#context: i was trying to find clips of an older stream and i had the volume turned up so i could hear it

[clownkiwi]

has this ever happened to you

[sophsun1]

(not so fun) fact: i started watching qaf last year because this fanvid showed up in my youtube recommendations and i watched it out of boredom/curiosity. and that scene you just giffed was in the video, except in the video it didn't last for very long and so i couldn't judge context. i thought it must be either a cute or a sexy scene and when i first started watching i was waiting impatiently THE WHOLE TIME for that scene to come up and IMAGINE MY HOROR when i learned the context sjsjsjsj :''(

Hey!

Oh my god, lmao you played yourself!

I actually love that you sent this ask because there's some similarities there to my experience of how I discovered qaf and britin. And now this gives me an opportunity to ramble incoherently as I do about it :)

So I used to see gifsets of Brian around tumblr here and there from people I followed in another fandom and occasionally see them discuss a couple called Britin and a song called Lover's Spit or something being so important (flashforward to future self - SO IMPORTANT AHHH) I often wondered what the show was about and who he was as the iconic if i'm not fucking you quote/mon amour chin bite scene etc would pop up alongside the age old discussion of Brian/Michael/Justin.

Like you one night years later I couldn't sleep and was bored and the universe spoke to me and said why don't you check that couple out on youtube to see what the fuss was, so I did. The first scene I ever saw was the mansion proposal of all things and first impressions were it's an older guy/younger guy vibe and the scene was the emotionally repressed older guy professing his love for the younger one and that the outfits they were wearing were extremely hideous.

Now I always assumed from what I would read that Brian and Michael were an actual couple and that when Justin came along it transpired into a love triangle with Brian having to ultimately decide between Justin and Michael for his true love asdfgjhkdkdjs. I wasn't completely wrong hehe 😂

Anyway I mostly forgot about them as I wouldn't see them a lot it was really rare and I just continued in my other fandom.

Watching all these without context was v interesting and confusing as I could only find like you fanvids but I wanted actual scenes so I could try and work out what was happening. So the few clips I saw were the 3x08 intern scene with the it'd be a pleasure to work under you sir. I thought oh so he goes to work for the older guy at some point and I thought Brian was a teacher for some reason lmaoooo but to be fair the clip was literally just that short scene so I had no clue.

Then came the stockwell scene where Brian has sold all his stuff as the concerned citizens and then finally what clinched it for me was I saw the prom dance and I was like wow, all the feels. The next day I hunted down a streaming link watched the show, still mildly confused and the rest is history. I became an unhinged superfan, searched them on tumblr found zero activity, taught myself to gif and I've never known peace since 💕

The End.

P.S I love hearing about how people discovered them whether it was from a friend, from gifs or if they experienced it live. I can't imagine the intensity of that, especially back then in the 2000's.

[adultswim2021]

Ephemera Week (2002)

Mission Hill (originally aired on WB, 1999-2000)

Mission Hill was a perfectly good animated series from former Simpsons show-runners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. It was a sitcom about cool young people in a cool young people city. Andy French is an aspiring cartoonist, intended to be a Matt Groening type who would (over the course of many many seasons) eventually find success and get his own super-successful animated series called THE SIMPSONS: SEASONS 1-8.

The premise of the show was that Andy’s parents retire and sell the childhood home, displacing his nerdy high-school aged younger brother Kevin. Kevin moves in with Andy and learns how to be a cool city style guy, you know, the kind that’s always “walkin here!” and sucking off Bob Balaban in the men’s room and whatnot.

The show is at least better than the bad seasons of the Simpsons, and has a cool alt-comics style that suits the show really well. Not to damn it with faint praise, it’s a good show. There are a handful of GREAT episodes and plenty of strong jokes. There's news of a revival in the works focusing on Gus and Wally, the older gay couple in the show. It's supposed to take place in the same era the show originally aired in, which is just great.

Like Baby Blues and Home Movies before it, I did catch this show randomly on it's network of origin. I saw one or two of the final episodes to air on WB. I liked it! I was glad to see it get revived for a run on Adult Swim. I've wanted more episodes ever since.

