#RIP Geoff

[dogwholivesontheinternet]

Don’t bully or they will find you (volume warning at the end)

How do you get rid of the mature label

[killaura]

this was by the far one of the most insane show experiences I’ve ever had. seeing thursday as god intended in a 300 capacity, barricade-less venue. mind altering

[fuzzpetalz]

omg it’s geoff rickly

[nebula1734]

I started watching Rooster Teeth in middle school and it was very influential on who I am today. I fucking loved RvB, and Achievement Hunter is part of the reason Im into video games today.

While I haven’t really watched them in a couple years, the shutdown of the company feels like losing a close friend. Especially watching people like Geoff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo have to talk about the end of something they worked so hard to build is super difficult. Seeing Geoff cry was so so shocking and hard, especially after he was so often the spokesperson for the company when something bad happened.

Rest in peace, Rooster Teeth.

[unholyverse]

ta da! i made a waterparks mini zine to give to them at sad summer fest :3 behold my hysteric work filled to the brim with tween magazine references, murder jokes, and the combined sense of nostalgia and cringing at outdated shit

[wheredidalltheusersgo]

"be normal about Geoff or fucking die right now."

Me asf:

[smfstump]

sooooo thursday ct is going insane

[dirt-mccracken]

Rose Books, Co. Dialogues #001, Geoff Rickly and Chelsea Hodson, Summer 2023

[onlylonelylatino]

Blue Beetle, Booster Gold and Rip Hunter

[awsteb]

greatest images in the world

[indecisive-dizzy]

i am *this* close to making Geoff/Jeff playlist,,, i need to be the content i wish to see

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 14/04/2024

Thwâmpröck Desert

Season 8 No Album Release (Read More)

Ripped by Madinstance

So you know how yesterday's post was about a ripper with a very clearly defined niche of work, with Jamangar and Locked In The Underground? And earlier in the week I was covering the sheer prowess of ripper Madinstance, the raw power he exudes with I will Never be a Redneck? And just a few more days before that, where I talked about how much Mario Kart Wii's music means to me with Sweatpants Select? Well amidst my lineup of possible future posts, I slowly realized how perfectly Thwâmpröck Desert fit all three categories - a great way to end the week, and another Season 8 rip to boot.

Madinstance is an exceptionally skilled ripper, that much I hope I've made clear over my past posts on him. But with a few exceptions from time to time aside, he's also a ripper with a rather particular focus - a lot of his greatest rips, such as Every Mob Wants to Rule My World, Fell From a High Place (Reprise) and M​-​O​-​O​-​G City, are all focused on paying respects to Minecraft and its legendary original composer C418, wheras recently Initial Deluxe (I've Just Raced on this Course Before) appears to reveal a newfound love for the Mario Kart series. You may think at first thumbnail glance that Thwâmpröck Desert is an extension of that, a rip of a Mario Kart game, but there's one more field of his expertise that I'm yet to cover on here. C418 is beloved by many, yes, but within those privy to video game music history, particularly in the chiptune community, few composers are as revered and celebrated as the Follin brothers, Tim Follin and Geoff Follin.

To VGM aficionados, they need no introduction - but then, its those same aficionados who would know such things as that Robocop on Game Boy of all games has amazing music, as I discussed in Viva La Robocop. Most others, those who are primarily video game fans, will simply choose their favorite composer based on their own favorite games. That's completely valid too, of course, many long-running franchises like Kingdom Hearts, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dark Souls and so forth have key people composing for them that are incredibly distinct, to where you KNOW what a Kingdom Hearts game will sound like, what a Dark Souls game will sound like, and so on. Yet what makes the Follin brothers so fascinating in contrast, is that their soundtracks were attached to all kinds of games from all sorts of places: Ecco the Dolphin on Dreamcast, Silver Surfer on NES, Pictionary on NES, Plok! on Super Nintendo - practically the entire spectrum of games of the 80s and 90s, from shovelware to all-time classics, the Follins contributed to. Yet to them, the individual game quality hardly mattered! Be it Pictionary or Plok, Tim and Geoff Follin composed every soundtrack like it was their life's greatest achievement, creating full-on chiptune prog-rock in games that had NO business going that hard (I know that's a bit of an overdone and reductive turn of phrase, but really - PICTIONARY???) The brothers knew how to make any platform they were working on positively sing, and their obscure weirdo games have become titans amidst VGM enthusiasts as a result. An underdiscussed side of video game history, still cherished by a specific subset of nerds yet today.

