A very rambly post about my frustrations with entertainment media in general. I find it harder and harder to find the kind of things i like. Whether it be comics or any other form of media.

I have a very narrow range of interests, and unless something hits my sweet spot, i find it impossible to immerse myself in it.


Maybe i'm just a snob? Mhh okay yeah, i'm certainly kind of a snob. It's really not a matter of quality whether i will enjoy something however, i can enjoy extremely simplistic things. If anything i tend to gravitate towards “flawed” art much more than clean & professional art. Because flaws create personality. I like doodles, i like sketchy styles, i like these little imperfections, they feel so much more personal. It makes it feel human.

The art style is just a surface problem in any case, the content is what gets me. Ask me what genres i like? Well, i like scifi generally. But i certainly won't enjoy something just because it has a futuristic setting. It has to have a certain vibe, a certain… je ne sais quoi. *monocle* It's so hard to put it into words, it's like, i know it when i see it? Something that jumps out at me, grabs me, and forces me to pay attention. Something that will stimulate me, either emotionally or intellectually. There's the snobbiness kicking in. I like writing that was written by someone smarter than me. Or at least someone who knows how to get under my skin.

Characters are very important. If there's at least one character i relate to or obsess over, there's a good chance the story will hook me. I can't stand flat writing. What's the point if everyone feels fake? For fuck's sake, give your characters some personality. Give me stakes that matter. Show me worlds and experiences i haven't seen before. Or at the very least, give me a good laugh.

And there's my problem. I don't even know how to *look for* things i like, because it is SOOOO specific. I wanna find some horror games, i can look through lists of horror games, and maybe, MAYBE, one or two will stand out to me. Most of it just seems like generic garbage. Seen it, done it, save me from this mediocrity.

How do you find the things you like? Just luck? I tend to stumble over it by chance, just from googling keywords. I suppose asking people who are into the same things as oneself, sometimes i ask for book/anime/games recommendations via reddit and such.

I feel overall it's also a matter of “seen too much”, once you reach a certain age you've simply seen all the usual tropes and cliches too many times. At some point i lost my patience with overlooking the lame and boring stuff. I'm too old to have my time wasted, i only want the good stuff.

all I can come up with to fit your criteria:








old issues of HEAVY METAL magazine

lothar wrote:
old issues of HEAVY METAL magazine

Funny you bring that up! I inherited an entire room full of Heavy Metal comics & the likes from my grandfather. Vintage stuff from the 60s & 70s, in several different languages, lotsa obscure french stuff too. The man was a comic connoisseur, and a fetish artist by trade. So yeah… nothing i haven't seen there before either, hahaha.

Though while i do have a few Art Crumb Collections, i can't say it's exactly to my taste. I'm more of a manga reader. But finding underground/indie manga (aka doujinshi) is basically impossible unless you speak/read Japanese. And have the cash and connections to import that stuff. I'm pretty much reliant on the semi-legal fansubber scenes in that regard.

It may not apply to you and your self-admitted narrow range of interests, but Martin Scorcese recently spoke of what the main problem is in this day and age of mainstream entertainment: with their here and now mentality, nothing sticks around long enough for people to really get the most enjoyment out of it. It's not like the old days when, say, a new movie would come out, and stick around in the theaters long enough that if it did really well and people really enjoyed it, people could go and see it multiple times - and of course, going to the theater is a communal experience. Then of course, there was also the prolonged waiting period for such movies to be released on home video, which was usually up to an entire year at best - and the wait was always worth it.

Nowadays, a movie tends to last in theaters only for a week - sometimes up to a month if it does particularly well, then it'll be released on DVD shortly thereafter, and that's it: gone and forgotten. As Scorcese says, we're getting no nourishment from our entertainment like we used to, and I see exactly what he means: for years now, I find it difficult to really get invested into new shows, movies, or other forms of entertainment because, like he says, there's none of the nourishment that I used to grow up with. I, too, can remember loving a movie so well that I would see it in theaters multiple times, and the waiting period for it to come out on VHS or DVD made me anticipate such home video releases all the more.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
It may not apply to you and your self-admitted narrow range of interests, but Martin Scorcese recently spoke of what the main problem is in this day and age of mainstream entertainment: with their here and now mentality, nothing sticks around long enough for people to really get the most enjoyment out of it.