I don't think the show is available for streaming anywhere, which is too bad. It came out on DVD with special features. That DVD set was reissued on DVD-R without special features, so... buyer? be wary. There's also a number of music replacements that ruin some of the scenes. At one point I had a bootleg set where somebody took the DVD video and replaced the audio with the as-broadcast version of of the show. Good luck finding it.

Here's an episode guide showing their debuts on Adult Swim. Bold episodes were originally unaired, making their debut on the channel. Also note: episodes had an innocuous title and a spicier in-house title in parentheses. It’s real Police Squad! shit.

12AM Monday Morning:

May 20: Pilot (or The Douchebag Aspect) May 27: Andy Joins the PTA (or Great Sexpectations) June 3: Kevin's Problem (or Porno for Pyro) June 10: Andy vs. The Real World (or The Big-Ass Viacom Lawsuit) June 17: Andy and Kevin Make a Friend (or One Bang for Two Brothers) June 24: Andy Gets a Promotion (or How to Get Head in Business Without Really Trying) July 1: Kevin vs. the SAT (or Nocturnal Admissions) July 8: Unemployment Part 1 (or Brother's Big Boner) July 15: Unemployment Part 2 (or Theory of the Leisure Ass) July 22: Kevin Finds Love (or Hot for Weirdie) July 29: Stories of Hope and Forgiveness (or Day of the Jackass)

11PM Sunday Night:

August 4: Happy Birthday, Kevin (or Happy Birthday, Douchebag) August 11: Plan 9 from Mission Hill (or I Married a Gay Man from Outer Space)

ALSO NOTE: There are about five episodes that were in early-stages of production and if you poke around you can find scripts for these episodes ( here as of this writing). A full animatic and table read for “Crap Gets In Your Eyes” exists if you search for it. 

MAIL BAG

London Arbuckle ASKS! or, states! sorry I’m writing this lead-in without having read the whole message yet.

Another confusing Baffler Meal thing: the deleted cold open that's on the DVD. It gets called back to in the actual episode ("Between two steamed buns", "Nine dollars!? For what?") and provides crucial context, BUT it also gets contradicted in the actual episode (SG sells out for "one serious speaker" instead of owing a restaurant money). Also I remember all the ads for this episode used a clip from the cold open! It always kinda bothered me that they cut it but boys (matt & dave) will be boys!

I do think the cold open is nice and I always make a point to watch it with the episode. In my mind they are as essential as watching that boring Terry Gilliam short before Meaning of Life. The next step is pointlessly editing them together using Nero. Yeah, that’s the ticket

Here’s ANONYMOUS, baby!

It's summertime and we are talking about Adult Swim and I gotta ask when's the last time you've been to a pool. Have you ever in your adult life enjoyed the benefits of an adult swim. Tell us just how much you like splash around. Yes, that would be quite illuminating I'm sure (rolleyes).

Man, when was the last time I went into a pool? It’s been literally years. I think the last time I swam I did a bad job. I am definitely am getting “bad job” vibes off my hazy memories. Man, my memories used to be precious. Damn!

do you think theyll ever work with george lowe again in any major capacity or do you think he's just bad news.

I was about to say “isn’t he on American Dad” based on him name-checking American Dad as one of his many credits but I just looked it up and he was only in one episode. Damn. Somebody give George work he seems nice.

beakman's world, anyone? The wild and wacky world of Paul Zaloom? Hmm? Anyone?

lol you wish...

Baby Blues really was my everything back in the early 2000s, it may not have head the punk rock cred you clearly seem to crave it was a soothing balm for myself as a new father in a scary world (9/11 and all that, terrible stuff).

you raise a good point, that you’re a huge dork “with child” and I’m cool and laughed at 9/11 because it was funny to me, actually

Just read your Baby Blues "take down" and I gotta say: In the immortal words of Mike Francesca, "You're a fool. ho-kay? A total fool."

Uh huh. Yeah okay. Mike Francesca hordes pot bellied pigs in his apartment and lives in filth. He stinks, and so do youd

Baby Blue is like every animation nerd's wet dream. What if they made the rugrats with only the parents part. And here it is. Be careful what you wish for, chunky.

Yeah and it’s too bad because judging from the previous mail bags my audience is primarily made up of BABIES.

