#annakie's tah stuff

[annakie]

“Wait!  Nathan’s doing his GIF!  He’s doing his GIF!”

[fyeahthrillingadventurehour]

Adventurekateer Resources

Greetings Adventurekateers! (Wow, it feels great to say that again!)

Since it's been a year or more since the TAH fandom has been very active, as we’re ramping back up, I thought I'd make a quick reminder of some of the TAH resources out there!

First, this here blog, Fyeahthrillingadventuehour was originally made by @shannondapper and now co-modded by @annakie (the one writing this post right now.)   We're a blog run by Adventurekateers for Adventurekateers.  We do our best to bring you all the news from TAH and those that write and star in it, as well as some of the best stuff that gets posted on tumblr, twitter or wherever else on the internet. 

The official TAH blog is here: workjuice.  You should probably follow that, as well! 

We have quite a few resources on this blog's main page I'd like to point out to get back into the swing of things!

An about page, which gives a little more detail about what FYTAH is all about.  We also have a source and content policy which guides what will be posted on FYTAH.  We take sourcing seriously around these parts.

We also have a tags page. Most  FYTAH content has been extensively tagged, and most of those tags can be found on the tags page, so feel free to use that tag page to find TAH content posted on tumblr!    

The official links page will help you navigate to all the official TAH content on the web.  The TAH twitter, the website, Facebook, merchandise, etc. The page also contains links where you can find Workjuice players in social media. At the bottom are some cool extras where you can actually see TAH performed a little bit online, and official videos. 

We also have a page of fan works.  Here you will find links to things like TAH Fanfic on AO3, 8-tracks and other TAH-related blogs.  If you run an active TAH fan blog (as in, solely dedicated to TAH and no personal posts or non-TAH related posts), or think we've missed something, feel free to submit to be listed here. Please also note that we only link to blogs who properly source their content when applicable.  If you are a fan artist, giffer, crafter, fic author or whatever, please feel free to submit a link to a tag on your blog with your original TAH fan works, as well!

I’m sure the links pages need some updating.  I’ll work on that in the next few weeks!   There’s still a lot of great content there to explore!

The next most important thing to know...

We have an extensive Thrilling Adventure Hour Wiki!  Just about anything you'd like to know about TAH can be found there!  If you enjoy wiki editing, please feel free to read the How to Contribute section, then jump on in and help!  A few important pages on the wiki we'd like to point out real quick: 

If you're new to TAH, please read over the New Listener FAQ for important information and to help orient you to the show.  

Please check out the Sparks Nevada Universe Continuity Guide to help get you through Sparks Nevada by not missing any episodes (there are several not labeled as Sparks Nevada episodes) and in the right order (there are several out of continuity for various reasons.)

And here’s some favorite miscellaneous pages... A very extensive timeline of the Sparks Nevada Extended Universe, A list of Shows that Frank and Sadie would/would not watch, an explanation of the Chronopatrol Universe, A list of every villain in the Laserbeam/Fathom universe, how to live The Hobo Way, The Bee Incident!, everything we know about the American Victory Commission, a list of every episode released on the podcast, a list of guest stars, and a list of songs.  There’s so much more to explore, though. So. Much.

Unfortunately, most of the audio links are now broken, we'll update the episodes that are still available for public listening soon! 

And, here's some links to get you back into all the official TAH content:

The Patreon - The backlog is still in process of being uploaded for subscribers, but they're into the 60's now.  This will soon be the *only* official way to listen to the complete backlog of the show!  Supporting the Patreon is the best way to support the new TAH endeavour.

The Original Graphic Novel is on Amazon through 3rd party sellers.

The run of the first Beyond Belief comic has been collected into one book and is now available. 

The Sparks comic collection releases in February.  For now, to get the comic issues individually, you may need to look at third-party sellers as it doesn't appear to be available digitally anywhere.  (Someone tell me if I'm wrong about this!)

The NEW Beyond Belief comic is in stores now, with issue #4 releasing shortly!  If you can't find the older issues in-store, they're available digitally on Comixology.

If there’s something important I’ve missed, let me know!  There’s a lot happening soon, and remember the first episode of the new podcast drops Monday, October 29th!

Sayonara Solid Citizens!

