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As I said in my longer comment, but I want to repeat here. Quality is not subjective. It is a postmodernist meme to say so. It is at the same level as saying any other baseless meme.
I never thought I would hear Matthewmatosis say the phrases "Rouge the Bat's vagina" and "Tails taking a stinky poopoo in his diapie" in a dry, academic context.
Courage...this took courage. Fuck me mate...what part of this took "courage" exactly? RU-vid has to be the most hyperinflated media in existence. Who out there is saying, "I can't believe he did this! I'm never watching another one of his videos!" Who? This isn't even close to extreme. So then what? Forfeiting the ad revenue? Marginal. ...Courage. I don't if you know what that means. As an aside, you got 72 thumbs up. How many were just because of your name? What courage does it take when you receive such blind support?
Am I supposed to know who OP is? Because I don't (so far). As to the courage point: I do think it's valid. Matthew has produced videos on games, in which he tries to objectively analyze and critique those games. That, over time, has garnered a specific audience that probably has expectations in regards to the quality of the content, as well as the video's topic. Since this game and the video analysis contain topics and imagery that can very well be disturbing to some (and it did disturbe me, at times), it might seem not fitting or outright a waste of time, to some viewers. I also doubt that people are going "I can't believe he did this! I'm never watching another one of his videos!". But we live in a time where the smallest comments can create outrage - or at least percieved outrage - among a fanbase. That, in turn, can lead to alienating the fanbase and discourage people from giving support. In this case, Maffew is a content creator and might lose financial support under his voluntary system. Maybe some patrons don't want to support this kind of content or view it as a major step down in quality and might, hence, cancel their subscriptions. Even if it's just for a month, that means a financial loss for Maffew. Maybe even a gradual decrease over a longer period. Of course I don't know how dependant he is on it. I doubt he is at all. But it is my feeling that even "doing something out of the norm" can take courage.
Jim Nastycs okay, definitely, I can mostly get that, at least in concept. I'm truly surprised that this content would disturb ANYONE who's spends any amount of time on the internet. But, in an odd way, I might be glad that such" innocence" still exists. I would further argue that he already has some content that is adult, definitely violence and can you have a Bayonnetta video that isn't suggestive? But, maybe, some people only watch his more family friendly content (the Nintendo stuff) . That's cool. Courageous is still too far, at least for me personally. Way too far.
"Warrented or unwarranted, being turned on by Tails taking a stinky poo poo in his dipey may have some psychological baggage" This is the greatest and worst sentence I have ever heard.
In a time where everything is memes and played for laughs, having someone to have a calm and racional look at even the strangest of things is without a doubt refreshing. Thanks Matthew
I like that this video starts with an insightful commentary on the nature of art and post-modernism but then you also put the sonic spring noise when you say springboard
In order to understand post-modernism, lets start with the name: (post=after+modern=current year)=future; in short post-modernists are a bunch of soy-addled narcissists who appended presumptuous jargon to their work as if to say that they're the future, from there we can draw a direct line between progressivism & post-modernism in that they are both philosophies whose adherents assume their ideas are the future because they'll define the future, & whatever they consider to be the future is largely dependent on upending tradition on the grounds that it's old with little regard for how or why some traditions become entrenched while others are lost to time, so not only are these ideologies based on an appeal to novelty, they're largely unscientific for rejecting the collective wisdom of the past on the grounds that it's old & probably racist
In order to understand anime, lets start with the name: anime=a contraction of animation; as the use of the term is generally endemic to Japan, it's often used as slang for Japanese animation in the west while the word itself just means cartoons in Japan, meaning that technically speaking, the Simpsons is anime.
I can't say that I ever looked at Sonic Dreams Collection with such a specific lens, but I think this analysis brings up an interesting point while completely missing the catalyst. Matthew mentions that the first game, Make My Sonic, is an innocent game, and it only starts getting weird on the third game, Sonic Movie Maker. However, there is a gap there: the second game, Eggman Origin. In hindsight, calling it Origin seems to be an obvious choice. When you first try to load the game, you quickly find out that it is inaccessible, since it was meant to connect to "Sega's" servers. It's easy to skip over, not thinking anything more of it. However, those who search the internet will find out that through tinkering with the files within the game, you can actually play Eggman Origin. The description of Origin says that almost nothing is known about it. Does anybody really know when or why the Sonic fandom became so intertwined with odd fetishes? Origin, while strange, still doesn't have that weird fetishistic material that the third and fourth games have, which makes sense. Instead, they player is simply cast in an open void-like area, free to explore however they feel. The analogue is that the person playing wants to share their Sonic OC with the internet, but in searching for those who would be interested, they became exposed to the weirdness. Eventually, your Sonic OC is able to "ascend" in Origins. It seems that ascension is the segue to the fetishism that starts in Movie Maker.
