#about 2000 views on youtube

[9823678]

GFRIEND (여자친구) - Three Of Cups - Bass Cover original song

[thinking-emoji]

RNZ interview mirror - the original file is exactly 700 kb too big for tumblr so I had to compress it slightly 🙃

Transcript under the cut!

YouTube megastars Dan and Phil will be coming to Aotearoa next week with a live show full of scandalous stories. For those who don't know them, these two Brits invented being internet famous. Coming to stardom in 2009, the pair have amassed a media empire with over 40 million combined followers, 2 billion views on YouTube, as well as a handful of best-selling books. Dan and Phil went on hiatus in 2018, with each coming out as gay soon after. This is their first tour together since then. The show is called Terrible Influence and it's coming to Auckland's Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre next Thursday, the 19th of December. I caught up with Dan and Phil earlier on the line from Australia.

DnP: Hello.

(Interviewer laughs)

D: Sorry, was that a weird stereo hello there? That must have been disturbing.

I: That's exactly how I wanted you to answer the call.

P: Yes, that's how we speak all the time. D: We share one braincell.

I: You speak in unison.

P: Yes. (laughs)

I: Because you two have lived together for quite some time, haven't you? D: We have. I: Not only working together for many years.

D: Yeah, like imagine like being really fed up with your co-worker and then you want to come home and you want to be like, God, this guy, I can't stand him. Like, what are we doing here, people?

P: Then he's in your house.

I: How long have you lived together for?

D: Errr, fourteen- P: No. D: No, thirteen- twel- P: Twelve years. I want to say twelve years. D: Twelve years, but it feels like 2000. Do you know what I mean? P: Time is not real. We don't know what's going on. D: At this point, we're like, you know, when you go to a zoo and there's two elderly tortoises that are about 400 years old. P: Yeah. D: That's how we feel. P: Yeah.

I: I'm glad that you've decided to, you know, take air travel to get to New Zealand.

D: It's literally the furthest place from home we could ever. So we get some tweets from people that are like, Dan and Phil, thank you for coming to New Zealand because, by golly, you've travelled a bit of a way. But hey, we're happy to be there. New Zealand is a beautiful country. P: Yes. D: And so are the people.

P: Whenever I come to New Zealand, I just want to move to New Zealand. I'm like, why am I in London when I could be in this beautiful, verdant land?

D: A lot of people do abandon for New Zealand and we understand why.

I: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that you do understand that. And it's your first big tour back since coming out in 2018. D: It is. I: The show is kind of a little bit like a gossip session. Is that right? Setting some things straight?

D: Absolutely. We're people that have been on the internet for a very long time and people have talked a lot of smack about us over the years, as a lot of people do with anyone with a lot of followers. And we're like, you know what? We all deserve to look back at our past. We all deserve to be roasted for the things that we did and said. That includes us being embarrassing and what our audience were like when they were all teenagers on the internet. But if we have a bit of a therapy session slash Catholic confession, we can end it with a bit of a hug and a pat on the back and go, it's okay. We survived. Here we are now in 2024. So it's like a roast and a healing session at the same time.

I: That must be quite an interesting thing because, you know, you both grew up on the internet and made so much content. You have this huge following that you've built. And so many people work really hard to kind of erase their former selves online. And that's probably something that you cannot do.

D: Oh, no. I would love to. It's too late. P: That's the thing as well. Sometimes our audience know us better than we know ourselves because they watch these videos so much. I never watch my videos back ever. So they'll come up to us at a meet and greet like, remember that thing you did in 2014? I'm like, no. D: No, I don't. P: I don't know what I said or did. D: But Phil, you love this ice cream flavour. P: Yeah. Speaking of ice cream, I'm excited for the Hokey Pokey ice cream. That was the thing I remember in New Zealand. I: It is good.

D: Yeah. Someone said, hey, you're excited to have it again. I was like, what was that? P: We don't have that. D: Don't you remember the time that you had it? P: No. D: Here, I've got this photo on my phone. P: Yeah. I'm going to have some more when I get there for sure.

D: That is not the main reason why we made the travel, but it will help with the jet lag.

P: It's 80% of the reason, I'll be honest.

I: Why is the show called Terrible Influence?

D: I think there's this idea that everyone on the internet, all these creators, all these TikTokers and podcasters are just horrible people that are trying to sell you some kind of crypto scam. And the truth is 90% of them are. And the question that we're asking is, were we terrible? What did we do to all these young people that watch it? Maybe the other question is, what did they do to us? Is what we do inherently bad? Is it a two-way street? Well, maybe we can answer that question and along the way just giggle so much that we kind of forgive and forget.

I: I'm sure you have a pretty good idea of the extent of your influence. But being in high school in New Zealand when Dan and Phil were first starting out, it was almost like a code word. (Dan laughs) It was how weirdos, kind of, identified with each other.

P: I think we've always been happy to kind of have representation for the slightly alternative people of the world.

D: Yeah, we like to joke that it's for the goths, the girls, the gays and the geeks. Any type of person that feels like on any level, they may not be completely mainstream. They may not be vanilla. They might feel other in any kind of way. We have an audience and we look out now because you understand when all these people were 14, it kind of looked like they were all teenagers. Now that they're all adults, some people are coming up to us, they're like, hi, Dan and Phil, meet my child. (laughs) But all these people have been in such different journeys in life. But it's knowing that, you know, back in the day, there was a place where no matter what kind of person they are, they felt like, you know what? Here in this comment section with these guys, I can just be myself and that makes me happy. I think whether that is something that we did do intentionally or it's an accidental byproduct of our influence, we'll take it.

P: And a lot of them have grown up with us as well. That's the lovely thing. So we're meeting people now that are just much older, but they're still watching the videos because we've- we've grown up and they've grown up as well.

I: Absolutely. And you took this hiatus, you know, from the internet. How long was that hiatus for and what was the impetus for it? And for coming back?

D: It was five dark years. P: Five years. D: And there was no Dan and Phil in the world until one day, like Jesus, we returned and here we are now.

P: We did. I think it's always a good thing to kind of have a moment where you're like, what's going on in life? Have a reset. And and I think we're kind of back now.

D: You know, like when everyone, you know, there was a pandemic and then they were like, you know what? My relationship, my job, you have decided it's not for me. I think we were trendsetters there. We did that early, voluntarily style, because we'd been going nonstop since 2009. And I was like, I just need to hit the brakes and look around for a little bit. And then I came back and I was like, hi, guys, I'm gay now. And they were like, ah, yes, that makes sense. But sometimes you have to hit the brake in life in order to take the space, look around you, take stock of things, make decisions. And ultimately, when you come back, it'll be healthier and happier.

P: And we didn't know this Dan and Phil thing- Like when we came back, we're like, do you guys still want these videos? And then, like, the reaction has been incredible, like, so many people watching the gaming channel. D: To the extent people thought Dan and Phil, you need to go on a tour right now. You need to get your butts all the way to Auckland (laughs) because I've been waiting for you to come back and we need to have a good night together. P: Yeah.

I: Yeah. And get out from behind the screen and kind of just interact face to face. You two are hugely into gaming and it's been quite a good pivot from YouTube to kind of try and be more successful, I guess. It's incredible how popular you are on these platforms. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that works and how you kind of make a career out of this?

D: Well, Phil's been doing it so long that he did it before YouTube could even monetize videos. He was doing it purely out of boredom and passion for the craft. P: Yeah. D: That's terrifying.

P: I'm a YouTube dinosaur. But I think with the gaming, we've got a Sims series, which we've got- how many episodes now? Like- D: Oh a hundred or so. P: A hundred episodes. And I think people follow along the journey with us playing the games. And it's like, I guess it's like when you were a little kid and you're watching your big brother play a video game. It's kind of that thing. You're just like watching along, having the bants. So I think what the people come to our videos for is more of the personality and us having a laugh rather than getting really into gaming.

D: Yeah! I mean, gaming is just the topic. It's like any type of TV or radio talk or commentary show, it could be about football, it could be about music and pop culture or the news, you just want to see people that you relate to, that you find entertaining, doing something that you find interesting and then you pair it together, and for lots of people they go: yeah! This is what i want to see P: Yeah.

I: Phil, how have you noticed the kind of gaming culture change over time, and was that something you're a little bit hesitant about, you know coming out as gay in that kind of domain, because we know generally that - you know, over the last decade-

D: The gamers are the worst demographic in the world absolutely- I: Things have changed. D: We’ve been on the internet since the ancient times and it's hard to say, like in a way obviously the internet these days, it feels like it's more terrible than ever, but in a sense it is a lot less toxic and a lot more wholesome and inclusive than it used to be.

P: Yeah, I'd say coming out on the internet is always going to be a scary thing, when you're saying that and being kind of vulnerable in front of so many people. Thankfully we've got such a great audience that the reaction was incredible, I would say.

D: And i think that what's great about the internet is that people can find their own communities, so even within spaces that you might think, oh they're dominated by this type of person – any subculture, any type of person that feels like, I want this space for myself – you can find it. If you want to order you know a ping pong club for girls with ginger hair called Susan that drink wine on a Tuesday, you can start that discord server, people will love it.

