#probably the funniest things I’ve done this week

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I’m thinking I might do a Taskmaster rewatch. It’s now about 3 months before I go off the UK for two weeks, which still doesn’t feel like a real thing that’s going to actually happen. But I’ve been thinking about how weird it is that I’m flying across an entire ocean because I happened to come across something on YouTube four years ago.

That’s how it started. Not because of the pandemic. It was early March 2020 when I was at my grandparents’ house out East, upstairs in their guest bedroom at about 9 PM, clicking through YouTube, and came across Taskmaster s01e01. I thought, that’s interesting. I like British comedy, by which I mean the old shows my dad had on DVD boxsets so I watched them over and over as a kid (Yes Minister, Flying Circus, Ripping Yarns, Blackadder, Mr. Bean, Fawlty Towers, a few others), the greatest TV show in the entire world called The Thick of It, a few tapes and CDs that my dad used to play in the car a lot (Billy Connolly, Beyond the Fringe, The Good Show), all of Douglas Adams’ books, a few other scattered TV shows I’d watched over the years because my dad said they were good (Peep Show, The Inbetweeners), and a whole bunch of Radio 4 programs. But I didn’t recognize this. This one of those TV panel shows they have there. Like QI, the show I hate because it took Sandi Toksvig away from The News Quiz. But surely that doesn’t mean all TV panel shows are bad. I wonder what this one is?

I clicked on it, and it had a man I vaguely recognized as the teacher in The Inbetweeners, and six other people I did not recognize at all. They were doing things I did not understand. I couldn’t tell how serious they were about anything whatsoever. I couldn’t figure out why it was funny. What are they doing? Why have they brought in items? Who are these people? I was intrigued.

And then Romesh Ranganathan threw a watermelon on the ground and my life hasn’t been the same since. That’s what it was. That’s the moment it clicked for me, and I instantly understood everything about why Taskmaster is funny. I had to call an apology to where my mother and grandparents were sitting downstairs, because sound travels easily in that house and I could not stop laughing. I couldn’t stifle the sound, I couldn’t get my breath. Romesh Ranganathan throwing a watermelon on the ground was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I needed to see all of it. I needed to see every episode of this and also every other thing that any of these people have ever done. It’s a total coincidence that the world happened to end about a week later so I had time to actually do that.

The world ended, the tournaments I was supposed to get home to coach got canceled, so my trip out East got extended, I watched the rest of Taskmaster. Every episode that had aired as of then, which was up to the end of season 9. I got to the end and couldn’t just be done with all those people, so I Googled my favourites to see what else they’d done. Made a list of what shows came up the most often. Then spent about a year watching every episode of every show on that list, because the world had ended and I had nothing else to do. Would I Lie to You, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Catsdown, Mock the Week, Big Fat Quizzes, QI, The Last Leg. Never Mind the Buzzcocks, though I did start that one from the beginning of the Simon Amstell era, didn’t watch it from the beginning. But I watched every single episode (that had been released as of then) of the others. As I went along, I found new favourite people, and looked up things they’d done, and added those things to my list. Watched/read/listened to those things too. Shorter panel shows, sitcoms, books. The Mash Report and New World Order, of course. I watched every episode of UK Roast Battle and I'm pretty ashamed of it but probably still not as ashamed as I should be. Had a big WILTY phase during which I also re-watched Peep Show, watched everything else Mitchell and Webb have ever done for good measure, watched every episode of Not Going Out and that sketch show Lee Mack did before it, read both Lee Mack and David Mitchell's autobiographies. I watched every single episode of Russell Howard’s Good News and The Russell Howard Hour. There were so many of them. Why did I do that?

Realized it was weird that I loved The Thick of It and Veep and In the Loop so much but had never sought out other Armando Iannucci things (besides that Death of Stalin movie that I saw in the cinema when it came out). Fixed that, went chronologically through all Iannucci's stuff starting with On The Hour/The Day Today. While I was at it, re-watched The Thick of It, also re-watched all those other Britcom shows I'd loved as a kid. Re-watched The Inbetweeners.

Had a phase of being obsessed with Noel Fielding when I watched Buzzcocks. Also watched The IT Crowd, Nathan Barley, Garth Marenghi, The Mighty Boosh, even Luxury Comedy. Learned some more stuff about Noel Fielding, and now regret that phase. But I still think Nathan Barley and Garth Marenghi are masterpieces (the latter didn't even feature Noel Fielding, it just got rolled in with the others due to other crossover people).

At first I excitedly told my friends all about this, but they did not care, and my best friend started getting actively annoyed about it, so I went looking for a place where I could put my Britcom-related thoughts and still have friends when this is all over. I created a Tumblr account in August 2020. It asked me what I wanted my name to be. I thought of a joke Sean Lock made on 8 Out of 10 Cats once, about how people should tell the meerkats that everything’s fine. I went with that.

After the first year, I figured I had a good grounding in long-running TV shows, and could expand my repertoire a bit. I downloaded all 125 hours of the old Russell Howard and Jon Richardson BBC 6 Music radio show, listened to those, confronted some stuff about how shortly before the pandemic I’d had to move out from living with a friend because my OCD-like tendencies (I can’t technically say “my OCD” because I was diagnosed with OCD as a child but then told as a teenager that it was probably a misdiagnosis and those were actually autism symptoms, but it comes to the same thing, it’s just semantics and doesn’t matter) made me so bad at sharing space with other people, watched that documentary he made, drank a bunch of whiskey and had one or two emotions. It was fine. I did Hypothetical next to bring the mood back up. Made a few incoherently furious Tumblr posts when Russell Howard brought on Jordan Peterson and ruined my ability to enjoy any of his work anymore (Russell Howard's work, that is, I didn't enjoy Peterson's work to begin with).

In 2022, the world started to exist again, and I had to do some in-person work placements (as opposed to the last two years, which I’d spent doing my very easy work-from-home editing job that left lots of time for panel shows), and I realized that audio comedy is a lot easier to take with me on a commute than TV comedy. I listened to all 217 hours of the original run of The Bugle. Then took a break for a few months before listening to the reboot, because getting to the end of the original run made me so genuinely sad that I needed some time to get used to the idea that it would become a different thing, before I could actually enjoy that other thing. Which I now enjoy very much. Listened to all of Zaltzman and Oliver's other things, of course. Got into Chris Addison's old Radio 4 stuff off the back of The Department. Found a bunch of other people's Radio 4 stuff in the same spot.

Saw Nish Kumar live twice within a few months, traveling to New York City and then Montreal for it. One time he looked at me and laughed at my reaction to a joke and asked me a question, and I briefly knew how it must have felt to be those people who fainted at Beatles concerts back in the day, due to being overwhelmed by proximity to their hero (though it's not exactly the same situation, hopefully Nish Kumar has beaten fewer women than John Lennon).

Got into Kitson in mid-2022. Bought all his stuff on Bandcamp and Vimeo, wanted more, scoured the internet because I was promised that bootlegs existed, couldn’t find them, messaged a guy on a comedy forum to see what he had, got much, much more than I could possibly have hoped for (including, incredibly, a spare room where I’m staying in London this summer). Bought all David O’Doherty’s stuff off Bandcamp. Got a NextUp subscription. Got so into stand-up that panel shows started to seem over-edited and less enjoyable by comparison. Watched all of Stewart Lee’s TV shows and stand-up DVDs within a couple of weeks. Got really really into Josie Long. Spent a fair bit of 2023 meticulously going through a hodge-podge collection of old Kitson recordings, carbon dating them from the tiniest detail so I could accurately record their date and venue on my spreadsheet and in the file name. Developed a deep obsession with a thing called the Chocolate Milk Gang. Got into a Beautiful Mind-style need to unravel all the mysteries of this one video featuring the Chocolate Milk Gang and a cow from Edinburgh 2003. Decided that Stuart Goldsmith is the best interviewer I’ve ever heard. Once accidentally ended up in a brief email correspondence with Stuart Goldsmith and had to take about six months off from listening to his podcast because I was so embarrassed about it. Listened to all Mark Watson's old radio shows and then did all of No More Jockeys, decided Mark Watson is probably the best person in the world, learned a few more things about him, decided he's maybe actually not. Memorized all the Perrier Award winners since 1999, because that seemed worth doing. Saw Grace Petrie live and managed to not cry until the final song. Went to coach the national championships in 2023, felt sad about how disconnected I'd become from the sport that was my whole life for years, ended up spending much of the weekend sitting in an empty hallway listening to Gavin Osborn songs. Accosted Josie Long in the streets of Montreal and made her sign a poster from 2011.

Went back and watched/listened to some earlier stuff. Rounded out my previous journey through the TV shows/movie of Alan Partridge with the specials and audiobooks and podcast. Did all of Lee and Herring in about two weeks. Listened to Do The Right Thing mostly in an empty classroom on breaks at my new autism therapy job, fell briefly in love with Danielle Ward.

Then 2024 arrived and that was mostly John Robins for a few months. Became an XFM/Radio X retro one-r, accidentally got a video of John Robins taken off YouTube and immediately wanted to hide under my bed forever. Booked a trip to London and Edinburgh for summer 2024.

All of this happened because I happened to click on s01e01 of Taskmaster in early March 2020. I’m flying across an ocean. And what I really wanted, to begin with, was more context for Taskmaster. I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, and I think everything is better in context, so I wanted to see these people do other things, get as much context as I possibly could so I could get all the little in-jokes on Taskmaster.

When I first watched Taskmaster, only nine seasons were out. Across those nine seasons that I watched in the first go, I only saw six people I recognized. Greg Davies, and later, Joe Thomas, from The Inbetweeners. Sally Phillips, from Veep. Jo Brand, whom I knew from some of my dad's old British stand-up comedy tapes. Hugh Dennis, as I’d been listening to The Now Show for years. And Nish Kumar, as I’d been listening to The News Quiz for years. I’d never actually seen Nish before getting to Taskmaster season 5, and was shocked the first time I watched s05e01, because based on hearing him on the radio all those times, I’d assumed Nish Kumar was about 55 years old. Since then I’ve realized that a few of the people I saw in those first nine Taskmaster seasons were actually people I’d heard before on The News Quiz, but I didn’t make those connections at the time. Nish was the only one I’d heard enough times on The News Quiz to immediately realize that this was the same person as the one on the radio. I was shocked by how young he was. And then I was shocked by how very bad at everything he was.

