aspects of religion in me, I don't do much for the religious version because I am just happy to buy things for the people I care about, and I really love the atmosphere and the feeling. My family however does have their own traditions, and all-in-all, that is kind of how religious holidays work, with the people who celebrate it exactly how they think they should celebrate this time. Everyone does it differently, and it all means the same to them, as that is the point of religious holidays. To reaffirm your belief in God, yourself, the people around you, the whole world and all the people in it.

And so the question is if the commercialization aspect does in fact ruin all of the above.

In all fairness of course I understand having your feathers ruffled at the idea of trivializing a special time. That, in the end, is part of the process of commercializing something. Capitalizing on something with the intention of not just making a profit, but of trying to make a dollar out of as many people as you possibly can. This is not a niche market where they hope the crowd opens up, this is something where they plan on striking everyone's hearts and wallets at the same time.

We are talking giant inflatable Santas that are both on display and available for purchase, we are talking licensed Disney characters in Christmas clothes to place on your lawn, even made-for-TV movies about the holiday that are produced on a nickel and sold for ten or twenty dollars per DVD.

And I'll be real, I don't have a problem with this.

Businesses are businesses, they suck the money out of everything. We are talking about the very people who have invented holidays simply to grab our hard earned cash, we do not need to be surprised that they are trying to do so with the holidays they didn't invent as well. Personally, I always liked the upside to this. This really and truly does get as many people into the Christmas spirit as possible.

And, it does give the non-Christians a chance to enjoy something about the holiday as well.

Now like I said, there is nothing on Earth that could take away the religious section of Christmas. The only thing that could be done would be one of two things: It would be the businesses somehow buying all of the churches, or the death of Christianity. As for the former, don't get me wrong, I can think of many businesses of the top of my head that would gladly buy out every church in the world if they could, but the power of the church is something too strong even for the raw power of corporate greed. Even the ones that already go hand-in-hand with them, but I'll stop there. As for the latter, for any one of you that wants to point out it is not unheard-of for a religion to die, remember that no religion truly evaporates from existence, and also to be real, if Christianity is going away at some point it is not in your lifetime nor mine. It has been around for thousands of years even with it's detractors.

To get back on point, have any of you heard of how Christmas goes in Japan? Japan does not associate Christmas with the usually associated religion, but they do celebrate it, and it is very commercial. Lights and decorations everywhere, all the good cheer the holiday can bring, Christmas trees everywhere. I love this idea. While it may in the end just be the demand of the almighty dollar, we can still use this as a way to love and cherish everything about the holiday, no matter your own personal beliefs.

And not only will I say more power to you if you disagree, I am going to make you happy by adding something else. If you are so unhappy with the commercialization that you refuse to take part in buying the merchandise, than you are in fact doing exactly what the corporations are hoping you do not do. Their plan is you get your money, and by denying them your wallet out of protest, you honestly are hurting their end goal. You may only be one person, but the goal is not to just make money, it is to make everyone's money. They may not know your name, but they know, as corporations are more than ever ready to bleed everything dry, they know when they can’t get everyone, and some of them furiously hate that. Go ahead and have your small victory, but it may only feel small to you, believe it or not.

So, in the end, my point is that a holiday is a holiday. It is our own right to celebrate however we feel, and personally, I like knowing that my favorite holiday can reach the hearts of millions in any way they see fit. If you feel this has gotten out of hand, then again, more power to you, celebrate the holiday as you see fit.

It is too late to wish a Merry Christmas in this post, and both Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are roughly halfway done at this point so wishing a Happy Hanukkah or Merry Kwanzaa is a little strange I suppose. It is not, however, too late to wish a Happy New Year to all of my readers. There is a lot about the upcoming year. Some of it frightening, very frightening, although I do hope we can come together and try to understand each other a lot better. No matter what holidays we love, or how we celebrate them.

