sorry to mix specific examples with more general ideas. in particular, me having an aesthetic. i sorta stepped on my own points toes; namely, i recognize the aesthetic in "non-blendy" work. things can blend on levels other than pixels.

but, its true, i do sometimes (a key word in my original post) find myself cringing at the results. sometimes i am just a visual guy, who wants peace and pixels, smoothness and blendiness.

some day, when our grandkids are working on levels with five digits, they will look back and laugh that we were worried about an edge here or there! haha