[atopfourthwall]

State of the Wall: 12-2-17

New State of the Wall post! Lotsa stuff happening, so click under the cut to see what's happening!

Schedule of Upcoming Episodes 12/4 – Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Dark Holiday Special 12/11 – Sensation Comics #14: The Story of Fir Balsam 12/18 – Steam Wars Christmas Special 12/25 – Christmas with the Superheroes #2 1/1 – My Top 15 Favorite Episodes of AT4W 1/8 – PATREON: Legion of Superheroes: The Great Darkness Saga 1/15 – Patreon Viewers’ Choice (NFL SuperPro #2, Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos #3, or James Bond, Jr. #1) 1/22 – PATREON: JLA/Avengers 1/29 – PATREON: Homestuck, Act 2

As always, the schedule is subject to change for any number of reasons, I’m pretty locked down with these choices… aside from MAYBE my Top 15 Favorite Episodes. I keep waffling on it, but for now it’s what we’re going with.

The Road to 500… and the 10th Anniversary 2018 will mark the 10th Anniversary of Atop the Fourth Wall! Needless to say, it’s going to be a big year for the show. If everything goes according to plan, there will be two storylines within it – the Contest of Champions arc that began in October as well as a shorter 10th Anniversary storyline whose name I shall reveal once we get to it, likely ending October 29th (if not the 22nd to coincide with the 10th Anniversary episode).

To celebrate this momentous time, every review that is not a Patreon-sponsored episode will be a follow-up to something from the past ten years! This would include sequel episodes to previous material, like another issue of something covered previously, a thematic follow-up like, say, from the same creators as a popular episode or could be thought of as following the same ideas as that episode. However, thankfully some of the Patreon-sponsored episodes themselves will be follow-ups, as indicated by the January 29th episode being the second act of Homestuck (which should hopefully make the many Homestuck fans asking for me to cover the next act happy).

Along those same lines, we’ll be doing the second Patreon Viewers’ Choice episode! The official announcement for the poll on that one will likely come at the end of the Top 15 Favorite Episodes of AT4W, but I’m letting you see the choices now to start thinking about it. The choice will be between three goofy tie-in comics I’ve covered previously – another issue of NFL SuperPro, another issue of Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos, or going all the way back to James Bond, Jr.’s first issue. I did return to James Bond, Jr. for a live show that hasn’t been put up yet, but we haven’t seen it on the show proper since the end of 2009. A comment on that issue is the source of the infamous “You’ll never be as popular as the BeeGees!” comment that is now immortalized on the back of the second DVD.

But of course there’s even another big even happening in 2018 as part of the 10th Anniversary – we’re going to hit the 500th episode! I definitely want to do some special stuff this year for the 500th, most especially being another livestream like we had for the 300th. It’ll take some time to plan, but here’s a list of ideas I have currently for it: -More testimonials, trivia, and anecdotes like in the 300th -Showing some otherwise-DVD exclusive content from all my DVDs, including the Movie -Showing the previous “100th episodes” – Sonic Live #1, Spider-Man: One More day, Holy Terror, and Marvel Super Special #7: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band -A live showing of the conclusion to Pokémon Omicron, where we’ll take on the Elite 4 -Various Longbox of the Damned episodes -Special guests -Live-riffing some shorts

These are all just ideas for the time being, so if you have any of your own, feel free to let me know! We’ve got 5-6 months until the 500th and I’d love to know what people think!

Platform Change 4: The Revengeance of the Whils VidMe has announced that they are shutting down their services as of December 15th. As such, there are going to be some changes in how things are handled around here. This is the FOURTH time that a platform has failed and I have had enough. We hadn’t even really finished replacing the vidme embeds on the LAST embed player change, so screw it: we’re going all in on youtube. There might be an option for Vimeo down the road, but for now, here’s in the broad sense what’s going to happen: -All Atop the Fourth Wall videos, from here on, will be thumbnail images of the title card that you click through to go straight to youtube. -All Longbox of the Damned embeds will be made into youtube embeds. Next year’s Longbox videos are currently up in the air, but hey – we’ve got ten months to figure that out and maybe have a tried and tested system in place. For now, it makes more sense to make them youtube embeds because of people’s nature in marathon-viewing videos and Longbox videos are short enough as-is. -New videos like vlogs, side content, and Let’s Plays will follow the title card thumbnail process being used for Atop the Fourth Wall. Old videos are up in the air, but they will likely be embedded videos just to make life easier on us as we once again replace everything. -History of Power Rangers… well, that’s a bit of a beast all on its own. Refer to the History of Power Rangers section below for more details.