I: And I think it's nice to have those pocket on the internet where people can feel safe and can kind of commune together. You will be playing the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, on December the 19th. What about people who didn't grow up watching you, who think you might be quite funny right now. Like what could you say to them if you want them to come to your show?

P: I'd say, well luckily for you we have got a whole section of the start of the show which is the complete history of Dan and Phil in five minutes, so if you might have just slightly known who we are and be like, what's going on with these guys? We're going to catch you up in no time.

D: A lot of people drag their boyfriends, their sisters, sometimes like that mum that you need to drive you so you can have a couple of cocktails to the show, and we're like we need something for these people, we're going to catch them up, we're going to get them on our side, and if we have a spot- there's like a grumpy dad folding his arms in row three, I'm like, I'm going to crack you P: but- D: My mission for the night is you're going to be belly laughing by the end. P: They're always smiling at the end though. That's the thing, we do. We do crack them.

I: Oh and this will be your last show before a well deserved Christmas break, then back into the new year. What will Christmas look like for both of you?

P: I mean we're going to try and get home for Christmas. D: Yeah, yeah the question is, can we get back from Auckland on the 21st of December? P: Twenty- yeah. I think it's gonna be a challenge to get all the way home, but then I'm probably just gonna be asleep on my mum's sofa with jet lag, hoping to drink a lot of cocktails. D: I'm gonna slip into a nice coma.

I: I'm really glad to hear you are back together again.

D: Oh, well thank you! We really, really appreciate it and we're so excited for the show, so thank you New Zealand. P: Nice speaking to you!

@dnp-described

[buskingalbatross]

AmazingPhil channel marathon musings

during a pre-show q&a back in november, in response to a question about what show someone should binge next, dan said they should watch all of the AmazingPhil channel from the start. I was not the person who asked this (nor was I at this show), but regardless I did decide I wanted to take dan’s suggestion seriously. just a few days ago, I finished watching all of AmazingPhil in chronological order. and now i really want to talk about what it was like and why I would recommend marathoning his channel to pretty much anyone—because it was a blast.

I watched all of the 369 currently public AmazingPhil videos over the course of 35 days, which is from my perspective a pretty casual marathon. 369/35 = roughly 11 videos a day, though due to algorithm and monetization policy stuff, phil’s videos became longer in duration around 2015-2016; for many years, most of his videos were around 4 minutes long or less, which for me meant that early on in this marathon I was watching more videos per day, and then later on my pace slowed. phil’s videos with dan are usually pretty long as well, so if I had something like a baking video or wdapteo up next to watch, I might have only watched one or two videos that day. 

unsurprisingly, watching all of phil’s videos in order in a relatively short span of time gave me a really cool perspective on how phil has grown as a person and as a YouTuber over the past eighteen years. surprising to me, though, was how I felt like watching his channel in such a linear way felt a bit like coming to know who phil is for the very first time, again. despite having watched his videos for over a decade, i feel like i understand his style and creativity and personality more fully, and in general better, than I did before. watching 2007 phil become 2009 phil become 2011 phil and so on in the span of a few days or a week meant seeing clearly how his sense of humor evolved, how his editing and creativity developed, how his perspectives on life and relationship with his audience shifted. much as when you binge an entire tv or book series and immediately afterwards feel like you’re brimming with information, and have all the context, that’s sort of how I felt. and it was new for me because I’d never done that with phil’s content before—I’d never followed the course of his life the way you might a fictional character’s. 

AmazingPhil is also an incredible capsule of 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s Western internet culture, obviously. it’s like an anthropologist from the future with a very hyperspecific thesis topic’s dream treasure horde. what a person can learn about one corner of the world, and one corner of society, from AmazingPhil’s videos is, well, a lot. I see so much cultural value in AmazingPhil, it’s insane. his videos are not sketches, essays, and commentaries on society and life like Dan’s, but I’d make the argument (as I’m sure most of you would) that they’re just as important and critical to helping people understand themselves and the world they live in. and the kind of people they want to be, too, perhaps.

there were also certain videos that stuck with me more than they had in the past. I discovered new favorite videos and videos that I considered more interesting than I previously had. (I tried just now to make a list of some of these but it rapidly got too long, so instead I’ll restrict myself to mentioning only one, a new favorite, from 2021: “I Got Catfished.” - which i think is a fantastic example of phil’s storytelling style). dnp have both said before that they view life as a performance – and phil is without a sliver of doubt a magical and incredible performer. he knows so well how to tell stories with words, pacing, structures, and effects that are hilarious and entertaining; he turns anecdotes from his life into these amazing whimsical pieces of art made in a way no other person has ever made things. YouTube has from the beginning presented him with the perfect way to be creative in a way that suits him. and more than that, i found that it was never even remotely unpleasant to watch his videos every day for over a month. there is simply not an AmazingPhil video that doesn’t bring me joy and make me sit there smiling like a fool. my cheek muscles are probably stronger than they were 35 days ago. 

so, to you I say, go: watch all of AmazingPhil, draw your own conclusions from his current oeuvre and deepen your parasocial relationship with Phil Lester in ways you cannot yet comprehend. I really recommend. 

(final notes: one side effect of watching all of phil’s videos was being unexpectedly yet thoroughly convinced he does indeed possess psychic talents. even though i don’t believe in magical anything, i do now believe phil lester inherited prescience from his grandmother.) 

(also dan is completely right that every time phil changes his hair, he regenerates into an entirely new man.)

(also also I made an AmazingPhil spotify playlist that is highly specific to my music tastes but that anyone is welcome to listen to all the same) ✨🐗💙🥱

[thexfridax]

D.E.B.S. at 20: a Queer Cult Classic

Bessie Yuill Photo: Sundance/WireImage

There is a secret film hidden within the shadowy sapphic corners of Letterboxd. Some call it escapist trash, some call it an underrated cult classic, fools call it a male fantasy. It calls itself D.E.B.S. As other early-2000s chick flicks like Charlie’s Angels and St. Trinian’s have been reevaluated and embraced for their candy-floss aesthetics and campy wit over the years, the lesbian community was quietly reclaiming its own equivalent with 2004’s D.E.B.S.

The precursor to contemporary high-concept lesbian films like Bottoms, the spy flick is filled with something that queer female moviegoers still often yearn for: fun. That includes Jordana Brewster and her era-defying eyebrows as the impeccably named supervillain Lucy Diamond, John Woo–style fight scenes that parody the action genre in the same way as Charlie’s Angels, and a cheerfully cheap aesthetic where spies run around in plaid schoolgirl skirts.

D.E.B.S. was written, directed, and edited by filmmaker Angela Robinson. While “unapologetically queer” might be an overused phrase, it does apply neatly to Robinson. The Chicago-born director’s first project was a short film called Chickula: Teenage Vampire, calling on the long history of vampiric queer women that began with 1872’s Carmilla.

Her love of playing with genre led her to later put a lesbian spin on the movie musical by writing the underappreciated Girltrash: All Night Long and exploring polyamory in a period biopic about the creators of Wonder Woman, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. On the small screen, she also burnished her lesbian credentials by working on several episodes of The L Word.

When D.E.B.S. started life as a short film, Robinson described it as “a story about a trio of superspies who are all chicks. I love all the comic-book characters: Charlie’s Angels, Batman, Josie & the Pussycats … But I always wanted them to be gay and they never were, so I wrote my own.” Success at Sundance led to Sony snatching the short up and deciding that D.E.B.S. should be a full-length feature.

Two decades later, the joy of this movie lies in the details. The tone is immediately set by a gravelly voice-over telling us that there is a secret test hidden within the SAT to recruit young female superspies (and establishing that, like Bottoms, this is a film aware of genre archetypes and willing to push believability). Our main character Amy (Sara Foster) is an academic overachiever — like many lesbians overcompensating for their perceived failure to live up to social norms. Her perfect score on the secret SAT test makes it even more scandalous when she falls for the aforementioned supervillain Lucy Diamond.

Queer friend groups may delight over the nostalgic frosty eye shadow and lip gloss worn by the D.E.B.S. (which stands for “discipline, energy, beauty, strength,” naturally) at all times. Flip phones, CGI holographic screens, and Goldfrapp’s appearance on the soundtrack will also remind you that you’re watching a film made in the early 2000s. And many will squeal when they spot Holland Taylor, over a decade before she came out, as the academy’s head.

Admittedly, the special effects are goofy enough to cross over into comedy, especially when our girls are abseiling into a restaurant or climbing walls with plungers, and the lighting could be charitably described as resembling teen soap operas of that era. But the chemistry between Amy and Lucy is crackling enough that YouTube compilations of their scenes have racked up hundreds of thousands of views online. Their fun enemies-to-lovers plotline begins with the pair pointing guns at each other and quickly progresses to a whirlwind romance (the other D.E.B.S. think Amy’s been kidnapped and launch a national manhunt, just as many friend groups have had to organize rescue missions for lesbians on weeklong first dates).