Which, then, brings us back to Thwâmpröck Desert - an arrangement of one of Tim Follin's most insane pieces, the title screen music for NES game Solstice. It deserves a listen all of its own - the way it fakes you out with the most barebones little ditty of all time before switching into a rock masterpiece is an absolute work of art, and the piece just keeps growing from there, at once impossibly layered yet incredibly cohesive. Madinstance LOVES ripping the Follins' work, he's made a name for himself in part for ripping the SNES game Plok! in particular during Season 6 and Season 7, yet even still I was unsure how well Thwâmpröck Desert could really work. Its not a rip of a Follin composed game like the aforementioned Plok! rips - its arranging this impossibly dense piece of music into a song that already sounds like the violin version of pure, yet elegant, panic. Yet I suppose that also makes it the perfect fit for the Solstice title theme's sheer density - and when actually listening to Thwâmpröck Desert, its hard to imagine that Thwomp Desert ever sounded any different.

It's just - GAAHH!!! Its fucking mind-boggling how good it sounds, how this odd song I'd barely thought about from Mario Kart Wii wound up being the perfect template to arrange Follin's music into. The melody's string instruments are perfect for the Solstice title theme's pure distilled chaos whilst still capturing that sense of elegance and flow, and the most quirky instruments still present in Thwomp Desert add a delightful texture to the arrangement. I have to pause it every 10 or so seconds I listen to just process all that I've heard - the percussion, lead, backing, the progression of the song, its all handled absolutely masterfully, I cannot BELIEVE this was just dropped on us on a normal tuesday! I will Never be a Redneck was at least a season premiere!!

Whew...well, alright, I hope you get the picture - The Follin brothers' music fucking rocks, and I am SO glad that a ripper as amazing as Madinstance has taken it upon himself to pay regular tribute to their work. Games like Mario Kart Wii are leagues more mainstream than the games that the Follins typically worked on, and the idea of SiIvaGunner getting less VGM-savvy viewers to find out about these legendary composers - it just makes me really happy! Madinstance's rips are bangers to be sure, but much like Beautiful! ~ Curveball of Sean Kingston, like Beyond the Floating Isles, like Gate Happy: they're bangers that can also open up a whole new world of musical interests to viewers like you and I. And isn't that just the coolest way for SiIvaGunner's art of subversion to live on in?

(oh, also, its called Thwâmpröck Desert because the Solstice NES game takes place in "Kâstleröck" and I just found that very funny)

[comfortfoodcontent]

The Star Spangled Kid aka Stargirl aka Courtney Whitmore Profile Page from JSA - Secret Files & Origins #1 

By Geoff Johns and art by Jason Pearson

[unholyverse]

i made parx pokemon cards! i put them onto actual holographic pokemon cards so they look even cooler B)

[wheredidalltheusersgo]

Ezekiel stealing Geoff’s shirts wondering why all of the buttons are gone

Geoff stealing Ezekiel’s shirts and wondering why all of the tags were ripped off (not cut by scissors, ripped apart with bare hands)

Ezekiel's shirts and hoodies probably look like CROP TOPS on Geoff 😭😭

Ezekiel, however, is actually very cozy in Geoff's shirts

[i-aint-here-man]

Wow, he really hates that kid

Src->Booster Gold #1 [fyi: "that kid"=Superboi Prime]