Chronis67 even though it’s second the process of finding and playing it definitely comes last. Maybe it’s not as much about segueing into fetishism but breaking off from the original act of creating an oc into something else. Maybe it is into fetishism, but maybe it’s away from sonic completely. Considering it’s EGGMAN, his main antagonist and not sonic himself, he could represent adulthood, the one that children and certain fans either resent or fear going into. Some of them connect to that fake server, make the steps to feed those worms, and finally give up their awful oc to move on. Considering that this also takes you to an actual online server to connect with other people, it’s a way of finally stepping out. Some never do and thus never play Eggman origins, and end up becoming social outcasts, making more Sonics ocs or fetishes or game analysis videos for the internet
I think in keeping with the postmodernism that Dreams might be going for, when/if Eggman Origins is played goes along with that narrative. Make My Sonic might be incredibly shallow, but it *is* a character creator. The fact that the second game is a MMO, with which you would undoubtedly need a created character, it seems to hope for a certain mindset from the player. The first possibility is that the player wants to immediately find out why it doesn't work, which could be tied into wanting to show off the character they just made, which would then in turn be an implication towards the whole Sonic OC fandom. The second possibility is that the player simply moves to Movie Maker. They never had that moment of wanting to share their Sonic right then and there. After playing Movie Maker and possibly Neighbor, the player then would have to choose whether to try and return to Origins (implying they want to continue down the hole) or just ignoring it all together (implying they are either done with the "joke", or simply didn't get the arrows hinting at more).
Actually, when you said you are planning to upload reviews of Zachtronics games in the upcoming months, I never thought you'd start with their master piece "Sonic Dreams Collection", where the actual puzzle lies in questioning your life choices.
Matthew is much more willing to talk about uncomfortable and heady things than any other game essayist on youtube. Just one of the several reasons why he's the best one.
christian sonic art is from kids whos pious parents didnt give them remotely violent games, enter sonic, a game about breaking robots and freeing woodland creatures. no one hurt, no blood, its the only popular game with a huge fanbase to socialize with. mario kills turtles... and so on.
At the same time I think the phenomena of sanic fetishism/furry fetishism in general could also be attributed at least in part to overly protective parenting in the late-90's/early-2000s. A lot of the kids into this stuff were most likely white early-teens living in America, under strict christian parenting. The only games they were allowed to play were stuff like sonic, because it's just about "cute animals" doing relatively-non-violent stuff. However at the same time this kind of media was also the only way for those kids to explore their sexual proclivities as they went into puberty, because they wouldn't have been allowed to play or watch anything more mature. Combine this with the internet - an incubator where these kids could connect with each other and share their proclivities not under the watchful eyes of their parents, and what you get is a ton of sanic porn filling up the internet.
That is true, there's more to fetishes than sexual repression. I can definitely say that Sonic was middle America's video game character of choice, though, and that spectrum covers millions of kids going through puberty at the turn of the milennium.
I’m blown away right now. I was never expecting to see a game like this on the channel, but you approached it with more in-depth analysis than I thought the game had deserved, and executed it superbly.
I hate myself for finding "Stinky poo-poo in his Diapey" so funny at thirty one years old but got damn did that line get delivered better than half my amazon prime orders.
There's nothing to feel bad about. Matthew seems to admit that this game is funny for it's kind of shock value, and this is about the same thing. You expect serious discussion on a game and get that line out of the blue (no pun intended).
I remember when I played sonic dreams collection, I had a lot of fun picking apart its secrets, and what I personally took away from the game's meta-narrative was the sexualization of minors in media. Sonic and his friends in sonic movie maker are given a pretense of adulthood during prom, despite it being a high school event, and when the game progresses towards childbirth and parenthood, it then infantilizes them, turning characters who had just made the jump to adulthood back into babies. Adulthood at that point isn't something you grow into, it's a status that's applied to the consumer, with childhood being the status of a person turned into a product to be consumed, both literally and figuratively in sonic movie maker. On top of all that, sonic giving "mpreg birth" to tails opens up into a "meat hallway" which then leads to you being given birth to. Sonic hasn't even actually been born and yet we're seeing him go through excessive sexual fetishes and eventually giving birth. Sonic is then one of the parents after you fall out of rouge, but tails and blaze are the babies. The fact that you start out in Rouge's belly instead of a womb reinforces the idea that childhood is a consumed product rather than an objective age signifier. The game's hidden content and secret word bubbles even convey uneven power dynamics and the removal of freedom and choice (master and slave bubbles, "I'm sorry, daddy", one of the eggs creates a "pro-life" word bubble) Basically what I read from sonic movie maker is that those with the status of adult are given power over those deemed to be children, who are fetishized and dehumanized for the consumption of adults, both in and out of media.
