#i mean there's talk radio in the form of podcasts

[wastehound-voof]

I always wanted to be a radio DJ.

[dynamic-swap-au-archive]

I'd like to offer gorillaz fans (and Potential gorillaz fans) another resource that I've spent over a year creating and perfecting.

The Gorillaz !

This playlist is, to the best of my ability, Every Single piece of gorillaz content that can be found on youtube in story order.

all of the music videos, all of the indents, all of the interviews, animations, radio shows, news specials, podcasts, audio books, tiktoks, Everything.

on top of that ! I made the decision to include select fan content! because Frankly the gorillaz fandom is unimaginably talented and creative. this includes Fully animating several music videos that were cancelled, but given to us in animatic form, original animations, animatics, and storyboards, fan visualizers and recreations of live visuals, even voice fan dubs for written material like the interviews and novels.

and more than that, with the (incredible) fan content that was available I've Also been able to flesh out the stories of each phase! a decision I made due to the plastic beach, the third album, never getting to finish the story officially (leading to the band breaking up and coming back 7 years later).

I'm so proud of what I've been able to do with it ! and even happier to share the picture I've been able to make as a whole :>

below the cut I'm going to include several other playlists that are based on this one, but made to be more digestible and less intimidating for newcomers ! as well as many other resources to fill in the gaps that this playlist can't ! (namely the written material)

thank you ! and I hope I can share something I love with all of you !

First is the simplest ! all of the music videos in order ! (plus a Few indents, because I can't help myself): [Link]

this obviously means that you lose out on quite a bit of context, as much of who the characters are as People and their relationships together are in the extra material (especially the shorts and interviews). BUT

this is the most Accessible, and also really convenient if you just want to vibe to the music. if you're not sure if you want to commit this kind of time to a cartoon band, consider checking this out! you may find yourself interested enough to learn more, or you may just have a good time and feel satisfied with what you've seen ! either way I'd be honored to have helped :>

Second, the Midpoint between these two extremes !: Phase 1-3 [Link] Phase 4-7 [Link]

these Include extra material like the shorts and animation, but Cuts Out some of the longer content like the podcasts and interviews! you can still get a pretty good idea about what happens in the story of each phase watching this, but it's not bogged down by videos that are hours long.

it'll give you a clearer picture of what's going on, include fun side content, while being less intimidating than the Full playlist. this is what I use to show my friends gorillaz !

alright, so you've got just the music videos and just the short stuff, now lets try just the Long stuff. all of the interviews, radio shows, podcasts, Etc: [Link]

maybe you've used my last playlists and now you'd like to listen to some of those long form videos you missed out on. maybe you just want to listen to these characters talk because it's Nice. either way, it's all here :> (I know, because I had to upload some of them myself)

Pirate Radio: [Link]

it's all here with One technical exception. pirate radio was the serial radio show for plastic beach/phase 3, that gave us insight into murdoc's frame of mind as a character. it Also used copywriten music. the reuploads on youtube cut the music out (likely because they wouldn't be available otherwise), while this google drive has the full unedited audio files if anyone would be interested!

this one may seem redundant, but I promise it isn't. All of the gorillaz albums in order: [Link]

this playlist (for the most part) doesn't Have any visuals, it's Only the music.

likewise, all of the music in the previous playlists are only those songs that Have visuals (official or fan made), which means not all of gorillaz's music is present! which is exactly what this is for :>

you have every album in order, filling in the gaps of what's been missed, As Well As special albums that are Associated with gorillaz, and gorillaz' guest appearances in other people's music !

now we're out of my playlists and into other resources :>

Lobotomy Pop: [Link]

this is a website that's worked for years to preserve and organize Every Single written interview gorillaz has ever done ! it's an invaluable resource and really just very cool.

it also categorizes several other things ! such as listing out all of the personal playlists the gorillaz members have put out over the years, or every profile that's ever been written for the characters ! it's very much so worth checking out as a fan.

Gorillaz Art Archive: [Link]

exactly what is says on the tin ! this is a google drive that's attempting to archive Every Single piece of official gorillaz art that was released from phase 1 in 2001, to phase 5 in 2018. it is Massive and it's such a joy to have access to

The Kong Files: [Link]

if you were wondering why the art archive stopped at 2018, this would be why ! the kong files has much the same goal, but instead picking up at phase 6 and continuing on Theoretically forever ! or at least it's kept up with all of phase 7

that said ! the kong files is attempting to document Everything relating to those phases. so all of the social media, all of the music videos, all of the written text, Everything !

I wouldn't try to Only use this for watching phase 6 and 7, but it's an Excellent resource for everything that could fall between the cracks

Rise of the Ogre on Archive dot Com: [Link]

rise of the ogre was an official novel released at the end of demon days (the second album/phase 2), that covered the entire history of the band up until that point! their backstories, how they met each other, what they'd gotten up to in the 10 years they'd known each other, and the shocking event that happened at the very end of the phase and the band's reaction to it. all leading in to plastic beach, (arguably) the Most story heavy phase of them all.

as I understand it, this novel has been out of print for a very long time and is quite expensive to buy second hand. so ! it's been scanned and uploaded here to the archive! there's actually several more scans available in the gorillaz art archive, but this is the most recent (having been uploaded just earlier this year).

Dawn of the Ogre: [Link]

dawn of the ogre is the fanmade sequel to rise of the ogre, attempting to fill in the gaps of what happened at the end of phase 3, the 7 year gap, and up to the (then) newest point of canon.

this is, of course, unofficial. so this is essentially fancy fanfiction. But it's extremely well done fanfiction that happens to be novel length, attempting to emulate the style of the original novel, and is fully illustrated. along with being available completely for free!

I'd definitely give it a shot, if you're the type of person who's already read rise of the ogre

the gorillaz wiki !: [Link]

I have no clue what the fandom thinks about it, but it was absolutely invaluable both in making my playlist, and becoming a fan at all. with all the work I've done my hope is that people won't need to go digging for themselves, but the Option is certainly always nice !

I'd Especially like to highlight this page [Link] which has transcriptions for all of the pirate radio show episodes !

I feel like there's a lot to find here :>

and of course, my own dynamic swap au archive! [Link]

if you've fallen in love with gorillaz and are desperate for more to sink your teeth into, then I couldn't recommend this enough !

keep in mind that these resources will continue updating ! as new music is created and new fan content is made! I'm keeping my eyes out on a fan project for a fully animated mv right now that I'm sure will make it to my playlists one day :>

[journal-three]

I was watching a youtuber talk about vox and al and they said something about how vox was right with saying al was outdated just being radio

But honestly... I feel like 1: radio never left

2: podcasts are crazy popular that people yeah watch but mainly just listen to, no it's not mainly radio but its similar and I feel like honestly I want an alastor weekly podcast thank you for coming to my tedtalk

I MEAN if we REALLY get into it, isn't TV just as dead as radio?

Okay sure tv shows and whatever are still popular, but it's all streaming now, it's all on-demand. The same way that new radio is podcasts, new tv is streaming. this is just two outdated modals of media beefin it up for no reason. (TL;DR Velvette supremacy)

Really I'd agree with you. Radio just changed forms the same way TV did and they're both equally but differently strong forms of media. :)

....

..

.

ALTHOUGH.

IF WE REALLY GET INTO IT:

Analog TV, the kind of old TV that used antenna (like vox has) and analog signals were fully retired in 2009.

That kind of media is quite literally dead. But y'know what kind of broadcast signal isn't dead? What specific kind of audio broadcast signal is still being used to this day? >:3

[mundaneandmagicalcreature]

The Newsreader & gender expectations. Part II: Dale Jennings and being a newsreader

I feel like there's a line connecting Dale's mum with his career ambitions and with how he feels about his sexuality.

Dale's not that young. So, why hasn't reflected more about his sexuality and his relationships? Why is he still trying to erase parts of himself (darling, it won't work)? Why does he assume that everyone wants to get married?

"It's 1987, there was not really the language for him to discover that (and he's working in such a rigid environment), to even really understand what bisexuality is or what pansexuality is or maybe demisexual (sic)." Sam Reid. ABC Radio National

Both Sam and Michael have talked about Dale lacking the language about his sexuality. While it's true that that he may not have come across the word "bisexual" (although the famous Bowie interview is from 1979), I feel like more than a label he needs a narrative. It's pretty common for queer people, when we're discovering our sexuality to look for people like us: historical figures, fictional characters, people in our own life, etc. Just some one to show us how to live.

Gerry also doesn't have a label, and yet he seems much more happy and comfortable in his sexuality. His life history could be that narrative Dale needs: fall in love with a woman, marry, have a child, have a successful career AND have sex with men on the side. But Dale is set on monogamy. Which is absolutely fine, but he can't imagine himself as attracted to both men and women, and monogamous, AND happy.

My theory is that he's never had the time to think about this things because he was an emotionally parentified child. We know that Dale's father died when he was only 15. He had to take responsibility for his mum happiness. And he's holding that responsibility ever since.

