So in the spirit of being the change you want to see on the world
Hey, the AI Curio Bot has had a revamp as of late, and is now more likely to produce recognizable faces than unrecognizable soup. So me, in one of the accounts where I didn't get carried away and created stuff that got me blocked, I've been creating imagined casts for stuff to keep me from trying to create stuff that will get me blocked. Here's my idea of what more or less what a Sequel to Street Fighter from 1994 might have looked like.
My idea is, they release Street Fighter II in roughly 1997, and I imagined actors that might have been around and that might have been cast in these roles and characters that existed back then, so no Kimberly or El Fuerte played by Jennifer Lawrence and Diego Luna. Anyway let's go.
Guy (Dante Basco)
Hugo(Shaq)
Shadow Lady(Ming Na Wen)
Poison (Candis Cayne)
Gouken (Sonny Chiba)
Sakura (Thuy Thrang)
(Cody) Austin St. John
Elias Koteas as Alex
Patrick Stewart as Senoh
Brad Dourif as Necro
Daniel Berdhardt as Gil
Talisa Soto as Rose
Neil Patrick Harris as Eagle
Aaliya as Elena
Mark Dacascos as Akuma
Ving Rhames as Birdie
There's more but they're not as good and you can look at them here! Now you may say this is bad casting or the costumes are bad but...yes. This is what a Street Fighter sequel would probably have been like. I will will it into the world.
"Dreaming hard dry winds are dancing in the sunset You can hear far away eternal voice Nothing changed our love Nothing changed our love I'll be there for you"
There, you're welcome!
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| We're coming in hot! |
You know, I've been using Youtube for over 10 years. To some of you who are younger, for whom Youtube has always been Youtube from after Google buying it, it may seem that Youtube has not changed all that much in a decade. And indeed there's still many things that are basically unchanged.
Yes, this is where you put in the jokes about the comments section.
And I'm not here to lament that it went from a social network (I had "Youtube Friends") to something that tries to sell you Batman and Robin when you look up clips of it. If YT us is now a service then YT is now a service and there's no fighting back against that.
With that said, if Youtube is a service, then we judge it as a service. Here's the service: You browse through the millions of vids, find one you like, click and the video plays. There's channels native to Youtbe providing original content, there's officially hosted preexisting content suppliers, and there's "guy at home trying to get you to help him steal superman." varieties of quality. You can rent or I think buy movies for Youtube, you can..."find" movies on Youtube, you can find somebody who hosted just that good clip from that good show or movie.
There might be some ads, too.
Now, skipping ads is something I generally did not do...because I used my internet browser to watch YT instead of the dedicated app, so I did not get ads. I didn't do it for that reason, I just thought Google had enough control of our lives that I should also be using their app for something I could see on the internet. I considered it a failure on their part not to put ads in the browser, and no, I wasn't gonna reward their failure by watching it in their app.
But I understood that watching this ads helped Creators, so if ads ever played I did not skip them, because I knew at least there was a solid chance Lewis Louhaug or Phelan Porteus or Lindsay Ellis or Larry Bundy or Bob Chipman might see some money from it. I know how this works, a single view is /nothing/ but little by little you fill the cart, as my momma used to say.
I did not like the ads. I don't remember ever seeing a Youtube ad that made me want what it was selling. And while I might have tolerated them, there where certainly ones that crossed some lines. Like I like you guys, but I'm not watching 20 minutes of Prager U just to watch 8 minutes of you. I do not like you THAT much, I don't think I like ANYBODY that much.
But it was understood that watching the ads was broadly good for Youtubers and skipping them, I assumed, sent some kind of virtual signal to YT HQ that you weren't ENGAGING with the ads. When you saw that ad you knew you where doing your part.
Unless Youtube chose to just give all that money to somebody who claimed the copyrights of the work.
Yes indeed, YT has been notorious for years by handling copyright disputes by just putting the ads and giving the entire winnings of that video to whoever claims owns some copyrighted material in it, even if the material is 10 seconds long and the "owner" can't prove it owns anything. This happened to me recently, as a midi of the first 30 seconds of Smoke in the water was met with offers to just put some ads in there and give the money to Deep Purple, or delete the clip.
I am not allowed to monetize my own channel. I used to , but YT changed the rules so that you had to have a lot of views to monetize. So I'm not allowed to put ads for my own gain. If you see ads in my videos just skip them, it's just money going to some company. It does not support me.
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| This Partnership can't be held together. |
So watching the ads supports creators unless it doesn't and they don't even let you know, either. They don't let you know you might be putting up with these garbage ads for nothing. Depending on the content you're watching there's a solid chance that money is going straight to nobody related to the video.
And lately there's been a lot more ads, if you've noticed. That's because Youtube recently rolled out a policy where they're just gonna be monetizing unmonetized content for themselves, off of the people they don't allow to monetize because it "just didn't get enough views" before. They're putting ads in just old videos or videos of clips of shows, and you can't even know if the money is going to Fox or themselves.
