#there are youtube/digital-only releases on there all over there.

[gordonstanheight]

reblog to scare a letterboxd admin

[itstatartdump]

So like most people on here I had been watching Watcher since they started their channel, and like most others I was surprised/concerned at the announcement that they're starting a streaming service. After checking out the site and looking close at their YouTube, this feels destined to fail.

I'll go through my thoughts.

They don't currently post enough to justify the paywall

Over the past year, they have posted between 4 to 9 videos a month. That is a decent amount for most YouTube channels, but for a streaming service that is way to low. For $5.99 a month, getting only 4 episodes is not a good deal when other services give you more for less.

What makes this problem worse it that...

They only produce one show at a time

Whenever Watcher releases a shows, they only have that show running. During a series of Mystery Files, they only upload Mystery Files. During a series of Too Many Spirits, they only upload Too Many Spirits. Now this isn't the case all the time, when they have smaller productions they usually release a similar size production along with it.

If we go back to the issue of only getting 4 episodes, this means that you can be paying $5.99 a month to access 4 episodes of a show that you don't enjoy.

These two issues would be less detrimental if it wasn't for the fact that...

They backpedalled removing their YouTube back catalogue

Lets be real, not only were they originally going to remove their YouTube content, It was the only way I could see this being worth the price.

Yes, they say that they aren't removing it, but if you read the full article it say's that "The company originally told Variety that Watcher would eventually remove all of its videos from YouTube".

Their original plan WAS to make all their content exclusive to streaming, the problem was that everyone new this was a scummy idea and they gaslit their audience into thinking they weren't doing that. But that now leaves them with a streaming service where all they offer is 4 episodes of a show per month and a back catalogue that is free on a more well known platform.

The big question I have is...

How are they going to make more content

This is something that I feel should be addressed, they are a small production studio who are trying to "creating television-caliber, unscripted series in the digital space" (direct quote from their YouTube Description). They need more content per month to make this service worth while, how are they going to do that?

Will they push out multiple small budget, easy to film, YouTube like content that bring up the overall upload count which may cause them and their employees to crunch and burn out.

Or are they going to produce several higher budget, TV-calibre shows that would each be more expensive than they can afford to make.

Not sure if this was coherent but thanks for reading anyway.

(sidenote)

While I agree that Steven is getting a huge bulk of the anger that should also be applied to Shane and Ryan, I also have to acknowledge that the first announced show after saying they need money being his travel show is not helping.

[ctrl-alt-vibeshift]

in defense of the brat album art

my feed stopped when charli xcx dropped the album art for her upcoming sixth studio album "brat" a few weeks ago. like many angels, i was confused at first, as the image staggered out of the code on her merch site unannounced through a vinyl preorder link that originally had no image to go with it (and yes i ordered one before seeing any visuals...). even after she tweeted it, and the creative team posted about their contributions to it, questions were left unanswered. was it real? was it just a placeholder? was it an alternative cover for the brat_360 exclusive vinyl? this is not the album cover right? one angel dared ask our god in her twitter replies.

even before i got official confirmation that this was indeed the official cover, which i think came from charli's interview with vogue after the release of lead single von dutch, i was obsessed. the green: neon, but not tacky like the overdone highlighter trend already claimed by k-pop boy group nct, rather a muted, dull lime, catching your eye but not blinding you. the font: a simple sans serif, slightly condensed and elongated, nothing over-the-top or borderline illegible like the custom fonts artists usually commission. and the blur, the pixelization, the resolution, the quality (or lack thereof)—this is what really does it for me.

they're barely there, the rough, blurred edges of each letter, but once you see them you can't unsee them. the design evokes the feeling of waiting for an image to load in full quality on instagram, a youtube video playing in less than 1080p while buffering, a hi-res photo downloading from the cloud, a show or movie lagging its way into clarity on streaming services. or as oomf (@_alienmelissa) using a fan edit of von dutch lyrics put it:

(trans: lyric videos around 2008 all had fonts and backgrounds like this..........)

while thinking about the many implications of the low quality text on the cover, i read the essay "in defense of the poor image" written by hito steyerl in e-flux journal back in 2009, which perfectly put into words what i had been ruminating on:

[The poor image] mocks the promises of digital technology. Not only is it often degraded to the point of being just a hurried blur, one even doubts whether it could be called an image at all. Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place.