This is more fanfiction than analysis territory, but I can imagine a recently widowed Val glued to the TV, watching news. And I can imagine a very young Dale thinking "Now that my dad's dead I have to be a proper man, the kind of man my mum values. And that man is a newsreader."

"I suppose Dale has always sort of believe that the pinnacle of... everything that represents stability and assuredness and the kind of like archetype of what it is to be a man and what it is to be a voice of authority is represented in this newsreader kind of form." Sam Reid. The Newsreader Podcast. 06 | Fireworks with Sam Reid and Michael Lucas

I know that sexuality is not correlated to gender, but these things intersect and the ideal man for society (specially in this moment in time) is a straight man (who gets married to a woman, has children, provides for them financially, etc). Queer men are seeing as feminine and therefore faulty. Dale's running away from being perceived that way.

What I would call "a partner" and Adam calls "a lover", Val calls "a friend". The euphemism makes it pretty clear that she's not comfortable with queerness. Dale wants to make her happy, so he has to be a straight man.

Even after more than a year of Helen and Dale being together, Val says she wasn't sure Dale was going to propose/marry her. Maybe she thought they were going to break up, or that they would continue to "live in sin" (lets note the religious expression for a moment...) for ever. But what I hear (and judging by Dale's awkward reaction, he may be thinking the same) is "up until this moment I was afraid you were actually gay".

By the end of the season, Dale and Helen have broken up. He buys his own house and while he's showing it to his mum, they have that little dialogue. "It's not a family home", once again that idea of nuclear family shows up. For the first time he's going against her wishes. Does this mean he's happy? Sam doesn't think so and neither do I. I think he just switched his mum's expectations for those of the society in general. And society expect for people who work on TV to have big fancy houses, so that's what he bought.

________

(part I)

feel free to comment in whatever form you like, I'm nosy and I like to read what other people think.

[myloish]

i cant believe i've been going down this entire mark bankston spiral without posting my favorite audio clip ever. ever.

Dan, podcast host: Now that we've established there's this really large audience, Mark wants to talk about, you know, you have a responsibility to not lie to your audience. And this is great. Mark: Hyperbole is something you're very familiar with? Alex Jones: Yes, that's right. Talk radio is a big part of that, yeah. Mark: Exactly. When addressing that audience, your United States and global audience, would you ever intentionally lie to them? Alex: No. Mark: Okay, let me play you another clip. Jordan, other podcast host: [cackles in anticipatory glee] Past Alex: I don't want to ever see Wolf Blitzer hurt. Because Wolf Blitzer's a human maggot. I mean, do you really want to start a fight with us? He just can't help it. Yeah, you do, don't you? You're begging for it. You're begging. You're begging to get your guts stomped out hard.  And I don't know, Wolf, if you ever had your guts stomped out, but you don't live after that happens. Not that I've ever stomped anybody's guts out. Actually, I have a couple of times, It's not too nice. It takes people a long time to die if you stomp their guts out. But that's no threat to Wolf Blitzer. Mark: How many people have you physically killed? Jordan: 🤣 Alex: None. Alex's lawyer: Objection, form.

[johannestevans]

Writing individual character voices is one of those skills where the best way to learn is by listening, but the problem with advice that amounts to “Just listen!” is knowing precisely what you’re listening for.

Dialogue in fiction, regardless of the medium, can be difficult in itself to craft — in writing a dialogue between characters, you want to write speech that reads as natural to how real people talk to one another, but also does what you need it to within the text, whether that’s to drive the plot forward, to show tension or conflict between characters, to be a vehicle for humour, tragedy, and so on.

But the thing about dialogue in any extended narrative is that it’s exchanged between those who are, hopefully, developed characters in their own right, and therefore will have their own unique, distinctive voices.

Crafting these voices and ensuring that they are strong and individual to the characters they belong to is a complex process that has a lot of moving parts. When we’re listening to dialogue in a radio show or a podcast, or when we’re listening to dialogue from a TV show or movie, many of us can differentiate between the current speakers based on aspects like the depth of the character’s voices, the way they use tone, their accents.

I say “many of us” because this isn’t always the case — many people who are D/deaf or Hard of Hearing may not be able to differentiate between speakers based on these more subtle cues alone, and not everyone has an ear for the more subtle distinctions between certain accents.

For me personally, the litmus test for good, strong character voice is this: if you put only your dialogue on a page, and include no dialogue tags to tell the reader who is speaking, will your reader still be able to tell who is saying what?

Before I get on with the rest of this guide, I just want to note that what I’m not going to do is include a list of ways to write dialogue and imply that some are correct and some are wrong — I have my personal preferences and pet peeves, but I believe that just listing the “right” ways to write dialogue would be just as useless as saying, “Just listen!”

My priority here is listening to character dialogue in order to craft our own, but specifically, it’s about how to listen and what to listen for.

This guide is going to be separated into 5 sections, each with a variety of questions to ask yourself about the character in front of you, what their voice sounds like, and why it sounds that way, with examples and comparisons.

The guide as a whole is pretty intensive, so feel free to give it a scan, see what bits you’re most interested in going over, and then come back to it later. This guide is written with analysis in mind, so you might want to come to it when you have a spare hour to really dig into it, as a lot of it is posed in forms of questions to ask yourself, which might be overwhelming if you just want to read through the guide casually.

What I’m going to focus on instead is a list of core questions you can ask yourself while analysing character voice that you can then turn around and apply to your own work. It’s by no means an exhaustive list of every question you could or should ask yourself when listening to dialogue or writing it, but my hope is to cover a wide range here to give you enough angles to work with.

Last disclaimer is that I’m a white, English-speaking guy for whom English is my first language — we all have personal biases in terms of how we process language use and conversation, but as a white first language English-speaker, my biases are more likely to be accepted as truth or default without further examination.

Part of the reason crafting strong voice is so important is because of the ways language use and accent particularly can be policed and targeted for prejudicial reasons, and one of the things it’s important to be cognizant of as writers from any background, but particularly as white EFL (English First Language) writers, is harmful stereotypes and stigma associated with certain accents, dialects, and vocal tics. It’s not just bad, lazy writing — it’s alienating to readers who may be from those backgrounds or have those tics, and can uphold harmful misrepresentations that bear no similarity to real life.

So, the five sections are:

how a voice sounds I (tone, pitch, texture, volume)

where a voice comes from (accent and dialect, as influenced by the character’s background, age, class, time period, etc)

what a voice says (choices made in speech, including character expressions, language use, direct versus indirect communication, personality)

how a voice sounds II (speech patterns, filler words, verbal stims, tics, repetitions)

what a voice means (values communicated in speech, additional information that can be inferred from speech analysis that isn’t just from accent and slang)

These sections are loosely grouped and all of them will and do have crossover, each of them impacting the other, but splitting into sections just makes things easier to digest than a big wall of text.

[whatmathgodwrought]

Salad Bar Theory of Popular Culture

This is going to be a long post. It will discuss "The Salad Bar Theory of Popular Culture," and why Tumblr dot com is the ideal, overgrown petri dish on the web for this phenomenon.

It's a bit of lark, but I do hope you'll laugh at least once if you read to the end.

Imagine you're dining at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. The restaurant is massive. The self-serve food bar has every kind of dish imaginable, and what's more, there is a construction crew adding more space, and new chefs are constantly adding new entrees, remaking old favorites, and sometimes they even invent new cuisines altogether. All of your friends and acquaintances are there. Sometimes you eat together, sometimes you talk about what you ate, sometimes someone excitedly comes to your table raving and telling you to try something new or an old favorite. There is more than you could ever possibly eat in several lifetimes, and it only keeps growing.

This metaphor is the current state of entertainment in the 21st century for all forms of media: music, movies, books, TV shows, ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, talk radio, art, comics, graphic novels, manga, webcomics, cartoons, anime, newspapers, infotainment, online journalism, live-streaming, plays/dramas, console gaming, PC gaming, smartphone gaming and more. Thanks to the internet, streaming, global-shipping, viral-meme-culture, commodification-of-the-invidivual-via-the-social-media-grind, (and let's be honest, piracy and archival culture), people have access to and are exposed to more entertainment than they could ever hope to consume in several lifetimes.

So, where does leave the typical diner at this restaurant? Well, as the next paragraphs will show, there is no such thing as a "typical diner." There are no gourmets, no gourmands. There is just the Cornucopia and groups of people wandering the endless salad bar. You can be first in line and pay a premium to experience the brand new dish. You can go back to the same section and reload your plate with the same thing as many times as you want, and people will ask if you don't ever get tired of the same thing. You can be a vegetarian. You can eat only meat. You can eat a bit of everything. You can brave the sneers and jeers of the gatekeepers as you sample something--with tastebuds aglow--for the first time and rave about it to all your friends.

So what kind of dining experiences are there in this cultural canteen, this pop-culture pizzeria, this taverna theatre? What do you see there?