As always, I ask for patience during yet another period of transition. Plenty of videos will be unavailable during this time (including crossovers in particular), but we’ll try our damndest to get things back to working order as soon as possible.

History of Power Rangers I’m happy to report that FINALLY, all of History of Power Rangers is back up after so many months of being down due to ContentID striking many of them from VidMe. Minor edits have been made due to the lengths of certain clips used…

…And you can only enjoy them for another 13 days because VidMe is shutting down. Or rather you can DOWNLOAD them for another 13 days using a third-party downloader.

Simply put: I’ve had it. These videos were made for a different time, when Blip was the main video host and longer usage of video clips wasn’t an issue. The platforms have dwindled and it’s down to youtube and I’ve already tried to upload these videos to youtube once before and it didn’t end well. The audio quality of these videos isn’t that great compared to my current standards and many of them utilized low-quality pirated versions of episodes recorded off of TV. I own all of Power Rangers on DVD now and new Power Rangers content that I put out has to come from legitimate sources like DVDs anyway. I simply cannot make these older versions work anymore. Don’t bother trying to suggest another video host like Vimeo or DailyMotion. Aside from both having their own ContentID systems, I am tired of trying to accommodate an inferior product.

Work will begin anew on the revised History of Power Rangers videos. While I had wanted to work on them in order, it took forever just to get the SLIGHTLY-edited versions back on VidMe due to my busy schedule. As such, I’m going to release them on youtube out of order, starting with Overdrive through RPM (Samurai, Megaforce, and Dino Charge already exist on youtube) because of their already-decent audio quality. If you want the old versions (and sadly that will now include the SLIGHTLY-edited versions that I have put up more recently), feel free to download them however way you can, because I am no longer going to try to support it. Let it not be said that I didn’t TRY to keep them up after so many years of fighting with various platforms over them.

I had planned to announce that it was likely the In Space History of Power Rangers would be delayed as it is simply due to the busy schedules of others needed to work on the “Under Pressure” section, but, well, here we are. Hopefully we can see HOPR restored to something better than it was once the dust completely settles.

Let’s Play Pokémon Omicron As stated in the last State of the Wall, the Pokémon Omicron streams are on hiatus due to finally reaching the Elite 4. Due to the various things I’ve had do to these last few months (not the least of which being concluding a storyline, Longbox, AND getting married) I’ve had little to no time to work on Omicron videos. As I’ve said before, I’d like to do a major stream for the Elite 4. If you look above, I’ve suggested fighting the Elite 4 as part of the 500th AT4W Episode Celebration Live Show and would like to hear some feedback on that.

Storyline Compilations In case you haven’t been following the youtube channel (which you probably should be at this point given what’s going on with VidMe – link HERE), the Game Show Reviewer (who does a lot of the special effects for the show) has put together compilation videos of the AT4W storyline! They feature JUST the storyline segments and occasionally a clip or two from a review for context (or because he felt a joke was funny enough to include). At this time, everything through the “His Blue Soul” arc has been released. The other compilation videos are done and uploaded, but I’m currently waiting for some ContentID claims on the Royalty-Free music to pass before I release the rest. Otherwise, you can enjoy the compilations currently available thanks to this hand-dandy playlist.

DVDs and T-Shirts Sale In honor of the holiday season, IT’S SALE TIME! All INDIVIDUAL volumes of Atop the Fourth Wall DVDs have been reduced to ten dollars (until December 26th), including the most recent – Volume 3: Character Reboot. In addition, Shark Robot is still running their Black Friday sale through December 6th – just use the promo code “BLACKFRIDAY17” on the two Atop the Fourth Wall t-shirts – “I am a Man” and “Because Poor Literacy is KEWL!” You can find those shirts HERE!

I’m working on getting some other sales ready for both the Screenwave store and the T-shirts, so feel free to keep checking back here for any updates on additional sales!

