#Grand dad

[livhowlett]

I just finished watching Peter Capaldi's Doctor for the first time

And I'm so angry!

I was told by so many people that "he's a bad doctor" "he's too old" "he's boring" so I put off watching him for 10 YEARS!!!

And I fucking love Grumpy Rock n Roll Space Granddad!

He's cool! Has terrible social skills! Hes Scottish! Plays an electric guitar! The Sunglasses! And he's so funny!

Not to mention he's also a big Doctor nerd.

Capaldi is now my second favorite Doctor (DT will always be my #1. But Capaldi is a VERY close second)

[xpi3]

I started doing this in early July, I finally finished it, I know it's crooked, but at least it's FINISHED, SO HERE WE GO-##8-&

[7grandmel]

Character Archives - [FILE-07]

Grand Dad

"Mario seven, uh, was that the one I played? Oh, let's check it out..."

For Walt Disney, it all began with a mouse. But for SiIvaGunner, it all began with a bootleg game, a streamer, and a pinch of insanity. Many have come after him, and many can claim to be funnier - but Grand Dad will forever hold the title as the first ever figment of imagination to come out of the bubbling mind of SiIvaGunner [FILE-01]. As a result, he has come to be a symbol for the channel in its entirety, the very embodiment of the SiIvaGunner ethos, and something of a dear friend in the eyes of its creator.

In 2014, a certain streamer under the name of Vinesauce Joel was going through the motions of his typical streaming routine - playing games of the oddest variety, and bellylaughing at the absurd results they'd deliver. Even as part of this greater whole, however, Joel's reaction to 7 GRAND DAD immediately became a standout moment, a series of events so perfect that the comedic timing couldn't have been coordinated to be any better. A mumbling Joel clicks on the game bizarrely labeled as "Mario 7", and is to his great shock met with the imagery of a garishly discolored Mario, placed onto an equally garish blue background, as bold letters declare the game's name to be "7 GRAND DAD". Before Joel can even properly process the twist he's been subjected to, only letting out a reading of the game's name, the game twists all expectations once again: An 8-bit rendition of The Flintstones theme, originally from The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, kicks in - prompting a bewildered reaction of "FLINTSTONES?!" from the thoroughly befuddled streamer.

This is a sequence of events you're all too familiar with if you're a fan of the SiIvaGunner channel, yet nevertheless a necessary one to properly recount to understand just how core Grand Dad is to SiIvaGunner: Through this one 15-second clip of one streamer's reaction to the unpredictable world of bootleg video games, a small subset of internet dwellers on the platform SoundCloud realized that they'd uncovered a whole new genre of derivative audio work. Mashups and arrangements were always alive and well on the internet, yet always delivered with upfront honesty: To play into their derivative nature as part of the reaction, to present these edits as if they were the nostalgic, authentic real-deal video game music that you grew up loving, only to have the edit serve as an unexpected punchline, was the kind of brilliant idea that just had to be capitalized on. Thus, in January 2016, one lone internet dweller by the name Chaze the Chat started the SiIvaGunner (then GiIvaSunner) channel, and uploaded "Wild Pokémon Battle - Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire". The bait-and-switch foundation that laid the groundwork for all of SiIvaGunner, all built upon the concept of a bootleg Flintstones game pretending to be the seventh entry in the Super Mario franchise.

In our world, Grand Dad's debut to the online world is now over ten years old, his legacy on the SiIvaGunner channel being that of a figurehead mainly representative of the simpler times that the channel has long since grown up from. Yet in the SiIvaGunner universe, to SiIvaGunner himself, Grand Dad is the beating heart of the entire channel, the first spark of imagination which binds his whole universe together. Every figment made since the channel's inception owes its existence to Grand Dad, and with every step SiIvaGunner underwent across his original 2016 run, Grand Dad was right there alongside him, an enduring voice in his head steering the channel onward. And even as his creator fell into a deep slumber, as The Voice Inside Your Head [FILE-03] set his plans into motion to extract SiIvaGunner's figments into the real world, Grand Dad was at the front lines of the resistance fighting in his name - and remains a symbol of hope for all figments caught in The Voice's tyrannical reign.

Across eight years of the channel's life, Grand Dad has gone through so many phases in reception: As a novel joke, as a beacon of hope, as a redundant and played-out bit, looping around into being used ironically, followed by a loop-back-around into being genuinely appreciated. Event after event, album after album, Grand Dad has become a genuine symbol of everything the channel does, and continues to appear to represent it across all of its twists and turns. It's no small feat for a figment to have endured in relevancy for as long as Grand Dad has, and no matter where the channel is headed, you can sure that he's here to stay.

[coffyblak]

some head designs bc i'm not fucking drawing all of these fuckers at all.

[kenboi]

Something's wrong with my fruity pebbles.