Also, I didn't realize until way too long after I'd finished my initial Taskmaster watch that Sara Pascoe was the radio employee in the Richard Bacon episode of The Thick of It.

Anyway, I have more context now. Quite a bit more context. Arguably too much context. Maybe more context than any one person could ever need. But I'm thinking, before I actually go to the UK on this trip that I still can't believe is going to be real, I might go through Taskmaster again, with context this time.

I've re-watched it before, of course. In those first nine seasons, I've seen every episode at least four times. I re-watched them all along with the podcast when that first came out. I re-watched the first 13 seasons with my then-girlfriend, back when we first got together, in late 2021/early 2022. But I haven't watched them all properly since then. I've re-watched sporadic episodes, but not all of them in order.

I'm thinking I'll do all of them order. With all the context. With too much context. Not on YouTube this time. I can watch it on my laptop's own video player, from the folder in the 5TB hard drive I bought specifically to house my comedy folder (currently about 2TB). That'll be a good use of my limited time on this Earth.

Here, have a video I made in the fall of 2020, putting moments from the nine seasons of Taskmaster that were out at the time to a song that I listened to a lot during early lockdown days.

[mindful-of-ideas]

A/N: Don’t do drugs.

“You dosed me,” said Wilson, barging into the apartment, “again!”

“Yes,” said House.

“So you admit it? Just like that?” asked Wilson.

“Yes, but just because I know I am right!”

“What’s going on,” you asked, closing the book you had been reading.

Just moments ago, the apartment was completely quiet. You were huddled with a blanket on the couch, reading a book, while House was making dinner.

“House could’ve killed me, that’s what’s going on!” screamed Wilson.

“No it’s not,” replied House, “I’ve put him on uppers to prove that I am right and I am. Just wait and see if he yawns Y/N.”

“I won’t be yawning,” replied Wilson, “because you are wrong and you drugged me for nothing. You could’ve given me a heart attack.”

You looked at them confused. It felt like you were only getting half of the story and the other half was getting lost in medical lingo. Yet you couldn’t help but smile. You knew that whatever House had done, it was meticulously planned and Wilson wouldn’t actually get harmed. Seeing them argue like this, over something as simple as yawning, was a sign that the rest of the week was probably going to be filled with pranks and revenge. Those always proved to be funny and put a smile on your face.

“Well, a heart attack is not going to kill you. You were in a hospital,” said House.

“You tried to kill me!”

“I gave you speed!”

You giggled, hiding your face with your hand. Giving Wilson speed was definitely not cool and wrong on House’s part. However, getting to see Wilson on speed might just turn out to be the funniest thing.

“See, even Y/N agrees with me,” said House pointing at you giggling.

“I’m not…” you started.

“They’re not agreeing with you just because they find this funny, “said Wilson, cutting you off, “and it’s not funny Y/N, speed is really dangerous.”

He looked dead serious saying that, which made you laugh even more.

“Y/N, it’s not funny,” Wilson went on, “he put me on speed just to prove that I was on anti-depressants. Which I’m not!”

That last part was aimed at House.

“Then how do you explain the Lexapro box in the bathroom trash?”

The smile faded from your face.

“I don’t!” Wilson said exasperated.

He slumped down on the couch almost crushing your feet.

“We’ve been through this. I don’t care if you’re taking them!” said House.

“And I’ve told you, it’s personal. I’m not on anti-depressants House. Just stop.”

You could feel the tone of the conversation changing. You had to say something before something bad happens.

“Those are mine,” you said looking up at House.

“Y/N, you don’t have to lie for Wilson,” he said.

“Y/N,” said Wilson worried.

“Now come on, they’re not actually serious,” said House.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Wilson.

He turned to face you on the couch.

“Y/N doesn’t need anti-depressants,” said House, “they’re not depressed, right?”

If Wilson looked worried, you couldn’t tell how House was feeling. Worst-case scenario, it was pity. And you didn’t want pity. That’s why you hadn’t told them yet. Worry was understandable, normal even but pity, pity was dreadful.

“Oh, come on!” House said, breaking the silence. He chuckled a little before going on. “That’s a good one. Making me think you both are depressed just to make me admit I am. It won’t work because I am not depressed.”

You looked at him in disbelief. How could he not believe you? Wilson scheming against him was believable, plausible, natural even, but you? You didn’t have the time nor the heart to play with anyone’s feelings like that, especially House’s.

“I got them about a week ago,” you went on, hoping House would understand you were joking, “I was going to tell you eventually, I just… I didn’t know how and…”

This was exactly why you hadn’t said anything. You couldn’t find the right words. Not without completely breaking down. And you didn’t want to break down. Not in front of Wilson.

“Y/N,” said Wilson, “it’s okay. You don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want to. But we’re there for you if you need anything.”

He reached out trying to squeeze your knee but you got up before he could do anything. You felt the tears rushing to your eyes and didn’t want him to see you like that. You turned away from both of them, trying to calm yourself by taking deep breaths.

“I’m fine,” you finally said, “I’m not weak, I’ll get through this.”

“Y/N, no one said you were weak,” Wilson said, coming up behind you.

He placed his hands on your shoulders before continuing. His voice was so low, only you could hear him.

“The fact that you sought help shows you’re actually strong. You don’t have to tell me anything but I will be there whenever you feel ready.”

He wrapped his arms around you hugging you from behind.

“Yes I am a doctor,” he went on, “but mostly I am your friend. I just want you to know that.”

You freed yourself from his grip only to turn around and hug him tighter.

“Thank you,” you whispered, “side effects had been a bitch honestly, but we can talk about it later. Maybe. I just want to go back to laughing at you two.”

In all this time, House hadn’t said a thing. You didn’t dare look at his face either, but you knew that he would come around and be there for you in due time. His silence didn’t mean he didn’t care, only that he had his own way of showing he cared. Later he would come to you and talk but right now, he still needed to process what he just learned.

“So you think it’s funny that House dosed me?” asked Wilson, breaking free from your hug.

“Really,” you said, “Actually, it’s hilarious!”

“Well I’ll have you know it’s the second time he does this,” he added.

“Well, it’s not as funny then,” you said, hoping to get a reaction from House.

“See?” Wilson asked House.

“I think he’s mad because he got proven wrong,” you said.

“I think I’m mad because no one is enjoying how funny having Wilson on speed is!” he finally said.

You burst out laughing.

“It is true that it’s the first time I’m actually witnessing this,” you said, “on second thoughts this is still hilarious.”

You walked up to House, visibly siding with him.

“Oh, that’s just great. Now both of you are on the same side. What will I ever do,” Wilson said, once again slumping down on the couch.

Another burst of laughter ensued.

“I’m done,” he said.

You were about to sit on the couch as well when House held you back.

“You’re stronger than you want to believe,” said House in your ear, “you know that?”

“I’m starting to get that,” you said.

You dragged him to the couch where you picked up your book again. House turned on the TV promptly turning up the volume just to annoy Wilson.

[louisisalarrie]

"louis leaked the weed video to daily mail and you cant convince me otherwise"

the weed video is so funny to me, I wasn't in the fandom back then so I don't really know how the fandom reacted. But looking at it now is so funny considering how he has a song high in california and even harry has admitted doing drugs not to mention his lyrics. but the funniest part about that video is that zayn says "i know you like dick"

Hello anon!! This was meant to be a lot shorter, but… yep. Here we are. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these but, well, welcome to the show…

It was sooooo clearly planned. And hilarious. And at the time, because a lot of us were on the younger side, we were shook at this video. tried to rationalise it by them being excited about the actual food chicken, not coke, and there were more than a few people who unstanned. People burned physical concert tickets, deleted their blogs, sent nasty tweets to the boys… It was not something we were expecting, particularly because it just came out of the blue one day, and a lot of us were too young to have dabbled in the devil’s lettuce.

but yeah… louis filmed for a long time, clearly putting the joint in the middle of the frame multiple times so we wouldn’t miss it, spoke super loudly so we’d know it was him, kept talking about how they were smoking weed, and basically removed all plausible deniability. and there wasn’t really too much attempted clean up afterwards. things just kinda kept going on as normal, even after the video was leaked.

SC did a half assed attempt at saving face, Liam made a series of tweets to try and save their butts (as per usual, he cleans up haha), TMZ said One Direction’s lawyers were getting involved because someone stole that video and leaked it (which like… how? It was literally filmed on louis’ phone, and im sure there would be much more interesting things to leak off there), and then articles about how upset Harry was at Louis for the whole thing were planted the next day to a) push larry further apart and continue their enemy thing, and b) push harry for another reason for a solo career.

BUT the thing is… SC’s statement, came roughly a week after all the articles had come out. It wasn’t straight away. And you wanna know why I think that was?

This article from the BBC.

Plainly put, it’s a short speculation piece about whether or not One Direction were still happy. That was a massive thing that came out of that video… was just like, Zayn and Louis being annoyed that they were putting out ANOTHER book, and that it was just the same old boring stuff that the fans had seen and read all before (I have all the books still, and yes, he is correct). I think that probably encouraged a statement from SC, because what’s the best way to show you’re unhappy and wanna step away from your brand and get back at your big boss who has full control over your career? You guessed it! A scandal.

While they certainly were smart enough to do this while in a country where it is legal to have a small amount of jazz cabbage for personal use, to avoid further complications with the law etc., and never actually using any explicit terms like “cocaine”, it got them off the hook enough that this leak was successful while still protected them from “going too far”. And I 100% stand by that it was Louis who planned to film and leak it, and that’s why “I know u like dick” came out, too.

Precious Mr Tomlinson has always been a bit of a mastermind with a master plan, and he knew that by posting this, the media would jump on them doing drugs more so. That was meant to be the main feature, with a splash of hating their brand and wanting to do more for fans. But for us Larries? Well… zayn saying he knows louis likes dick and then a loud louis cackle was pretty huge. Louis encouraged it and probably suggested zayn say something along those lines just to stir the pot (pun intended) some more. This video truly had the trifecta: hating SC/the 1d brand, doing drugs, and encouraging gay rumours.

