Masturbare Encomium

Although most works of creativity can be branded in some way as masturbation, there are some that are certainly easier to label than others.

A lot of high-profile gaming blogs have recently linked to the ambitious, gratuitous and undoubtedly shameless Haloid video. Each blog had its own reason for recomending the video, though I think that none of these sites would have bothered linking if it weren't for the quality of the animation itself. This sort of thing isn't easy to do. Even with the models ripped, you still have to animate the damn things and without the aid of motion capture suites and without some hefty rendering machines the process can be painful. I experimented in a much similar way with Virtua Anime. Haloid far surpasses my meagre efforts at attempting 3D video-making. Both videos, however, share a similar muse.

Homage and wish fulfillment. That's the key to Haloid and to many similar videos that we work ever so hard to produce. It's a love letter to these video games and like many love letters, it's unrestrained. The creator (Monty Oum) admits that, in terms of wish fulfillment, it was no-holds-barred. Beyond the extremely referential nature of the fight (again, something I am equally guilty of) there is the wonderfully unnecessary dance ending. This tickled me in particular because it reminded me of the early days of cinema where film was recorded primarily to satisfy a "cinema of attractions", giving narrativeless glimpses of wonderful things. In fact, one of the most influential early film works, The Great Train Robbery (1902) is largely the same structure as Haloid. The long spectacle of the robbery/battle is ended with a non-sequitur - in the case of the silent movie classic we see the emblematic clip of a cowboy firing a gun at the camera. Haloid was created as an indulgent delight.  Your own appreciation may, of course, vary.

All in all, I find Haloid to be a totally natural form of creative masturbation. Some will believe that it has crossed the line of acceptable obsession but to say such a thing underestimates the extremes some remixers will go to. Take, for example, BadBoyVenus (very very NSFW). A large number of his creative endeavours were lost recently but he's back on the porno-UCG site and glitzing all his wares for everyone to see.

BadBoyVenus is nothing short of mind-boggling. Exceptional. A true master of creative masturbation... literally. UGC porn sites like PornoTube and  XXXUploads have nearly endless examples of guys jacking off... but not like this. The garish special effects, the love for classic musicals and the sheer determination to be the most spectacular masturbator on the internet push BadBoyVenus to new extremes of self-indulgence. It's wonderfully entertaining stuff, though not the sort of thing that will beckon a new era of mass-appeal derivative videos. An excellent example of personal expression and I thoroughly approve. In many ways both Monty and BadBoyVenus' work put different social taboos to the test while still being, within their context, harmless fun. There's a lot to respect in that.

Keep on masturbating, you're bound to catch someone in eye who will appreciate it. This is the internet, afterall.