"one even doubts whether it could be called an image album cover at all," as many have due to the "poorness" of the brat art. better yet, steyerl goes on to proclaim "resolution was fetishized as if its lack amounted to castration of the author," also predicting the mass ridicule of charli for choosing and releasing such a "hurried blur" of an album art design.

regardless of what you compare it to, the low-res, early internet digital aesthetic it speaks to is something i haven't seen spoken much about. many twitter gays are up in arms about the lack of an image of charli on it, breaking her faceful cover streak (although she does hide it a bit on pop 2), and not giving them a new image to set their profile pictures to. charli has acknowledged this in the vogue interview: “I mean, as a female pop artist, what’s more bratty than not being on your album cover? Especially when there is so much pressure for women within the pop sphere to do exactly that," as well as in a tweet posted right before i started writing this:

which grimes replied to while i was writing this:

grimes scratches at what i'm getting at, but is more focused on the shock value that comes with its loud simplicity. this sentiment of breaking the feed, cutting through the visual muck and endless faces with a bold monotone color and by refusing to show face, is something i also admire. yet i think why i feel so passionately about the aesthetic value of this cover is that it offers me a respite from the overflow of high-res images mediated through the internet and onto my phone screen.

i'm so sick of the flood of iphone/digital photography, its quality increasing with each new device release. these images try too hard to replicate what they're representing, and create a false reality that many (myself included) get trapped in. we've sunken into the uncanny valley, and it's about time we claw ourselves out. i don't want to experience the physical through the digital anymore. i'd rather see all your pores when you're inches from my face than through the insane number of pixels resting in my palm. i want the images on the internet to be so obviously contained within it that there's no mistaking them for something material. i think this is why i'm such a fan of camcorder style photography and videos: like the chunky pixels surrounding "brat," they whisper i'm not real, i'm flawed technology, i will never replace the resolution of your retinas.

lucky for me, brat isn't the first artwork to do so, as there seems to be a shift back towards the materiality of the offline and the rougher edges of early internet interfaces within the broader art and design world as well. kat kitay describes this as "technoromanticism" in her essay "what's after post-internet art?" for spike magazine:

Exposed circuitry departs from the post-internet gloss typified by DIS Magazine, which shined up or hid away the ugly parts of technology. Hardware is made visible, laying bare the flow of power and information, at the same time transfiguring electronics into sacred objects. 

replace DIS magazine with PC music (its audio equivalent imo) and you'll get an analogy more relevant to charli's own aesthetic journey here. the super slick black lamborghini on the cover of the vroom vroom ep has driven off, her impossibly iridescent skin on the cover of pop 2 has shed its shine, and the skyscraper she's perched on for the cover of xcx world (RIP) has long been toppled, leaving nicki minaj's gag city in its ashes. the brat cover is the antithesis to these eras.

while ecco2k croons all i wanna see is 1080p / but reality keep me on 240 on "hold me down like gravity," maybe it's time to embody the "240" of reality again. with charli teasing this record as her clubbiest to date, tapping back into her party girl roots attending uk raves in her tweens, brat offers us a chance, both visually and sonically, to embrace the blur, the sweat, the adrenaline, the tears, and of course, the poppers fumes, of a low-res life.

[venusvity]

2022, the year Venus finally secured the Converse and a Pepsi sponsorship. Arguably, this is the least liked year of Venus for a majority of Constellations for numerous reasons. Trying to replicate the success of Summer Luv!, the girls would release their 8th mini album, VENUS HIGH! with the title track Hi-Tops, along with a collaboration with the brand Converse.

Commercially, the song peaked at number ten on the Gaon Digital Chart and topped the Billboard K-pop Hot 100, their first number-one song on the chart. Following the release of Venus High!, Venus promoted the song with live performances on several South Korean music television programs and amassed six music show trophies. They also held a concert by Converse, which sold out in seven minutes.