And theeeeen SC hit louis with a punishment, which was Eleanor was to accompany louis for the rest of the tour because she’s a “great influence on him” (lol) which was announced on the same day of SC’s statement (coincidence?).

That same article then commented on how louis was so upset about the video because he was trying to make a deal to buy the Rovers at that time and didn’t wanna jeopardise it (he knew that vid wasn’t gonna jeopardise shit lol).

I think Louis saying the N word (which we all argued about whether he said it or not for ages bc damn louis) is totally inexcusable. That was by far the worst thing that came out of this video, and the media noticed it too. I don’t think he intended on it being in the video leak, because regardless of how much he wanted to piss off SC, I don’t think he’d ever intended to hurt anyone else and him saying that obviously did. I won’t excuse that and I kinda think well did he even watch it back before leaking it? Did he rewatch it still stoned and didn’t think twice about it? Either way he shouldn’t have said it regardless of being on camera or not and he did really hurt a lot of people. It was stupid.

The vid still available online is cut exactly at 5 mins, and is chopped up and doesn’t show the whole thing (I think there was a longer version somewhere that came out too and it was like over 8 mins but didn’t have the cuts in it? Idk I remember there being a longer one that disappeared???) but yeah… it truly was a time.

[crestfallercanyon]

WEEKLY TAG WEDNESDAY

Thank you Evie!! These are always delightful to do (even if I am usually late/forget — oops) @energievie ❤️❤️

—

name: crest

age: mid-to-late-20s

star sign: Pisces

your first language: English

second language: I used to be conversational in Spanish, now I get by.

favourite lip product: medicated chapstick and a mauve lipstick I’ve had for forever

the best food dish you can make without a recipe:Jambalaya, probably. Or chicken and green bean casserole.

If you drink tea, what kind? Tea both iced and hot are my drinks of choice, I drink black tea, and I mainly stick to earl greys, bergamots, kind of floral ish (I do not like fruit flavored for hot teas at all).

If you drink coffee, what roast do you usually get? Medium roast. I put half and half in my coffee and I like the richness — if I get light it tastes too much like milk.

favourite thing to watch on youtube right now: I’ve been watching Fantasy High Dimension 20 and I’m dying over it (you’ve probably been seeing me reblog fandom stuff from it if you follow me lmao) — and I’d be remiss not to talk about the video I watch probably once a week, which is a very specific games done quick of a nostalgic Nintendo game. It’s my cozy comfort video.

favourite thing to watch on youtube in 2012: oh god — I was a nerd-fighter for sure (vlogbrothers), I also watched Meekakitty (Tessa Violet) and Charlieissocoollike (that may have even pre-dated 2012, that might have been like 08 lmao) and likely many more.

favourite item of clothing right now: a brown and gray plaid short coat.

favourite item of clothing in 2012: i had a pair of corduroy rocket dog sneakers that I still own because I do love them, they’ve just been stitched back together so many times lol

fandom

three movies you recommend: Steel Magnolias, Life as a House, The Birdcage

your favourite concert: oh so many good ones, but watching Kevin Garrett respond to a fan who asked “do you have any happy songs?” with, “you walked into the wrong concert, brother, but I’ll try — this one’s kind of happy” and proceed to play a song about desperate heartache and heartbreak and fragility of youth was the funniest thing I’d ever seen and was also beautiful.

have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion? Not really — I’ve only really unfollowed people for a) being rude to other people’s fandom preferences and b) being endlessly and needlessly negative.

have you ever left a fandom because of the fans? No, but I do kind of stick to smaller fandoms.

the best tv show you watched last year: The Bear. It was phenomenal and I’m scared and excited for S3.

do you have a fancasting you just can’t let go of? Not really the same but I want Will Poulter to take over Armie Hammer’s role in The Man From UNCLE because that movie was great and I wish it had a sequel but it never will because AH is a fucking creep, but, unlike Armie Hammer, Will Poulter seems like a great guy and he’d do the role so fucking well, I just want it.

a ship you’ve abandoned: I’m sure I have one? But I can’t think of it.

on a scale of 1-10 how willing are you to share your ao3 history? Maybe a 5? I don’t actually read much these days, I’ve been kind of busy. If you ask me what I’ve liked though I’m not shy about telling you.

do you have a fandom tattoo? (do you want one?) no and the only one I would consider getting is from a book I know I will always love, like Piranesi or This is How You Lose the Time War, and I have no idea what I’d get from those.

what fandom do you wish was bigger? I actually kind of like my fandoms small, the video game Transistor by Supergiant Games is beautiful and I want to talk about it with people dammit.

has a finale ever ruined a show for you? Yes. Game of Thrones for sure. Dexter (though I don’t think I could rewatch it anyway). I agree with you Evie, That 70s Show’s ending was horrid! How I Met Your Mother, as well.

have you…

swam in an ocean? Yes, got absolutely wrecked once.

ever been vegan/vegetarian? no

gone skinny dipping? Nope.

gone skiing? Yes! Both water and snow.

been to a convention? Yes, in high school I was vice president of my library’s teen reading club (I was also in band and a theater kid so nice to meetcha I am a super nerd) and because of this our club got to go with my librarians to the fanciest hotel I’ve ever stayed in which hosted the most amazing convention ever of Indie Booksellers and I met Maggie Stiefvater and got Rainbow Rowell’s advanced reader’s copy of Eleanor and Park (think I’m dating myself here lol) and a couple of other amazing authors and talked poets and librarians and publishers and booksellers and I don’t think any convention will EVER surpass that experience.

—

Tagging: @mybrainismelted , @callivich , @gallawitchxx , @michellemisfit , @whatthebodygraspsnot , @sam-loves-seb , and ANYONE else who’d like to play!!!

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #558

Top Ten “Weird Al” Yankovic Songs

In retrospect, I should have done this last week and the Tarantino list this week. But really, what is more Al than just randomly getting something very, very slightly off? Because there’s a fillum out and I want to celebrate. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Harry Potter as “Weird Al” Yankovic in a hard-bitten biopic of drugs and excess that is only available on a streaming service you’ve never heard of that isn’t even accessible in the UK, and is both the true story of Yankovic’s rise to success and also completely made up. And as someone who’s been a huge Al fan for over twenty years, this is incredibly exciting, hilarious, and rather frustrating in equal measure. Anyway: to celebrate, here’s a list.

Yankovic is an incredibly gifted musician and performer, something that I think is often hidden by the fact that he’s most famous as a parodist. But it’s one thing to just change the words of a song to make a joke; it’s another to spend forty years adapting multiple genres and styles of music, as well as expertly recreating famous videos, as well as making parodic references to everything from Star Wars to Santa Claus. The breadth of his talent and musicality, to say nothing of how funny and effective he is as an overall writer and performer, is frankly astonishing; in his career he’s turned is hand to everything, from gangsta rap to piano ballads and all sorts in between, to say nothing of his legendary polka medleys of popular songs.

All this brings us to the list itself, which at the end of the day is just my favourite of his songs. And I tell ya, it was hard! This was one of the hardest ones I’ve done, I think! Like with all kinds of music, really, you veer towards different songs at different times, so how does one compare American Pie to Pretty Fly for a White Guy, the works of Billy Joel to the works of Coolio? So we just come to my basic criteria, which is: how much do I enjoy the song? How funny is it? And, if it is a parody, how well is it doing with the parodying? Because one of the things I love about Al is that, as well as homaging different styles of music or plots of films, he often peppers his songs with lyrics that reference so much stuff. It’s a delight unpacking them from a comedic standpoint. Sometimes it’s not even a reference, sometimes it’s just hilarious wordplay. So that’s all factored into my complex algorithm. And this is the result!

The Saga Begins (1999): whilst I was broadly familiar with his work, this is song that really made me a fan. I remember it being a news story on the Empire website, and trying to watch it on my flaky dial-up at the time ��� probably the first music video I ever watched online. And I still think it’s just hilarious. I think the funniest thing is that, unlike some other songs, it’s not really parodying Star Wars; it’s actually a fairly straight retelling of the events of The Phantom Menace, just sung to the tune of American Pie. But the lyrics are golden; “My, my, this here Anakin guy/Maybe Vader someday later now he’s just a small fry”. It’s so perfect that it’s not only damn funny, not only a beautiful love letter to Star Wars, but also it just works as a song. I’ve sung it so much I know all the words and it was actually a bedtime lullaby I sang to my kids. And however much I love some of his other songs, I can’t say that about The Night Santa Went Crazy.

Dare to Be Stupid (1985): is it possible that I love this one so much because it was the first Al song I heard? That it is, in fact, featured on the soundtrack to The Transformers: The Movie? Almost certainly yes, but I don’t care. I am not, in truth, very familiar with Devo, so the intricacies of its parody are mostly lost on me; I get that he’s doing a bit on their songs and the video is referencing them too, but for me it’s just a really catchy song full of terrific, hilarious lyrical gags and references. And it’s played when Hot Rod and Wreck-Gar are dancing on the planet of Junk.

Don’t Download This Song (2006): rather than lampooning a specific song, this is a satire on a genre, perfectly parodying the pretensions of those Band Aid-style charity singles by earnest celebrities. As well as skewering the style so succinctly, it also has a tremendous target for the early noughties – the downloading of “free” music from file-sharing sites. Whilst incredibly of its time, it’s full of on-point references, including Lars Ulrich’s famed disdain of downloaded music, as well as mocking celebrity excess. This is all incredibly hilarious for me as, after really getting into Al in 1999, it was finding more of his music via Napster when I was at university that really made me a huge fan of his back catalogue. And don’t worry – I’ve also bought it on CD, too.

Jurassic Park (1993): this song is probably unique in the annals of all parody songs by virtue of it being more sensible and making more sense than the song it’s a parody of. The genius realisation that “Jurassic Park” scans perfectly with “MacArthur Park” is just the start, as it runs through the events of the film in hilarious manner (“I admit it’s kinda eerie/But this proves my chaos theory”). Apparently the stop-motion video was approved by Spielberg himself! Nobody leaves a cake out in the rain, however.