Popularity is the Objective Word Here

When something is popular, it spreads like wildfire. This has always been true of popular culture even before the internet. Humans are social, they tell stories and they share. This may seem obvious, but it's also bedrock for the other observations.

Originality is Dead: Long Live Reboots and Remixes.

Show of hands to three questions:

How many people recognize the reference of a gorilla carrying a woman, climbing the Empire State Building while bi-planes shoot at it?

King Kong right? A cultural icon for many years.

How many people have actually seen the original King Kong (1933) starring Fay Wray and directed by Cooper and Schoedsack?

Not as many right? Maybe you only saw one of the many remakes in 2021, 2017, 2005, 1986, 1976, 1967 or 1962.

How many people are alive today that saw King Kong (1933) in the cinema?

Not many I'll bet.

I'd wager the number of hands goes down with each question. And yet the staying power of the original story remains burned into film history and memory. The point is this. Humans retell stories. This is not a bug. It's a feature. "Tell me the story again of…" There is joy (and profit) in the retelling.

Derivative Reference is Often the Primary Way of Experiencing Pop Culture

OK, so people are sharing things left and right. They're retelling, remixing, rebooting, writing fan-fics, etc. All of this creative effort means that your first-time encountering something new may be a reference, rather than experiencing the original. People rarely experience the true original firsthand anymore. They're going to experience things second-hand.

This is especially true with older media. A first experience with something will often be a derivative reference. An example: Back in the day, in school, we watched Planet of the Apes in class. (I don't know, probably the teacher was hung over.) Want to know how I figured out before the big reveal that the Planet of the Apes was really Earth?

Troy McClure spoiled it for me. In Season 7 Episode 9 of the Simpsons, "A Fish Called Selma," McClure takes an acting gig in a musical adaptation of Planet of the Apes, and he sings the following lines:

Oh my God, I was wrong It was earth all along Yes you finally made a monkey out of me.

So there I am, watching Planet of the Apes for the first time, and Troy McClure's big number starts playing in my head. I sit there in disbelief, remembering the Simpsons, and then practically crying into my desk with laughter.

Probably the teacher thought that "kids these days" don't appreciate cinema, but it was just so absurd to have the movie spoiled by a bit in the Simpsons.

Want to know something else? In doing research for this essay, I discovered that Planet of the Apes film isn't even the original. The original story was a French language novel "La Planète des Singes" by Pierre Boulle. So again, people love retelling, often in different forms of media.

Point is, the longer something has been out, the more it tends to be referenced in other forms. TV talk shows will make jokes referencing the new popular thing. Popular phrases quickly become part of the everyday lexicon. People talk at the water cooler. A tech mogul names their new software after one iconic word in Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi novel.

Any piece of popular culture could be "spoiled" for you at any moment, which brings us to....

Spoilers are Everywhere but Do They Just Act as Adverts?

King Kong dies in the end. Dumbledore Dies. Both of these are spoiler memes (and I'm not sorry), but consider the amount of time passed between the original release of both. How long is the statute of limitations on spoilers? How long before a popular piece of media saturates public awareness so much that it becomes unavoidable? Is this ultimately unavoidable because of the viral nature of advertising, marketing and sharing?

In the modern day, it's increasingly hard to avoid spoilers. I've heard of people going off social media for weeks before a major film release so it doesn't get spoiled for them.

People seem divided on the topic of spoilers, but it's a very good question: Would you still enjoy a story if it was spoiled for you? Shakespeare spoils Romeo & Juliet in the first 14 lines:

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Do you still want to see the rest of the play? What if it had Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo, Claire Danes as Juliet and Harold Perrineau as Mercutio? There is something to be said for knowing where the story goes, yet still enjoying the teling of the tale.

I'll go on record and say I don't really care about spoilers. They've become adverts to me, hooks of interest into things I might not have discovered otherwise. I have to encounter new media somehow, and I try to take a positive outlook on it, saying, "I was meant to discover this." If I like something, I'm going to like it unabashedly and still find a way to enjoy it.

Delayed Gratification

If you are PC gamer, let me ask a question: How many unplayed games do you have in your Steam library? Games you haven't even downloaded and opened for the first time. What about unfinished games? Played-once-and-dropped-it games? Now ask yourself: Did you buy this game when it first came out? Did you pay for early access? Would you have still enjoyed it, even if you had to wait a while? Consider the Reddit community r/PatientGamers. They don't care to line up and pay a premium for a brand new release. They know it will still be the same game (often less buggy), and they will even be able to get it on sale. They know the salad bar is vast. There's lots of content, and there's no hurry. They let it come to them when the time is right.

I Don't Want to Hear It

Similar to r/PatientGamers, there is also the phenomona when it seems like everyone is raving about something, to the point where you begin to actively block it out. It doesn't seem to matter what it is; even if it's something good that you would ultimately enjoy. Something about the repetition or the messaging rubs you wrong, and you innoculate yourself against it. You avoid that part of the salad bar at all costs, even if you might like it.

Interpreting the Rules: Remixing as Fan Behavior.

How dooes your social circle play the game Uno? Fandom has a tendency to take what's been created and modify it, remix it according to their own rules, according to fanon's own internal logic. Sometimes it's seen as an act of repair, sometimes a love letter to canon. Sometimes it's shipping characters. Sometimes it is a what-if. What if all these different characters from different properties got together in a story?

Dismay at Media Conglomerate Strip Mining

Has one of the five mega media conglomerates "ruined your childhood" by making a live-adaptation of your favorite childhood cartoon? Well, buckle up, because they aren't going to stop. The big five are hungry for content, and they are actively strip-mining your childhood favorites. It doesn't matter if it's a live action remake of Avatar the Last Airbender or CATS the musical, eventually some studio exec is going to see dollar signs, and your favorite thing is going to get a bad remake. It's best to just accept this.

Further Dismay at AI Strip Mining

If you don't like what the big five are doing, you will hate what AI is doing, and if you're an artist you probably already know you are getting robbed by AI companies. Large language models (also known as Plausible Sentence Generators) and text-to-artwork tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney are getting more sophisticated.

They're still scraping the web, and more sites seem to be selling user-generated content to these places, prompting artists to use Glaze and Nightshade to protect their work and poison AI data-models.

People are selling their likeness for permanent use in perpetuity for use in crowds. Lord of the Rings used AI-enabled CGI units in some of the battles, and that was over 20 years ago. How long before they don't hire extras for movies anymore?

The year is 2100. You put on a vid. It is the usual cast, starring: Tu-Pac Shakur's avatar, Hatsune Miku, the latest Disney princess avatar, and the disembodied voice of James Earl Jones. All of the original flesh and blood actors are long dead, but their AI avatars and copyright ramain. Some were never were alive in the first place. It's all necrotainment. You turn off the TV.

Back to the present year, James Earl Jones's voice is now in an AI model, so Disney can give us the same Darth Vader forever. The year 2100 seems not so far away.

On the plus side, there seems to be a growing backlack against AI-generated content. People consider it cheap, shoddily-made and flimsy, and the quickest way to associate a brand as cheap garbage. At the Glasgow Willy Wonka's Chocolate experience event, the organizer used AI generated visuals for the marketing, and people arrived disappointed at the "dirty old warehouse." According to Paul Connell, the actor who played Wonka, the script was "15 pages of AI-generated gibberish."

"I never knew I would have liked this"

OK this is getting a bit grim, so here's something fun: People are getting exposed to other cultures' entertainment, and they like it! Netflix reports that 60% of their users have watched a Korean drama, and they plan to invest USD $2.5 billion in future Korean drama for the platform. Like anime booming outside of Japan in the 80s and 90s, or the British Invasion in the 1960s, people try out other parts of the salad bar, and discover they quite like it.

Archival Behavior

Abraham Lincoln once said, "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet." This is why screencapping and archiving things has become more important. Tweets get deleted, accounts get banned, and users deactivate. Capturing and archiving things here at least preserves some of the conversation.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote, "If you know yourself and you know your enemy -- and let's be clear the enemy are techbros, who are fundamentally lazy and want to cut corners for the sake of a quick buck and flashy, fake-innovation. Even their own mothers don't love them. They stole this content from Tumblr username whatmathgodwrought, original posting date 2024/03/03, and this should be used as evidence in the lawsuit against the responsible parties -- you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

If the internet is just 4 websites containing screenshots of the other ones, many are doing the good work of archiving for posterity.

Wasn't this Post also about Tumblr?

Yeah, yeah, we're taking the scenic route. (If you actually read this far, thank you. Send whatmathgodwrought a message and I'll read your blog, maybe reblog some of your stuff, maybe even follow you.)

Let's recap: pop culture spreads like wildfire. It gets retold/remixed/rebooted. Reference and spoilers are everywhere. You can delay and still enjoy a thing anytime, or you can resolutely choose to avoid a thing completely. You can remix, recreate, and fan-theorize canon ideas to their natural conclusion. The big five entertainment corps and AIs are strip-mining the heck out of it. People loves to try out things they never would have had access to before. So, after having some of these kind of experiences, you can post your fandom thoughts on Tumblr, add tags and watch it blow up (or not) or don't add tags (and watch it somehow blow up anyway?). Posts with "10k note energy" have slept for years before someone fired a reblog chain heard round the world. So what makes this environment the Galapagos Island or Cambrian period of websites for this Salad Bar idea?