[originalhaffigaza]

[desire-mona]

all of my mutuals becoming mutuals with joel is, no joke, the EXACT same feeling as watching all my friends pet my dogs when they came over

[pyjamaart]

All the things I drew for the SiIvaGunner Spirit Week :D

[luithesomeone]

[rotaryphoam]

...GRAND DAD?!

[frostcoldhere]

yeah

[boomchacalakaa]

funi guys

[pentaqola]

GUH... GRAND DAD?!

i love thid fella btw even before the mod, the amount of joy i have for the fact nourishing blood is such a fucking banger is so immense

[7grandmel]

Rip of the week: 30/09/2024

Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix)

Season 4 Episode 1 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume AI

Ripped by beardfear

Last week, for my "Character Archives" series, I finally pulled the trigger with the aptly-named [FILE-07] and wrote about the SiIvaGunner channel's mascot: Grand Dad. The funny Flintstones have been there since the literal first day of the channel's life, in a way representing everything that the team has aimed to achieve for the channel during its run. Yet one part I only briefly covered in the aforementioned post was the very fascinating evolution that Grand Dad as a channel meme has undergone over these past eight years. To outsiders to the channel, it may appear as if we've been laughing at the same tired joke for close to a decade - yet as things so often are on SiIvaGunner, the truth is far more densely layered, and arguably even more stupid. And in my eyes, no rip on the channel better encapsulates that ongoing growth than Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), a time capsule of almost five years by now.

Back in the beginning of Season 1, the appeal of Grand Dad as a meme was incredibly simple to understand: You expect one song from clicking on the video, and are instead met with one of the most globally recognizable melodies in the world. It's not that the Flintstones melody has some sort of inherent comedic value to it, like with The Nutshack and rips like Too big, huh, my nuts are too big how about that, nor is Meet The Flintstones the kind of piece to really evoke fierce emotions the way Snow Halation does in rips like Violet Snow Memories. As the very first joke made for the SiIvaGunner channel, the appeal in Grand Dad lay almost entirely in the novelty of the melodyswap alone. You as a viewer will be aware of The Flintstones theme, and you may even be aware of the Vinesauce bit that inspired the channel - and from that, the surprise of hearing the tune from a video game song you weren't expecting to, most often done with surprising authenticity to the game being ripped, was the extent of the bit.

The problem here, as you might already be able to tell, is that this joke is very reliant on the first impression, the initial surprise of not expecting the funny Flintstones to show up. That kind of surprise is something the team would continue finding new ways to evoke even in these first few months of the channel's life, resulting in a huge amount of all-time classic, inventive Season 1 rips like The Great Weed, Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be My Girl, and of course: Athletic Doctor. Yet as these kinds of new and fun ways to surprise people kept being explored, Grand Dad rips still kept coming - it had become a fun exercise for new rippers to learn, a simple melody to play around with. And even just a few short months in, I distinctly remember the reactions toward these rips beginning to feel more...tepid. Within the team, legendary rippers like Triple-Q had gone vocally against leveraging the joke further: all of which slowly escalated into the meme becoming derided as played out and tired. We'd get phrases like "Funny 7" and "Epic Flintstones" tossed around in an ironic tounge-and-cheek fashion, forever immortalized into the rip of Season 1's finale, Epic Flintstones. It felt as if, across the channel's nine months, Grand Dad had now lived a sufficient life, going from hero to the channel, to a bit of a punching bag, but one we were still left sad to see go.

And then the channel...y'know, continued.

With Season 2, as I've covered on posts like ULTRA S+G, the channel was now taking itself and its lore just a little bit more seriously. Grand Dad was still a little bit of a dated thing, yet with the notion of the channel's fate hanging into balance, he came to be as a sort of symbol for the channel's spirit, an icon to rally behind. By the time Season 3 rolled around, all of these views on the meme had wholly coalesced into outright ironic reverence. Videos like Unusual Circumstances and tons of rips made during the Nostalgia Takeover (see Fragile Snowman (Remastered)) in particular emphasized just how bizarre the fanbase's supposed adoration of Grand Dad and the funny number 7 was - and we the fans nodded, laughed and agreed! We all knew Grand Dad wasn't *genuinely* all too funny anymore, but somewhere in that storm of irony-fueled laughs it felt, at least to me, as if we sort of forgot the importance that Grand Dad was meant to hold on the channel, the ways in which it so beautifully encapsulated everything the channel stands for. And that's when this story takes an interesting turn.

In April of 2019, Season 4 of SiIvaGunner was officially well under way - and all eyes were, of course, on the newly-announced King for Another Day Tournament, covered on posts like Theme of HOBaRT. This month in particular gave us the first-ever real "SiIva Direct", a spoof on Nintendo's series of video announcement reels, only now of course focused on activity on the SiIvaGunner channel. It was as mentioned mainly focused on reveals for the still largely under wraps tournament set to come later in the year, yet amidst all those reveals and the announcements of some albums, one of the headlines stood out amidst the rest: The announcement - a week ahead of its release - of a lone high quality rip. That, of course, being Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix). Now remember, this is still the same channel that releases on average six of these videos a DAY - and all that this announced rip was explained to be was a basic, ancient, old-ass, everyday Grand Dad rip. Surely, we all thought, there was a twist ahead: this rip was going to have a character reveal for KFAD, or this rip was going to be the start of some larger ARG, or contain some sort of crucial lore!! Even as the Direct ended, it stayed in the back of my mind...