VENUS' collection with Converse. Each girl got to desgin their own shoe. The collection sold out in 15 minutes.

Venus would come back with their fourth full album, their last project with beloved creative director LEXA. Love, Venus would feature the title track, "So Sweet," along with eleven other tracks.

"So Sweet" won eight first-place music program awards in South Korea, including a triple crown (three awards) on Inkigayo. It also won a Melon Weekly Popularity Award.

"So Sweet" debuted at number one on South Korea's Circle Digital Chart. It remained atop the chart for thirteen weeks, becoming the longest-running number-one song in its history. The song debuted number one on the Billboard Vietnam Hot 100 chart issue. It topped the chart for three consecutive weeks. In Japan, the song peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 and number 13 on the Oricon Combined Singles Chart.

The music video would feature heavy Pepsi product placement but is still beloved by fans as it's the last video directed by LEXA. Lexa would make a lengthy Instagram post announcing their departure from Angelico and Venus' creative director, leaving fans and the girls concerned in what direction they would go in next.

LEXA'S DEPARTURE LETTER: it only feels right to share my favorite moments with my favorite girls, though there are plenty more. if i could post 100 images on this post i would lol. as of today, i have officially stepped down as the creative director of venus. these five girls are so special, talented, and overall wonderful visionaries i wish had more freedom over their careers. i do not wish to get sued so i won't say much, but i hope you all can use critical thinking skills as to why i've decided to leave angelico. i wish yoonah, bliss, chloe, sena, and jiah nothing but so much love and well wishes for the best. I'll always have so much love for my five favorite stars in the sky 🌟 until next time, venus! ❤️

The girls would take a short break, something unheard of in their career, to regroup and find a new creative director. In comes Adrian Reyes. Adrian would take over as not only their creative director but producer and marketing manager, ushering Venus into their most controversial era.

??? would be the ninth mini album by Venus with the title track GOTCHA. The ??? era would be defined by the marketing used to prepare for the era. Posters were posted around the world about the "missing sister of Venus" with four girls on the poster. Billboards asking, "Have you seen our moon?" would be put up around LA, Seoul, Busan, Tokyo, Shanghai, and various other cities featuring the four members Sena, Baebi, Jiah, and Bliss, but no Chloe. This led fans to believe she wasn't going to be included in the comeback until a thirty concept film, "Why Venus Has No Moons: ???" It was posted to their YouTube channel.

Venus was finally getting lore, and fans were...very mixed about it!

Stills from "Why Venus Has No Moons: ???" directed by Adrian Reyes.

The album would come, and the title track, GOTCHA, would cause a mass debate on Twitter on whether the song was good or not. The debate still goes on to this day. "GOTCHA" won 10 first-place music program awards, including a triple crown on M Countdown.

In South Korea, the song debuted at number 17 on the Gaon Digital Chart for the issue dated and peaked at number 5 in its second week. It also debuted at number 1 both on the component Download Chart and on the component BGM Chart.  In the United States, the song debuted at number 5 on the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart. It also debuted at number 37 on the Billboard Global 200 and 29 on the Billboard Global Excl. US during the same week.

Venus would win Artist of the Year and Best Female Group at the 2022 MAMA Awards.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 01/05/2024

super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont

Season 8 No Album Release (Read More) super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont

Ripper Unknown

So. It's been a month now. Has it all settled yet? Have we had the time to let SiIvaGunner's April Fools 2024 event sink in, 30 days later? Speaking personally, I don't believe I have yet. Visions of Gegagedigedagedago, Pomny (digital circus), Boykisser, Brainless Kitty and all of my other favorite memes continue to haunt me to this very day - I see one of the events' rips in my recommended, and in the blink of an eye five hours will have passed. I cannot be anything but amazed at the surgical precision that the SiIva team captured the phenomena of online internet brainrot with during this event, spanning the whole range of severity levels from bad to worse. super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont was certainly not the worst it got - yet it embodies everything the event sought to achieve through it's title alone.