White and Nerdy (2006): talk about your references, this is the motherlode; and, quite frankly, it speaks to me. A veritable spreadsheet full of nerdy ephemera, the hilarity obviously coming from the juxtaposition of edgy rap with, well, Al Yankovic, almost every geeky IP or pastime is namechecked: Star Trek, Wikipedia, D&D, bubble wrap… the exquisiteness of the lyrics and speed at which Al cycles through them means it requires multiple listens to catch all the gags. And it has perhaps my favourite of all his lyrics: “The only question I/Ever thought was hard/Was do I like Kirk/Or do I like Picard”.

Ode to a Superhero (2003): ah, now we’re back to the soft gentle ballads and another recounting of the events of a summer blockbuster. Somehow singing a song about Spider-Man to the tune of Piano Man is perfect; after all, both Peter Parker and Billy Joel are New York legends (one’s from Queens, the other’s from the Bronx). Like The Saga Begins, it’s funny not just because, well, singing about Spider-Man is funny, but also the specificity of the references; like Mary Jane preferring guys “who can kiss upside down in the rain” or Norman Osborn wearing a “dumb” mask but being “scarier without it on”.

It’s All About the Pentiums (1999): another fabulously fast-paced rap about something exquisitely geeky; except this time it’s honing in on millennium-era computing technology. It’s another example of playing spot-the-reference but one thing that I find increasingly delightful in this case is that it’s so fabulously outdated; references to Y2K, newsgroups, “a hundred gigabytes of RAM”, and even the very fact that it’s got “Pentium” in the name. I can’t help but feel that this one’s just gonna get funnier as it gets older.

Pretty Fly for a Rabbi (1999): again we see the comedy emerge from the collision between a fast-paced, hard-edged style of music (in this case, millennial American punk) and frankly ridiculous lyrics. It’s not just the silliness of something as benign as a rabbi being the focus of an edgy rock song; it’s also the incorporation of Yiddish and stereotypically Jewish turns of phrase into the lyrics. Partly responsible for my assumption that Yankovic himself was Jewish!

Amish Paradise (1996): an infamous Weird Al song in that, whereas usually the original songwriters are chuffed to have him parody them, this one actually pissed off Coolio (RIP). But it’s part of the genre of tough songs about silly shit, the gangsta rap ballad of inner-city life and crime transmogrified into the badassery of the Amish, raising barns and milking cows. Perhaps it’s a bit mean to the Amish, in retrospect; but “you know I’m a million times as humble as thou art” is still a cracking lyric.

Bedrock Anthem (1993): I don’t think I’ve really expressed enough just how on point his parodies are; how well he raps, how closely he mirrors the style of the homaged artists, even in videos. But this is exquisite; somehow Al even looks like a Red Hot Chilli Pepper. And it’s just bonkers; I mean, how on earth do you get The Flintstones from Under the Bridge? I’m guessing – and this is just a wild guess based on nowt – that it was doing the “Yabba-dabba-dabba-dabba-do now” to the chorus that spawned the rest of the song, but who really knows? And once again we have lyrics that give me such joy, especially the way he throws in – out of nowhere – references to Bedrock life, such as “got a baby elephant vacuum cleaner”. Joy!

Now whilst I am gutted I didn’t find room for Bob, Yoda, or Santa, I’m also a bit gutted that I never got round to one of his polkas. These are really impressive works, how he manages to translate such a wide variety of songs into a polka style, and then turn it into a big medley, bouncing from track to track and even from genre to genre within the same song. Seriously, the man’s a musical genius. Maybe that’s why only Daniel Radcliffe could play him; he’s used to playing wizards.

[ohtobealady]

Ok I’ve finally decided which ones I want. Headcanon 8 for Robert and 19 for Cora.

Eeee! Thank you, my friend! Xoxox

(This gif has nothing to do with shopping, but I love Robert nibbling a cold chicken leg happy as you like.)

8 - Robert & Shopping

This may be the funniest thing I’ve had to imagine in a while.

First of all, Robert doesn’t shop. He can probably count on one hand the number of times he’s been inside of a store. He WILL at Cora’s persistence or occasionally on holidays, but he’d rather not.

His clothes are tailor-made, and he goes to the tailor he’s always gone to in Thirsk for that.

His guns and saddles and wines and books all seemingly come to him thanks to people he employs (and Cora).

But he has shopped alone before. He’s gone inside a London jewelry store for his lovely Cora several times, though as he grew older learned he could have a selection sent from the store to Grantham House (if he was alone) or Rosamund’s house (if Cora was in London) for him to choose from. This was a far more proficient process; he always wanted to get Cora everything he saw for “oh, but this would look quite nice on her, too.” At least when the jeweler brings just a small selection, it’s no big harm done if he chooses more than one piece. (He likes to buy her pearls. Oh! and “those dangling type” earrings — he’s rather proud of the opal and mother of pearl ones he got her after the whole Bricker fiasco.)

He’s also gone into Hamley’s a few times on his own to buy his young daughters’ gifts, most notably a soft, stuffed tabby kitten for his three-and-a-half year old Sybil, a rosy-cheeked curly-haired doll for his newly seven-year-old Edith, and a little stuffed dog for his newly eight-year-old Mary. He gave them to the girls the night before he went off to the Second Boer War. (Cora had to leave the nursery before she cried.)

19 - Jokes & Cora

Cora has a better sense of humor than people think. She loves teasing, especially Robert…because he is pretty easy to tease. She loathes practical jokes for she hates to feel stupid and thinks they can be a little rude.

She naturally has a rather naughty sense of humor, and once told Robert a rather dirty joke that scarred him for life: They’d been at one of Lady Warwick’s parties the week before (where they were scandalized lol ahem @modernamericangirl ‘s clever headcanon I’ve adopted) and in the quiet of their bedroom Robert observed that it was “likely quite hard for Lady Warwick to organize such a thing.” Cora snorted, “I suspect Lady Warwick likes things that are quite hard.” In spite of being married over fifteen years at that point, Robert could not believe her. He went beet red, mumbled something about him not understanding how she knew about such things, and then shook his head dismissively when, laughing, Cora said it was only a joke. “I’d never say anything like that outside this room.” She never again said anything like that inside that room, either. He couldn’t handle it. (Now, that isn’t to say he doesn’t appreciate read: throughly enjoy a wicked little tease from her when the mood is right, just not an outright vulgar joke. Too much, even if he thinks it rather clever.)

[tiptapricot]

🍉🍒🍌🍐!!

🍉—Do you prefer to write short fics or long fics? Multichaptered works or single ones? Why?

I usually go for shorter stuff, or single chap stuff even when longer. I think it’s mainly because that’s the easiest way for my brain to order a story, and a lot of the time I’m focused on smaller interactions building on a common theme, idea, or symbolic accentuation. I can get really run down doing longer stuff and have a harder time finishing or sticking with it if it’s not something I can get done with relatively dedicated focus in a week or two. The few multichaps I’ve had are either ones I wrote as one thing and then decided up, ones that took months and were made from an extreme fixation, or have been abandoned since (even if I hope to return). So ig just with how my creative process is, im able to keep the momentum on single stories and shorter ones better than longer ones!

🍒—What’s your favorite character dynamic to write? (Can be romantic or platonic specific or general!)

I don’t think I necessarily have a peer for platonic over romantic, even if I do trend towards writing romance more than gen fic. It depends on the characters involved and the flavors of intimacy I’m interested in exploring, and all relationships have types I love to write. Friends are so valuable and important and beautiful, romance is too, and finding the line of definition between them for characters is sO fun.

I think in a larger sense I like writing relationships that help to explore each character, that define the other with their presence or absence. Obvs that’s just how relationships work, but that’s how I always approach writing them no matter what type they are. Friends, partners, people having sex, it’s all a way to feel out intimacy and boundaries and connections for the parties involved.

🍌 —In your opinion, what’s the funniest joke/reference/pun you’ve made in a fic?

I’m so bad at rmring specific lines but recently made one in an E rated fic that I won’t post but had to do with… similarities in a hand position to that used when shooting webs. I’m happy w that one.

🍐—Is there anything in canon that you absolutely hate and love to fix in fics? A wrong choice made, a fuck-up in characterization, a misunderstanding never cleared up, a conversation never shown on screen, etc.

I rly love when comics Moon Knight fics add back in the system dynamics and headmates missing in canon. It’s a vital exploration for the group and who they are and it becomes very inorganic feeling in canon and adds much more genuine feeling and exploration in stories that actually write them as they should be written. Other than that I can’t think of too much as which canon I’m thinking of affects the answer, but yeah I’d say that! In general tho probably unnecessary romance plots that distract from the plot n characters r a big pet peeve, but half the time I don’t even write for stuff that does that lol

Send me a fruity writer ask!

[menyee]

[23: 12.05] adulthood, fr?

it’s been a week and 2 days since i’ve touched down again.

i’ve been so grateful for the first week of it being a mix of welcome backs and “here’s a place i love!” — i’m so thankful. but i’m also feeling, what i think it is, anxious. anxiety? any english majors here?

i’m in a space, mentally, where i’m constantly split between just breaking down and just pushing through each responsibility that i can attempt to check off on my to-do list. like everything keeps avalanching in my head. nothing really is unfolding. (perhaps this is called stress? my insurance doesn’t cover therapy abroad unfortunately.)

i’m in a space, emotionally, where i’m so grateful for this opportunity to be here, to have a familiar face to take around for a week, to have the places i’ve gone to regularly before to welcome me back, to have people who support me from thousands of miles away. regardless of what i choose to do.

i’m in a space, physically, where i’m creatively inspired, even challenged, where that one grandma is always sunbathing by the corner of her house (she smiled and waved at me today, have i been too shy to notice that she’s been waving each time?), where the mountains are just a few bus stops away from the mess of this current residence.

i’m in a space where i’m probably supposed to just trust and surrender to the journey. gently, they say. i don’t know where to even begin with envisioning how i want this chapter to end up like.

how was i expecting this new chapter to start, you ask?

not like this. i don’t think i expected anything, actually. i had been gone for four months.

i thought it’d be a lonely start.

but immediately, from a surprising and warm welcome from the two shops i frequented before, to the funniest and most comfortable coworkers, to a familiar face to take around and do things that i would have never been able to do alone here, and even to another warm welcome from shop that i had no interactions with, i was very much welcomed back. (like i actually cried from this last welcome back, because i had never thought that this place i treasured, treasured me back.)

for the week and two days, i think it’s processing, finally, that i’ve done it. i’ve left, and i have finally started.

it was a week to slow down, process, and even begin to question what adulthood really means for me.

maybe i’ll start with a hobby. shout out to the 70 year old tarot reader. but i’m definitely proud of anything, everything that i’ve done.

trusting the process and working on discipline,

menyee.