You could argue that espionage serves as a metaphor for the closet and that Amy is such an effective spy because she’s used to lying to herself about her sexuality. But that almost seems like too much weight to put on this meringue confection of a genre spoof: Its campiness liberates the characters to inhabit a fun, exaggerated universe with no serious homophobia or consequences. Guns are used, but the so-called superspies have such consistently terrible aim that there are no real casualties. And Lucy Diamond’s supposedly nefarious crimes are all reversible — the murders pinned on her are revealed to be misunderstandings, and she returns all of her stolen goods in order to win Amy back.

When this live-action Totally Spies with a lesbian twist debuted, it only made $97,000 and was dismissed by critics. But there were enough moviegoing gays impressed by its snappy dialogue, fun romance, and stunning supporting cast (including Meagan Good, Jimmi Simpson, and Devon Aoki with a French accent) for its reputation to grow online over time. In forums and YouTube comment sections, young girls were asking, “Are there any lesbian films where they just fall in love and have fun and don’t die at the end?” Their answer was D.E.B.S.

[9w1ft]

i declare

thinking about the tortured poets department the song, and the charlie puth line, and how maybe like, the act of declaring he should be a bigger artist helps place the song into the greater timeline.

because it’s a sort of weird thing to say in 2024 of an artist that’s no longer up and coming.

charlie puth got his start in youtube in the late 2000’s and released his debut single in february 2015. and leading up to that he had several EP’s and promotional singles. it made me curious, at what point might the people en masse start to pay him attention? i checked google trends and as you can see here he gets a huge jump between the 2014 and 2015 data.

(he then gets a further jump toward 2016 when he did a promo single featuring megan trainor, and then doing “see you again” with wiz khalifa. (coincidentally this song becomes one of the guest duets featured in the 1989 tour movie))

and i was looking around at articles from this time period, when i ran into this tasty morsel:

so i clicked on through

take a little ride with me

so to summarize, charlie puth had his breakout star peak over the course of roughly 2014-2016, during which he was up for an award at the 2015 MTV VMAs. he doesn’t win, and in fact, he loses out to taylor herself! later on in the article it talks about him going to an after party and hanging out with taylor selena and others. so it had me thinking, i could almost imagine taylor talking with her friends that year or that night, or even declaring to charlie himself in the wake of his loss and her win, in a giddy manner, at the party they are reported as having talked at, that he deserves more success than he gets. in this way i came to the conclusion that the timeframe of 2015-ish (rather than 2023) really fits the spirit of the lyric “we declared charlie puth should be a bigger artist”

and

yes.

yes fam.

the 2015 vmas was that vma’s.

that vmas.

let me pull quote an excerpt from the billboard article as i included above, just to emphasize:

4:40 PM: Charlie has the good fortune to walk the carpet in the wake of Taylor Swift’s gaggle of supermodel friends, including “Bad Blood” star Karlie Kloss, leading photographers to alternately yell “Charlie! Karlie! Charlie! Karlie!” as if it were a hectic version of Name Game. While on the carpet, Puth chats with multiple news outlets, and later he says of the dealing with the paparazzi, “It’s amazing that we view people in unnatural states and just love it. I don’t really understand it — it just makes me very uncomfortable. But, whatever. I’m so appreciative to be here.”

such a fun convergence of events, don’t ya think?

and just a few extra points i thought i’d add:

first, i don’t know how many of you remember how taylor was behaving that evening, but don’t you think she was giving major golden retriever energy??

both in how she was chasing after karlie that night,

and also… call me crazy but, her hairstyle??

(also she’s in a houndstooth print, har har)

and i can kind of envision this taylor, who brought the whole bad blood music video crew as her entourage, having more than several bars of chocolate at hand for everyone that night, but ending up eating them all herself 😆

and another thing that helps tie the song to this time period (maybe some of you have guessed?) the line “who else decodes you?” is extra apt because… *da da-da daaaaa*

🤗 karlie had just embarked on her coding journey!

on a more solemn note? i don’t think it requires too much of a stretch of the imagination to see “but you awaken with dread” “i chose this cyclone with you” among other lines pointing to the new layer of stress taylor probably was harboring around being with karlie in public. because this is all taking place in the year directly following kissgate 🥺

so there you have it folks! this is why the tortured poets department is a kaylor song to me 😌

[garycxjk]

Why most people don't get Europapa

So, Joost Klein's Europapa apparently is taking the world by storm. With its happy hardcore or gabber house tunes and beats and the silly music video, there's no denying that this song has a certain charm, though it also has its detractors.

The thing is, though, most people on both sides don't fully get the song.

To summarize the song, it's essentially about an orphan who travels around Europe to find himself. Those were in Joost's own words.

Europapa is about an orphan who travels throughout Europe (and beyond) to find himself and tell his story. At first, people don’t recognise him, but he goes on seizing any opportunity he gets to let himself be seen. Europapa is a tribute to my father. When bringing me up, he passed on to me an expansive view of the world.

Okay, but why does the song sound so silly? Well, that's something deliberate. I don't really know much about Joost Klein's music, but what I do know is that this is basically what most of his songs are. Silly, yet deep.

Okay, brief detour to give context to the rest of what I'm writing, but it's important to remember that Joost Klein basically became an orphan at a young age. He lost his father to cancer when he was 12, and a year later, his mother died as well. This essentially shaped his music. From what I can gather from the many YouTube comments, he always watched Eurovision with his parents, and told them that one day he'd be there on stage.

So, let's just talk about the elephant in the room. Some people call this European propaganda. However, just the first few lines clue you in that it isn't just some pro-EU propaganda.

Welcome to Europe Stay here until I die

In fact, there are several lines used that wouldn't sit right if it were pro-EU propaganda. Let's look at the second verse.

Ich bin in Deutschland Aber ich bin so allein

Which roughly translates to

I'm in Germany But I'm so lonely

The next lines, "Io sono in Italia / Maar toch doet het pijn" (first line Italian, second line Dutch), which translates to "I'm in Italy / But I still feel pain".

Essentially, the entire song is him trying to let go of his past, to let go of his grief. That's essentially what the burning house and the windmill represent at the end, finally moving on from the past.

And that's essentially what the entire song is about. The entire song sounds like it's stuck in the '90s and early noughties. Naturally the most glaring part is the music style. Back in the '90s, happy hardcore and gabber house was really big, especially in the Netherlands. The way people dance back then and dressed when they did can be seen in the scene with Paul Elstak. Then there's the Gameboy Advance, which came out in the early 2000s.

Another cool thing is a reference to New Kids, a Dutch comedy show from 2007, when someone says "Welkom in Europa jongen!" ("Welcome in Europe boy!"). On the television screen, you can see Gerrie van Boven, played by Tim Haars, a character from New Kids.

But it isn't just a throwback. It's all being done deliberate. Something that gets lost in translation is the text. The rhymes work, however, to a Dutch person, it sounds a bit... childish. Very simple, at the very least. But I think that even that is done deliberately. It sounds like a child has been writing these lines, but I think that's the point of the song. It's supposed to sound like a child has been writing these lines.

The entire song is about the protagonist being stuck in the past, being stuck in his grief. It's why there's a disconnect between the text and the melody. Sure, it's a celebration of Europe, of Eurovision. Joost Klein genuinely loves Eurovision. However, it's also essentially him saying, this is me closing another chapter in my life.

Let's take a look at the outro of the song.

Op kruistocht in m'n spijkerbroek, lopend door de velden M'n papa en m'n mama zijn voor altijd mijn helden Aan het einde van de dag zijn we allemaal mensen M'n vader zei me ooit: "Het is een wereld zonder grenzen" Regen op het raam en ik stond huilend bij het venster Veel te vroeg duister, het is winter in de lente "Ik mis je elke dag", is wat ik stiekempjes fluister Zie je nou wel, pa? Ik heb naar je geluisterd

This... seems quite long, doesn't it? Well, that's because that's the full outro. What most hear during the video clip is this:

Aan het einde van de dag zijn we allemaal mensen M'n vader zei me ooit: "Het is een wereld zonder grenzen" "Ik mis je elke dag", is wat ik stiekempjes fluister Zie je nou wel, pa? Ik heb naar je geluisterd

Let's translate the full lyrics. I'll put the translations of the lyrics in the music video in bold and italic.

On my crusade in jeans, walking through the fields My dad and mom are forever my heroes At the end of the day we are all human beings My father once told me: "It's a world without borders" Rain on the window and I stood at the window crying Darkness far too soon, it's Winter in Spring "I miss you every day", is what I secretly whisper You see dad, I listened to you

So, basically, the gist is, this song has many layers. It's a heartfelt tribute to Eurovision, while also telling a personal story about grief and letting go of said grief.

Though I think this interview with Joost Klein on De Avondshow met Arjen Lubach may say more than I could.

Well, sometimes you must say goodbye to whatever is most dear to you. And when one door closes thousands of others open, apparently. But what I've learned is that you tend to hold on to your own pain sometimes. So this letter provides some sort of closure, dare I say. Saying: "Hey, Mum and Dad... You will always be there for me, but I can't carry this pain forever."

