B.A. Baker's Blog, page 7

Dr. Strange 2: My Teenage Dreams Fulfilled

Dr. Strange 2: In the Multiverse of Madness is kinda controversial. Shocking, I know. A movie that basically requires an encyclopedic knowledge to follow. And, of course, a movie that’s more a sequel to a TV miniseries than the actual first Dr. Strange. A lot of people hated this thing, which naturally means I enjoyed it way more than everyone else.

I gave it 3.5 stars! On my first watch, at least. Marvel Cinematic Universe movies tend to drop for me on rewatches, so we’ll see.

The main th...

8 New Oscar Categories We Deserve

New Oscar categories are sorely needed. Even the Academy admits radical change is needed. And new awards are an obvious huge solution.

Every year, the Oscars have worse and worse ratings on TV and streaming, and even big scandals like in 2017 or 2022 don’t seem to have an impact. Awards shows in general have felt this burn for a while, but the Oscars have it real bad, seeming out of touch with popular audiences more and more with each year.

I could argue the Oscars have always been pretty ...

I Got the New Fire Emblem!

Look what I got in the mail today; the new Fire Emblem game!

I wasn’t a mega-fan of Three Houses back in 2019, although I sure did enjoy it for what it was and fell in love with plenty of the characters. (Tragically, in one case.) But I’m a Fire Emblem die-hard through and through, and I’m ready to play the heck out of the new Fire Emblem as soon as I can.

Honestly, I haven’t played through a full beefy video game in a really long time. According to the spreadsheet where I log all the long...

New Year, New Thedude

Welcome to 2023, the year of rabbits and also of B. A. Bakers.

I went another month without a new blog post, finally ending my hot streak of twice-weekly blogs. Sad, because I think some of my best stuff yet was posted this year, but it’s more like I’m saving my chakras up to unleash a big genki-dama blast of good writing this year.

My professional career is currently in a bit of a flux and I’m not sure how it’s going to develop the next several months. So I can’t give accurate predictions...

TERFs in Japan: A Crappy Dating App Story

I’m increasingly angry about TERFs in Japan. Obviously, TERFs are the worst thing ever in general. Ultra-conservative queer maniacs who are basically the gay equivalent of QAnon cultists. But in Japan, this isn’t some bizarre minority of crazy or deluded women. It’s al all-pervasive toxin on LGBTQ+ culture that somehow refuses to die.

Japan is the only remaining country in the G7 without same-sex marriage and with some positively barbaric laws regarding transgender people. It sucks. But, it’s...

Strange World is Going to Bomb. Disney Will Let It.

The movie Strange World has just come out and I only knew it because I write a lot of movie release dates in my planner. There’s been practically no marketing I’ve seen here in Japan, just an unceremonious release. And as far as I’ve seen of North American marketing, it’s just as bad over there.

Is this some sort of Good Dinosaur level audience-unappealing stinker? I don’t know. Well, it has a 66 on Metacritic as of this writing. That’s exactly the same score Good Dinosaur got, so make of tha...

Arita Mitsuhiro – Pokemon Card Art Spotlight

Today, I’ll be spotlighting another Pokemon card artist, Artia Mitsuhiro (view his work here). After my last spotlight on Morii Yuka, I got lots of appeals for more Pokemon artists to cover, and I had to go with another total classic.

Arita Mitsuhiro is one of the main Pokemon card artists who’s been in the game since the beginning. Since Base Set. After Sugimori, he’s probably the most iconic creator to visually depict the franchise. So let’s look at his 25+ years of wonderful art and see ho...

Mourning the Spider in My Bathroom

There was a spider in my bathroom. Not anymore. Now I’m weirdly sad about it.

When I first moved into my house in Shizuoka, giant huntsman spiders infested my house. By that I mean there were 3 or 4 of them. But I couldn’t get them to leave! They kept hiding in or around all the junk I brought but hadn’t unpacked yet, and it made unpacking 1000% more scary. I know huntsman spiders can’t hurt me, and they’re much more scared of me… But I can’t help it! They’re huge and way too fast!

Eventua...

More Striking Romance Comic Covers!

Y’all liked the original post so much that I’m making a follow-up to feature more striking romance comic covers. Plus, it seems like my posts about cool artists and promo art are really popular in general.

This one will definitely get much worse SEO because I’m not sure how I can stretch this article all the way out to 300 words and also feature the keyword “more striking romance comic covers” enough times, but just bear with me and enjoy these covers. Some of them are actually way cooler to ...

200 Blog Posts! Feel Free to Binge ’em.

Gosh, I have 200 blog posts now!

When I started this blog in 2018, it was mostly just to have a place to make story announcements and to host my bibliography page. In fact, I didn’t even make my first real post until January 2019! Since then, the blog’s always just been for rambles. Not enough people subscribe to it for it to be that useful for story updates, although I do still post them, of course. I think Twitter and other social networks are where most people follow me for the actual new...