[1980s-slasher-film]

Wow, I guess I never thought about the fast pass due to autism dilemma. I just think my worry would be constantly overanalysing whether or not I need something and I usually tend to try to fit in. Atm I’m just using all my access arrangements for school etc, but I feel guilty.

I CAN wait in a hypothetical theme park line so I WILL wait in it, but it may have a knock on effect further down the line. But neurotypical people will feel that effect too, right? Ughh I hate thinking.

or maybe I could use the hypothetical fast pass if I was close to meltdown or overwhelmed? Yeah that makes sense. Thanks for posting about this btw, very important

Theme parks are my biggest special interest, so yeah, I see it a lot. People straight up faking disabilities because they think access passes will allow them to skip lines, people with actual disabilities using them when they’re unneeded, it goes on. My home park had to redo their entire access system because of people misusing it. They were probably going to soon enough, because the expanding knowledge on disabilities and all, but their main reason was people cheating the system or stretching the boundaries of the system.

My thing with accommodations is always, if it’ll help you and make your time easier, go for it. If the pass is being used properly there’s no harm done. Even if it’s “just” for anxiety or “just” for sensory issues, it’s always fine to be used if it genuinely helps. The people that bother me are those that take the time to fight for one, brag about it on social media, and then use it to their advantage when it was never going to make a difference for them whether they had it or not. The amount of times I’ve seen fellow autistic people get a DAS at Disney or a Cedar Fair green sheet and flash it all over social media like a prize, all while making sure everyone knows they “don’t need it”. It’s very aspie supremacy the way they try to separate themselves from those of us that do need them. Thats the part that bothers me. Generally, though, the rule of thumb is that if I helps you and it makes your day less stressful,, you need it.

Even I, someone that is sometimes at the park twice a week, haven’t gotten a green sheet yet. As a kid I enjoyed lines, got to infodump about whatever ride we were waiting for to strangers, but as my health has gotten worse and I’ve been through multiple burnouts, I definitely need one now. But I don’t feel I’m “disabled” enough, despite the fact that I’m on crutches nearly 100% of the time I’m there. I think overthinking stuff like this is pretty normal, but it just means you actually care about the experience of others I think lol.

The funniest part of the whole things tbh is that disability access passes at theme parks typically don’t even allow you to skip lines anymore. They definitely were like that in the 70s, as my grandparents used one back then and they talk about it being like a fast pass, but definitely not anymore. They work on a return time system, meaning you wait the same amount of time as the people in line, just not in the line. So these assholes really are just setting themselves up, because they’re still just gonna be waiting in lines.

[wheatbeats]

Last Line Challenge!

Rules: in a new post, show the last lines you wrote (or drew) and tag however many more people you would like.

I was tagged by @theladysherlock, and it’s fun to be included in things.

The last real thing I drew was a dumb meme. When I’m building new characters, I tend to draw them in stupid meme templates to build out their personalities. So far Sunny is new enough that her strongest (or funniest to draw) personality trait is “horny for Morgana”. Morgana, who was built from a template of Edgy Hot Goth Princess, isn’t sure how to feel about this.

The last lines I wrote were something building a dnd mini-arc I’m running next week. The last INTERESTING line I wrote was from my last desperate attempt to slug away at my draft of Apotheosis:

Nicole waited, seeing if Ariel wanted to continue. The woman gently leaned forward until her head was resting on Nicole’s shoulder, buried in the soft fabric of her coat.

So quietly Nicole could barely hear her, Ariel said, “I’m scared. I’m so scared, I can’t stand it.”

She said nothing more, so Nicole wrapped her arms around Ariel’s back and held her.

Finishing this stupid story has been like pulling teeth. I’m probably about 60k words from the end (which my dumb brain interprets as “almost done”), and all I can think of now is all the shit I want to change on the second draft. Makes it hard to wrap this draft up.

Technically I’ve been working the most on my music lately, but I’m not about to post a clip of that for free on here. Secret.

I’ll tag @ragtimebanshee in this, because I know they’re always working on something great.

[dollwrites]

Awe my heart ur too kind doll <3 YES SEA GOD RAFAYEL! Funny story how I got those cards. It was the last week of the banner and I pulled twice cuz I felt lucky. I got the cards back to back I squealed so loud. If only I was that lucky in my other gacha games!!! Awe thanks! I like testing out different hairstyles and hair colors on her. I like her as a red head because I dye my hair red lol. I love ur mc too!! She’s a cutie <3

Slay you got the pair!! I love the matching clothes they are so cute!!! Fingers crossed!! Hope u get Your Fragrance because that card is so 🥵🥵

You won’t regret getting into all the lore. Sksksk you got the towel outfit!! Slay I haven’t gotten them yet lol. I love messing with Raf in the cafe he has some of the funniest reactions and when he blushes !!!!! He’s so damn cute. Ahhh the work out fit 🤤🤤 I totally forgot I can unlock those rip 🤣

-mammon anon

THE LIMITED PAIR BACK TO BACK? GET OUTTA HERE THATS SO ICONIC I’m whispering so the devs don’t hear me and also taking into account that I’m probably still skating by with beginners luck but the gacha seems kind of dare I say generous atm I HOPE IT DOESNT GET MORE BRUTAL THE LONGER YOU PLAY I’ve almost pulled 200 times in my first week in the standard gacha. I’m not pulling for limited xavier even though it’s a nice card, I want to stash my limited tickets and save them for any limited raf that is upcoming.

I WOULD TEST OUT DIFFERENT HAIR COLORS TOO I used to dye my hair a lot but I’m a natural blonde so I’ve started just doing my hair platinum when I feel like getting it done so I usually go with platinum hair in customization bc that’s my preferred color.

YOUR FRAGRANCE IS A NEED !!!! I’m almost done with the week of tasks to get the optional five star too? And I’m gonna go with the raf cherry blossom one. I would’ve anyways but I realized that I already have the zayne and xavier one SKSKKS

YEAH I want to get all of Raf’s fits because I think it’s cute that he’ll dress himself up everyday lmao

OH DO YOU HAVE A NICKNAME FOR HIM ON THE SOCIAL MEDIA THING?

I have like my nickname from him / his name edited in the tablet thingie are both like ocean themed ( CRINGEEE I KNOW 🤭 ) I also matched our avatars to couples avatars ( DOUBLE CRINGE ) there’s so much to do even after you’ve spent everything that I find myself on it all day, even just setting it to quality time while I’m at work.

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2007): Knee-Deep in ZDoom

Welp... I’m done with my rather short hiatus. After taking a break, I think I’ve come up with the idea of how not to experience another burnout. Simply, I will take at least a week-long break after every review/post related to Doom WADs. That will give me time to experience other games that I have in my Steam library or read some magazines.

And now, without any further to do, let’s take a look at, from my point of view, one of the more controversial WADs/partial conversions that came in the second half of the 2000s.

G6: Knee-Deep in ZDoom

Main author(s): Various (project lead by Tormentor667)

Release date: June 2nd, 2007 (original release)/December 27th, 2008 (version 1.1)/June 16th (version 1.2)

Version played: 1.2

Required port compatibility: ZDoom (obviously)

Levels: 10 (typical episodic structure plus one super secret map)

Knee-Deep in ZDoom – another case of trying to remake/reimagine the original first episode of Doom I, and quite possibly the most recognizeable one (for good and bad reasons).

Many of the WAD makers behind this one were encountered in my previous reviews. Among the people who were the core team behind KDiZD, there is Tormentor667, who was the project leader behind ZDCMP1 (likewise with this WAD); Graf Zahl, the creator of GZDoom; Pawel Zarczynski, who created the GZDoom port of 2000’s ZanZan; and Nick Baker, who helped with both Darkening installments, RTC-3057 and ZDCMP1.

The WAD’s development was in shambles for lack of better words, earning it not only the regular Cacoward but also the Mordeth Award for the WAD with the longest development cycle.

So what actually happened? From what I’ve gathered, the development went on for around three years, so I can only guess that it all started in 2004. It was originally supposed to be released somewhere at the end of 2005/beginning of 2006, but the ambitions of the team members made it constantly delayed, with the WAD’s release becoming a joke in the community. KDiZD was hyped to the level only Action Doom was capable of, with posters, testaments, and other similar stuff the other WAD did, but of course, it was more mocked rather than celebreated. There was even a time when the beta version of this WAD leaked. Not to mention new team members being added and dropped like flies.

The funniest thing about KDiZD is that when it was finally released, the biggest reasons why this WAD was delayed ended up as the biggest cons in the eyes of the Doom community.

Nowadays, it’s probably even more disliked/polarizing than it was back when it was released, but I will try to take a look at this WAD with my 2007 glasses. To see what a casual Doom WAD player would think about it without thinking about all of this controversy shit back then.

So, without wasting any more time, let’s finally take a look at Knee-Deep in ZDoom.

If there is one thing where this WAD is legitimately good at is the visuals. It looks great. It might get too far with tiny details and ambient sound effects in some places but by 2007, this was the shit. The best part is, of course, the locations from the original levels; they might look unrecognizable on the first look but for people who were sniffing Doom coke for over a decade at this point, it feels like how people in 1993 saw them for the first time.

Even the original locations that extend the maps aren’t half bad, whenever it’s the new techbase rooms, hellish corruption showing up much more frequently than in the original episode (if those were there at all), or the outside/underground areas.

There is even an option to launch this WAD with rotating sprites for items. Originally it was hard-coded, but since version 1.1, it’s in a separate file. Honestly, you can skip these since these sprites sometimes make it harder for an item to be found.