[blorbocedes]

How did you actually came across the bbc rpf movie? Curious to know

so i use duckduckgo as my phones search engine and i was looking up young lewis and nico for a previous ask (that was about their 2000 karting championship). during that search i came across this picture

I knew that's not young lewis or nico, so it caught my interest. what was even more interesting was when i clicked on the link it takes you to this

and that picture in the preview is nowhere in this article.

i went on google search to find the picture by searching the keywords of the article but it didn't show up on google, which means the DDG version was showing an older cached version of the article

because DDG doesn't have reverse image search, i save the pic and look it up on google. and it had only 2 direct matches a bunch of just kids karting toys ads

the first website linked to this forum. Not super helpful, the person posting thought the unicycling pic and this pic are both baby brocedes. NOT! a real scholar

the twitter link was interesting because it linked directly to a bbc article. but the bbc article didn't exist anymore

but narrowing down the timeline helped! 22nd Nov 2014, a quick google search was Abu Dhabi 2014. and the other reference of bbc. so i went through the archives of blogs that used to be active in 2014 in hopes they posted this, but that was a bust.

then i searched other fan forums with the keywords "bbc" "Hamilton Rosberg" "Abu Dhabi 2014" "children" and came across this Reddit post

child actors!!! that must be it! and a YouTube link, by god I've done it

😐

but i knew the most important part. bbc race intro! that's where it's from!! a lot of dailymotion and vimeo reuploaded old f1 stuff without getting copystriked and armed with my keywords i was going through it

this was uploaded 9 years ago with 1.3k views. but the quality is shit and there is no sound 😬😬 but it's proof the video I'm looking for exists 🥹 and delving down through YouTube's abysmal search

I finally find it. then at 95 views. my white whale

so yeah, that's how i came across the brocedes rpf film lol!

[olderthannetfic]

I hate that people make posts about how people should be writing something a certain way or prioritizing their time making content for certain groups or adhering to absolute canon for specific instances. And it’s framed as this community wide PSA for the fandom federation or something ridiculous like that as if it’s our solemn duty as a fandom to conduct ourselves in a way that is not cringe, or that the widest possible audience will enjoy it and of course wholesome never too sexual and morally good (and is literally just the posters specific preferences most of the time)

And then these sentiments sometimes spread and you get comments correcting you on the way you spend your own free time playing with dolls as if you are failing the collective in your duties or some shit. Why do people do this! This is a hobby for fun I am not a YouTuber or Tiktoker leave me alone! We are not required to collectively adhere to the most popular views of canon go away! I do not want to be your idea of advertiser friendly so you aren’t embarrassed to share an online space with me. I was disowned by half my family when I came out and couldn’t take my own gf to prom because of Period Typical homophobia from the 2000s you think I fucking care what a bunch of weak willed zoomers are embarrassed by? I am unapologetically sex positive and kinky in my artistic expression and I can take or leave what I like about canon like I have for the 15 years I’ve been in fandom. I’m not going anywhere and I am not changing for your personal sensibilities.

--

[floatingcatacombs]

So Help Me God, Lucky Star Is Actually Good

12 Days of Aniblogging 2024, Day 5

As someone who was hard-filtered by the choco cornet during my first attempt a decade ago, some part of me still finds it hard to accept, but I now believe Lucky Star to be a great anime. Veneration is in order.

The real miracle is that I was probably watching the same upload both times. For whatever reason, Lucky Star has been on Youtube for as long as I can remember, in perfect HD quality. Unlike other anime uploads, which persist only through a widespread game of DMCA whac-a-mole, uploads of Lucky Star remain untouched, as if divinely blessed. The one caveat being that you will be watching the dub.

Some background is in order, for the archaeologists and the young. This is a “cute girls doing cute things” anime, which aired at the peak of the “moe boom” in "2007". Market forces had shifted away from the hypermasculine gorefest that was the OVA era and the psychodramas of the late 90s to early 2000s. Now the people demanded moe. Anime girls became ever more neotenic and proportionally compressed until their default designs resembled the chibi and super-deformed sketches you’d previously only see in gags and parodies. The cuteness of the characters themselves began taking absolute precedence over plot developments, as more mundane and relatable settings grew in popularity. It was a perfect storm and generated unfathomable profits for the studios willing to cash in on it. Exactly why this all happened is up in the air, and everyone you ask will have their own answer, guided in part by their own emotions. Weebs with old-school taste view the moeboom as a monstrosity that ate the entire industry for a moment there, from which it never truly recovered. Cultural critics and psychoanalysts will be sure to point out how the artists and directors were knowingly pandering to lolicons by accentuating the innocence and purity and youth of the girls through their designs and demeanors. The more business-oriented might point to how the genre lent itself to heavy merchandising through viewers developing attachment and loyalty towards specific characters, and the later success of idol anime being built directly on the backs of CGDCT.

But watching Lucky Star in 2024, that's not where much of my focus goes. Mostly I’m thinking about whatever the hell is going on with Konata’s gender.

You see, Konata has all the traits of a stereotypical male otaku from this time period, transposed onto a moe girl. That’s it. It’s brilliant in its simplicity. If you’re the type of person to put on Lucky Star in the first place, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of kinship, regardless of your gender. She’s the kwasatz haderach of weebdom.

Konata is the obvious star of the show, and the whole anime would fall apart pretty quickly without her. Her best friend Kagami can be fun, but her snappy personality only works because of her chemistry with Konata framing them as a comedy duo. The other two girls in the main four are kind of nothing, conceived of as helpless by design to appeal to people who are into female helplessness (I can and will judge). There’s a bit of meta charm to Miyuki because she’s being actively pedestalized as a moeblob by Konata herself, whereas Tsukasa’s whole deal can just feel downright patronizing at times.

Between calling her friends moe to their faces, dishing out otaku-based insults left and right, and emotionally leading on Kagami, Konata is a bit of a shitlord! She’s got a real dirtbag voice in the dub, which absolutely helps sell her character, especially compared to the universally shrill Japanese voice acting. It is very, very rare that I watch dubs, but I considered Lucky Star’s survival on Youtube for this long to be a sign, and it mostly paid off! It does its best to treat cross-cultural references as totally mundane which goes a long way for the atmosphere, and the casting thankfully predates the Funimation monoculture that got to dubs a few years later.

Of course, in this day and age, “having the traits of a guy” more often than not means something. It’s impossible for someone like me not to want to poke. And what I propose is that Konata is a lad.

Let’s jump over to some other anime to illustrate my reasoning. One of my favorite games to play while watching CGDCT is “Which girl in this anime's main group is transgender?” It's important that this question cut both ways. Bocchi from Bocchi the Rock is something of a modern classic when it comes from transfeminine headcanons, due to her sublime mixture of hypercompetency and anxious failgirl patheticness. But I've honestly always thought that she makes more sense as a closeted transmasculine character. Hear me out. The boy band sketch, the intimidation around Ryo’s somewhat androgynous demeanor, her insistence on wearing her party outfit with a fake mustache for a liiiitle too long, until someone asks her what’s up with that and she panics…. It’s as if she views herself as a guy on some level, but has no idea how to integrate this into her psyche, and certainly does not have the mental and social acumen right now to work through it sanely. Poor Bocchi.

Sometimes, you even get series like Hidamari Sketch, where my question actually has a somewhat official answer: Hiro was conceived of as a boy who wanted to be a girl. Though this idea was ultimately shot down by the mangaka's editor, it still seems like fair game to parse Hiro as a trans girl when going into the series.

But I digress. With regards to Konata’s gender, what seemed like simply a tomboy’s gap moe back in 2007 now feels like a signal that Something’s Up. We know she plays the same bishoujo games as her dad and projects onto the male protagonists. She RPs as a boy in MMOs, and in-game-marries a guy playing as a girl. Her anime taste skews heavily towards the male demographic, and she's also familiar enough with shounen ai to tease Kagami about it with specifics. But she also expresses comfort, maybe far too much comfort, with her role as a short and cute high schooler capable of being objectified by the otaku gaze. There’s something going on, and that something makes her a crazy power fantasy for people in pretty much every position of the great web of gender, cis and trans alike. Konata as The Divine Moe Androgyne. Seeing the Macross Frontier crossover figure that fuses her with beautiful girlish boy Alto Saotome only furthered my conviction in this.

look at them

Anyways, Konata is clearly genre-aware and uses this to torture her tsundere bestie. Kagami, being what she is, will never admit to anything ever regarding romance, but it seems pretty likely that she’s in love with Konata. The OVA practically spells it out by depicting a particularly psychosexual dream of hers. The Lucky Star mangaka is famously against pairing off his characters, but even he admits that Konata and Kagami have a one-sided love. Most importantly, HE DOESN’T SPECIFY WHICH WAY. While definitely the less likely option, it would be extremely funny if it turned out that Kagami’s tsundere mixed signals were actually just genuine confusion and disinterest, and that Konata’s joke-flirting was real and unrequited all along.

The mangaka may not be interested in shipping, but the staff at Kyoto Animation working on this show were Trve Yuri Warriors. The animation director even drew them married, with Kagami as a butch in a suit and Konata her femme (Maybe I need to re-evaluate my gender takes, but also, dressing as a girl is clearly still a sex thing for Konata). Sakamoto Kazuya, I hereby award you the title of Furtive Himedanshi.