I gotta admit, my knee jerk reaction was that this was going to just be some sort of meme video, which aligns perfectly with the line about this probably being seen as just some shock value game by most people. But the actual analysis is great, it takes being open minded to tackle a topic like this without just instantly falling into mockery.
Has Matthew Matosis finally lost his mind? In all seriousness, this analysis is hilarious and insightful. Please keep giving your thoughts on anything that peaks your interest in the future.
*Piques, not peaks Sorry, I can't think of a way to say that without sounding rude, but it's an uncommon enough phrase to see written down that I can't tell when someone actually doesn't know that they're using the wrong word (vs sth like your / you're, which feels a bit petty to point out).
With every video, I'm more and more convinced that no one can make these types of videos better than Matthew. The only RU-vidr I trust that makes interesting videos despite what everyone else is doing or what may get views. I am so proud to be a member of this community. You really inspire me Matthew!
This is one of your best videos, it deals with interesting subject matter most people would just dismiss as too dumb/jokey to be analyzed, has several hilarious deadpan jokes and is overall quite thought-provoking.
That last scene hit me hard if only because just from seeing it I instantly got the joke/criticism. It says "Congratulations, It Takes A Village". That's the name of the episode of Sonic Boom they introduce Shadow in. It's no coincidence that Shadow is present in the scene. Shadow being the original recolor hedgehog, as well as a character very popular with the fanbase. Naturally, the OC you make is also present as Shadow may have been the progenitor of the recolor fan characters. It's poking fun at how that particular episode was lauded by fans exclusively for including Shadow as well as at the legacy that the character caused. Holy shit I might be autistic.
Quick google shows It Takes A Village first aired on September 20 2015, while Dreams Collection came out August 10 2015. While Dreams came out first it's not unreasonable to think that the synopsis of the episode was already known at the time, which would even make it topical to the fanbase at the time.
Man, Sonic Dreams collection was such a genuinely surreal experience. It's so weird to think a game satirizing "Sonic DeviantArt cringe" kind of stuff is legitimately a work of art, and the class on environmental storytelling in games I'm taking really pushed me to think about it further. I'm so glad someone else has given thought to it, and it's also really refreshing to see honest, thoughtful, good-faith discussion of the aforementioned "cringe", so kudos to you. :)
matt i fucking love you, such a unique video that borders on unprofessional however you are still able to portray well thought out concepts and ideas. stay gold man
That's absolutely fascinating to think about, to my surprise... Made me look back to my Sonic fanart from highschool, too. Nothing lewd, I've just always felt fascinated by different cartooning styles. I moved on to Redwall for two years afterwards.
Wow, I liked this more than I thought I would, and what you said about art (specifically about post modern art, but also about art in general) really addressed some issues I'd previously not considered.
Great video Matthew. Wonderful to see this side of you and aproach to videogames and the odd culture that surrounds it. Most of these topics i've heard have mostly been aproached in a juvenile joking way, but this can reshape peoples interest about them a bit. You handled the history of games, the creation/creators of games, its consumers/fanculture, gave them understanding and compassion, psychological advice and tackled the nature of the medium itself. It was a wonderfully specific and multifaceted approach of something unanimously agreed as a laughingstock yet very important for a large group of others. If this isn't a work of love, than I don't know what is.
Great video Matt, definitely an enjoyable departure from your usual material. I'll admit I saw Dreams Collection as primarily a shocking joke game, which I think at heart is probably what it mostly is, but your construction of the three games building a narrative was really interesting. Hope you do more "story-focused" videos like this in the future.
KAZ He has like 1,000 subs how on earth could you have met him before this video? I see these comments all of the time where a big name with 400k subs comments on a video and people respond with "You watch this too!?!?"
I'd be more surprised if sexual fan works didn't reappear after being magically undone, than if they did. It just seems like a new manifestation of an ancient human propensity. We may not have had cartoon hedgehogs, but ancient mythology had no lack of gods and spirits having sexual shenanigans. I doubt it was all for the sake of the metaphor. The first artist who made Sonic porn still needed to have that idea.
I had no idea what to expect when I saw this, but I'm glad I watched it. :P Great analysis Matthewmatosis! :D Who knows what their true intentions were, but I feel that your sentiment of the game as a whole being a mirror held up to the community was pretty spot on. :P
There's a huge amount of insight in such a short video. I agree on what you said about fetishes. I personally think they're not bad per se, but sometimes they come associated with some psychological issues. It's not about being a prude. It's that sometimes they become such an important part of some people's personality that they make them unable to participate in other social circles, trapping them. Being into Sonic fetishes should never be the main aspect of someone's identity
