This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Scenery Porn: From YKTTW
bluepenguin: Am I justified in thinking that the bit on 5 Centimeters Per Second is a bit long and it'd be better just to say "Makoto Shinkai's movies tend to have a lot of scenery porn," or am I just looking for excuses to delete all that because I actually really like Makoto Shinkai's movies and don't agree that they're boring?
Azukar: I added Final Fantasy X, but if anyone can find a better way to phrase its entry, please go right ahead.
Question — would the original opening of first Chris Reeves Superman movie fit here, or somewhere else? In case you don't remember, it featured an endless flight through sunset clouds, with the credits occasionally flying by. It took _forever_. When I saw it in the theater, several people got up and left. When it was released on tv and home video, they'd changed the credits to white letters quickly flying by a star field.
Luthen: Does Serenity - and by extension the rest of Firefly - count? I know there weren't so many vistas but Joss put a lot of care into the settings and Serenity is kinda the tenth character.
Man Without A Body: Can I remove the quote? It's needlessly obscene, bordering on troll.
el Igore: Shouldn't Batman: Gotham Knight be put under Anime? It's from a Japanese studio.
Pavlov: Chopped the quote in half. A little less coherent, a lot less obscene. Putting the deleted section here: "Crysis is so pretty that were it an inmate in a male prison, it would be the bitch of every motherfucker in that place before you could say Andy Dufresne."
Question — wondering if one should mention Chrono Trigger under the mention of Chrono Cross? The game has made backdrops that definitely function as scenery porn, going above and beyond to capture a specific mood. In this tropers opinion of course.
Question — Do the first six pages of Watchmen's last chapter count? They're basically a succession of images of the carnage wrought by the Big Bad's plan, which is New York with extra dead people and fake alien.
Answer: Nope, that would be Scenery Gorn, silly.
Dentaku: Please, people, if you're going to do stuff like putting redirects on top of this page, discuss that here. Yes, I'm talking to you, Fast Eddie.
Prfnoff: From what I've read, Follies is set mostly on a (stylized) bare stage except in the Show Within a Show sequence, so this trope doesn't quite apply. (The costumes are another matter: when someone remarks on one minor character's dress, it's clear that costumes are enormously important in this show.)
- Stephen Sondheim's Follies uses the old days as a contrast to the bitter lives of the performers now. Ironically, because it indulges in this and Gorgeous Period Dress to make its point, it's rarely given full stagings anywhere; Peter Filichia wrote in his book Let's Put on a Musical! (which discusses the pros and cons of various musicals for theater companies that might want to produce them) that it could be the most expensive production a company could ever mount due to the costumes alone, since the show calls for a big cast.
Muninn: Put the old ARIA picture back on the page. The [=Lot R=} pic was nice, but as far as I could tell, there was nothing remotely resembling a discussion about replacing the picture. (no edit reason, either). The Number, if you have a problem with the current image, bring it up on the discussion page before you go removing things from the wiki.
Dentaku: I also think the ARIA picture is more fitting, since that series consists of Scenery Porn throughout (and was my inspiration for creating this page in the first place).
Dentaku: I reversed the Bio Shock image. It's pretty, but nothing special—lots of games look that nowadays. Aria has a sort of ethereal beauty that is levels beyond that. So let's not start an edit war, okay?
While that is kind of pretty, it isn't exactly awe-inspiring or jaw-dropping; the scenery of Bio Shock, though, is; it has become one of the most famous, elaborate, and beautiful locales in recent gaming, namely due to its attention to detail in atmosphere.
Dentaku: ARIA is the inspiration for this page, so I am putting the picture back. In any case, please discuss changing the main picture here, before you do so—it's still way more polite than just replacing the one that has been here for ages already.
How's it the inspiration for the page? Says who? Unless you give me a real reason, I'm changing it back.
Renagade: I agree with mister random person here. Rapture was amazing when I first entered it in Bioshock. ARIA May be nice and pretty and all, but I never even heard of it before this page, and I've seen my fair share of anime, I'm fairly sure several other tropers here would agree.
Dentaku: Okay, here comes a somewhat lengthy explanation about why I want to keep the ARIA picture:
The phrase scenery porn was first used by Sean Gaffney specifically to refer to the lush backgrounds in ARIA, so I thought it would be a nice Shout-Out to keep an explicit reference to that series on this page when I created it. Also, anyone who has ever seen ARIA will agree that it fits 100%. The Arietta episode, where this screen shot comes from, is nothing but scenery porn, pure and simple.
I think it's a bit of a shame that a lot of examples on this page are not really scenery porn, but merely pretty window dressing. Most gaming examples are like this and Bio Shock forms no exception. Scenery porn goes further than mere pretty pictures: it's an integral part of how the artwork is perceived. Without it, the work would simply not exist. Bio Shock could still be played without the nice backgrounds. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and ARIA are so tangled up with their artwork that it can't do without it.
Besides, not knowing where a picture comes from is no reason to simply remove it. As a matter of fact, referring to somewhat lesser known media is a great way to let people discover new things. Check out ARIA. Who knows, you might even like it.
Buh6173: If you think that Bio Shock can "be played without the scenery", then you've obviously never played the game. The entire draw of the game is its fantastic atmosphere and attention to detail. There are parts of the games where you're not shooting at anything, but just looking out at the majestic view. Without it, Bio Shock would just be another generic shooter.
While ARIA may have coined the term, that's more along the lines for a quote, not the image; for an image, you want something that truly exemplifies it. An average person looking at the article would get a much stronger impact from the art-deco architecture of Rapture than sunlit streets.
Dentaku: I give up. Sorry, sweet ARIA picture, I really tried, but it seems nobody loves you. Ah well, one day you have to let go of your baby. I'll put on Arietta and dream of a better world...
Pavlov: Stuck the old Aria picture at the top of this discussion. It's not the first time an old favorite has been traded out, and there's no reason this one has to vanish.
onyhow: I'm just wondering, in this case will ARIA be qualified as Trope Namer (even for an indirect case like this, since something like this happens to Beautiful Void (Myst) too)? At least it should get this honor, even if the picture was removed...