KyoAni understands the importance and hilarity of leaving those two unfulfilled, and goes all in on the underclassmen instead. Konata’s sickly younger cousin Yutaka is introduced halfway through the show, a plot development which immediately threatens to break everything. The background moe concentration of Lucky Star is already at somewhat dangerous levels by default, and throwing in even more childish designs can quickly make things feel uncomfortable. But they thread the needle and it genuinely turns out fine. Yutaka quickly befriends Minami Iwasaki, a butch kuudere who instantly and silently vows to Always Protect Her. Their dynamic would be just as passive and unaddressed of a crush as Konata x Kagami if it wasn’t for their pervert friend Hiyori, who constantly draws art of them as takarazuka couples. She exists in a state of perpetual agony and self-torture from of the shame of shipping her buddies in secret, even if they probably are gay. Obviously, I think she’s great. She and Konata only get a few scenes together but it’s so funny to see how they’re two sides of the same evil pervert lesbian coin, with shame as the dividing line.

From a yuri perspective, the underclassmen round out the upperclassmen well. We’ve got unrealized, possibly one-sided love, and some unfulfilled hazy feelings of dependence and warmth being observed through a terminally yuribrained third wheel. I’m very satisfied by their efforts here. I expected the yuribaiting to be fairly half-assed, but it’s incredibly fun for the most part, and my goggles are lily-tinted enough that I simply see it as the truth.

Speaking of characters that threaten to shatter Lucky Star, everything surrounding Konata's dad walks an extremely fine line considering that the punchline is that he's a total creep. Miraculously though, things never goes too far, and he even gets some sad and sweet character moments in a episode towards the end.

I was kind of surprised by the visual quality of this show! This is a late SD-era anime, but the Youtube uploads I watched are all full 1080p. How is that possible?  Basically, they threw it into a late-2000’s upscaling program which generally produced terrible results (the Haruhi BDs are famously rough) but works alarmingly well for Lucky Star’s ultra-simplistic, solid-color designs. You start to see jaggies at the edges of character’s hair, and some background detail is blurry upon examination, but in motion it works really well, and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at all for the first few episodes. Also, it was entirely animated at 30 frames per second??? That’s why the footage in the Out of Touch Thursday meme still looks surprisingly smooth even when slowed down like that – most of the Lucky Star OP was animated on the ones, so at half-speed you still get 15 frames of animation, as opposed to a maximum of 12 frames from the customary 24. Neat! Otherwise, the increased framerate is largely unnoticeable. Thank God it doesn’t do the jarring 30fps panning that a handful of productions from the mid-2000s are guilty of. Looking at you, Haibane Renmei.

Lucky Star showed up in my life at an important time. I first started putting it on as something to watch during lunch, but it ended up serving a far greater purpose. Lucky Star helped me survive a terrible vacation where everyone immediately got covid and we were fully bedridden the whole time. Having a tablet on hand and the show already sitting there dubbed on Youtube genuinely kept me going. The English voice acting was much easier for my covid-addled mind to parse, compared to trying to follow along with subs, as keeping my head up was already a full-time activity. It was also so much more logistically accessible than having to hunt down torrents or DVDs or pirate sites. I suppose that’s the appeal of Netflix and Crunchyroll, eh? Unfortunately for them, I have far too much of a chip on my shoulder to ever pay for streaming anime.

it was like this minus the stuffed animals because I was away from home ;_;

Lucky Star episodes are typically cozy affairs, but the episode where they visit the KyoAni studio is kind of heartbreaking now. The director of Lucky Star was one of the ones caught in the fire, alongside countless other contributors.

Well, the second Lucky Star director. The first one was unceremoniously fired four episodes into the production after a deluge of complaints and chocolate cornet memes regarding his middling introductory episodes. His current hobby is being racist online.

Lucky Star ends as it begins, with the whole ensemble cast of girls working out how to perform the hectic opening theme. It’s an act of eternal return, and provides some nice closure to the show. CGDCT anime often struggle with capping off their seasons, so it was very welcome here.

Somehow, Lucky Star might go on a list of my ten favorite anime??? Even months after finishing it, this is still hard for me to accept, being a weirdo elitist with antiquated weeb prejudices. But I think it’s true. It’s been fun to observe how Lucky Star’s second life in the 2020s has been split cleanly between “webcore” aesthetic collages with nostalgiabait revisionist memes, and a general critical reappraisal of the moe-boom now that we’re so far away from it. I’m obviously in the latter camp, but I’m here for it. This show was a dive into the deep end for me (I avoid shows from the SD era 2000s like the plague, and CGDCT isn’t my thing unless it's explicitly yuri), and it paid off splendidly. One could even say that it saved me.

[kishdoodles]

Treebark Week 2024 - A Post-Mortem

Hi! If you haven’t seen, I have released seven (7!) videos for Treebark Week 2024! This wall of text is my behind the scenes and also post-mortem thoughts on the project, which I found worth documenting.

Even if you don’t end up reading the text, I appreciate every comment, tag, and view my videos get. I did it for the fun of it and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do it for the attention. I did, because I think these videos are the funniest things I’ve ever released. Shoutout to @thefluxqueen for being my partner in crime and confidant for these. You saw my vision.

I wanted to do something for Treebark week but admittedly I had noooo idea. So this whole gimmick was a fun set up for me to stretch my creativity in. What started as “I’m just going to do everything in mspaint with a mouse” spiraled to “I think it’s going to get boring if everything’s in the same style, so I’m going to have to do something different everyday.”

The important factor to me throughout all of this is earnesty.

Even if its life started as a joke, this project is a love letter in every respect. This is what I grew up on, this is the YouTube that is precious to me. Capturing this era of time in 7 videos is all at once easy, yet surprisingly laborious.

First I planned the songs. Fitting the songs with the prompts was a brain scratcher, but once we (me and Spain) had a few in the rest slotted in pretty easily. Common thread was, of course, any popular song from the mid-late 2000s.

The first confirmed song was Sugar, Sugar for Sweet (Day 2) courtesy of Spain, given the Eddsworld video. We had a few songs for Burn (Day 3) or Infernal (Day 4) which we threw out (Elli Goulding’s Burn, 2NE1’s Fire, Steam Powered Giraffe’s Fire Fire, etc.) I ended up digging through my old playlist and listened to 20% Cooler, which after a realization I immediately slotted it for Frost (Day 1). Spain brought up the Heat Waves parody (Cold Spells) for Frost too, to which I realized I could just do regular Heat Waves, so that became what I did for Burn.

Bring Me To Life was brought to my attention (I forgot how, maybe Youtube recommendations?) and with the lyrics, it became the song for Blood (Day 7). The all time classic, Angel with a Shotgun, fit in nicely with the prompt of Divine (Day 4), so there was no contest. Another classic, Everytime We Touch, was harder to fit but I eventually reasoned through the prompts enough to fit it with Lips (Day 5) (the everytime we kiss part).

At this point, nothing I’ve found fit Day 6 (picnic/garden/strawberry) at ALL. So I decided the only way I knew how. RANDOM CHOICE!

Mad World won but that was a trap, for I have biased myself toward Animal I’ve Become at that point and it almost won, so I went with that instead. This is a lawless land. 

-

The actual video ideas really came to me in piecemeal, so I’ll explain how I got each idea as I cover each day in order of when I completed them. 

20% Cooler (Day 1) was the most straightforward of the days. It was done in 1 hour and 30 minutes and I was purposefully being extremely literal about the lyrics. I already had the vision for what I want, and I didn’t want to care about quality all that much, so it came together really fast. 

For my process, I lined with mspaint brush and then bucket tooled with default colours. I took advantage of the new layer system mspaint added for some scenes, but otherwise it was as simple as just drawing. (Pictured, 3 layers for 2 scenes.)

It was really easy to just quickly edit in Windows Movie Maker 6 too, I just dragged the pictures in, slapped effects, roughly timed everything and it’s done.

Programs used: mspaint, Windows Movie Maker 6

-

Sugar, Sugar (Day 2) was an honest effort at avoiding any complicated animations. I initially thought of doing an animation similar to the original video that inspired the song choice, but eventually scaled back because. I don’t want to animate. 

Thus came the decision of subject matter. I ended up settling on the demon roleplay because I thought it was the campiest thing in the world. And it was a sweet reunion, no? The lyrics just fit the vibe, and in a moment of brilliance (hitting the showers) I thought to make a visual novel. One reflective of old flash games and like the visual novels of cultural zeitgeist at the time.

I’ve known about Ren’py for quite some time now, but I’ve never properly learned how to use it. For this my task was simple. Find out how to change sprites, backgrounds, and move people into the scene.

Sprites and backgrounds were easy, so those were the first things I did. Ren’s sprites were inspired in design by Demon Hunters in the Warcraft world, mostly because I was playing a lot of Hearthstone and liked the idea. Martyn’s sprite style was inspired by early 2000s anime visual novels, like Higurashi (though I’ve personally never consumed it nor do I actually recommend consuming this piece of media (neutral) its ripple throughout the anime community was felt. Notably, parodies of the anime’s opening were very popular.) I toned back the stylizations, but trust me when I say that Martyn’s hands were purposefully big to be yaoi hands. It didn’t end up that big, and I did not give him the dorito chin here so, immense self control on my part (or cowardice?). False and Joel were just my regular style. For all this I used my tablet instead of my mouse.