[annakie]

POW!!

[annakie]

TIPPYTOES!

[annakie]

Finishing the Fic

Exactly five years ago yesterday, I started writing a fic.

It’s still not done.

I really want to change that.

So back when Thrilling Adventure Hour was deeply encompassing nearly my entire being of fandom, I had an idea for a fic, and @shannondapper and I had a very long conversation planning this fic out.  It’s a Sparks Nevada fic full of adventure and angst, taking place after Custard’s Last Stand but before the Crisis on Infinite Marses episodes.

And I actually started writing it!

And over the next few months I wrote like 25k words (70 pages!!) of this fic and was like, halfway done with it.

Like almost all fic I write, it’s canon-compliant.  So things were going real well until six words spoken in canon really threw off my plans for this fic.

Those words were “And I love you... MY BUDDY!”

Well, shit.  What does that mean?  Is Ginny actually a Jupiter Spy?  And if so, did she know the entire time?  Is she evil?  Does she actually love Sparks? How am I gonna write this fic not knowing if one of the major characters in this fic is who she says she is or not, not knowing IF she knew and WHAT she now knows?  My favorite chapters in this fic are written from her perspective, how am I going to keep this fic canon if I didn’t know what canon even IS.

That episode was recorded on April 11, 2015.  I was in the audience for it.

Of course, that was the last episode that was recorded until August 2015.  I wasn’t there for that.  

I felt like any ability I had to actually write this fic and stay canon-compliant was at a dead halt. I just... gave up on writing until we KNEW.

In October, when I worked the TAH booth at NYCC I tried to pry a little info out of Blacker, but as expected, he held his cards close to his chest about it.  So few episodes were made that I didn’t feel like I had enough information about Ginny and her motives until December 2016 when Still Alive came out.  And by then, I had finally come up with my own plan on how to handle Ginny.  And I think it works.  SO I did some moderate revisions on her chapters then.

And then just... left it alone for another year or so, occasionally dragging it out to tinker with it.  In like 2018 I wrote almost an entire chapter, really loving the first half, and kind of getting stuck in the second half.  And then.. again, I’ve pulled it out for editing a time or two, but am really stuck on how to end this one chapter.

I’ve thought a few times of just... publishing what I’ve got (ten chapters that I think are pretty good!) but I’ve always been wary of needing to fix something that happened in an earlier chapter later, and don’t want to have to write around something I later felt like was a mistake.

And then a few months ago I saw a post here on tumblr that I loved that said “Hey, if you’re stuck at some part in a thing you’re writing, just like uh, skip over it?  Go write something else in the project, skip to a part you really DO want to write, and come back to the part you’re stuck on later.  It will probably have worked itself out by then.”

Shit, that’s RIGHT.  I’m gonna do that as soon as I get back to writing my big Sparks fic! I told myself

(John Mulaney voice) AND THEN I DIDN’T.

Anyway, the point is, I’m gonna.

I’m gonna just try and do 500 words a day as long as Shelter In Place lasts, and see what happens.  Even if they’re bad words.  Let’s see how it goes.

Let’s see if there’s even anyone existence who WANTS to read 50,000 words of a mostly slumbering fandom (but hey, maybe if they keep doing TAH Live it won’t be so slumbering anymore!)  Even if nobody does, I’m gonna write it for me, so I can say I actually finished something!

The worst thing is, there are certain plot points and things I knew were gonna happen and things I set up in the fic that I seriously have no fucking clue anymore how I was going to finish off or resolve.  I knew I HAD plans for those things, but did I write them down?  NOPE.

I did, however, save a very long chatlog between Shannon and I where we hammered out a lot of ideas, even if I changed a lot in the actual execution of the fic, and a chapter outline.  That... helps.  But now I definitely want to finish before posting a damn thing to make sure it all actually comes together.

My knowledge of canon went from probably being one of, if not THE most knowledgeable person outside of the Bens about Sparks canon (which will happen when you relisten to a thing obsessively and then write basically every wiki entry on a thing on the semi-official wiki) to... a little fuzzy.  I did a relisten about a year ago, maybe I need to do that again.

Anyway, if you are a TAH fan, I hope when I finally get around to you, that you may want to actually read it, and that you like it, but hey, I know it’s a Lot and maybe you won’t, and that’s OK.  