The music tracks are stocks from the original game, which makes sense since it’s another interpretation of Knee-Deep in the Dead. I still prefer playing this WAD without music since the original tracks feel too short for these extended maps.

There are, however, two custom tracks that play at the end of Phobos Anomaly Z; During the prologue to fight with Bruiser Demons and during the actual fight itself, and during the final boss fight. I recognize these two tracks since the first track was used in Scythe’s MAP26, but I’m not sure where I heard the second one (maybe it was in Scythe 2; I don’t know).

Now playing this WAD – this is where the bigger cracks start appearing.

As I mentioned earlier, the maps are now extended; there are completely new locations on each map, like the mine section in Toxic Refinery Z, or the tower in Central Processing Z.

Most of the time I was fine with these, but some of these, particularly the ones in the fourth and seventh map, overstated their welcome, feeling like I was walking in circles in another mangled maze.

On the other hand, each map has at least one interesting thing to offer, whenever it’s related to the level progression or finding secrets/items.

For a couple of examples, there is restarting the generator in the water where the water turns into toxic slime, using the keys to unlock the doors by flipping the switches in the center of the map rather than by using them on the doors, using a bomb on a timer to blow up some rocks, or turning off the other generator to deactivate force fields.

Since the original episode focused on a human base on Phobos, this WAD changes the skulls into silver, green, and orange keycards to make more sense tonally.

There are also two new items. The first one is a Megasphere from Doom II; it functions the same while looking different. The second one is completely original – Terrorsphere; it makes you see orange and enemies run away from you (they still fight back occasionally, though). I wish it was more frequent.

Now aside from remastered levels, there is a tenth one, super secret map – Penultimate Evil. And you can’t get there by finding a secret exit on one of the regular maps. There are two ways to get there.

The first one is speedrunner’s delight – finishing all levels under the par time. Perfect for people who are into this stuff.

The second one is aimed closer towards regular players – get at least 90% of kills, items, and secrets on all levels before E1M8, even on E1M9. Now I have a problem with this, particularly with collecting items. Not only you would have to waste some very valuable items that you would like to save for later, but you also need to lick every floor tile to be sure you won’t end up under 90%.

And I know that no person with a brain would like to suffer through going to all of the locations to search every corner of them just to find one tiny health/armor bonus that was under their nose when they were having the big fight with demons just to reach 90% of collected items. Sure, on (G)ZDoom, you can type summon [item] enough times to reach that percent but still.

...                                                                                      

The new intermission screen looks kind of cool though... and offers more than the regular one... even though it feels unneeded.

Coming back to Penultimate Evil, at least I can say it’s the best map in KDiZD. On the foundation level, it’s a Frankenstein’s monster made out of locations from the later episodes of Doom I, and yet everything fits in place. Asides from the E2M2’s crate maze that almost always sucks, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this map was dragging out. If you ever want to try this WAD, you can at least play this map.

Now, how hard is this WAD? It’s kind of challenging but I wouldn’t say it’s hard. There are moments filled with bullshit like corridor fighting and hitscanning snipers here and there, but these were rather rare from what I’ve experienced.

Although, I wasn’t a fan of how ammo-starving the first 1.5 levels were, especially Z1M1. Even if you know where the secrets are, you will end up without shells, forcing you to kill enemies with your peashooter (at least it’s slightly faster here than in the original games).

Also, some numbnut decided to remove infighting in the WAD. Like, are fucking shitting me?! Infighting is hilarious in Doom WADs. There is at least one fight where it begs for some infighting but no. Whoever came up with this must be an asshole that wants to be threatened seriously but fails in at least 50%.

Oh, and by the way – hard-coded falling damage. Because fuck you.

Changing the subject, it’s time to introduce you to the new roster of enemies, at least doubling the amount of enemy types in the first Doom.

Starting with new zombie variants, we have Rapid-fire Trooper, who’s basically Wolfenstein SS if he was an actual Doom enemy; Chainsaw Zombie who requires no description of what he does, and Obituary’s Rocketeers, coming back to show you once again that they will kill themselves more frequently then you.

Oh yeah, Hoovies also join the fun, now looking like an aging old fart... great... -_-

As for the Imp variants... oh boy... we have seven of these.

We already met three of these variants in Cheogsh. Shadow (renamed Howler in that map) is the Class 2 Imp from STRAIN if he actually looked and sounded more like an original monster. Soul Harvester is basically a mini-me Revenant with projectiles that almost always hit you if there is no cover. And Nightmare is complete and utter bullshit filth to fight that thankfully only appears in two sections of Phobos Anomaly Z.

And as for the original variants, we have Stone Imp at the start; a slow, melee enemy that’s rather easy to defeat.

There are also three variants of the Dark Imp. The regular Dark Imp has yellow eyes and shoots homing projectiles (that turn slower than Revenant’s missiles). Skulltag Imp has red eyes and shoots much faster projectiles (it might feel like you were fighting regular Imp on Nightmare). And Void Imp has orange eyes and functions like Undead Warrior from Heretic, AKA has a chance to shoot a red projectile that deals much more damage.

Pinky aside from having Mauler whom we already met in Cheogsh (that charges at you like the Lost Soul), also has a variant titled Blood Demon, which is basically half-robot Pinky that is twice as tough to kill.

Hell Nobility has five additional variants in the roster. We already met Satyr, Hell Warrior, and Bruiser Demon AKA the one who’s a melee-type enemy, the one with the shield (that often uses it right as he’s about to get shot), and the one that’s basically a boss version of Baron.

As for the new variants, Hell Knight joins the game, now with a slightly different color and sounding different (for some unexplained reason). There is also Hell’s Fury, a tougher variant of Baron, that shoots red, faster projectiles and three homing projectiles (same ones as Soul Harvester). When he dies, his head comes off (it looks like a beta Lost Soul).

As for the original enemies, the last map introduces two of these. The first one is Hell Cube which is basically an enemy version of the summoning cube Icon of Sin spits out from his forehead.

The second one is actually a boss – Magmantis, who defends the portal to Deimos. He can summon portals that shoot fireballs or Lost Souls, and sometimes he dives back into lava, summoning Imps in between. He feels like a filler, not gonna lie. The final area with hell nobles felt more like a proper finale than he was. Not to mention how easy he is when you constantly shoot him with a BFG replacement.

To fight all of these new monstrosities, you get three new weapons to use:

There is the Super Shotgun, and at first, having this beast from Doom II added might make you think that it’s a Christmas miracle, but it feels like another pair of socks to the pile of these that your nanna bought you. It looks off, it sounds off, and the worst of all, it reloads slower than the original version! Like, come the fuck on man! Who’s coming out with these ridiculous nerfs in gameplay?!

...

At least it’s not completely useless... Good thing the other two weapons don’t feel like that.

The Grenade Launcher feels like a Super Shotgun answer to the Rocket Launcher. It fires slower, the blast radius is much higher, but the damage is around 1.5-2 times higher. It has two fire modes, each changing how far the grenade flies.

The Rifle, on the other hand, feels like if a hitscanner weapon became the BFG. Its bullets are as hard as rockets, it fires rather fast, can kill a couple of enemies in the line, and can easily stunlock them. The only thing that makes it not completely overpowered is the ammo capacity; you can hold up to 75 bullets only without a backpack. So use this gun only on the toughest bastards in tight areas.

Another pro about this WAD, is that it doesn’t have game-breaking bugs, only the visual ones (at least from what I remember).

Knee-Deep in ZDoom is a WAD that took a hit in quality due to the ambitions and questionable decisions made by the team behind it. With falling damage, nerfed Super Shotgun, worthless final boss, and infighting removed as some of the bigger cons of this WAD. It might be seen nowadays as a laughing stock by the Doom community... but I would be lying to myself if I didn’t say that I was having (at least) some kind of fun while playing it.

It’s not a bad WAD, but honestly, I think I would recommend other episode 1 reinterpretations.

Next WAD on our list is another community project. It’s the return of Community Chest. I wonder how many of the maps won’t bore me.

See you all in the future.

Bye!

[alsjeblieft-zeg]

309 of 2023

How are you doing today?

Kinda tired, but okay. And cold.

What day of the week is it?

Tuesday.

What’s something you used to believe in that you don’t anymore?

That everyone is good.

What do you admire most in a person?

Honesty, being genuine, kindness, compassion.

What’s your favorite dinosaur?

I don’t give a fuck about dinosaurs.

Do you believe in reincarnation? If so, what would you like to be reincarnated as?

I have no opinion, but if it’s treally a thing, then I’d love to be reborn as someone’s beloved pet cat.

What are 3 scents that you like?

Cinnamon, vanilla, sea air.

Do you ever use the grounding technique 54321?

Never heard of it.

What’s the silliest thing you’ve gotten injured from?

Having sex lol.

What’s the weirdest food combination you enjoy?

I don’t know, really. Cheese with fruits?

Where would you relocate if you were forced to leave your place of residence?

Gladly.

Do you play any instruments?

I’m afraid you need two good hands to do it, so no.

What is an unpopular opinion you have?

Mango is disgusting.

Have you ever done a crazy dare?

Yeah, ate a bit of dry cat food. Tasted like nothing lol.

What’s your favorite type of cheese or cheese substitute?

Gouda lol. I don’t like any cheese substitutes.

What are things you still enjoy from your childhood?

The beach.

What smells better.. fresh baked bread or fresh brewed coffee?

Both, don’t make me choose.

What’s the oddest text you’ve received recently?

Something about a baloon-like object in Poland that fell somewhere and if I find it, I shall call the police lol.

What’s something you believe everyone should have?

Confidence.

What’s the first thing you do once you get home from a trip?

Probably pee.

What has been the worst kitchen mishap you’ve made?

Burning myself with boiliong water? I have no idea.

Do you know how your parents met?

Yeah, they’ve been knowing each other since my mum was 7.

Do you believe love is blind?

Sometimes. It might hurt.

If you could get away with it, what crime would you commit?

Lol what a question.

If you owned a restaurant, what would you serve?

Belgian food. It’s much more than fries and waffles.