The programming part was a little troublesome, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t google, so it got done pretty fast. There’s other small bits, like how I mismatched the background sizes, the sprite sizes (with each other)(minorly) but for the most part it came together pretty quick. Once the VN was done, it was just about recording it. So I put on the song, and danced along.

[You can download the VN here]

Programs used: Ren’Py, OBS, mspaint, After Effects (just to move the scene over at the beginning)

-

So I knew I wanted a classic style AMV, so that eventually became Everytime We Touch (Day 5). 

The pictures mostly come from a discord server I’m in (hi [redacted]!!!!) and I thought of it like a nice homage to the insanity we had in there. Bless all of you guys, you guys were the ones I wanted this series to be made for the most.

Not much to say beyond that, besides me just editing it all on movie maker as usual.

Programs used: Windows Movie Maker 6

-

Angel With a Shotgun (Day 4) was the last to be planned for. I predicted it was going to be the easiest to make on the fly (it was) and just kind of winged it. I wanted a unique style still for it though, and the idea of drawing their cubitos came pretty late. 

I was not exempt from this trend in my youth (my art in mspaint, age 11, me and my sister)

The rest was history. Just kidding, I really wanted something to do with the shotgun thing so I literally searched “shotgun” in Curseforge and got MrCrayfish’s gun mod just for the shotgun. I loaded up the 3rd Life world I had from my Broken Lives animatic (it’s a custom made world using the seed) and just got to work with FreeCam and OBS (it’s my first time with FreeCam too!)

A rejected clip I didn’t use because of skin consistency / continuity.

Programs used: Minecraft, mspaint, Windows Movie Maker 6

-

Heat Waves (Day 3) acquired a pixel art style as an homage to its original lyric video. People have said it reminded them of Homestuck, which I honestly don’t mind. It fits the era and I did grow up with it. It kinda looped back in on itself that way.

I blame this frame, here's it as a gif which lies unused.

For the video, the more I rewatched bits of Last Life for it (it’s been a while!) I realized it had a lot more potential than I initially thought. Though I doubt most of it didn’t come through in the final product (I limit these videos to a minute or less, if possible, excepting credits and allowing few more seconds over the minute mark so long as it felt warranted), I tried to cram in what I thought fitting to the prompt the whole time.

The watch tower burning was an easy pick, a classic Treebark moment you might say. For the rest of it, the nuance laid a lot in how Martyn presented the Shadow Alliance. “The Dog, The Shadow, The Roots. We make this place burn.” Under the eyes of the moon, it witnessed this pact form, and its resolution for the server. The moon is included in multiple frames because of this, as a stand-in for the eye of the Watcher(s) I included at the start, watching Martyn through the series.

In a lot of ways, how Lizzie and BigB turned red I also found fascinating. Lava and explosions you could argue are an extension of burning and fire, and an explosion was also how Martyn left the series. Ren, from the start of this alliance, inexplicably committed to and saw through what ultimately rips the people he was loyal to away from him. 

Martyn on the other hand, I drew in the later portions quite aware of the position he’s in, hence only his eye in the frame with the last 4 folks. This to me starts a path for him toward where he goes in the later serieses (notably in Limited Life). This is all very “vibes” and instinctual kind of “trust me on this” sort of read on c!Martyn honestly.

On missed opportunities, I’m almost upset at how I never brought up the moment Martyn buys a love crystal from Scar (never used, it got blown up) which I (and a lot of other) may have delusionally thought it was for Ren. Besides that, I never had a chance to desaturate the colours in the video leaving only red (which Ren did upon the encounter of the establishment of the Moon Cult)(it really emphasized Martyn’s lips!), I tried just plain desaturating, but ended up ditching it since it never felt like it jived well with the rest of the video.

All that aside, I finished this one really late (for me, which was past midnight on the day it was going to be posted), so I’m glad it was out on time. It’s the one I put in the most effort for, and I’m glad to see people enjoy it.

The eye on its own, which reveals the Watcher symbol I accidentally did in the wrong orientation. Oops!

Programs used: Aseprite, After Effects

-

Animal I Have Become (Day 6) was thought on for a while. Eventually I have my eureka moment and I thought it was a nice shout out to the Bannedstory community who I’ve followed in my early days, where I’d watch animations of people’s custom OCs (original characters) made with Maplestory sprites animated to audio clips that I really wasn’t supposed to be listening to at the time lol. That, and all the online games and the like I grew up with on the early internet. I personally didn’t partake in it, but roleplaying on those was a common sight, and I found it endearing. 

My partner in crime for this day in particular was @thefluxqueen, because I really can’t be bothered with character customization for a lot of these games (I respect the craft but I lack the patience), but I knew who LOVED doing that. He really knocked it out of the park, helping me do the Gachalife, Club Penguin, and the characters for Animal Jam and Ponytown. For the latter, they handed me the account information and we just went to town.

A Treebark stream in a just world.

I can’t tell you exactly how I assigned the lyrics, but I definitely assigned the animal sections during the chorus so it was a surprise (and so it also fit the lyrics). I did have fun recording and we had a fun time in Ponytown. We were shown where other mcyt fans are by a Grian pony (Hermit Hill) and then we hung out there sitting down while we workshopped the Bannedstory segments with both our sonas together. All in all a great time.

It took a few takes.

Programs used: Bannedstory 3 (I would’ve loved to use 4, I grew up with that!), Gachalife, Club Penguin, Animal Jam, Ponytown, Windows Movie Maker 6, OBS

-

For Bring Me to Life (Day 7)... I ended up getting more attached to the thought of it the longer this project went on. 

I wanted it to be the end all be all, go out with a bang and everything. I kept thinking and thinking, how do I end Treebark week? After a week of homages, how do I make the last one?

What’s beyond my childhood? It was just growing up. But it’s not like I had to let anything go. My artistic endeavors are influenced by all of my experiences. I saw good reason to bring it all home, do a callback to the styles of the entire week, it’s my victory lap.

And why not call back every instance of Treebark through the entire series then? This evolved into me learning more about Martyn’s lore because I want to be informed! I want to make this as someone who earnestly loves the narrative of these characters, and the stories they’ve told.

From a story perspective, it felt like Martyn was always doomed to tragedy. Suppose the life series always does end tragically, but Martyn’s Vtuber in relation to all this has its own inherent tragedy to it. In my eyes, this roamer of cyberspace constantly has to live through different lives with familiar people. The people he loved and cared for in one world will always be ripped from him, and he knows that.

Amongst everything the Unguided Hand gets me the most. In the video I drew the Ren he chases as a shadow. He’ll never get the Ren he knew then, back. Even if he meets another Ren in another world, it's never going to be The Red King. To me, Limited Life is the snapping point, a point of selfishness above all else in the comfortable knowledge that he wins, without ever needing to experience the same closeness and loyalty he had in lives past. The realization that this is what the game was about. Winning at all costs. I wanted the progression to reflect that.

Deep down, maybe he yearns to be saved from all that. The song echoes that sentiment. I tried to match the lyrics to how I saw the timeline of events as close as possible for that to hit. In this, Ren is his anchor, someone that he gets drawn to no matter the incarnation. The tragedy is that Ren, even if he knows about what Martyn’s going through, can’t join him in this journey. Martyn will always be alone in this experience, and Ren can only be a short comfort before the cycle starts anew. 

I quite liked the pixel art I did for LimLife!Martyn

From a meta perspective, this video (and by extension, the whole series) is about art and creating. I have been obsessed with art for 14 years now, and as time goes on I’ve grown fond of every way that we, as people, have evolved our storytelling. The multitudes of mediums that we have developed to express ourselves and share narratives will continue to fascinate me endlessly. Cringe be damned, there is a universal desire to create and enjoy stories of all folds. From the smallest story told from painstakingly typing chat boxes for little custom-made characters to say, to the highest production play put on for multiple hours in a game of Minecraft. 

And at the beginning of my journey lay paper and pencil. Bring Me To Life is an elaborate pun on my end, yes, but also a reflection of my roots. I started my journey as an artist endlessly doodling the adventures of tiny magical girls fighting demons, drawing fanart of costumes in MMO games I found cool, and sharing them with my friends at school. I find myself still drawing, still creating, for hundreds, if not thousands of eyes to see. Still I get inspired by the stories others tell, and I create in turn. In appreciation, in love. 

Bring Me To Life as a song, is a slate that, to me, reflected what I saw in the relationship of Treebark. Bring Me To Life is also a demand, of a piece of art that I had a vision for, that I wanted to bring to life. I struggled at how to end it for a while. Closing the book became very straightforward. It’s the end of this video, this saga, and another way that me, as a Watcher myself (as what they’re originally meant to represent) exercises control over stories in my own unique way. Creation is never limited to a select few. I think everyone should keep getting inspired by the things around them, and keep making art in turn.