[annakie]

Notes on a Blog Cleanup, Part 3

Continuing this...

So I started with 3021 pages of blog.  It’s a bit hard to determine EXACTLY where “halfway done” is since I’ve my guesstimate is that I’ve now deleted more than 1000 posts, and of course new blog posts have been made etc. etc. but I’m now on page 1508, so, close enough to halfway through the blog.

I had posted back in like... March?  Or May? of 2013 celebrating my 20,000th post.  I now have 44,428 as of writing this (which is hilarious to me for inside-joke related reasons.)  So, yeah,  Close enough to halfway.   Page 1508 is in November, 2013.  

So it took two and a half years to make half of the blog’s content.  2013 me has settled into a decent tagging system finally, everything is tagged by me and nearly every post tagged.  But I’m still finding some things I didn’t tag correctly or almost at all that need fixing.  So that’s being corrected.  Finding some good gems both Mass Effect related and now Thrilling Adventure Hour related.  Good memories.  I like the blog a lot more now than I did in the first two years.

I also really started having a consistent queue in 2013 and usually it’s set to 10 - 15 posts a day, sometimes 20 if I’m really active on tumblr for a time, so scrolling-time moves faster.  I also really started unfollowing a lot of people around this time and curating the people I follow down to just people who tag their posts (a rule that I still strictly follow), which helped a lot.

My “personal post tag thingy” tag is getting filled up the most. Everything I can’t catalog anywhere else is going there.  It was a tag of about 45 pages when I started this and now it’s over 80 pages.  Also all Mass Effect stuff including gifs, edits and random thoughts are being consolidated to annakie’s mass effect stuff , same with TAH as annakie’s tah stuff.  

I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to keep this up?  Maybe another year’s worth?  After a point I did a pretty good job of keeping everything tidy.  But hey, maybe I’ll go up all the way to like, this year.  Who knows.  I mean, I still have a LOT of Doctor Who to watch while I do this. :p

Speaking of which, I’m on Journey’s End (which made me realize that I 100% said the wrong title of the Doctor Who episode a week or two ago when I meant Doomsday, gotta go fix that post).  Man these episodes are a mess but in a great way.  So much is going on and so little makes actual sense but you don’t care because EVERYONE IS THERE.

There’s one of the four “movies” from the next “season” I really hated and only watched once, the one with the bus in the desert and the jewel thief lady.  Guess it’ll be time for a second viewing.

Also slightly amusing, the number of times I’ve been watching a scene in Doctor Who and then I scroll past a post that gifs that EXACT SCENE.  Just happened for like the 20th time.

[annakie]

I’m requeuing a bunch of my Thrilling Adventure Hour gifs and stuff in celebration of the announcement of the show’s return, and I’m very sorry to those of you who will feel this way:

Please feel free to blacklist Thrilling Adventure Hour.  :)

(also “ i'm requeueing TAH stuff since I'm so happy its coming back” if you like TAH but don’t want to see my gifs and stuff again.)

[annakie]

Hi I've been listening to the thrilling adventure hour and was wondering why you think croach became a drunk after he fulfilled his onus?

I actually wrote an entire fic about it!

I think the in-universe explanation is that after Barkeep gave Croach a beer during “Pour Me Another” in The Piano has Been Thinking” he just liked beer enough that he kept coming back for more.  All of that is true, but my deeper thoughts were always that he realized that he was not fitting in with his tribe as well as he used to anymore, and that he secretly ended up not wanting to fulfill his onus after all the fun he’s been having with Sparks and Red. He couldn’t say that out loud, or maybe he didn’t even realize it himself at the time, but either he didn’t make it back to the tribe or if he did, he really just wanted to go back and hang out with his human buddies. But when he got back to Town, everything had changed, and so he just stayed there hoping for things to get back to normal, and drinking more of that delicious beer until he was a drunk.

But yeah, mostly, I said my piece about it by writing a 4500 word fic about it. :)

(Hint: his love for Red and Sparks has a lot to do with it.)

This stuff may be spoilers depending on how far you’ve gotten, if you’re not much past TPhbT stop reading!