Why My YouTube Channel Will Never Be Successful

In July of 2012, I created a YouTube channel for the purpose of creating and uploading videos. The idea was never to make money off of this channel, from the very start the idea was to use the platform as a way to get my creative material out there for the world to see. When I first started it up, my views weren't necessarily bad for a brand new channel. Looking back at one of my first videos, it is just shy of five hundred views, and for an unknown channel that is not a bad number. It is not even my most viewed video, but, it is definitely up there in that regard. Said video was the first episode of my nine episode horror-comedy about an Apple fan who was also a serial killer, and if you'd like to see why so many people watched this first episode, which had no reference to the second half of the premise, you can simply watch it down below:

I'm proud of many videos I have made, and many of the ones I regret were erased from my channel (with a back-up copy in my possession should I ever change my mind), and when it comes to those videos I erased, if I had left them up I sincerely think they would get roughly the amount of views they do now in the form of non-existence.

I have learned how to do good videos by this point, and I am fully aware that my efforts are gaining no reward. I remember years ago, when I first started, when YouTube was more open to letting the unknown channels get attention. I am far from the first person to complain about the fact that this no longer seems to be the case.

I will play devil's advocate, however, for something I do believe is fair. As I do not monetize my videos, I understand why YouTube does not feel the need to give me more attention than a channel they do profit from. YouTube does not make Google any money, it's been stated as much several times, so I do understand why they don't need to bother too hard with someone who does not make them money.

On the other hand, YouTube breaks even for Google, according to the reports. They are not losing Google money, at least as far as I am aware. In that regard, I do think I'm gaining less attention than I and several other unknown channels deserve, and when it comes to myself I am not asking for much. As the thumbnail shows I currently have 26 subscribers, over the course of 4 years. While I would easily appreciate more, I am very proud of the fact that there are people who plan to watch content that I make.

But my views are not reflecting that. Out of my 26 subscribers, I cannot tell how many of them are watching my videos. My view count is terrible, and while I may not be the greatest creator on YouTube, I know I care way more about my quality than other creators who are getting much more attention. I have seen some of the completely hated videos that gain massive attention, and I am just as upset as everyone else who suffered through them while their uncreative makers profit. Be it from the monetizing meaning YouTube pushes their stuff out, or from all of the click-bait that they have in their titles, there is something wrong with certain people who are getting a good deal of views, and a few years ago, myself and other unknowns would have at least been given a little bit of that viewership.

As for my personal complaining, honestly, a lot of that is out of my system. There are a few things I would like to say, but they would be better covered in a post about everything that has been going on with YouTube. The frank reality is, right now I'm luck to get 10 views on a video, and a majority of my older videos got more than that in a week when I first uploaded them. I have gotten better, and I even receive less dislikes, but the algorithm doesn't wish to help me the way I would like it too, and this is true for not just the lesser-known channels, but some of the biggest channels have now started to find out that a good deal of their subscribers aren't even aware of their new videos on plenty of occasions. This is the very reason I now use this blog instead. I don't know how many people read this, as I don't get comments or likes just yet, but I do know that I pay Squarespace every year to have this website and they are helping me out, because I directly paid them. My chances of attention are far better here than there.

I don't dislike YouTube, but I did temporarily give it up.

The next few uploads I did, would be stuff like this:

Neither of these videos were made for YouTube. They are pieces I did for a class, and I recorded them because I simply felt like it. They did better than the stuff I recently made directly for YouTube, so until my channel gains any form of attention, they are all I am planning to do.

I miss doing stuff just for YouTube. At this point in time, I have the footage for a video I was working on for quite some time. When my last video bombed with only one view over the span of currently three months, I realized there wasn't enough reason to care about it. It is shelved until something can be done.

Maybe I'm just on a high horse. I'm complaining that my life isn't working out as well for me as I wish. Well, personally, I've been there before and this doesn't feel like that. After all, this is the only YouTube post I've made on this blog, and I have yet to rant against the system and even played fair. Honestly, I do care, just not enough to get all that mad. Ever since I was a child I have wanted to make other people happy. I wanted to entertain, to make people laugh. Like all artists and creative types, I do want to be well-known, as that means more people can hopefully enjoy what I am doing. YouTube was supposed to be the thing I could do before all of that happened, even help me achieve that, but that possibility is likely dead and I have to face the reality that my channel will only be successful if I'm successful first.

