In the last episode, we talked about the prevalence
of sexy "Overwatch" fan art.
Let's see what you had to say.
So it's end of the year, and I'm going
to give myself a little bit of a present, which
is to saltily respond to a negative comment
and put it at the front of the comment response video.
I wish I had a box to unwrap, as though this were something
that I were giving to myself.
So hold on, Lordpoison671, who, I'm not going to lie,
I chose you because your name is what it is.
I understand that you are frustrated maybe
by the complexity that we treat cultural and media-related
concepts with.
You were in numerous company.
I don't know that you were in good company,
but there were certainly lots of your company.
And what I would like to ask, the thing
I would like to know-- and I think
by saying that, what I mean is, this is a rhetorical question
and I don't actually want to know because I feel
like I know what the answer is.
Is whether or not you feel similarly
about science questions?
Hypothetically speaking, if you were
to watch a YouTube video about, say, why there are tides.
And it was a minute long, and the host shut up,
and they said, it's because of gravity
that's related to the moon and the tides
get squeezed because of a kind of force that's
like a hydraulic force, and that's why we have tides.
Like, comment, subscribe.
Would you feel a little cheated?
Would you feel like maybe that's too simple an explanation
and that you would want to know more
and that you'd want to know why?
And then why to the answer to that question?
And then maybe why to the answer to that question?
What I'm trying to say is that in this case, I am the tides
and Tracer's butt is the moon.
To everybody who noticed that we had called out rule 34
in the top line of the description,
Franklin Allen's comment is essentially
why we didn't mention it.
That, it is a law, a rule, of the internet that
doesn't really describe why things happen,
only makes a claim that things must,
which is not the case and sort of transgresses
one of the things that we tend to like
to make sure is, we're always doing at Idea Channel, which
is giving people agency and not technology or media.
So this is a great comment.
Links to this one and all the others in the place where
all the links are.
Matthew Glif writes a really great comment
about the aspects of characters that people
might want to know more about and to kind of have
that effective [INAUDIBLE] that we talked about and gives it
a really great name, which I might-- actually, Matthew,
I might steal this-- he calls it "unfinished business,"
as a name for characters where a fan
group can fill in some details.
I really like that.
Whirlingjibberish, on the subreddit,
brings up a really good point that we didn't really
get to in the episode, which is a lot of the popularity
of "Overwatch" and therefore, the characters and the thing
that might explain why people would want to spend more
time with them outside the game is, how positive
the experience of playing the game itself is.
And this is something that I've had a lot of conversations
with friends about.
How good of a job Blizzard did creating
a game that at as many steps and interactions as possible,
reinforces the idea of cooperation and teamwork
and working together and complimenting people and being
positive.
And I think that, yeah, this is a thing that we definitely
overlooked or didn't spend enough time on.
That, yeah, there is a kind of positivity and optimism
to be found in the details of the game that is uncommon
when it comes to multiplayer online games especially.
Phoenixius mentions something that there was-- actually,
we had a section of it.
I had written a section of it for this in the script
but ended up cutting it for time.
And that is the relationship that all of this
has to the practice of Doujinshi, which
is a sort of more Japanese, considered
Japanese, practice of writing erotic, drawing erotic fan art.
And there was actually a really good paper
that Lindsay Brown mentioned in her piece--
if you read that-- that is really, really great
and I'll put a link to it in the description
and maybe you'll be able to find it on the internet
or get access somehow.
Because it's about this idea and the importance of it
and sort of digging into it and figuring out how it works
and what it is?
Yeah, really great.
John, I mean I have, at least from my experience,
which is limited, the MLP and CLP community
seems to be both quantitatively and qualitatively
different from the erotic "Overwatch" fan art community.
My guess was always that the fact
that "Overwatch" is mostly humanoid people.
It's people, except for Winston and Zenyatta,
but that "My Little Pony" is mostly animals
and so the animalistic nature of that media
would make it harder for a lot of-- for a contingent of people
to find it effective in some way.
But maybe I'm wrong, and I would be
curious to know what other people think about this.
Dustery makes the argument that one of the reasons "Overwatch"
might be so popular in this way is
how the characters that we play in "Overwatch"
are not just detached media figures.
That they are characters that we play, friends that we have,
tools that we use, personalities that we become interested in,
and that that is particularly unique for them in the fact
that they are related to a video game.
And I think this is really interesting
and an idea that, I think, I will dig more into.
Sort of reminds me of the video we did a while back
about controlling versus being your avatar
but then extended to three or four more senses.
And finally, Noah Sifferin points out
something that, I think, is related in a lot of ways
to some of the stuff we talked about in our millennials are
ruining everything video, which is the degree to which video
games and, of course, "Overwatch"
are geared towards a younger audience,
and so have this kind of stink of youth culture on them.
And that, in so far as youth culture
is or is strongly related to popular culture,
that those things are then guided heavily by sex appeal.
And so there is a very complicated push and pool
and political relationship between a younger audience,
the need to be approachable, the return on creating characters
that are attractive and have a kind of youthfulness to them.
But I think, yeah, this is super insightful.