To the people who’ve made it til the end here, make art, keep creating. Do shitty doodles, write whatever you want, make sounds and crafts and keep living. That’s all I really want, and this was what this whole series was about.

Programs used: mspaint, Aseprite, Blockbench, Bannedstory 3, Pencil and paper, After Effects

[blazehedgehog]

What do you think of the idea that YouTubers in the 2010s are the reason Sonic had/has a bad reputation?

It's really stupid. Completely unfounded.

You know why Youtubers in 2010's felt that way? Because a lot of people outside of the Sonic fandom felt that way.

I was in high school when Sonic Adventure 1 came out. I got my Dreamcast for Christmas in 1999. Purely by surprise, my brother sent me $200 for Christmas that year after not hearing from him for a decade. I was living in Colorado, and we'd had a white Christmas, meaning the roads were too slick to drive anywhere on December 26th. But I knew I wanted that Dreamcast.

The local Wal-mart was a little over a mile away. So, I bundled up and hiked it. With other money I got for Christmas that year, I had just enough for the Dreamcast, Sonic Adventure, an off-brand VMU, an issue of Official Dreamcast Magazine with a demo disc, and a lightgun -- I'd wanted House of the Dead 2 and I was desperate for a home port of The Lost World.

I played Sonic Adventure all day, every day, for like a week. Some of that was the fault of the cheap VMU I got -- it wasn't even a VMU, it was just a memory card, and it was half the price of the official thing. For whatever reason, Sonic Adventure (and ONLY Sonic Adventure) had trouble saving to that thing. My saves would frequently corrupt and disappear. I didn't mind as much as you'd think. I willingly and happily replayed Sonic Adventure over, and over, and over, and over.

When I got back to school in January of 2000, a lot of other kids had gotten Dreamcasts and Sonic Adventure. And it turned out I was the Sonic Adventure evangelist.

I wouldn't say everyone hated Sonic Adventure, but they were pretty frustrated with it. The main talking point was that there were too many characters in the game and most of them weren't very good. Everyone had their ranking list for who they'd rather be playing as, and universally, everyone just wanted to keep playing as Sonic. Knuckles, Amy, and Big brought up the rear for the most-hated gameplay styles. A lot of kids were saying they weren't even going to bother finishing the game if it meant having to play as Amy and Big.

My point of view was that it was normal. Sonic 2 introduced Tails, Sonic 3 introduced Knuckles, so it makes sense that Sonic Adventure would introduce new playable characters as well. It did little to address their complaints that most of the non-Sonic characters were annoying.

This sentiment never went away. A year later, in 2001, Penny-Arcade, basically the biggest webcomic in the world at that point, awarded Sonic Adventure 2 "the best Sonic game where you do not play as Sonic" award, which was less of an actual award and more of a jab at how Sonic wasn't actually in 75% of that game.

Then the Gamecube ports started coming in, which, if you've watched my Definitive Way to Play series, you'd know that SA1 and SA2 were quick and dirty ports that introduced a lot of problems in visuals, control, and sound. Reviews for those versions deservedly slammed them, citing poor music that drowned out the dialog, rapidly dated visuals, and a generally buggy presentation, on top of all the problems people had with the original Dreamcast releases.

After that, the decline really hit its stride. Sonic Heroes, then Shadow the Hedgehog, then Sonic 06. A real triple whammy of things just getting worse, and worse, and worse. Sonic 06 in particular was so much worse that it hit the fabled point where it wrapped around to being kind of funny for some people.

All of this was YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS before "2010's Youtubers" ever stepped in front of a microphone. Those people were just recounting the lives they had lived.

Anyone who thinks 2010's Youtubers did anything are just revealing how young they were back then, and how ignorant they were about the general temperature of things beyond "after my nappy time and my juice box I'm going to play the colorful animals game, yay!!!"

Before that gets me into too much trouble, I'd also like to say that obviously, times change. Opinions are a fluid thing. There will always be a "younger generation" that thinks about things in a different way than the older generation. Anyone, no matter what era they grew up in, can go back and find some beloved nostalgic classic getting blasted by critics. (For example: recently I rewatched Howard the Duck, a legendary bomb for Lucasfilm, and I loved that movie as a kid)

Loving something that you realize everybody hated when it originally came out is kind of just part of the human experience. A rite of passage, almost. But it helps to embrace that perspective, understand it, and realize you can still keep liking that thing regardless.

2010's Youtubers did nothing except exist.

[9823678]

"Jubilife City" | Pokémon Summer MegaMix Entry | Remix | Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum | (bandcamp)

[crystalgastles]

I will not accept a life I do not deserve (My Nina the killer)

Yay finally a nina post! Read my information on Mortem feeders to understand what kind of creature she is

YouTuber in the late 2000’s and early twenty tens

She got pretty popular for the time with her hair and makeup tutorials, she loved doing music and hair dye reviews

Obsessed with views and numbers, she’s gonna be a star

“I’m going to be a star, look how many views I got on this one video!”

It comes to a point where it’s almost all she talks about, that and partying.

She was invited to a concert in may of 2012, friends didn’t want to go alone

She vlogged the whole thing, doing makeup and hair in the hotel, her outfit, the guys she and her friends went out with after.

It (my slenderman) found her body in a dumpster behind a gas station three miles away from the show venue . Cut in half.

She woke up with the smell of trash in her nose , morbid memory in her mind and ravenous, No amount of greasy food would satisfy this hunger though.

she found a man after hobbling three miles up the road camera in hand. Long black hair and leather, cologne that invaded her senses. Men like that don’t think twice about tattered clothes and blood. (Foreshadowing)

She tore him to pieces and filmed the entire thing.

People on the internet love gore

She found the men who killed her, still hanging around the venue, she could still eat.

“I will not accept a life I do not deserve!”

Her smile is too wide now but not to the point where she can’t appear out in public.

her jaw unhinges when she eats, the skin on the sides of her face split open and stay that way for a few hours until they close back up.

She finds her fame on youtube, superstar on gore sites

[urclna]

hey, would you be willing to explain what happened in the ARG to me?

i didn't find out about it until it was over and now i'm a bit (very) lost

A lot of stuff! Including us breaking things multiple times.

Here's RQ's official recap (it leaves out a bunch of details, but it does provide some extra information about behind the scenes stuff and the intended story).

If you want more details, this YouTube video sums it up pretty well.

Reading/watching the links above should tell you basically everything, but in case you're eye-aligned or something, here are even more sources:

This was a Google Doc we had during the ARG to keep track of what we found. It's not in chronological order and contains a few loose ends that didn't end up being relevant.

And if you, for some reason, want to read over 200 pages detailing all the events of the ARG, here's a timeline.

I'm pretty sure all of the websites made for the ARG are down now, so unfortunately you can't view them yourself. However, @strangehauntsuk and the OIAR channel are still up. If you want to see something specific, you can ask in the Statement Remains Discord server (it's 18+ though!) and someone will probably have it downloaded. (If you're under 18, send me an ask and I'll see if I can find it for you.)

If you are too lazy to do any of that, TLDR: alchemy is relevant somehow, the OIAR stopped associating with Starkwall in 2000 (or at least that's what they claim), there's this creepy park mascot named Bonzo, a German conspiracy theorist disappeared after finding stuff about the Magnus Institute, the Magnus Institute did ethically questionable psychological tests on children (including Sam, "Connor Dyer", and Gerry. Yes, that Gerry), there was a file named "klaus" that looked like OIAR records but in German?, the German translation of DPHW is TSHU, Lady Mowbray is... well uh... we don't really know anything about her, but she seems cool, some spooky ritual thing happened in 1996, FR3-D1 and JMJ (whatever that is) are very sus. (That's the gist of it, but obviously there's a lot more.)

[tokiko220]

Noone talks about The Drummer and the princess movie enough and ESPECIALLY not about the people behind it. It puzzles me to this day.

Warning, extremely long post but i really wanna archive all this.

For those who don't know, in 2018 Angels Pictures released a teaser trailer( CZ EN) for this movie and it obviously looked shit for a movie made after 2000 ESPECIALLY when people were claiming it cost 80 million CZK to make (3.5 mil USD-ish) which is an insane amount of money for a czech production. Plus in the czech trailer they have an uber popular czech singer Karel Gott appear revealing he's voicing in it, they even have a super low res photo with him from the studio.

(honestly i'm pretty convinced they met him once for the recording of the trailer lines)

So allegedly 80 mil CZK 3D animated movie with a bunch of celebrities voicing in it! Wowza! Why does it look so shit? EDIT: CORRECTION! After going through some more documents this is in fact and estimate of how much they think the movie is going to cost- they seem very upset people get that wrong. But honestly I don't think anyone actually thought they spent that much money on it.

Immediatelly bunch of czech news websites started rolling out articles about it because obviously, it was ridiculous. It looked ass the trailer is pretty cringy and they have all that stupid self congratulatory bs about giving 4% of ticket sales to kids because its made for kids. With love♡ People are ridiculing the hell out of it, obviously, but then a rumour starts that it's a all a publicity stunt. Obviously noone would make something that looks this bad in the year of our lord 2018! Angels Pictures don't hesistate and start nodding their heads aggressivelly. They pat themselves on the back for coming up with this new cool marketing strategy they dubbed "The Spites and Envy Promo."