Event Comics Month II The first Event Comics Month was such a big success we’re doing it again next year! As before, it’s a vote by patrons at any level picking two DC and two Marvel event comics! You can check it out HERE, become a Patron, and make your vote known about what you’d like to see reviewed next year!

Patreon As a reminder, the Patreon-sponsored review tier for Patreon is still closed for the moment, with details you can read HERE. While I still don’t have a date yet as to when I plan to reopen them, I’ve been taking your feedback about it into consideration. A common train of thought is that any non-comic review should at least be in some way linked to comics, be it about superheroes or, at the very least, linked to something I actually regularly do/am in some way interested in (for instance, the occasional sentai reviews are fine given History of Power Rangers, or video games could be Star Trek or Pokémon or the like). I don’t think that’s too unfair a compromise given what people are thinking, but I wouldn’t mind getting more feedback about it during this time, so feel free to make your feelings about it known if you haven’t already!

That’s all I’ve got for now! Feel free to let me know your thoughts/concerns/questions for everything going on!

[grannygremlinaudio]

So there’s this thing that has happened to me a few times, where I write a song and then years later it comes true/becomes hugely more relevant. As a very basic example, one of the first songs I wrote, back in 9th or 10th grade, was a bit of a high school drama narrative with the chorus being generally about the protagonist having a crush on a girl in his French class and her being completely oblivious about it.  I was at an all-boy’s school at the time, had no idea my fam was gonna move clear across the city and I’d end up in a co-ed school for 12th grade... with a huge crush on this girl Michelle in my French class (people thought it was weird cuz most everyone was into her older sister, and also somehow because she was adopted, which I never quite understood, but all of this tangent is neither here nor there)....  This is a rather superficial example, I admit, but it was only, after all, the first (and also the one I don’t mind discussing publicly; the rest tend to get rather personal).

I’m not making any grandiose claims; there’s plenty of room for coincidence, self-fullfilling prophecy and other boring explanations, just saying that there is a history.   I would chalk it up to all sorts of such pedestrian things, if it wasn’t for the fact that I usually have a very hard time writing lyrics. I hate most of them - they feel forced or stupid somehow.  Songs like this however, come in a wave of inspiration and I seem to be done before I realise what it was I trying to write about.  Again, this does not necessarily imply anything more esoteric than momentarily tapping in to one’s own stream of unconsciousness, for lack of a better term; a natural meditative or altered state (I wrote none of these songs when intoxicated on anything).

This one here, Freedub, was a remix I did of a song by an old band of mine (I didn’t write the original lyrics; rearanged them a bit and added my bits at the end) called The Corporation (not to be confused with the slew of other punk bands of similar name; you never heard of us, trust me on this).  The song was called Freedom Fighter. The original came out some time around 2005, but the remix may not have been done until 2008.  And yes, a lot of the things I’m talking about here were indeed issues then, but they were not on the radar in the mainstream nearly as much, and, more significantly, it felt like some progress was being made on many (not all) of them in the intervening time; at least more awareness and public discussion, if not actual progress.  A great example being education (here in Toronto at least) and net neutrality.  I had forgotten about the whole thing and not listened to Freedub in ages.

Then it comes up on my random in the car this morning, and it occurred to me that at the time of writing and reading it back I thought it was good, but wondered why it was all so disjointed - every line or 3 I’m touching on a completely separate issue; like a laundry list. Usually I focus in a bit more on something or there’s an overall specific theme that ties things together, and it only is starting to make sense now, with the current political climate down in the US, which, some signs indicate, is spreading up here as well.  There’s one line in particular, which at the time I was not sure what it was about, but it makes sense now, getting context from the line before -  a summary of one of the main points from the speech Albert Saint Jean made at a protest in NYC the other day (can’t find a good clip of that now - see the 54 min mark in the vid on this page).

The first proper line of my bit is a dual nod to Tenement Yard by Jacob Miller.  I was obviously not gonna self-reference as ‘Dreadlocks’ so I drew on The Clash’s version of Junco Partner (which has a few small yet significant lyrical differences from the original by James Waynes).  I even tried to get The Corporation’s front man to put down some fiddle on Freedub, but it didn’t work out.