I think time will be on my side, but I needed to face the fact that the current system is technically against me and there wasn't really anything I could do other than go for another outlet as far as web videos. I chose blogging because it allows me to keep writing every week, and besides, there are no other successful forms of video for the internet. Blip crashed and burned, and to speak candidly for a second, I have no f#(*!ng idea how Vimeo works.

But I miss making videos like this:

And I miss being surprised at when a video of mine becomes a success:

But, I've moved on for now. I really do not believe I will ever be the kind of channel to rake in the remarkably big numbers, especially with the system that is currently in place. I'm taking a break from the platform because I know it's current state, but I look forward to a future where I can return and have some fun.

Anyway thanks for watching be sure to like and subscribe it totally helps me out! Share a comment below in the comments, I'll make a video where I read some of them or something everyone likes those! Tune in soon for when I edit parts of Bee Movie because that's a funny thing people are currently doing right now and I may as well completely steal from them for attention instead of watching the video and learning from their success on how to make good content! When I get a million or 2 subscribers maybe I'll even show you my pe-

I was going to say p#$&s because I censored this post and that's funny.

Why Must Our Artistic Tastes Have To Change Over Time?

Please bare with me on the writing style of this blog post. I try to stay stone-faced professional when I write these, unless it is pure comedy like with my Top Ten Things You Can Do In Naughty Bear post. This one is not a pure comedy, however, this one has a more blunt and personal feeling and I think speaking the way I normally would (barring curse words) is the best way to get this point across.

As of only a few minutes before I started writing this post, I went through my rather long list of YouTube subscriptions. I have had a YouTube account for many years, and with the account I have both created my own videos to help promote myself, and watched content for almost every day of my life for the past few years. There are several channels I still watch often, and some of them are channels I only recently started watching. This content ranges from Let's Plays, deep frying multiple foods, podcasts, animation, video essays, and other notable styles. 

If you had asked me only a few months ago, I could have gone on much longer.

I made the mistake of not counting how many subscriptions I had before, but I have since unsubscribed from a great deal of channels I used to watch all the time. I no longer like videos such as movie reviews where the person just recaps the whole film and adds jokes or pointless pop culture references to eighties kid's films. My patience has worth thin for many half-hour videos I used to set aside time for. While I am willing to wait for a product I really like to release a new episode, I have also decided that some of them are taking far too long compared to my personal investment and interest. To put things in a retrospective for just how many videos I do not care about anymore, I also just reduced the amount of videos in my "watch later" list. The number used to be almost two-hundred, now it is only seventy-three, and a few of the videos I left in had a good deal of hesitation.

Funnily enough, the deleting of over half my "watch later" list came from me looking at it and basically saying the true yet cliched line of "I'm not going to live forever". My head was sick of the fact I was never going to actually watch most of these videos in my too short lifetime, and in doing so, I further questioned if I really cared about what I was admitting I wouldn't watch. Most of the videos that were scrapped came from channels I decided to unsubscribe from. Granted, there were some channels I am still subscribed to and still love that also created videos I deleted from my list, but in many of those cases it boiled down to the fact that I still liked other content they made but no longer liked the kind of content I chose to delete.

Online content is not the only art form I now have different opinions on.

I would like to admit that this and the previous year is the first time in a long time I started reading for pleasure again. My reading choices varied from classics, to unheard of, and to everything in-between. My time reading again not only reminded me of just how much reading is, but I discovered that for the first time in my life, I really love the murder-mystery genre. I used to hate it. I used to think it was cliched, either completely predictable or so unpredictable that it made no sense , or they were just plain boring. And yet after reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I have been going in and out of phases were all I watch or read is murder mysteries. Even bad ones catch my attention and interest.

This sudden genre-love was not my only discovery. During my time reading again; I have fallen in-and-out of love with J.K. Rowling's style (Loved Casual Vacancy, thought Cuckoo's Calling was way too long and padded,), I have gotten closer to liking super-heroes other than Spider-man, and I've outright grown a respect for literature that is far stronger than the one I used to have. That is saying something considering my career is "writer".