Repeat and Resurgence

So the thing about a recurring joke is that it keep recurring. People will often write: "I will always reblog this." There are also seasonal examples. King Taejong falls from his horse, Feb 8, 1404. Julius Casear's assassaination on the Ides of March. Voyager's "Threshold" season-2, episode 15, Jan 29th. The clay tablet to Ea-nāṣir complaining about inferior quality copper. People like retelling, and reblogging with scheduling or queue contributes to the seasonal nature of repeat themes.

Tag You're It

Tags kind of help with the spreads-like-wildfire aspect. I've always liked tags as a general concept, because they're a flat, non-hierarchical, multi-category way of organizing information. In the Dewey Decimal system, your number is the category, and that's it; no nuance, no second-guessing, no argument. With tags, you add as many as you want, and then off it goes--haphazardly careening about the Tumblr ecosystem. Tagging is also broken, but whatever.

Goncharov

my favourite thing about the goncharov nonsense is that it relies on the tumblr culture of watching ur mutual posting about something but not really paying attention to it. the reason it slips so easily under the radar is we’re all used to seeing people’s random sudden fixations on our dashes and then just letting them do their thing - you don’t unfollow, you often don’t even filter it out, you just think ‘hey, glad they’re having fun’ and scroll past. i went like two days before realising it was a mass joke because i assumed one of my mutuals was just Really Into some old mafia film from the 70s all of a sudden. because why wouldn’t they be

User @watchmakermori hits the nail on the head. Tumblr's ecosystem exposes the user to random fandoms, which they might like, might look at later, or might actively avoid. It is within that space of ambiguity that the Goncharov phenomena thrived.

Trending By Organic Pollination

On this hellsite, it's possible to completely overwhelm the tags and get something trending, but at least this is mostly driven by human interest. In this case, Tumblr's lack of an algorithm is actually a feature. When a mutual reblogs something, at least I know that a human did it, unlike algorithm-based, auto-served content. We've seen what algorithms have done to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and even Google search. Algorithms drive "engagement", endless scrolling, and are likely contributing to Dead Internet Theory. At least Tumblr users are continuously blocking bots, trying to inoculate against AI-generated content, and are reblogging human content.

Parallel Play

Tumblr users' tendency to engage in parallel play also contributes to the remix factor as users reblog, retag and recontextulize. A shitpost becomes educational. Two isolated fandoms collide accidentally because of a poll. Someone makes a spelling error and it goes viral. Users play with JPEGs like dolls. Everyone is just out there doing their own thing in the big sandbox, and emergent behaviors result.

In Conclusion?

This post ended up more Tumblr-positive than I intended, even though that wasn't the original idea. The idea was to be more dispassionate, more objective, a casual observer. But like any participant-observer, I've gotten a bit caught up in the phenomenon.

So let's call this a Love Letter (academically aggravated) to Tumblr. Suffice it to say, I hope y'all keep blocking bots, reblogging humans, spiting the great AI content harvest, and keep enjoying the Salad Bar.

[evermorehqs]

CATCHING MY BREATH, STARING OUT AN OPEN WINDOW

Daimaō Bowser is based on King Koopa from Super Mario Movie. He is a 34 year old immortal turtle, florist, and uses he/him pronouns. He has the power of creating small balls of fire through his mouth. Daimaō is portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe and he is NPC.

CATCHING MY DEATH, AND I COULDN’T BE SURE

Bowser could still remember that day like it’d been yesterday. The moment when the Mario’s brothers hit him with the star’s super power. Everything changed. He changed. Suddenly he wasn't King Koopa but a small turtle in a jar forever changed. The love he held for Princess Peach had been thrown out to the dirt cast out forever into the dirty mud. What was once pure and magical had been ruined by a bunch of good for nothing plumbers. Nothing could go worst than it already had until one day it did. Evermore found in an unusual body form, in an unusual town with unusual people. Stranger was the fact that he was working on a flower shop creating beautiful arrangements for weddings, dates and all the couple stuff. Gazing into the distance as he remembered his love Princess Peach while gently caressing a rose. Walking around town blowing tiny fire balls from his mouth with every huff and puff he made. His favorite past time was listening to John Cena's program every Tuesday and Thursday as he waxed on poetry about loved ones. Finding himself regularly calling asking for advice on what to do with his love Peach. He's been told plenty of times to stop calling, that he was delusional but Bowser knew Johnny was just kidding! They were the best of friends. Finding inspiration from John Bowser began a Podcast titled "Bowser's House of Love" that he puts out every other day. He has four listeners but he knows soon enough he'll get more, meanwhile he'll continue dreaming of Peach.

I HAD A FEELING SO PECULIAR

❀ John Cena: Bowser's delusional thinking John Cena and him are the best of friends. Sometimes Bowser sends flowers to the radio station where John's show is broadcasts. For some reason he always get's a return to sender must be because John is so modest. ❀ Persephone Kouris: Probably the only person that tells him to hang there but he isn't sure if she likes him. They work together at the flower shop and sometimes when he's talking about his sweet Peach she tells him he is delusional. He thinks she means it in a good way but maybe she just doesn't know what it means, after all there's nothing wrong with having illusions. ❀ Hades Aidoneus: Apparently he's not the only one that has a trick with fire? There's this Hades guy he's seen around the cemetery? That's so freaky, whatever he's going to challenge him to a fire off.

THAT THIS PAIN WOULD BE FOR EVERMORE

[desert-bluffs-and-me]

What the heck happened to Kevin?

-straps you in against your will- (it's long and I'm not sorry lol)

tl;dr: Kevin isn't an purely evil antagonist (at least not the entire way through the show). He did found the religion surrounding a Smiling God but no longer controls the version of it in NV. He did not found Strex. Strex did use the religion to control people and Kevin had some importance because of his standing. Kevin lies to us and himself but his tone and other things betray the truth. Charles might be good for him actually because of this??? More Kevin please.

WTNV is a great podcast because it highlights a truth about stories that people forget: protagonist just means 'the person whose point of view the story is in' and not 'the good guy'. Nor does having a protagonist who is good necessitate a continuous and obvious antagonist.

When Kevin is our protagonist we get the same unreliability we get with Cecil, but Kevin's brainwashing is overt and obvious whilst Cecil's is a subtle result of his upbringing in a conservative place like NV.

So just who is Kevin of Desert Bluffs? What are his ties to Strex? Ep.73 gives us the context we were terribly lacking during the Strex Arc.

Ep.73 - Past Kevin: “Strexcorp? That faux-friendly big business corporate monster? Don’t talk to me about them. Strexcorp is the worst. […] I actually tried to stop them from buying it! I tried very hard. I put my own body, this fragile thing, in between the Strex representatives and the entrance to the building but they forced their way past me using ethically brutal methods that left me forever physically changed."

Future Kevin: "Oh, what StrexCorp and their Smiling God did to my wonderful little town. What they did to me. I’m not myself anymore. I’m a smile, and a twitch of the wrist. It has been years, Cecil. I’ve drifted away from myself. Sometimes I am one me, and then again I am the other. What they did to the sentient heat trapped temporarily in my body."

In this episode, a Kevin before Strex has any power in my opinion doesn't have any reason to lie to Cecil about his involvement in Strex, unreliable narrator or no. He also emotes differently in the further-past, having a genuine flare of annoyance at the mention of Strex. He simply does not talk like this at all later on when Strex is in power. Something changed. And if he were lying about hating Strex to stay on Cecil's good side, why mention this? -

Ep. 73 Past Kevin: [...]You know they’ve been trying to buy the radio station? Can you imagine how awful that would be? They’d probably try to take me off the air, and replace me with someone else. Or, worse, try to change my personality completely. Oh! I would never let that happen[...]"

That is...basically what seems to have happened to him. In his 'present' form (which is really more of a recent past version of himself) during this episode when Cecil talks about Night Vale and Strex, Kevin happily talks about Strex despite Cecil again clearly not being happy about it. He shows no need to side with Cecil's opinion here because he's under Strex himself now.

As an aside, Kevin also states he's never heard of NV in the further-past whilst his recent-past self during that episode and his first appearances in the Strex Arc do know what NV is but has never been there. This is either an oversight by writers or a different Kevin or he just genuinely hadn't heard of NV then.

In the future, he once more speaks of how awful Strex was when they hurt his town and once more, in my opinion, has no reason to deny his involvement especially when he's been isolated for years and is clearly depressed and miserable and has nothing to lose.

Also, with dubious-canon, there is this from a patreon listener questions session:

Kevin:  “So I smile over and over until the version of me in the mirror stops smiling along and starts looking scared and exhausted and then sits on the edge of the tub, muttering about the life he used to have before Strex got a hold of him.”