And then the day came, April 7th. Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), as scheduled, lands right into our laps. And, shock and awe: It is quite literally exactly what it was advertised as. Waluigi Pinball, from Mario Kart DS, with the melody swapped to the Flintstones theme. Just the same as it had been as far back as Season 1. The drop of this video wasn't really hyped up more than its announcement, it wasn't as if this was the only video to drop this day, but it still felt like a lot of eyes were on it, yet the reaction wasn't really angry, or even tepid, so much as it was just a fair bit baffled. "I like how we all expected something huge but it's just a normal decent rip", writes one commenter: "I knew that there wasnt gonna be any special joke", writes another: Largely, though, people were of course dropping in a lot of ironic excitement for the rip, feeding off of the reputation Grand Dad had gotten. It was like Season 1 had never left! Or, well...

...the thing is, when you listen to Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), when you give it a genuine listen, you realize just how far the channel has come since Season 1. Sure, its grown in more extravagant, ambitious ways as well, but in Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), all SiIvaGunner viewers got to oh-so-subtly notice just how much better the team had gotten at ripping even the simplest of concepts in the few years since the channel's inception. A good number of early Season 1 like the original release of Violet Snow Memories were once taken down from the channel due to their off-key sound, and even the ones that stayed are often noticeably rough in sound, sufficient in getting the joke across yet failing to really stand up to any scrutiny. We'd seen rips get bigger and bolder, projects growing to the scope of projects such as The 2:28 Collab and SNES Mini Circulation - yet in a way, it was as if we were missing the trees that built this forest. In Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), the melody swap plays along to a melody so erratic in tempo, with such strange instrumentation, to where you just KNOW right off the bat that a less experienced and less knowledgeable ripper would have made this sound completely off-kilter back in the days of Season 1. Yet the ripper behind Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), beardfear, only got his start on the channel just a few months prior toward the end of Season 3, doing simple melody swaps much in the same vein as the ones Grand Dad had inspired hundreds others to do back in the channel's humble beginnings. The spirit of Grand Dad, even though all the mockery and irony surrounding it, was still continuing to inspire new rippers on the channel. It still so concisely and effectively represents everything that SiIvaGunner as a channel and as a team aims to achieve - and I feel like with Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), tongue-in-cheek as it were, we got a gentle reminder of just how much this ancient meme really means to all of us. From my perspective, seeing this unfold, this was the first point at which we began to start actually...like Grand Dad again?

It wasn't as if we automatically began finding the meme as funny as it had been in Season 1 or anything, nor did all of that lighthearted irony-posting really ever cease. Yet in the years since, in Season 5 and 6, it felt as if we'd all come to understand just how important Grand Dad as a figure is to the channel. By the time Season 7 was declared to be an entire YEAR dedicated to the guy, all hints of the irony that used to dominate discussion in the comments on Grand Dad rips felt as if it had completely disappeared. So many years had passed, not just since Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix), but since the days when the meme had even started becoming derided to begin with, to where it just felt normal to present and view Grand Dad as a figure worth celebrating on the channel. He's the one who started it all! He's the most clear-cut embodiment of what the channel represents! But more than that, I feel as if by Season 7, we had all begun to realize just how far the channel had come, just how many years it had now been trucking along for - and just how impressive it was that it could all still be traced back to that one little melody.

The very next year after Waluigi Pinball (Beta Mix) released, at the SiIvaGunner team's 2020 MAGFest appearance, they held a special panel detailing how to get started in high quality ripping. Named High Quality Ripping LIVE!, it was a setup that let fans in the audience request simple rips for members of the team - live on stage - try to create as fast as possible. It was through first seeing this event that everything just sort of clicked together for me, in realizing how important Grand Dad as a figure still is for rippers in particular. I imagine it can be easy to feel lost in the excitement of rippers contributing these out of this world projects to the channel, yet as we learned back on Welcome to 2021! They finally invented summers that hurt motherfuckers😂 only at sonicforces​.​com - the main point of ripping, in truth, is to just let the imagination run wild and to have fun with what you're doing. That fun, be it ambitious or silly, all has to begin somewhere: and for rippers all across the team, rippers from Season 1 all the way to Season 8, those first steps taken into the hobby begins with FL Studio, a video game track of their own choosing, and the vision to recreate that iconic sequence of 15 notes.

[xpi3]

I did it, it's the first drawing on the paper that I rlly liked

also, IDK HOW TO COLOR HIS CLOTHES, my pens doesn't work normally 👹

[alic0rez]

Joel