I do think we live in kind of a fast food entertainment age, where making media has been become so cheap that there is a surplus of no-effort crap. Sifting through the crap to find the one or two gems buried beneath becomes exhausting. Kind of a weird paradox. It's easier than ever to connect with people with the same interest, while simultaneously being harder than ever to actually find what you want. There has always been crap, 90% of everything is crap, and of the remaining 10% maybe 2% are relevant to you as an individual. I honest to god envy people who are easily entertained. I wish i could sit back and relax and just enjoy the show like an MST3K mantra.


But i also don't subscribe to the “everything was better back in my day and age” mentality. Of course everything *felt* better when you were younger, because you weren't the jaded bastard back then that you are now. Things were new and exciting because they truly were new and exciting to your younger, more impressionable mind.

I did it to myself. I found my preferred genres in my teens and hunted down everything i could that was related to it, eventually i simply used up the backlog. I'll never find a “new” 80s or 90s anime, because there is a limited amount of it. I used it up, there will never be more of it. It's the fossil fuel of entertainment. There will never be more Lovecraft because the man has been dead for 100 years. Everything boldly calling itself Lovecraftian is a pale imitation of the real deal. At best i can hope to find something that evokes the same feeling it gave me, personally. The Dororo anime wasn't made in the 90s, but it made me feel like i was 12 years old again, wide-eyed and excited, like watching Goku turn Super Saiyan for the first time. The game SOMA wasn't written by Lovecraft, but goddamn, it captures that essence of horror in exactly the way i need it.

When i specifically seek Lovecraftian horror, usually all i get is a couple of tentacles. Like that Abyss ripoff with the chick from Twilight, Underwater? A good thing Lovecraft has been dead for almost a century, cause that movie woulda killed him from pure shame of having his name spoken in the same sentence, lmao.


Look world, i'm an adult. I need stories that satisfy my adult brain. I acquired such a distaste for anything nostalgia baity. Not understanding that sure, when we were kids this stuff was amazing, but we're not kids anymore. Your taste for entertainment evolved with you. Watching DBZ today makes me skip 90% of the filler cause i can't goddamn stand it anymore. As a kid i would have devoured the filler content, plate and all. Maybe as a stupid teen i would have enjoyed that Underwater movie. How was i ever this undiscerning in my taste? Some things i used to enjoy boggle my mind nowadays. I still like a lot of it, but do i really like the thing itself, or do i just like the positive memories i associate with it? Bet is on the latter. Case in point, the last 2 things i truly enjoyed were the Mario movie and that Sonic Prime show on netflix…. So much for high brow writing! If the Mario movie had featured Minions or who knows what instead, i would not have been able to sit through it. And i honestly hate myself a little for liking it at all. But that's how my brain is. Seemingly completely random in what it will enjoy. God i wish Disney still produced hand drawn movies…


I dunno, i don't have much of a point here exact a deep sense of frustration with myself and the world at large. Mostly i just wish i could reset my brain. Wipe it clean and re-experience child-like happiness again for the first time again.

TheJagged wrote:
I do think we live in kind of a fast food entertainment age, where making media has been become so cheap that there is a surplus of no-effort crap. Sifting through the crap to find the one or two gems buried beneath becomes exhausting. Kind of a weird paradox.

That was George Lucas's argument to Scorcese's point, in that with so much mass-produced media in this day and age, it's hard to stand out in that sea of so much sameness, not to mention trying to get yourself some shelf space.

But i also don't subscribe to the “everything was better back in my day and age” mentality. Of course everything *felt* better when you were younger, because you weren't the jaded bastard back then that you are now. Things were new and exciting because they truly were new and exciting to your younger, more impressionable mind.

I'm not saying you're either right or wrong, but IMHO, I would say that everything was better back in my day and age, for a variety of different reasons, one of the biggest being that in those days, most of what we grew up was produced with not just kids in mind, but adults as well, so there was a lot more effort put into the writing and stories to not only entertain the kids with wacky cartoon hijinx, but also jokes, gags, and even innuendos for the adults that would make them laugh, but would also go right over the kids' heads (and believe me, there's so much from old cartoons that I can't believe they actually got away with back then). Watching them again as an adult, they all still hold up incredibly well.