Which could be like, a literal alternate Kevin he can see through a mirror or just Kevin pretending it's just a mirror version of himself whilst it's actually him feeling negative emotions/effects of trauma he doesn't want to admit having.

And during the podcast, there are hints that something terrible did happen in DB which could have been Strex's takeover and which Kevin (by his tone more than his words) has been negatively affected by. For the life in me I cannot remember the exact episodes to quote it, but I think they're early episodes. The gist is that he mentions an 'incident' that 'some of them never woke up from again' during which Intern Vanessa died.

All of this evidence cannot be ignored. We can say with some certainty that the Kevin we hear the most from started out as a man who was ordinary by whatever ordinary in DB ever was, and was taken in and changed by Strex.

It also can't be ignored that later episodes and It Devours! increase Kevin's involvement in both Strex and the worship of the Smiling God, at least in theory.

But some of it just never sits right with me. In particular, this quote:

Ep. 137: “The mayor and I have been close for a long time. We’ve had our ups and downs, but I think our more difficult times were back when we used to run a company together. We had some typical disagreements over who was in charge. She thought because she was the president of the company, she should have final say on all decisions. Whereas I knew that I was one of the Smiling God’s chosen prophets, and our all-loving devourer would not choose a prophet who made mistakes.”

There's...inconsistency here that I can't ignore. Lauren was promoted from executive to vice-president as of episode 49. She was never promoted to president in our timeline. Also, Kevin only states that he should have more power than her because of his Smiling God connections, not because he was actually important in the company.

But did that hold merit, or did it only hold merit to him? Lauren is not in agreement during these later All Smiles' Eve to Mudstone Abyss episodes. And why not? Just because Strex was using the Joyous Congregation to help control DB (theocracy and capitalism do go hand in hand!) doesn't mean that Kevin had any real power BUT it may have led him into thinking he did. If he really did i.e. was Strex's founder or something and they were really fighting about it, he could easily have demoted or fired her. It wouldn't have been difficult.

Strex does not mind 'disappearing people' when necessary and there's no reason we can see for Kevin to have special affection for Lauren. They have a tumultuous relationship at best. If she had no power over him, he would have always treated her with the same disposability and control he does when he runs Desert Bluffs Too.

It Devours! ch 8: “You see, our prophet Kevin found an old oak door[...]"

We never really get to see how Kevin reacted to being in the desert otherworld after Old Oak Doors. But I theorise the reason he was able to start building so fast was because he had, genuinely, already been there and brought back a religion revolving around a Smiling God with him. (The book is new though, he's been in the desert otherworld ten or more years compared to NV time which is plenty of time to write it and get it sent back).

And what about the religion surrounding a Smiling God?

The nature of the Smiling God and what it is is...difficult. Kevin mentions in All Smiles' Eve and the Mudstone Abyss that the religion has been around since he was a child. He says he's celebrated All Smiles' with his family, and that he's dreamed of creating the MSA since being little. If we're taking this as truth, then if Kevin founded the religion he founded it as a child. Or he's lying. Again.

But also there isn't just one Smiling God. It's always referred to as a Smiling God (in the podcast at least), not the. Dana sees a Smiling God which is just a vast light and it's this which is dangerously trying to get into NV through the Old Oak Doors. But also, Kevin writes about a giant centipede as if it were a Smiling God (the movements of such a creature is also observed by either Dana or Carlos, I forgot I'm sorry ;; ) but only Pastor Munn/Gordon know about Kevin's book on the centipede and believe in that version of a Smiling God.

It was genuinely not known by other congregation members, even those like Darryl who grew up with the religion and members who lived in NV previously. Kevin also once said that a Smiling God has teeth and a tongue, which neither a centipede nor a light have. Congregation members also question whether Huntokar is a Smiling God and softly admit they're not sure what a Smiling God is.

It Devours! shows us a differing interpretation of their religion from the side of Darryl and other 'ordinary' congregation members and those actually running/leading it and deciding what the regular members are and aren't allowed to know. It's clear that it's very much like a cult at that point. But was it always? The Joyous Congregation exists happily without Kevin there to guide it and even after learning the weirder and more negative aspects of it they choose which version they like the best and follow that instead. Could the religion had also started out differently? Different ideals? Different ideas of what a Smiling God was? What did Strex influence in it, if at all? Is the version followed by NV citizens before any DB interference different too?

Kevin definitely hides things to show everyone (even himself) only the best things. (That's why Charles' has the potential to be really good for him, I get that now lol). But I don't get the vibes of 'mastermind perfectly in control of himself' from the man who was too brutally honest about his hatred of pasta salad and said this:

ep. 73 'recent past' Kevin: "I remember being a real grumpster, just a grouch and a half about everything! [...] But Strex bought out my radio station, and everything changed for the better. [...] Once Strex entered my life and showed me the power of the Smiling God, why, nothing was the same for me ever again! I felt so much happier. I did terrible things. I felt so much happier! I tore and bit and growled…I felt so incredibly happy! My skin rent, blood drops on the ceiling, someone’s throat in my hand! So deliriously happy!"

And he sounds a bit delirious whilst recounting this. Kevin's tone only ever changes when experiencing something genuine and that is not often.

So what do I think? I think that WTNV is written as socio-political commentary and Kevin reflects that. He is made to represent the influences a theocratic-capitalist society has on a person. He is made to be complex, and not just 'simply evil'.

Maybe there are many Kevin's we are hearing from even when we aren't made aware of such (but this feels like a cop out) and thus many Strex's and many religions surrounding a Smiling God.

But most likely:

DB was a mirror or close enough of NV. Kevin and Cecil were very similar pre-Strex. Strex was directly established in DB. Kevin spent some time in the Desert Otherworld and either discovered people there who already worshipped/observed the vast light which is a Smiling God which exists there or founded such a group of people based on others already lost there (evidence is found by Dana of there once being a civilisation doing such worship in the desert otherworld).

He brought that knowledge back with him and despite it being incomplete/not very solid/based mostly on his own interpretations, the religion really took off in DB and either dripped a bit to NV or the NV version is what created the otherworld version when some of them got lost in the dog park and ended up there. Anyway, Kevin becomes pretty important because of this.

Strex adopted that religion, changing it to suit them as they saw fit and even adopting it's triangle symbolism into their company logo, and used it to gain more power over DB and it's citizens so they could take total control (they also canonically invented control collars...).

Strex beat down and brainwashed Kevin but kept him in his job because people already looked to him as a prophet of a Smiling God. It works like this for years, with belief in a Smiling God becoming a mandatory part of the StrexCorp regime and Kevin himself still having some influence over it. He incorrectly believed this gave him power over StrexCorp and it's employees too. He would fight with Lauren about this and she was actually the one in the right hence why she never gets reprimanded, but also why she can't get rid of Kevin without destabilising the control they have.

The Strex Arc for NV happens. Kevin is returned to the desert otherworld and does research on a giant creature he sees there and mistakes(?) it for a different form of a Smiling God. He finds a way to send this book back, and since time works differently in NV (i.e. many years have passed in the desert otherworld but not in NV) the book looks 'old-ish'. Pastor Munn only shared the book with Gordon and they change the religion subtly based on what they gleam from it. This may or may not have been Kevin's intention as it seems more like general notes or even scientific research (gasp!) than any kind of dogma.

Kevin continues to believe and insist on his own version of events, maybe even to help him through his trauma, and eventually gets to live out his fantasy of control by running Desert Bluffs Too. He has a small religious crisis during this time (canon, mentioned during the All Smiles'-Mudstone Abyss arc), likely because neither the vast light nor the centipede he assigned a Smiling God nor any other version he imaged seems to be in the desert otherworld any more. Charles enters the picture and starts to challenge Kevin's perceptions of his own importance, what is correct emotional regulation and what his religion might actually mean. He has all but forgotten Strex at this time, but is unable or unwilling to look back on those times as completely negative especially because his religion (which he very well likely founded) became so linked with the company.

More Kevin please.

[thiemrossi]

INDYCAR 101 PART 3 RESOURCE MASTERPOST: a 2023 guide to indycar by @thiemrossi

hi, hello, happy race week! If you want to start watching indycar this season but don't know where to start, this is for you. I couldn't cover everything, so I tried to focus on the drivers because there are so many unrecognized great personalities in indycar. If you have questions about anything on here or other stuff I didn't mention, feel free to ask me, I'm happy to help! This will also be multiple parts, so I'll link them all below

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3

This info was originally on slides, but I am just going to share it as text here. So, part 3 is a "how to find out more" masterpost.