But, right, the event - you'll have noticed right away that everything about the above-linked video's metadata is completely awry from typical SiIvaGunner videos. No attempt at a bait-and-switch, completely different video description, not even a thumbnail of the game used...and what the fuck is the "Buddy Holly Soundfont"???? What's going on here? Well, a lot of these traits may seem familiar to you if you've been on other corners of YouTube in the last few years - like I mentioned briefly back in we are number one but with outdated memes over it, there's been a trend in how non-SiIva audio edits are presented on YouTube as of late. There's an algorithm to appease now, after all - surprises and ambiguity only serve to ward off potential new listeners! After the explosive popularity of some of these, particularly during 2023 with videos like Nirvana's Nevermind but with the SM64 soundfont, they began feeling inescapable - often times sounding pretty low-effort to boot. I don't intend to shame anyone who's made these videos or anyone who enjoys them, of course, but...through how hard they aim to appease the algorithm that be, its difficult not to see these videos as attention-seeking first, and as creative endeavors second.

Which then brings us back to SiIvaGunner. Eight years in, and the channel's way of presenting its videos has remained thoroughly consistent, rain or shine - content in charting its own course. Narratively, this is actually playing to the channel's thematic core, something enforced all the way back in The Reboot story of Season 1, and that continues to be relevant over the years through rips like NIGHTMARESCAPE 〜Unrestrained HyperCam 2〜 (Final Boss Phase 2), and indeed through this very April Fools event. That core is simple: To never conform, to never restrict, to let the channel's team of artist continue doing what they love purely for love's sake, rather than to appease a crowd or a system. Throughout this April Fools day event, then, it was as if we were shown the twisted view on that core, the channel's rippers following the opposite creed - clickbaity titles and thumbnails, no core theme, often even lacking any regard for the tracks being remixed - several times the Wii Shop Channel theme was simply called "The Wii Theme", and of course the very notion of games having "soundfonts" is something that's woefully misinformed to begin with. Opening the entire event with Buddy Holly by Weezer but in the Mario 64 Soundfont set the stage perfectly - after all, what game more overused in "soundfont" edits than Super Mario 64, what album more trendy to playfully make fun of in 2024 than Weezer's Blue album, and what song from said album is more memed than its hit single, Buddy Holly?

Except, of course, this whole thing went one layer deeper. Throughout the four months that the season has been running for thus far, Season 8's running theme above all else has been pure silliness - everything from a Justin Bieber takeover, to an MLG day, to the currently-ongoing SpongeBob day embodies that theme perfectly. And at the helm of it all sits the Joke-Explainer 7000, the current in-universe manager of the channel. Her name doesn't lie: as we saw back in Magolor's Shoppe Fusion Collab she do be Explaining the Jokes, and that was initially assumed to be the bit of this very April Fools bit, the titles like super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont explaining the jokes of the event immediately. But forget not the point of April Fools as a holiday - to deceive. Indeed, though the titles suggest that the team are spending the day just explaining the joke of every rip uploaded, they're in reality just spoiling the supposed "premise". Listen to any one of them yourself, and you'll be given a bait-and-switch surprise which completely transforms the rip of choice. And as the day went on, these surprises only grew stranger and stranger...

SiIvaGunner's April Fools events have an incredible track record, as I've hopefully made clear in Our Sweet Parsley and Your Best Nightmario - but I think I can safely say this year's bit was at least the FUNNIEST one of them all. Every minute of the day felt like slipping deeper into insanity, made all the more clear the moment super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont was uploaded - in a matter of hours, the event had gone from making fun of low-effort soundfont edits that very much DO exist on YouTube, to completely making up an entirely new tier of slop through the very idea of a "Buddy Holly Soundfont". In case it needs to be explained, "soundfonts" are used to refer to video games using sequenced music, wherein individual instruments are played note-by-note through data sent by the game, rather than being streamed from a recording - it is IMPOSSIBLE to derive a "soundfont" from songs like Buddy Holly, played on live instruments and saved as masters back in the 90s. That is the gag that super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont is built on - the "instruments" used to recreate Bob-Omb Battlefield from Super Mario 64 are intentionally low-quality snippets taken from Buddy Holly, used just the same as Super Mario 64's sequenced instruments are used within soundfont edits.

