Midway into December already....

[rogueslayer452]

++ We are on lockdown again because cases have risen significantly. Seriously, what is so difficult with abiding by the rules, staying at home, wearing a mask and social distancing? I'm so tired.....

++ The Last Of Us: Part II basically swept The Game Awards, including best performance by Laura Bailey as Abby Anderson and Game of the Year, and honestly I am so incredibly happy, especially when you consider what happened earlier in the year with the leaks and people bashing the game before even playing it and people who cannot separate fiction and reality harassing and sending death threats to Laura for the character she played, these wins are absolutely well-deserved. I know that there are genuine criticisms going into this though, mostly when it comes to awarding crunch culture and the mistreatment of employees, a massive problem within the gaming industry as a whole and that shouldn't be ignored. And yeah, award shows in general are often popularity contests, but I'm not going to lie and say that I don't feel somewhat vindicated that something I love won and felt was well-deserved (and it sucks that there are these other behind-the-scenes factors that go against it, aka crunch culture). The Last Of Us franchise, while not entirely perfect, is a masterpiece of gameplay and storytelling, and The Last Of Us: Part II delivered more of that in a brutal and heartbreaking way.

++ With all the announcements made of upcoming Disney/Marvel/Star Wars/etc content, my overall feeling is just....meh. There may be couple of things that I'm curious about, but otherwise I'm just so exhausted. Between the constant reboots/remakes and large continuing franchises being announced every five minutes it seems, I'm just so burnt out. We've known for a long time that the entertainment industry lacks in originality, but seeing these announcements back-to-back really drives it home.

Comments

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

I think honestly it's just the sheer amount of it that we've had in our faces for the better part of a decade, and now they're ramping that up exponentially. I think there's just way too much to care about.

That's precisely it. There's been so much for so long that, aside from 2020, we've always had a presence of these franchises that having a long list of upcoming projects from them just feels so empty. And the remakes/reboots add to that emptiness, since it's less about originality and more about banking on nostalgia. And it is very, very overwhelming.

(Of course, they're not all going to be released at once and surely COVID will play a major role in determining whether or not these even make it out in the future, but seeing the sheer size of everything that was announced is quite overwhelming and it makes me just feel less inclined to be at all excited even for things that do look interesting.)

Also, I'm bitter because we had a good Marvel television line-up that explored the lesser known characters of the universe, many of them had their own concepts and genres and ways of telling the stories and push the envelope that way and were all original in the way they presented themselves, but those were all cancelled (the only one that got to finish proper was Agents of SHIELD). I'll admit to being curious about She-Hulk and seeing Kate Bishop, but I would rather it not be held by Disney+ and the short leash they'll be on, y'know? Which is another issue altogether that we won't see more risk-taking with these newer MCU-based shows.