Where can I learn more about drivers? (Long-Form Content)

Off Track with Hinch & Rossi Podcast & Bonus content on Youtube

The Vibe: Long-form, unstructured, casual, funny, feels like 3 friends hanging out & talking

Weekly podcast (Thursdays) with best friends Alexander Rossi (current IndyCar driver) and James Hinchcliffe (former driver, current NBC commentator) where they discuss their lives, IndyCar, & other racing with a healthy dose of banter that descends into wonderful absolute chaos in the off season

Fun for new fans & a great way to get to know two key personalities in the series especially if you listen after a race weekend

But you will miss inside jokes (which make it more fun) if you haven’t listened to the old episodes, so I highly recommend going back and listening to those if you have time

Speed Street Podcast with Conor Daly & Joey Mulinaro (full episodes also on Youtube)

The Vibe: Long-form, semi-structured, funny, honest, & casual but also journalistic

Weekly podcast (Wednesdays) with friends Conor Daly (IndyCar Driver) & Joey Mulinaro (Comedian, Journalist) with commentary and interviews from all racing series

Great way to get to know Conor & the drivers he interviews plus get great insider insight into race weekends

Conor also just talks in a very entertaining way that I find very funny

Dinner with Racers Podcast

The Vibe: VERY long-form, unstructured, casual, personal

Hosts Sean and Ryan get to know various figures in racing through long form unstructured conversations over dinner 

These guys REALLY get drivers to open up & are very funny with it

All of the IndyCar driver/series figures episodes are great I highly recommend them

Trackside Podcast/Radio Show

The Vibe: structured, journalistic, informative

Weekly Indianapolis Radio Show with NBC commentator Kevin Lee and IndyCar VP Curt Cavin with series news and driver interviews (also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts)

They're probably the best series news podcast imo because they discuss things in an engaging way & give info we may not have heard yet

The Marshall Pruett Podcast: This Week in IndyCar

The Vibe: structured-ish, journalistic but can be casual

Weekly updates about the series, answering questions, driver interviews

Marshall has great insight but his podcasts can be hard to listen to because he rambles and talks slow, but the info is generally good & accurate

COMING SOON: 100 Days to Indy

IndyCar Docuseries produced by Vice and the CW following the lead up to the 107th Indianapolis 500 premieres April 27th at 9pm EST on the CW (will be available internationally as well)

Where can I learn more about drivers? (Short-Form Content)

Bus Bros with Josef Newgarden & Scott McLaughlin

The Vibe: Medium-form, structured but casual and fun, essentially a comedy show

IndyCar drivers Josef & Scott try local foods, interview fans, tour other drivers/fans motorhomes, read mean tweets etc.

Super fun for new fans so highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t already!

If you want to see drivers having fun & showing their personalities this one is for you

Romain Grosjean Youtube

The Vibe: Short-form, technical, comparative Has a couple driver interviews (Pato, Scott McLaughlin, Conor Daly) but a lot of videos demonstrating technical differences between IndyCar and F1 if that's something you're interested in

All of these are behind the scenes during race weekends

Admit1 with Josef Newgarden You Don’t Know Jack with Jack HarveyPato O’Ward YouTubeIndyCar Inside the RaceArrow McLaren YouTubeJuncos Hollinger YouTubeOutside the Line Andretti YouTube

How to watch IndyCar

United States

 All practices, qualifying, & races available live & on replay with a Peacock subscription

All races (except Toronto which is Peacock exclusive) are also broadcast live on network TV on NBC or USA network

Canada

TSN & TSN+ (this is new I think)

Australia

Stan Sport *looks* to be similar to peacock they’ll carry practice, qualifying, races & replays this season

UK

SkySportsF1 broadcasts most of the races but from what I understand they won’t cut to IndyCar if F1 post-race is still happening & have also heard they sometimes replay the F1 race over indycar :/

According to IndyCar, you can subscribe to IndyCar Live to watch practice and qualifying but no clue how much additional cost that would be or if it actually works

Latin America (except Belize and the Carribean Islands)

ESPN (unclear if they’ll carry all sessions)

Elsewhere:

Check here 

if your country does not have a race broadcaster IndyCar live will probably be available & even if they do, it might still be available to watch practice and qualifying 

Here's NBC's graphic with the race schedule but download the IndyCar app!!! it is the most helpful race weekend resource to have!! It has all the session times & driver radios are free to listen to during races if you make an account!! you can also listen to the radio feed of the whole race (at least in the US) & check championship standings live!! it's one thing this series does right!! download it!!

Thanks for reading I hope you found these posts helpful & if you have questions feel to ask me!

[talenlee]

Decemberween ’23 — The New Music From This Year

New Post has been published on PRESS.exe: Decemberween ’23 — The New Music From This Year

How do you listen to new music?

I understand it’s really common for most people to listen to music in their cars or using systems like Spotify, which I don’t like and don’t drive. That’s right, I don’t like cars and I don’t drive Spotify. I listen to podcasts when I travel, usually, and I listen to music while I work at my computer, because I want something that affects my mood while I’m doing, like, this work.

Frustratingly, just because it’s usually there and ad-free, I let Youtube throw mixes at me. Then when I’ve noticed I’ve done that enough that some songs are part of my personal lexicon, I go and acquire those songs some other way, whether bandcamp (in the case of small bands) or

I want to nakedly recommend an mp3 collection to you. You don’t need special software to manage it. You can just dump all your music in a great big heap and use the search function on any mp3 player you like to find the songs you want. You have paid for music, you have paid for the right to use it in different forms, spotify subscriptions are not paying artists and they are rent-seeking on things you can buy directly, or in many cases have already bought.

Anyway, here’s the stuff that I added to my mp3 collection this year.

The Lads are a Christian band from New Zealand I listened to as a kid. I re-found them on Youtube this year. They’d had a song that stuck in my head, an idea that I’ve been trying to stick to, which is if you need a reason to make a change in your life, anything will do. Why not make a big change on Arbor Day, a day you probably had no idea was a day on your calendar?

Arbor Day - The Lads // Arbor Day

Watch this video on YouTube

I mean this isn’t amazing music, but I like having it on hand, you know? The detritus of what we are. Not all of us were influenced by absolute bangers. Sometimes the idea that ‘you can make changes to your life for any given arbitary reason’ is a good thing and it doesn’t matter that much that I got it from a band of dorks who moved to Nashville to sing songs to megachurch kids (which is their spot now).

Sub-Radio - Stacy's Dad (Full Video)

Watch this video on YouTube

Next up, a parody song. Stacy’s Mom is a banger of a song about having a crush on an older woman (and the song doesn’t, like, go anywhere with it). Then we get a delightful genderswapped version here, which I hesitate to call a ‘parody’? It’s the same song, basically, it’s just a different orientation with the same comedy bent.

One thing I do find a little awkward is, now I’m starting on being ‘in my forties’ (man that feels weird to say), hearing someone talk about ‘is he learning about the Civil War’ like – so what?! So what if that’s a thing that interests me!? How did I get read like that?

AJJ - "Brave As A Noun & Survival Song" (KVRX Library Session)

Watch this video on YouTube

The band Andrew Jackson Jihad, for, perhaps sensibly obvious reasons, changed their name recently. This meant they made an announcement on Youtube at some point and I noticed that (‘AJJ on their name announcement?’ what did AJJ mean?) and that meant I listened to some of their music, annnnnd I like it! I’m told they make Folk Punk, which sounds to me like nonsense but I also am firmly of the opinion that there’s nothing quite so punk as making very specific categorisations that everyone around you must adhere to, right?

BANG! - Last Life AMV

Watch this video on YouTube

Thanks to the Last Life Youtube series of Minecraft Hardcore Lets Plays –

What are you laughing at –

I wound up listening to some cool music that was made as part of animatics by cool fans of the series, too. And while sometimes that meant learning about something cool like the band AJR (who are not the same thing as AJJ, thanks file sorting),

Curses - Last Life Animation

Watch this video on YouTube

Or something interestingly indie and creepily jazzy, like The Crane Wives (and I’m sure I’ve shared this before, surely it was in my list of new music last year),

W.I.T.C.H | Double Life SMP

Watch this video on YouTube

Or maybe even something else normal people like like Devon Cole’s WITCH, it did also mean I wound up appreciating a song…

Sharks | Life Series Animatic

Watch this video on YouTube

By Imagine Dragons of all people.

Animatics are great. They recontextualise songs and the recontextualisation means that now I have a story for these songs to be about and not just, like, Imagine Dragons’ latest car ad.

The Killers - A Pirate Looks At Forty (Jimmy Buffett Cover) HQ

Watch this video on YouTube

I think I shared this earlier this year too, but it’s the Killers cover of A Pirate Looks At Forty. I may be a bit overly maudlin about anything to do with Jimmy Buffett this year, since this is now the point at which I know that he’s had to leave the party.

Yofukashino Uta

Watch this video on YouTube

Also, this year I listened to a bunch of Anime OPs, because I was watching more anime this year. And the anime this year that I liked just happened to have OPs that I think are great, so I added them to my list. In the vein of ‘sounds like just cool music you might seem international and interesting for listening to,’ there’s the band Creepy Nuts! They do Japanese hiphop and, in addition to the songs from the Call of the Night anime soundtrack, you should also check out Song for the Prodigies.