By the time we get to, say, the WTNV crossover ep, we can see that Croach just outright really doesn’t want to fulfil his onus and leave, though he still feels like he has to leave if there’s no good reason for him to stay.  And of course, by Marshal on Mars, he’s outright saying “Sparks you dummy, I completed my onus two cycles ago, I just want to hang out with you.” :)

I hope you’re enjoying TAH!  

[annakie]

I’m so glad Shape Ape is gonna be my dad in Mass Effect: Andromeda.

[annakie]

One year ago...

Reading through my TAHrch tag and I miss y’all like crazy Dani, @annadiplosis, @exudeawesome, @jmebressler, @chedsy, @madelinestarr, @mariusperkins, @arsenikitty, @gloriousclio, @ahab99, @stefwith1f, @daddymymouthisfullofstars, and well, those of you who weren’t there, too. :)

[annakie]

I really, really miss Sparks Nevada and his Pals on Mars. :(

[annakie]

Running thoughts on a Crossover Relisten - Part Three

So I was cleaning out the drafts today for the first time in a year and a half or so and came across this.  I made these posts for part one and part two of the crossover and never finished this one.  So I’m just posting it as it is (incomplete), a year, two months and two weeks late. Enjoy! :p

Okay so really was there a weather at this crossover or not?  Besides Steve singing the Captain Laserbeam theme?  The disappointed awwww's of the audience is great.  And also the huge cheer when they realize Steve/Hal is singing the Captain Laserbeam theme. <3  I love how confused the WTNV-only people must have been.

Paul and Storm were great as the ad men, but I really loved Joseph and Jeffrey doing it at the ECCC show.  IDK to me that just made it a little more special since we never get to see them on stage except for waving at the end.

Didn't you read the handbook of the USSA Time Travel Standards, updated edition?  "I disagreed strongly with the tone taken in the forward."  Suuuure Croach.

Pretty sure the whole thing with worrying that Steve and Cecil caused a paradox is new because I seem to recall them just landing outside and walking in at the right moment? IDK I could be wrong.

Sparks can't pronounce Night Vale either, and that's kind of expected but hilarious.

Felton never gets how revealing the past or future works.

Steve trying to do the "I'm from Earth" but pronouncing his name.  :3

Steve and Felton fighting.    "I ALREADY DO NOT LIKE THIS GUY!"

I totally bet that Carlos would be considered a mad scientist on Mars.  (if he knew what Mars is).

Cecil seems really nice here.  Even if he has past germs.  And the past version of space lyme disease.

Steve being completely right about things is great. Yeah, shut up, Steve Carlsberg.

"I possess no affection for the human designated Steve Carlsberg."  It's even funnier when you know Mark and Hal are good friends IRL.  And then in the background "Buddy!"  "I am not your buddy."  "You are my buddy."

Hal is totally the bridge between the two shows and yet he plays the most hated character.  

Having a teensy bit of trouble separating Delores and Ginny since they're both Janet and kind of similar?  Need more Ginny.

 That said everyone on that crowded stage is hilarious.

[annakie]

I may have picked answers to slant my results this way. 

[annakie]

Surprise Mark Gagliardi on Drunk History last night!

[annakie]

That “Post a favorite line that you’ve written” meme.

Mine takes two lines for context, but here it is, from this:

SPARKS NEVADA: Moping ain’t an emotion.

CROACH THE TRACKER: It is when you do it.

[annakie]

There are so many amazing things about this weekend but my favorite is just having so many people around all the time who I love so much. It’s just a constant flow of seeing friends at the booth and at the shows. And meeting so many new friends.

The only thing that sucks about this is that there are so many people around who I want to spend time with and not enough time for it to be enough time for any of them. I really apologize to so many people I haven’t been able to talk to like I wish I could.

If I’ve met you this weekend please please follow me here and/or on twitter! I almost always follow back in twitter! Here I only follow people who are really good about tagging your posts. Give me a few days to look at my follows!

Today is one more day of Booth working at nycc and then tonight is We Got This with Mark and Hal! Tomorrow: back to Dallas. Sad to be leaving, but happy to see my kitties and friends and co-workers. Also to a job that’s not all walking and standing. Next month I’m going on a real vacation with my mom and like… I don’t know what to do with a whole week of actually relaxing.