They post this stupid, self congratulatory post talking about how they actually intentionally made the teaser bad, saying they modified it with "minor technical imperfections" (MINOR??????? IMPERFECTIONS????). According to this interview some guy named Jeremy came up with this genius and "innovative" plot. But if you read the interview (in czech unfortunately) you'll also find out the teaser probably looks so bad because no, there isn't actually really a movie at this point! Which is insane, given they released the teaser in September and promised a winter release! They apparently work by recording the dub first and then animating for it. In the interview he says they have about 20% of that done. But whatever, they keep insisting it's all part of the plan dude! The movie is going to release in like 28 countries and it's gonna be huge. (if you speak czech i totally recommend reading that interview it is enlightening lmao) I don't need to tell you I think the "spite and envy" promo is a bunch of boloney because if you're looking to drum up views and popularity through controversy you don't turn off your youtube comments about it.

Back in 2018 I was having a riot following this and despite being convinced it is not going to come out, I was posed to see it day 1 in the theatre if indeed it did come out (afterall, they're giving 4% of ticket sales to kids ♡) They continued to flaunt their genius marketing strategy and even bragged their teaser became the most watched czech animated movie trailer on youtube! Which while true, it doesn't really mean anything, because they second most watched actually came out and made money, while The Drummer and The Princess entirely missed their initial release date with no explanation why! On their website the release year kept shiftin ever forward and in 2019 they added the "RIP Karel Gott" to the trailer, so I know you're out there GIVE ME MY MOVIE!

Spoiler alert, it's 2024 and we still don't have the damn movie! But ever since then I've been completely fascinated with these guys, so let me bring you towards the about us section of their website, because it's frankly hilarious. Meet Angels Pictures!

Starting with Alex Pieter you'll notice he proudly states he's the author of the "project" The drummer and the princess. The second thing he mentions is that he's a member of MENSA and makes sure to explain it is an association of people with high IQ because you wouldn't know anything about that. Underneath that he lists a bunch of things he did which really just reads like when you put literally ANYTHING you think is relevant and makes you look good on your CV, like that he cooperated with big names like Vin Diesel or Catherine Zeta-Jones or Gerard Depardieu. Generaly a bunch of jargon to try and make him look super cool.

There's also this guy but he's considerably less funny and really jsut looks like your regular marketing guy. He's not even in MENSA.

Back then I was still wondering whether this was all an elaborate joke, and I may even believe it if these two guys didn't sound like the most start up "trust me bro" marketing guys. That really marks the end of The Dummer and The Princess, but I'm not done with Angels Pictures quite yet! You see, I thought they got me all excited for this movie and then dipped but no, they were planning something even cooler.

A video game.

Honestly, you need to see it to believe it.

After seeing this, I genuinely started doubting myself again. Like this has got to be a joke right?? What in the mother of all asset flips...

It was supposed to be a VR experience (but also non VR) about .. uh.. well....... Flying aroung?? And there will be vampires.. and dragons?? Whatever they found on the asset store I assume. But not in the base game! You see, the clever MENSA head over at Angels Pictures came up with this new game monetization model called "Modular System". You buy the base game called "The Radix" and then you can buy additional packs such as "Oh, Look!" which adds interesting sights to this flying simulator (making me wonder what the base game even does have). Then we have "Vampires" which I supposed adds the Italian Vampire Palmira who does not believe in wearing pants. Also a bunch of other "modules" that add things to "duel with for treasures". Yay.

Those with a keen eye might notice this isn't actually entirely their idea, this has basically been The Sims 4 monetization scheme since literally forever, but as much as I hate to admit it, at least the sims actually like.... You know.. Gives you something? And isn't an asset flip. And ... exists. Oh yeah, spoiler alert, the No*1 game with the funniest flying object (whatever that means) never did come out, I know, we're all shocked an crushed about it. The actual website for the game went down (which is why I'm making this actually, everday I fear all of this will dissappear) but there's still stuff about the game on their company website such as;

The release Timeline. Lofty goals, per usual. I don't need to tell you none of that happened because if it did I wouldn't be writing this and I would instead be playing Magic Carpet game swith the Vampire and Space module.

Continuing the scroll we can find that they claim to be a studio of "roughly" (???) 30 artists.

Ah yes, nothing is quite as innovative as a VR asset flip game that gives vague description of what it's actually going to be about. Reminds me Dream World.

I don't know what kind of artists they are but whoever made that purple green logo should be fired promptly. Also as you can see they are still bragging about the huge success their marketing campaign was and using it to seem credible- never mentioning that the damn movie never came out. The kids are still waiting for their 4% (which btw they never quite mentioned what charities they are planning to give that to.)

Now let's check out Alex's updated profile for the game;

He's really come to his own since The Drummer and the princess. He's still a member of MENSA, a global association of people with high IQs, but I think it's adorable he updated his photo to be a picture of him holding a controller like he's a gamer girl on instagram. He's just like you, fellow gamers. He's a 3D artist now and an IT specialist and programmer! Is there something this handsome devil can't do?! though despite his newly acquired 3D art skills, the game somehow manages to look worse than the movie trailer.

I also wanna point to this, purely because I wanna archive it. "A game that simply isn't on the market" yeah but what is it ABOUT Alex???? It's honestly a hilarious read and a look into "the sicks brains on their team."

After all of that, what's the conclusion?? I dunno! I think these guys really missed their calling as MMORPG Fundraiser scammers, I think they really would have popped off with that. My theory currently is they try to set up these projects and websites and try to make themselves look as credible as possible to get investors for their stuff?? But I also cannot imagine it ever actually worked out? And obviously they never delivered on anything they promised so I just don't know! Besides they actually did work with Karel Gott and that's nothign to scoff at! I wish I could find out whether it was because they have an in with him or whether they paid him (if so, with what money? I can't imagine getting someone of his caliber to voice for you is cheap).

That marks the end of this insanely long rambling about this thing I've been obsessed with for years now and really wanted to archive in some limited way. Now I'm just waiting for them to come up with some new project that involves AI.

[piosplayhouse]

Niche fandom happenings to take your mind after whatever stuffs happening in your fandom:

So as you can probably deduce, the model horse collecting hobby is made up mostly of older people. The hobby has been well established since the dawn of the Internet and I've talked a few times about how it's difficult to find some older resources about it/its history because of how every other link you click on which used to lead to a hobbyist artist's angelfire blog now is just a dead link or worse, bought out by some ad company sitting on the URL. Up until recently, a huge portion of hobby talk still relied on now-defunct Yahoo groups; now most have moved to either forums like Model Horse Blab or private Facebook groups. Individually most of these are pretty decentralized, but since model collecting by nature is a hobby that requires a significant amount of financial interaction (buying, trading, selling, commissioning, etc.), there has to be some kind of centralized marketplace for people to pitch their goods to as many corners of the hobby as possible.

Enter Model Horse Sales Pages (MH$P), a, well, site where people can post sales pages for model horses and accessories. It's an old fashioned sales pages site from the 2000s with a somewhat shitty layout but unparalleled detailed search functions-- to order things from a seller, you'd have to personally email them to negotiate for their listing. Though this seems somewhat inconvenient to our modern senses used to one click payments and speedy delivery, MH$P is undoubtedly a pillar of the model horse community.

... So that's why people are scrambling as it's allegedly been hacked and taken down for the foreseeable future. Worrying about personal information aside, now fans are left to wonder: what's the alternative? Well, the first one is of course eBay, which many hobbyists already use. However, eBay is obviously less catered to model horse hobbyists and is therefore a bit harder to search if you're deep in the hobby and can't be assed to look through 4000 "plastic horse" titled listings to find the 2008 SR glossy xX Devilish Girlfriend++ Thoroughbred you want. MH$P occupied a specific niche for long time fans looking for grails.

So what are our alternatives for people in the hobby looking to buy from others in the hobby? Well, there's a few decentralized official dealers like Chelsea's Model Horses or Triple Mountain who you can consign older models to, but going through a middleman takes time and you have much less freedom in your personal listings. Alternatively, you could go grassroots and post listings in Facebook groups and on forums, but those have reaches limited to the members of those specific, often small, groups, and it can be hard to move stock that way. So now people are looking for a backup marketplace platform, both for the current situation and longtime health of the hobby. But imagine my surprise when I went on Model Horse Blab and saw people suggesting an alternative site kickstarted by

STAR STABLE ONLINE YOUTUBER DENIS/DENISE WISESTORM. Denis has been a controversial figure in the SSO fandom (though there's pretty much no uncontroversial ssotubers especially on ssoblr because clickbaiting and weird reactionary takes are like the bread and butter of that side of the fandom) who's been called out for having some alt-right homophobic views in the past, as well as for his abject and unproductive negativity towards improvements made on the game. He's a lps customizer and pretty prolific breyer collector, though, so his drive to create a model trading and selling platform makes sense at least. But still! Why him!!!!!!