Have you ever met a president?

I live in a kingdom.

What food tastes better than its appearance to you?

No idea.

Do you actively post on social media?

Only on YouTube and sometimes on Instagram.

What was your favorite childhood book?

Pelle Svanslös. It’s about a cat without tail.

Do you ever experience intrusive thoughts?

Yeah, sometimes. It’s a part of my OCD.

What do you consider to be the smartest animal?

Elephants. They’re incrediby smart.

What movies make you laugh the most?

I don’t watch movies.

What’s a product you use everyday that you wish you could get a lifetime supply of?

My medication lmao. If it doesn’t count, then deodorants and perfume.

What’s the best name you’ve heard a pet named?

I don’t know, honestly. I like human names for my cats. I think the funniest and the creepiest at the same time was Stalin.

What always makes your day better?

Train trips around the country.

Would you rather have multiple hobbies or 1 true passion?

I have two true passions and it feels amazing.

Coffee or tea?

Hot chocolate. Not gonna drink coffee anymore.

Do you listen to podcasts? Which ones?

I do, on Spotify. Mostly about unexplained mysteries and conspiracy theories.

Would you say you’re good at saving money?

Yes, but no. I spend much on train tickets.

Have you ever ridden in the front of a roller coaster?

I’ve never ridden in any and I don’t intend to.

Would you rather have free massages for a year or facials?

Massages, I think it would do me good as for my arm muscles.

When was the last time you’ve had an adrenaline rush?

Going to Poland for vacation, I was excited.

Have you ever used a whole chapstick?

I don’t use such things, apparently I’m not gay enough lol.

Has anyone ever given you a gag gift?

Not sure what this question means.

[masked-feature]

🥀...30 QUESTIONS IN 3 MINUTES: OT4

era: OBSOLETE era

a/n: @lost-leopard-beanie you asked for this... um it's probably ass but I needed to get something out.

masterlist

“Hello, let’s introduce ourselves,” Salem says, smiling with a small accent. “A mask will always hide your features,”

“Hello, we are MASK!” the group shouts in unison. 

“We are here today to do the 30 questions in 3 minutes with Buzzfeed,” Hae-won states, australian accent snapping into place.

“I’ve always dreamed of this when I was younger,” Leo muses.

What is your favorite thing about being in MASK?

“Nothing.”

“YAH, SALEM”

“What.” Hae-won rolls her eyes, staring at the camera in disbelief.

2. Who is your celebrity crush?

“That one guy from that one band,” Myra says, breaking the silence that befell the group. Her members stare at her while she shrugs them off. “I’m not trying to get a scandal here.”

3. What is your favorite food?

“Pizza,”

“Basic.”

“Shut up”

“You first you-”

“NEXT QUESTION!”

4. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

“Anywhere away from our dorm,” Leo states, stone faced.

“So… Vegas?”

“Myra, we’re not going to Vegas,” Salem sighs.

5. What is your favorite movie?

“HARRY POTTER!” 

“Hae-won watched the first one two weeks ago and now it’s her entire personality,” Myra states for the camera while Leo and Salem start arguing. 

6. What is your favorite song to perform?

“Deja Vu,” Myra says confidently. 

“Me too. I like Deja Vu,” Salem whispers.

“Gunshot” Leo states.

“I don’t know”

7. Who is your biggest musical influence?

“BTS!”

“Stray Kid’s Inka”

“One Direction,” Everyone turns to stare at Salem. “What? I liked them. I started playing their songs on guitar first.”

“I’m just surprised you know who that is,”

“Shut up,”

“Never,”

8. What is your favorite thing to do in your free time?

“Sleep,”

“Dance”

“Eat”

“Read”

“That’s a lie. Myra doesn’t read,”

“I DO. You just never notice ‘cause you’re too busy stuffing your face with pizza,”

9. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

“Flying,” Hae-won shrugs, unsure of what her answer should be.

“Invisibility,” 

“BASIC,”

“WHAT WOULD YOU DO?”

“Easy, ability to manipulate the probability of anything happening,” Myra states, easily. Her members turn to her completely confused with her answer. “What?” 

“Why am I in this group again?”

10. Who is the funniest member of the group?

“Myra,” The group choruses.

“Me,” the girl says with a wink

11. What is the craziest thing you've ever done on stage?

“Backflip off of Hae-won,” Myra states, remembering her iconic MAMA performance. “That one was hard though. We stayed up late to practice"

12. What is your biggest fear?

“Death of someone I care about,” Hae-won says, the rest of her group nodding along.

“Pigeons,” Leo states, completely serious. 

13. Who is the messiest member of the group?

Everyone turns to look at the youngest who’s staring at the ground, sheepish grin on his boyish face. 

“Umm…” Leo scratches his neck, unsure of how to bullshit his way out of the very real accusation being pointed at him. “No comment.”

14. If you could switch lives with anyone for a day, who would it be?

“Micheal Jackson,”

“LEO, HE’S DEAD,”

“EXACTLY”

“They’ll cut this right?” Hae-won whispers to Salem, leaning against his shoulder.

“I want to say yes but I don’t really know anymore. We’ve said worse today,”

15. What is your favorite book?

“SIX OF CROWS,” Myra shouts out, eyes shining.

“That was actually pretty good.” Leo comments, agreeing with the elder.

“I don’t read,”

“That’s because you’re blind,”

“YAH”

16. Who is the most competitive member of the group?

“Either Leo or Salem. They both suck at games though, so it’s really funny.”

“I agree with Hae-won, probably Leo though.” Myra states, ignoring the side-eyes Leo and Salem were throwing at her.

17. What is your favorite vacation spot?

“My bed,”

“Myra, that’s not a vacation spot,”

“Yes it is. I’m barely there.”

18. Who is the most sensitive member of the group?

“Hae-won? Maybe. I don’t know. No one in the group knows how to express their emotions well,” 

“LEO, QUIT EXPOSING ALL OF US. WE HAVE A REPUTATION,”

“WHAT REPUTATION?”

“Next question please”

19. If you could have any job other than music, what would it be?

“FORENSIC SCIENTIST,”

“MYRA, NO”

“What, my brother’s doing it,”

“No one normal wants to look at dead bodies to figure out how a person was murdered.”

“Who ever said I was normal?”

“Fair point,”

20. What is the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you on stage?

“Salem once face planted in front of Hoshi of Seventeen,”

“Leo almost went pee on stage,”

“YAH,” 

“I never embarrass myself on stage,” Hae-won said with a wink.

“WHAT ABOUT THAT ONE TIME YOU-” Myra was cut off by Hae-won swinging her fist at her head.

21. Who is the most stylish member of the group?

“Salem,”

“Myra,”

“Salem,”

“Me,” Salem snickered.

22. What is your favorite TV show?

“Tomorrow, Really good kdrama.” Leo said, remembering his journey watching it.

“Wah, that was so sad.”

23. Who is the best cook in the group?

“Myra can bake. Does that count?”

“Salem’s the best at cooking,”

“I am?”

“Didn’t he set off the fire alarm like two days ago?”

“Myra, shut up,”

24. What is your favorite color?

“I’m indecisive so I don’t have one,” Myra states with an awkward thumbs up. 

“What she said,” Leo agrees.

25. If you could have any animal as a pet, what would it be?

“DRAGON,”

“NO”

“I want a dog,”

“Salem, you are one, why would you need one?”

26. Who is the most romantic member of the group?

“Hae-won but she’ll never find love ‘cause she has no game,”

“YOU LITTLE-”

27. What is your favorite hobby?

“Messing around in the studio with autotune.”

“We should release the one cover we made with the robot voice,”

“Won’t our company get mad though,”

“I don’t think it’ll get worse than what we have now,”

28. Who is the best dancer in the group?

“Salem, end of discussion,”

29. What is the craziest thing a fan has ever done for you?

“I GOT A XBOX”

“I WANTED IT BUT SHE WOULDN’T GIVE IT TO ME,”

“SUCK IT YOU-”

“MYRA,”

“WHAT”

30. What is your biggest goal as a musician?

“Take over the world,”

“Alright I think we end here, Good bye,”

~EXTRA~

“That was definitely not 3 minutes, we better not get fired after this.”

[switchbackstudio]

Hello, and welcome to the first of what is planned to be a monthly series of devlogs chronicling the development of my new game, Grippy Golf! Today, I’ll be taking you on a longer journey than normal, all the way from my first lines of code to the creation of my shiny new store page. There’s a lot to cover, so I won’t go into too much detail on any one subject, but maybe there will be some future posts that break things down further, who knows.

So first off, what is Grippy Golf? Well, the initial concept is like golf, except that everything the ball hits, sticks. I first came up with the idea over a year ago, when I challenged myself to make 10 games over the course of just 10 weeks. Grippy Golf, or as it was known back then, Sticky Golf, was my first entry into the challenge, and probably one of the best, or at least the funniest. So, after wrapping up my previous game, I decided to take the concept and expand it into a full release.

It was nice to already have a prototype available, but there were a number of significant changes I wanted to make. For one, the pure chaos of the prototype is fine for a game meant to last 10 – 20 minutes, but I worried that it would lose its appeal in a game meant to last 10 – 20 hours. It needed something more, but at the time, I wasn’t sure exactly what. Don’t worry though, we’ll come back to that.

The other major mechanical change is that I decided to include a multiplayer mode, for both local and online play. Now, as any game dev will tell you, this is not trivial. Online multiplayer in particular fundamentally changes how you have to think about your code. I’ve also never done it before, though that’s true of a lot of things I do as a solo dev. So, after rewatching Alex Forsythe’s excellent video on multiplayer in Unreal for the 5th or 6th time, I got to coding.

I spent the first several weeks creating the basic framework of the game in C++: the character controls, the behavior of stickable objects, etc. It’s generally nitty-gritty details that are kind of boring, so I’ll mostly skip discussing it. At the end, I had a functional, albeit ugly game, where you could hit the ball, have it stick to objects, and reach a goal.

On to the next step: aesthetics.

Now, that might seem strange. There are lots of resources about game dev that will tell you that you shouldn’t worry about the look of your game at first, and should instead work on refining your mechanics and making sure they’re crisp. Mario 64 is the classic example here, and there’s undeniably truth to that statement.