Summer Time Render - Opening | FULL HD [1080p]

Watch this video on YouTube

The opening of Summer Time Render sounds to me like jangly folk rock? I think people call it College Rock? Problem here is I don’t even know this song’s name. It’s just The Opening To Summer Time Render, which is my favourite anime of the year, like it just absolutely whips ass, so I hear this song and I remember how that show makes me feel, from its first embarrassing opening of boobs and butts to its astoundingly sweet conclusion.

"Mobile Suit Gundam the Witch from Mercury" Textless version of opening "The Blessing" by YOASOBI

Watch this video on YouTube

The opening to Witch from Mercury has a similar effect, but I really like the way it has this, like, descending step effect? The staggering of it, it sings like dancing, and I love the way it feels like it’s responding to its own anxieties.

I have no idea what this song is saying.

TVアニメ『リコリス・リコイル』ノンテロップOPムービー｜ClariS「ALIVE」

Watch this video on YouTube

I think that the opening and ending of Lycoris Recoil whip ass. There’s this thing the opening does which I think anime openings love doing, which is this sort of crooning that turns into a high, wide arc and then abruptly stops and regathers its footing?

Paripi Koumei Ep5 ED

Watch this video on YouTube

Perhaps obviously, Ya Boy Kongming, an anime about music in Shibuya District, has nothing but bangers in its soundtrack. Everything, even the song by the Evil Bad Band That Sucks are good, but I especially like this cover of Kibun Jojo for the ending that adds instrumentation and a rap verse as the series progresses.

Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie - Opening | Honey Jet Coaster

Watch this video on YouTube

On the other hand, Honey Jet Coaster is just… like, energetic sugary pop music, it feels completely artificial and I have no reason to recommend it. Much like everything to do with Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie you kinda have to get something out of it on a very superficial level, because there is nothing going on here.

(That’s a lie, the song is voiced as if it’s a boyfriend singing about Shikimori, but the vocalist is a woman who sounds like Shikimori, and it describes how Shikimori is a ‘better boyfriend than him’ but you know, so what.)

The Truck Got Stuck - Corb Lund

Watch this video on YouTube

Now a hard swerve from songs I absolutely cannot sing to songs I absolutely can. I learned about Corb Lund this year! He’s a Canadian country musician, who I learned about after a comedian who appeared on Behind The Bastards told a story about how one time, a racist on a neo nazi website reviewed his set he did opening for Corb Lund, and was so upset he realised that Corb Lund might not be racist enough for him.

Anyway, truck got stuck.

Roll Northumbria (Loud Version)

Watch this video on YouTube

Continuing Canadian songs I can sing along to, The Dreadnoughts dropped an album late last year, lot of good songs but especially good is this version of Roll Northumbria, which is a song I already liked, but this time rendered as a big loud stomping song.

Sidle Up

Watch this video on YouTube

Also, something that a lot of bands I like have in common is how good they get when they say, turn forty and stop carrying around a focus on high school. That’s what happened to the Littlest Man Band, which is actually a spinoff band from Reel Big Fish, a 90s Ska Band One And A Half Hit Wonder. I have liked Reel Big Fish all through the years, but on a few tracks, as a gag, they let their member Scott Klopfenstein just do a wholly soulful rendition of a totally different style.

And uh, then he went and made his own band that just does those songs and they’re great.

blink-182 - ONE MORE TIME (Official Video)

Watch this video on YouTube

Talking about things from the 90s that got better as they matured, Blink 182 have a single this year. Apparently it’s part of an album I have no interest in listening to, but this single, on its own, phew. Just fantastic vibes and a real improvement on their baseline sound. It’s Blink 182, but with just a lot more musical competence and fewer mangled half-rhymes.

I thought after I was done with single paragraph summaries I’d go back through the article and bulk it out with more details, to get up to the word count I wanted. Turns out I’m at one and a half times my word count, oops!

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Decemberween2023

[adornesibley]

IT'S GONNA BE MAY: a Newsletter

Reading: The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly, How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Finished Reading: Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix, The Secrets we Keep by Shirley Patton, The Vegetarian by Han Kang 

Podcast: Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery

Playing: God Hand and Nier (Jank is Good, Jank is Life)

Making: Doom levels

Writing: Project E and *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧NEW THING*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ (which I will talk about below)

Word Count: Word counts are just a way the patriarchy can arbitrarily muffle voices it doesn’t like… but it’s 167338 

TLDR: I talk about my new short story anthology project, word counts and the desperation of doe-eyed newbie authors, the insular nature of TTRPGs and nerd culture jargon, glossary provided for her pleasure.

Firstly, new thing! *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  I’m working on a super secret idea which I’m going to keep secret until precisely … now. It can be summed up in five words: TECHNO HORROR ANTHOLOGY FLOPPY DISK. Take yourself back to a bygone era, where the hair was big and often mulleted (wish that trend stayed dead, crimped hair stayed away but mullets came back? WTF humans) to when everyone is reading their Goosebumps or playing with their Tamagotchis. Close your eyes. Can’t you hear the dial-up now. Smell your breakfast cooking in your George Foreman grill. I know I’m talking about a large year range but for most of us millennials the 80s and 90s is just a blob monster of slow computers and corded phones and Scrunchies and listening to the radio, waiting for your fav song to play so you can hit record on your cassette player. I will keep you posted here on the progress and continue to give hints as to the full plan with all the gory details of its taxonomy. For now, this is all you get.

Project E’s progress was not so bad. I’m actually really proud of this word count. I shaved off so much this month. I was productive AF. And yet I feel compelled to continue on. The average scifi novel length is up to 150k words and I’m still well above that. Then you go to the average DEBUT scifi novel length and psht… 120k. If I remove 50k from Project E, that’s a whole book on its own!  

I’ll admit that sometimes, a book is really and truly longer than it needs to be, but let’s also admit that plenty of books get published that are CERTAINLY longer than they should be. I’m looking at you, Herman Melville! So to act as though this is an aspect which would make it impossible to publish a novel is disingenuous. The shit reality is simply that more words means more ink and pages, and publishers are scared of losing money, so unless you’re well established or the concept is a “sure thing” then they’re unlikely to give you the time of day.

I have no proof, and this is not a statement I’d backup in any legal capacity, but I’d imagine it’d also be quite easy to find a manuscript which says things you don’t like, and then force the author to gut it to fit your requested word count. Once it barely resembles its initial form, then it’ll be toothless enough to be allowed to get by. New authors are desperate to have their stories accepted. We’ll do anything. ANYTHING. This isn’t to say that Lit Agents and publishers are mustache-twirling villains. I’m saying that shitty people exist in every corner of society, and those folks would likely be happy to abuse their positions of power.

So, a month and a half ago I watched a video about the TTRPG community and its insularity. Well, technically the video was about ShadowDark, but Indestructoboy spent a significant part of the video discussing this problem. I’ve never considered how impossible it would be to understand folks in our community when we’re discussing games. “So I just got to try out a new OSR1 TTRPG2, it’s a Roll Under3 3d64 system with no Death Saves5, or HP6 and it’s entirely GMless7!” Just imagine for a second that you don’t have access to the acronyms or specialized jargon. That sentence would be word salad!

Shit, just TTRPG is useless to anyone not already in the community. Tabletop Roleplaying Games have the power to be an incredible tool for community building and a creative outlet, but by creating so much shorthand, we force folks to learn a tertiary language to even engage with the simplest examples of this style of game! I think that a good stop-gap would be a Glossary of terms in the back of tabletop roleplaying game books, but long term I think it’s pretty important to consider that maybe doing away with the acronyms at LEAST would benefit the community significantly. (Or if you’re gonna use them, consider explaining them somewhere in your post/ book/ video.)

Support weird. Support indie.

OSR either means Old School Revival or Old School Renaissance. What these means is up for discussion and debate, but the “Revival” side appears to be focused on literally reviving old-school games like Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition while the “Renaissance” side takes ideas from these old Tabletop game systems and adapts them to more modern game design sensibilities. OR AT LEAST THOSE ARE MY DEFINITIONS.

TTRPG is simply short for Tabletop Roleplaying Game(s) which generally involves a certain level of imagining the actions (theatre of the mind) of a character whom you embody in that game, where you must take on the role of someone who likely does not think or act like you would.

Roll Under is a type of system where you will be rolling dice to try to get a number lower than your character’s ability scores. (The numbers that represent their Mental and Physical aspects) If you do, you succeed, and if you don’t, you fail to complete whatever task you were attempting.

d6 is shorthand for six-sided dice, which is the cube dice most folks think of when they hear “dice.” In this example, there is a 3 at the beginning which tells you that you would be rolling three six-sided dice and adding them together.

Death Saves are a concept from Dungeons and Dragons. When your character loses all of their health points/ hit points (a number representing how healthy your character is) then they fall unconscious and are forced to roll a twenty-sided dice each time their turn comes around. If they fail to roll a 10 or higher, then they have a “failed” death save. If they roll a 10 or higher then they “succeeded”. Traditionally you need three of either of them to finish being in this unconscious state. If you get three failures, you die, and if you get three successes, your character “stabilizes” but remains unconscious for some time. There are more rules, but those are for someone running a game to explain, this gives the basic understanding, I feel.