Nowadays, cartoon shows like this are divided into one of two categories: kids only, or adults only, and both are essentially mind-numbing brain candy without any substance to them to get the easiest laughs out of their target audience, but whereas kids only cartoons tend to be watered-down with brain-dead characters who do nothing but stupid stuff, adults only cartoons tend to forego any kind of story or structure for the sake of pushing the envelope as far over the edge as possible in terms of what sort of content they can get away with because, “Hur-hur! See? Cartoons ain't just for kids!”

Even live action TV shows were better back in the day - even before my day during a time I wasn't even born in. Characters, while quirky, were at least appealing and likeable, and their situations and arcs, while sometimes a little broad and absurd, were engaging and entertaining, as opposed to now, where almost every TV character is an unlikeable jerkass (because they're “more relatable” the networks say), and their situations and arcs are almost always about wanting to improve their sex lives.

I will say you're right in that at that age, when everything was still new and exciting, it was rather stiumlatory to our impressionable, yet developing minds, and I will admit that is something I also miss about growing up with new shows and movies . . . the older you get, the more that novelty wears off.

God i wish Disney still produced hand drawn movies…

Well, unfortunately, that won't be happeneing ever again. They tried that with both THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG and WINNIE THE POOH; both flopped at the box office, and Disney blamed it on there no longer being a market for hand-drawn animation, so they shut down that section of their animation department.

Yet somehow, Disney seems to think there's a huge market for their “live-action” remakes of their classic animated movies, despite how the public has been loud and clear about how much they hate them and are sick of seeing Disney doing nothing but.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Yet somehow, Disney seems to think there's a huge market for their “live-action” remakes of their classic animated movies, despite how the public has been loud and clear about how much they hate them and are sick of seeing Disney doing nothing but.

I keep hearing about how “the live action films make money”, but I don't believe it. I honestly think Disney is buying tickets or crooking the books somewhere to get more investors, and it is because Live action is so cheap and disposable no one really pays attention.

It is kind of like how they set up the last 2D movies up for failure, like putting one up against Avatar and the other against Harry Potter. Not only are you going into a race with the mob obviously feeding a steady diet of meth to their horse, but right at the starting line Disney decides to kneecap their own right as the gate opened and say, “see, it wasn't going to work! Off to the glue factory with you.”

The Disney company is full of crooked shysters and charlatains . . . quite sad when you consider that Walt himself was all about creators protecting their creations and denouncing sell-outs.

J_Scarbrough wrote:

Nowadays, cartoon shows like this are divided into one of two categories: kids only, or adults only, and both are essentially mind-numbing brain candy without any substance to them to get the easiest laughs out of their target audience, but whereas kids only cartoons tend to be watered-down with brain-dead characters who do nothing but stupid stuff, adults only cartoons tend to forego any kind of story or structure for the sake of pushing the envelope as far over the edge as possible in terms of what sort of content they can get away with because, “Hur-hur! See? Cartoons ain't just for kids!”

Nah, i gotta disagree with that. There's always been a divide of “for kids” and “for adults”. Stuff that caters to both is a rare and precious exception. The 90s were full of imitation Disney movies, one worse than the other. Quest for Camelot? The Swan Princess? Terrible, the lot of them. No adult would voluntarily sit through any of that. And Disney itself was shoveling non-stop cartoon show spinoffs and direct to video sequels. Life-action Lion Kings is just the modern version of Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. Movies produced for one purpose and one purpose alone: squeezing money out of stupid kids. Like me. I had a shelf of VHS stacked with bad cartoons, and even as kid i knew they all sucked.


Frankly, i don't think the lack of entertainment that at least tries to have some sort of artistic merit is a problem of the times, but a lack of talent on the production end. In Disney's day it was Walt himself who ensured a quality for the entertainment his company produced. The 90s Renaissance was spearheaded by people like the Musker/Clements duo, these dudes were simply very good at what they did. They cared. They wanted to make “good” entertainment. For Pixar it was Lasseter. Nintendo had Miyamoto. For Marvel it was people like James Gunn and Joss Whedon. You need guys like that, the auteurs and geniuses who have the creative brains, the influence and the determination of actually wanting to produce something that is more than a money maker. Right now, there's nobody. No one that i know who forces artistic influence into big budget productions. So big companies are free to only concern themselves with the most effective way to maximize profit, with as little risk as possible. That's how we end up with Trolls and Minions and Boss Baby movies.