However, it’s also true that as an indie dev, you need to attract customers, and you need to start doing so as early as possible. And if your game plays well but looks bad, it’s going to be hard to generate interest.

A balance is needed, where your game looks pretty enough to show off, without the visuals taking up too much of your time, at least initially. So, to beautify things up a bit, I first needed to determine the game’s art direction.

One of the main limitations I face as a solo dev is that I am not particularly good at art, especially 2D art. As a result, any art style I come up with has to avoid using anything hand-drawn or painted, which sadly locks me out of a lot of my favorite styles. Still, there’s a lot you can do within those limitations.

Here’s the process that I settled on for Grippy Golf. First, I download realistic textures for the material I want, typically from amazing Creative Commons 0 websites like AmbientCG. Then, I open them up in Gimp (yes, I use Gimp) and mess around with the Waterpixel and Oilify filters to achieve a softer, painted look. The next step is to desaturate the resulting image, and increase the contrast so it stretches all the way from black to white. I know that sounds weird, but bear with me.

Now, I add the modified texture to my model over in Blender. I prefer to have just one material per model for performance reasons, so I bake all the different materials to a single texture. However, there’s a lot more here than just the black and white image. There’s the normal map, of course, and other basics like metallic, roughness, and ambient occlusion. Then there’s a black and white vertical gradient that runs up the model, and an index value that is different for each material.

Baking all these different maps and consolidating them is annoying, so I also wrote a python script to automate it, which is probably my single biggest time saving decision so far. If you haven’t messed with scripting in Blender, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, Unreal is where everything starts to come together. Here, I use that black and white image to interpolate between two colors, which lets me change the color of my materials in Unreal, without having to rebake the texture. The vertical gradient is used similarly, and keeps things from looking too flat or static. The material index that I mentioned earlier lets me apply different settings to different parts of the model, even though they all use just one material. The end result is that I have lots of ability to fine-tune the look of the game without leaving the editor.

After making several example models using this approach, I also spent some time working on so-called “game feel”, things like particles, camera shake, and so on. In my experience, prioritizing these is a great way for your visuals to stand out, even if the rest of your game still uses placeholders. I ended up redoing all of these later, but even the preliminary versions were very well received.

In the process of testing these FX, I stumbled across the “something more” that I had been looking for in the gameplay. Namely, I realized that it was super fun to chain together a bunch of arrow boosters to get a “hole in one”. That, coupled with Mark Brown’s video on Neon White completely changed my conception of the game. Now, rather than the player being at the mercy of the wacky physics, I realized I could give the player tools to work with and around that wackiness, with an emphasis on fast, frenetic combos.

To that end, I created a flurry of new systems and powerups. The most notable is the dash, a one-time burst of speed in the direction of the player camera. This increase in player control over the ball completely changes the feel of the game, especially once I made it so that the arrows refresh the dash ability, like in Celeste.

I also added fans that blow you around, a magnet powerup that draws objects towards you, barriers that only break if you have enough objects stuck to you, and my personal favorite, the firework.

I could have kept going, but I deemed it was time to start working towards the next landmark: a store page. Having a store page is really important, as it gives you something to point people towards and lets you start gathering wishlists, i.e. potential sales. My personal prerequisite for a store page was to fill in all my current placeholder assets, namely the player character, the walls, and the floor.

Up until now, the player character had used models and animations from Mixamo, and they worked just fine. For the final product though, I wanted a character that was fun and appealing, something that could serve as a mascot for the game. I chose a robot so that I didn’t have to deal with human facial animations, which intimidate me. I also decided that they would fly, so that I didn’t have to figure out where the ground was every time I moved them. The noodley arms are a massive pain to animate, but I really like the way they look so I’ll probably keep it.

For the walls, I created a bunch of houses, largely inspired by the architecture around Capitol Hill, DC. There’s not as much variety as I would like, but for now it’s fine. Of course, this is a game about a ball that sticks to things, so I made sure each separate part of the building can be individually detached. I did the same thing with some trees as well, with each branch being a separate object.

For the floor, I didn’t want to be constrained by square tiles anymore, so I used Unreal’s Geometry Scripting system to make a custom landscape editor. It lets me trace out an outline with one spline, while setting the height of the resulting landscape with another. On top of that, a barrier is automatically generated around the level, so the ball can’t fall into the void. The more flexible terrain also needed more flexible roads, so I made a road tool using spline meshes.

With everything together, I made an example level or two, took some screenshots, and sent the page for review! Everything’s approved, and you can check out the page right now if you’re interested.

That brings us to the present! There’s a number of smaller topics I didn’t have a chance to discuss (creating an options menu, implementing controller remapping, fiddling with splitscreen for online multiplayer, various physics shenanigans, etc.) but this post is already long enough, and I’m itching to get back to work. I hope you found it interesting to see how I progressed from a basic prototype to something that at least resembles a full game. Again, if there’s anything you want to hear more about, let me know.

Cheers!

[londonspirit]

Incoherent ramblings about TLOU(s last episode)

Wednesday... About to get ready for another hard day of adulting and making decisions I do NOT wanna make but have to. But before that I need to get some thoughts out of my head or my brain will explode.

Sunday was the last episode of my new fav show. I knew it would be hard and devastating. It always has been so far. And boy did they deliver the most emotional rollercoaster so far. 

Once again, that show is hitting highs no other show will ever get to. Everything else pales against the most genius writing/filming/editing... it’s the most perfect thing out there right now (yes, OFMD is still a VERY close second, I love that one dearly but right now TLOU just is THE show).

Week after week Im blown away by the whole thing, but particular by Pedro’s and Bella’s insane acting!!! Those two are so fuckin’ talented. Bella is just ... GOD, that kid (I mean, they’re NINETEEN!!!) *shakes head* How they’re doing this, playing a CHILD like this?!?!? It’s fucking MINDBLOWING!! Ellie’s carefree giggles compared to the devastating delivery of ONE FUCKING WORD at the end is incomprehensible to me!!! I know I keep saying this, but if they’re not getting ALL THE FREAKING AWARDS come award season, there’s something SERIOUSLY wrong with the whole damn thing. Im sure they know how amazing they are, they  must be seeing all the love and adoration and praise all over the place and yet I wanna yell it into their face, let them know how very much they’re changing the landscape of ACTING!! UGH!!

And do NOT get me started on Pedro. That man. *shakes head* I’ve spent the past weeks in Pedro heaven. Watching (my way through) all his work, interviews, scrolling though instas and pinterest sides, doing the deepest dive I’ve done when coming in new into a fandom that’s pretty much existent for over a decade!

It’s so insane to me, that the man who’s doing the loveliest/funniest/silliest interviews and being the dorkiest, most lovable human being under the sun, is capable of bringing to life one of the most complicated character i’ve ever witnessed. His Joel is stunning. (again, I don’t know the game so I have NOTHING to compare to - Im sure others can speak on that) but BY THE GODS, his range is fucking unbelievable!!! He goes from being the coldest, most closed-off human being to the softest and gentlest dad and it’s a fucking JOY to witness that. Seeing him open up, bit by excruciating bit, letting his heart love again... just to have to become the cruelest, most fearsome man in order to save his Ellie? My heart shattered into a million pieces watching him going on that rampage in the hospital - im still getting chills just thinking about that. Playing someone like that isn’t easy, getting into the headspace of it, preparing to convincingly portray someone who’s entire world just came crashing down on him AGAIN? I can’t even imagine how one does that.

Pedro makes it look like it’s the easiest thing in the world!!! Which makes it even more insane when you KNOW what a soft, sweet and gentle goofball he seems to be in real life!!!

Words still fail me here. So yeah, if you’ve watched it, you probably know what I mean.

The SOFTNESS of him in that episode, trying to get Ellie to talk, to engage, knowing what she’s went through - the reversal of their dynamics from back in the first epis: Ellie chattering about all day, and Joel being all silent and grumpy is incredible. His face when he talks to her about things he LOVES? Goodness me, my heart was aching. He was trying SO HARD!!!

And poor Ellie was traumatized and yet she’s doing her best to reply, to be present. 

I am in love with all of Joel’s facial expression around her. (his face must HURT from all the smiling he’s done in this episode. That man was MADE to smile - it’s like the fucking SUN and how dare they to deny him that!) He’s so SOFT and sweet and embracing the love he has for her. Telling her the truth about the scar? GOSH, my heart was beating out of my chest when I realized WHAT had happened. But then, of course he tried - his purpose was gone. (Which in return makes me wonder, WHY he didn’t try again??? So many questions. Joel’s such a complicated, complex person and I can’t wait to try my hands on him in writing!)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE when they give us such tender moments (even though I  KNOW they won’t last). Even when they’re painful like ‘I’ll follow you anywhere you go’ or ‘wasn’t time that did it’. ASDFGHJKLÖÄ. These two (actors and characters) are soo soo dear to my heart by now and I would go to the ends of the fucking universe to protect them!!!

They deserve some peace and quiet... but of course they won’t get it. Well, at least we have around 2 years I guess until they’ll be back?!  I wonder how unspoilered I can stay. (I know too much already but Im still not looking for it, even though Bella (probably unconsciously) may have spoilered...some things (again, I’ve seen things so that wasn’t a hard leap to make). I don’t know.

I just know, I hope to see her and Pedro together again for events and award season, being their beautiful, adorable, lovely selves around each other, making me smile til my face hurts and help me get through anything shitty real life throws at me. Their real life chemistry is insane and I love their love for each other so very much!! It oozes from every look they share, every touch and I’ve never seen a more perfect team than these two!!! *sighs happily*

So what I’m trying to say here is, that I love this show! Every single frame, every single second of pain and heartbreak, love and joy it brought me in the last nine weeks. EVERYTHING about it is perfect to me, every choice they made, be it music (ASDFGHJKLÖ), lights, cameras, locations... it’s just overall the most beautiful, perfect and epic thing i’ve watched since OFMD last year!

I might add some more incoherent thoughts once I’ve rewatched it with a bit of space between now and then. I KNOW I will def try my hands on writing some TLOU fic (not exactly sure what).