HP is short for Health Points or Hit Points. This tells you how much damage a character can receive before they fall unconscious or die.

GMless. So, first, a GM is a “Game Master” and their job is to narrate what happens around your characters and to roleplay pretty much everyone in existence that isn’t your character. In Dungeons and Dragons they’re called “Dungeon Masters” or DMs. So, a game that is GMless simply means that there is no Game Master and instead the players are cooperatively telling the story together, usually by allowing the outcomes of dice to tell them whether they are succeeding or failing at certain tasks.

[earlgreytea68]

Hi! Thank you for posting so much interesting stuff lately, I really missed your long posts. I know, Twitter situation kinda sucks, but it clearly has its benefits, if you know what I mean ;))) I always love reading your fob lyrics analysis, for one, it makes me listen to the great old songs time and time again. And speaking of which, it seems, a lot of Pete’s songs are like a classic “angst with a happy ending” type of fic, with a lot of recognisable tropes in it. And it’s amazing. What do you think, if he was an active fandom member (any fandom you can imagine), what kind of author would he be? What kind of stories would he write? Would he engage with his readers? And, would you ever write a story about it??)) I wish you very nice and wholesome winter season ☺️

Awww thank you! I do miss Twitter but I've really been enjoying posting on here! It's been great interacting more with people!

I think Pete Wentz has an intensely fannish personality. He speaks fan-language with a fluency that would be hard to fake, I think, and he's done it all along. He had an *LJ,* after all. And when he talks about pop culture, he just approaches it from the angle of a fan. His radio show was instructive on that point, because he was playing off of a guy who was very clearly not fannish at all, and he would say things like, "I always wanted Rihanna to end up with Drake," or "I read this book and it was like I couldn't think of anything but this book for days," and the other guy was like, "...okay," and I was just like, Pete, darling, you need to get a fanboy around you. I just think he's definitely a fan at heart, and not just in the sense of being a curatorial fan of things, but in an active, creative, shipper-y way, like wanting Rihanna with Drake. There's this podcast he did once that I can't find right now where he analyzed a Hallmark Christmas movie and there’s this part where he’s like, “What’s the deal with the guy’s manager, like, I thought he was in love with the guy,” and I was just like, “Yeah, Pete, because you think in Fanfiction.” He often thinks in character and not in plot, and that's the hallmark of a fanfic writer, really.

Anyway, I have long had a story half-drafted where Pete accidentally becomes a BNF in his own fandom and is writing this epic star-crossed sci-fi AU about him and Patrick that he's trying desperately to hide from Patrick and also from all of his avid readers who for obvious reasons CANNOT KNOW that the story is being written by Pete Wentz hahahaha. Someday I will finish this story, because I adore the premise so much.

I think he would be a furiously productive author, because I think he just writes all the time. I think he wouldn't be much into editing (based on his comments about why he's never written another book). I think his stories would be more like LJ stories than AO3 stories, by which I mean LJ stories had a different feel to them, would sometimes end ambiguously, or have these intense inexplicable metaphors. Which is not to say AO3 stories never do that! And I love AO3 stories!! But Idk, when I think of the way Pete would write a story, it would be in that old-fashioned LJ way, and I think people who read on both platforms probably know what I mean? I think his stories would be full of soulmates and also massive amounts of confusion about being soulmates lololol

And I think he would ABSOLUTELY engage with his readers. He loooooves engagement, really. You will never convince me he's not lurking on every single social media site in some way, shape, or form, spying on the fandom. Probably less now than he did when he was younger, but I remain convinced there's still a secret Pete Wentz Tumblr out there. Pete Wentz was into the engagement before a lot of celebrities realized it could even be a thing. I think he'd answer every comment really thoughtfully.

[a34trgv2]

The Problem With Exposition Dumps

In any form of entertainment, it's important to establish some context for the events of the story. There is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Dumping exposition onto the audience is most certainly the wrong way. For this post, I'm going to explain my problem with exposition dumps and how to better convey exposition. And in case you're wondering, no, I'm not going to put down writers who use exposition dumps as "lazy" or "pathetic."" My intent is always to educate, not belittle.

You should be familiar with what an exposition dump is as they pop up everywhere. In movies, TV shows, video games, radio podcasts and etc.. Characters will stop the story dead in it's tracks to spend more than a paragraph talking about lore, character backstorys, or the setting they're in. This makes for boring entertainment because at that point the characters are just spouting random tribia from the story bible and not actually telling a compelling story. I'm all about fun facts and interesting lore, but not at the expense of good storytelling and creative world building.

Let's dissect this clip from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Moon Girl says that she's tired, yet the way she's animated in the clip leads me to believe otherwise as she's not panting or sweating. She also mentions that the bad guy is getting stronger, then asks "but how?" I can suspend my disbelief enough to get behind a child prodigy befriending a dinosaur and fighting bad guys in New York, but I don't buy for a second she doesn't know what a troll is. But okay, let's actually assume she doesn't know what a troll is (as unlikely as that sounds); she should still put 2 and 2 together when she sees that everytime she takes his petty comments personally, he gets stronger. She should've known before this particular clip that he was feeding off her negative emotions like a parasite, or in this case, a symbiote. She then zooms in on the troll and realizes that it's a symbiote before spelling out for the audience what a symbiote's weakness is. First of all, even if people didn't know what a symbiote was, you could've still showed us what it's weakness is by having Devil roar immediately. Or better yet, leave it a mystery to be solved in a latter episode because it honestly doesn't matter too much in the context of the episode. Second, you mean to tell me this kid knows what an alien symbiote is but not a troll? This makes her less of a relatable kid who just so happens to be smart and more like a socially inept outcast who's so caught up in scienec and math that she's basically stupid when it comes to being a human. Not only was this exposition dump useless, it was also poorly constructed based on what we already know about Moon Girl and what kind of girl she's supposed to be.

Is there a way to give exposition without it feeling pointless and boring, though? Actually, yes. One of the best examples I can think of is the opening to Samurai Jack. It perfectly sums up the main driving force behind Jack's quest with the late-great Mako's chilling and sinster voice, and eerie flute plaing, and the still images that look like ancient Japanese artwork. The lines used are also vague enough for the audience to fill in the gaps and we're told just enough to be invested in the story. Exposition can also be told in a way that's funny, such as in the Wander Over Yonder episode The Ball, where Beeza nonchalantly explains to Wander and Sylvia that the world is ending (again) at the paws of a giant space puppy. The comedic timing is on point as Tara Strong gives a very relaxed and soft spoken delivery as Beeza mentions cannibalism and starvation as possible fates for her people. Exposition can even be sung in a banging musical number, such as Part Of Your World from Little Mermaid, One Day More from Les Miserable, or the iconic Oompa Loompa songs from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In the hands of the right storyteller, the exposition scene could be an audience member's favorite moment from the story.

As the saying goes, less is more. This is especially true when you're writing exposition. Dumping exposition on the audience will either frustrate them or bore them to sleep. If you're gonna give exposition during the story, try having it delivered in a way that's interesting; i.e. during an action scene like in Kung Fu Panda, a funny scene like in The Bad Guys, or in a musical number like in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Just because exposition is necessary doesn't mean it has to be boring. Exposition is the avocado of storytelling. Alone, it's bland and boring as paint drying on a rainy day. With the right ingredients, though, it can make for some pretty good guacamole. See you next time ✌️

[metalchris]

Interview with Sgah'gahsowáh of Blackbraid

Listen to my interview with Sgah'gahsowáh of the indigenous black metal band Blackbraid https://wp.me/pDCET-40F

I interviewed Sgah’gahsowáh, the main man behind the indigenous black metal band Blackbraid, and it just aired on the Metal Embassy Radio Show on Saturday. If you missed it don’t worry, you can still check it out in podcast form below. We talk about his debut album, Blackbraid I, which just dropped on Friday, the meaning behind several songs, his inspirations as a musician and more! Metal…

[pizzapranks]

I've been trying to get out to more places (or at least to different places) lately and not only does that mean doing things like finding more time for tumblr, but I've also started uploading the video version* of Indiepocalypse Radio!

Indiepocalypse is the weekly pirate radio/interview/chat show I host on Saturdays where I mostly talk to contributors of Indiepocalypse but also game critics, streamers, or just people from the non-game art world at large. It's sort of my version of the relaxed post-con hangout without the need to have everyone travel all over the world to the same place.

It covers all the crucial questions you would have for game developers like, game dev origins & inspirations, regional foods, and "mario, what do you think about that little guy?".

It's available both in podcast and (as I add them) video form.

It's one of my main efforts to try and get attention for more underground game devs (and my admittedly my preferred way to hang out online since since I hate the personalized feed/comment style of interaction) and I think you should check it out!

*video is a very generous term since even the streamed version generally has a very minimal visual element