And if the best race horse only stumbles its way into the goal, why should the other horses try? There is no role model to give others something to strive for, if a big horse like Disney produces cheap crap that makes money anyway, why should any other company take the risk of producing more than basically a long advertisement to sell more merchandise? Time to greenlight another Trolls movie.

This is the broken windows theory of business. Why should you try to be better, when mediocre is good enough? When mediocre makes enough money, why ever take a risk of making less money? You try selling your artistic vision to some soulless CEO, when you have no examples of risky visions succeeding.

J_Scarbrough wrote:

Even live action TV shows were better back in the day - even before my day during a time I wasn't even born in. Characters, while quirky, were at least appealing and likeable, and their situations and arcs, while sometimes a little broad and absurd, were engaging and entertaining, as opposed to now, where almost every TV character is an unlikeable jerkass (because they're “more relatable” the networks say), and their situations and arcs are almost always about wanting to improve their sex lives.

Yeah, that i feel little more. Been feeling like a lot of shows are afraid to be campy. It has to be either super serious and super depressing all the time, or a straight up comedy. There is no middle ground. Can't have a protagonist in a serious show, who sometimes cracks jokes. Because… people are incapable of having more than one emotion at all times?

Preacher started out as a campy show, with equally serious scenes, silly scenes and even dipping into horror. And then season 3 came and it's just a comedy now. Harrow started extremely somber, all murder and rape all the time. And then turned into an almost surrealist comedy in season 3. It's very jarring, binge-watching that is guaranteed to give you major mood whiplash.

Man, and then there's Witcher. I loved that show's first season with all my heart. Perfect balance of good character writing, serious scenes, funny scenes, sexy scenes, scary scenes… it was so good. And then season 2 came and the fun flew out the fucking window. Now it's just Game of Thrones 2.0, now with more politics*. Shoot me.

(*And i mean politics in the literal Star Wars council debating trade disputes politics. Who gives a shit about all this war council nonsense? Can Geralt just go out, kill some Drowners and have an adventure, PLEASE.)

Careful you might fall down a rabbit hole where you can't watch anything but old black and white movies because you just can't get out of your own way and just enjoy things anymore.

That's another thing too . . . why, why, why must we erasing history by digitally colorizing old shows and movies that were filmed in black-and-white, or crop things because they weren't presented in widescreen? I hate it when that happens! Granted, I love color as much as the next person, heck, even in my original production work, I always playing around with color correction extensively to try and emulate that wonderfully rich and vibrant technicolor look that a lot of films had when they began switching to color, but I can't stand it when something that was originally presented in 4:3 is cropped into 16:9. I know everybody says you lose more of the picture in 4:3 whereas as 16:9 gives you more of the picture, but that's always been horse hockey, people just don't want to think for themselves in this department. I've always noticed more of the picture is actually lost in 16:9 than 4:3, there used to be an entire article online pointing this out, but the author has since deleted it because he used too much unprofessional and colorful language in it, and he didn't want it to hurt his professional life. But, just look at this example of how cropping into 16:9 has ruined SEINFELD. . . .



This is exactly why a few years ago, I began leaving my productions in an “open matte” format so that nothing has to be cropped either way . . . sure the aspect ratio may look a little odd, but as I say, at least nothing's lost either way.

bravo1102 wrote:
Careful you might fall down a rabbit hole where you can't watch anything but old black and white movies because you just can't get out of your own way and just enjoy things anymore.

Don't tempt me. I started a Film Noir marathon recently. Catching up on all the 50s and 60s stuff i missed, cause every other decade is dried up of content. xD

TheJagged wrote:

bravo1102 wrote:
Careful you might fall down a rabbit hole where you can't watch anything but old black and white movies because you just can't get out of your own way and just enjoy things anymore.

Don't tempt me. I started a Film Noir marathon recently. Catching up on all the 50s and 60s stuff i missed, cause every other decade is dried up of content. xD

You ran out of stuff from the 1930s and 40s? Every time I thought I'd done that something else always pops up.