So that's Youtube as a service: Where your video you made for fun in 2010 is now making anybody money but you. What's where "prosumers" went. So if you aren't skipping the ads because it might support the creators, remember that there's a solid change it isn't. Like, imagine one of those "antipiracy nags about how 15,000 people worked in this film" and then there's an asterisk like "*and some of them might have even been paid! Who knows? Well not YOU, that's for sure."
Personally on my end I'm always gonna skip, and if I can't skip I'll refresh the page. Maybe it won't be always, maybe sometimes I'll be to busy, but I'll do it when I can. Pretty much all my favorite creators all have said YT barely gives them money anyway, and they're all on Patreon at this point. Supporting authors is a nice sentiment, which is why those who exploit authors always have that one up their old sleeve. They'll then say supporting them is supporting creators.
And no, I don't think I'm important enough to tip the scales of YT with an "ad boycott" that will force it to treat it's creators fairly. I'm just one guy. But if it's all the same, this one guy isn't putting up with more Manscaped ads until you give me a reason.
See? I can change my terms as well.
That's right, I am mostly recovered from the marasm of the Trump era and ready to get back at you on. I even made a thumbnail and stuff can you believe it?
I watched a movie once. It was called Black Water. A rare case of random browsing turned to full movie watch, I watched this movie at the behest of my mother, who was at the time suffering from brain cancer, with very few days to live, so I often think about this. It's one of the last things we did together.
The story regarded 3 people, a newly pregnant woman her husband and a female friend of them, all living in Australia. They go on a trip to a crocodile farm, and then the farm owner offered to take them on a boat trip.
But then it all goes awry when during the boat trip a crocodile overturns their boat and carries away the captain, and the other ones must cling to tall treas while the hungry croc tries to out maneuver them.
The man got eaten in front of them, and one of the women (I forget which one) was bitten and died from the injuries. In the end, the final survivor took a gun from the body of the ship captain, used it to kill the biggest croc, and got out.
A harrowing story of survival. I like those kind of stories. You know, surviving nature, and like, dangerous animals. I liked it.
And then I looked it up in IMDB. Apparently this movie was inspired by real events, which made it even more amazing! Why surely, they must have added some here, and embellished something there, but like if it's inspired by real events you expect the changes to be within reason.
For example there's been discussion about 6 Days in Falluhaj, a video game about...The Battle of Fallujah. Making a videogame based on a real military operation that took place within most of our lifetimes in a war that isn't even over and...well it's the W
ar on Iraq. It's like...known to be bad.
See, that's how I chose to describe the Iraq War. Known to be bad.
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| Pretty bad, yo. |
The devs have discussed that their videogame, which was already cancelled when it was slated to be released in 2009, is "not trying to tell a political commentary", which one presumes means sticking to the facts, right? This videogame, which will be released on PC, will tell the story during that battle where over 800 humans died. It's using the real people who really where there, and a dual campaign where you're going to play as both the U.S. Forces and an unarmed Iraqi trying to escape.(BUT DEFINITELY NOT AN INSURGENT!)
It will not, however, include certain details, like American use of White Phosphorous and Uranium shells, because apparently none of the Soldiers they talked to knew nuthin bout this whole "war crimes" business.
From an interview these guy's heart seems to be in the right place. He's saying he doesn't want the player to come out liking the events, he just, it seems, wants to make you feel like, and for, the U.S armed forces that shot some people there, for some reasons or whatever. And uh...if he's been trying to get this game about this particular even out for 15 years he must REALLY believe in his vision.
But is that enough? Is wanting to tell a good story enough? What is our responsibility when telling a real story involving real people?
There's a general thinking in Hollywood,which for far long is videogame's north star, in which telling a good story trumps reality. Sometimes you condense a whole lot of people into one person. Sometimes, you just include a person that wasn't there, and then kill them off for pathos. And yes, sometimes you lie about war to make one side look better and another look worse.
In Black Water's case the real story is there where 3 men riding on bicycles (neither of them pregnant), when a sudden rise in water swept them away. One of them was unconscious and last seen in the jaws of a crocodile, and the other two hung on to trees for a night until they where rescued. There was no boat, and there was no captain, and there was no gun, and it was a fairly shorter ordeal.
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| I mean...Australia technically exists. |
But it makes a good story, doesn't it? It gives it that extra punch, it makes it relatable. I mean, it seems like a total rat bastard thing to make up, but if it makes the story better, it's worth it. Right? I tugged at your heart strings with these lies, and if it made you feel what I wanted you to feel, do I have a responsiblity to her, to you, to myself, to tell the truth?
Because the difference between heroic and villainous in media can often be what camera angle is covering you and what notes are playing while you describe what it is you want. The difference between invader and liberator can be an establishing shot of cheering people. And that's already a heavy burden when the characters are fictional and not real people. What you choose to say and not say matters.
If you're gonna dip your toes into that water, you need to take that into consideration.
They made a sequel to Black Water. Thinking of watching it. Will they raise the scales? Are the crocs bigger, the situation more dangerous?
I do like a regular creature feature.