After graduating college last December, I took this year to relax and take in all the art and media I didn't have to time for before. I never expected to learn so many things about myself and my personal tastes. Some things are still true; I still love crime-dramas, I still love realism, I still think satire is the hardest and highest form of comedy, and I'm still completely disinterested in high fantasy.

And yet there are many things that aren't the same anymore. I went from regretting that I had a list of video games I never finished, to realizing that there are many good reasons to not finish certain games. I went from being the kind of person to argue that story-telling in video games is more important than gameplay, to realizing that there were too many examples of a good or great narrative being undermined by the fact the controls were nothing short of awful. I have realized that even though it remains my least favorite genre, there are many country songs I genuinely enjoy.

The real funny thing about this, is that I always knew this could happen for things you liked or disliked as a child or early teen. I have always encouraged people to re-watch shows they loved as a kid, to see if it held up to their expectations or not. I've heard too many people defend something with "I loved that as a kid!", meaning they could very well be defending something they don't even actually like anymore as they haven't given it a watch as an adult. I also very recently re-watched the entire CatDog series and discovered a show I thought I didn't care about was in fact very entertaining to me.

We are often told, and just as often talk about, how we become different people as we grow. We even discuss how our literal taste buds change as we get older. Children don't tend to care for vegetables and no one likes beer the first time, that sort of thing. I am very much a different person than I was only a few years ago. Still, I never, never suspected that I would so quickly grow out of something. The very stuff I appreciated everyday of my college life, I now find unfunny and uninteresting only one year after my graduation. I take no regret in my former interests, but it is shocking to look at something I spent so much time admiring, and having to admit it was basically just a phase I was going through. I also never expected to go through phases as a full grown adult man, but I guess those can be more mature than we're often led to believe.

You know, when I was a kid, I hated mint. It disgusted me as a flavor, it killed anything it touched. Now I think mint is one of the most delicious flavors I've ever tried, and I think it goes good with everything. When I was a kid, I thought Tiny Toon Adventures was a good show, and now it's one of my favorites because I know understand so many animation in-jokes that they snuck in, blatantly or otherwise. When I was a kid, I liked the Teletubbies, and I don't need to tell you the utter disdain I have for that show as an adult.

You want to know something else though? In high school, I hated Dr. Pepper. I do mean the cola, in case that is the name of an actual person or a TV show or something. For years, I've wanted to buy it and see if my taste buds are different. See if I'd like it now. I feel it's worth doing, even if it would have been less than ten years ago when I hated it. Seeing how fast I've grown out of media I loved in college, maybe I should revisit some things I used to not like five or six years ago. I remember thinking The Graduate was boring, maybe I'll understand it now. I remember thinking Jaws was a chore to sit through, maybe current me thinks it's a suspenseful experience like I always did with Alien.

What I'm saying is, I think it may be important to find your Dr. Pepper. Something you remember having a strong opinion on, but can't shake the fact it may be different now.

My title for this post is still a question, and I guess I should try to answer it. The truth is, it really just confuses me that said tastes can still shift so hard later in life. I know that I like different things than I did as a child. I know that my early teens have little impact on my tastes in adulthood. I don't understand why there are things I enjoyed as an adult, that I almost despise one year later. I understand growing as a person, I can understand having a completely different personality even after a short amount of time, there are too many life experiences to list that can that to you. I just don't see a reason why my artistic taste buds have to have a drastic change again. I don't think I'll ever again like the stuff that helped keep a smile on my face during college's hard times, and I don't get why.

Sometimes your favorite movies are removed from the list when more come along. Sometimes a growing problem with a TV show makes you give up on watching the newer seasons. And I guess, sometimes you just sit down and go "I don't like this anymore and I don't think I ever will again".

I don't know what to tell you in this case. Things change, even in the span of a year. You can devote a good chunk of your time to something you won't care about anymore down the line. Again, there is no regret for me in this, I will still cherish the time I spent caring about something. It's just weird to live in a world where that can be the only positive thing to say about something you adored not that long ago.