The end result feels like getting splashed with cold water at every part of listening. Rivers' repeating "Whut" voiceline being used as the main melody for the first 40 seconds, for instance, is the kind of obviously "wrong" thing one would never seriously do in this sort of arrangement, yet it only serves to add to the joke here, of just how far we've fallen so deep into the event. The tinny guitar shredding, the low-effort thumbnail edit, the vocals suddenly being added onto the track, the bass being far deeper in the mix than it reasonably should be...it's an experience to behold, and just as you're letting it all sink in, the vocals are suddenly pitch-shifted to the quintessential SiIva meme, Grand Dad himself The Flintstones - its like the rip is poking fun at your misery, as to remind you that this IS indeed still SiIvaGunner, the bit is still going, you are merely along for SiIva's wild ride.

The entire event was RELENTLESSLY funny to see unfold from every angle. Be it experiencing every rip as it was uploaded, or seeing the comments' reactions to the gradual spiral of rot we were being taken on, or most importantly - realizing just how much fun the team must've still had finding ways to subvert expectations at every turn. Season 8 has been an absolute blast so far, and I cannot wait to see where its patented silliness takes us next - even if it'll be hard to surpass the shit we saw on this day, and the absolute state of things that super mario 64 but it's in the buddy holly soundfont represents. Truly one of the SiIvaGunner rips of all time.

[jmdbjk]

Episode 4: Disconnected

Beyond the Star, produced by HYBE Media Studio

Namjoon gives a brief recap of their rise from debut, through the struggles of the next few releases and then they take off with Wings, Fire, Blood Sweat & Tears, Fake Love, and Idol and all their accolades and awards.

They open this episode with behind scenes from filming the ON MV at Los Angeles' Sepulveda Dam. It was hot that day.

[did you say something Jimin? ahem... anyway]

Regarding the previous years to this point in time, Namjoon says he may not have made the best choices all the time but he believes he made the best choices he could at the time. Yoongi says they compacted 20 years into 7 years at the expense of their physical well-being.

Namjoon says he tried to prove himself to the world but now sees that what he's left with are the choices he wanted to make at the time with all his effort and he learned a lot from them.

Jungkook says he lived a life fit for himself, that if he had forced himself to do something that didn't suit him, it would not have been good. He did what he wanted to do and experienced a lot. All decisions he made for himself and which helped him grow.

In other words, they chose to work hard and run full speed ahead and we know that led to an almost burnout situation.

Namjoon states the lyrics of the song ON are what they mean: they've been through it and are on the other side, they made it to the other side together. Bring the pain, bring it on, it will only make us stronger.

It is heartbreaking to hear them talk about how much work they put into the MOTS tour, how involved they were with equipment and production decisions. Yoongi said it had been a while since they'd been this excited about preparing for concerts.

Things were planned that we never knew about. A large-scale gala for TV promotions?

And then the news early 2020. Jimin was asking if there was any chance the concert would ever go ahead as planned...

During the two years or so of the pandemic, each member dealt with the social distancing, self-quarantining, loneliness and lack of live performances in their own ways. They did a lot of nothing during this time. The footage shown here was not of them during the first months of the pandemic. There were no cameras set up during that time. They used footage from times when they COULD film safely to help represent how they were during isolation. Looks like Hobi and Jungkook in the hotel suite after the Grammy Awards and footage of Jimin in his apartment in late 2021, etc.

There were long periods of time when everyone, including you and me were asked or required to abstain from going outside, to isolate away from others, to not socialize with more than 5 or 10 people at a time, even with our families.

Bang PD reflects that BTS were at the peak of their careers, they lived to perform, and had to overcome the feelings of helplessness and that's how he believes they've grown as humans.

So they innovated...they produced the first online ticketed concert: Bang Bang Con. Over 750,000 viewers watched.

It was reported on the news that BTS was once again changing the industry.

And then on August 21, 2020, they released a song to enjoy with the fans:

If The Most Beautiful Moment in Life was the turning point, Dynamite was literally the explosion that shot them into the stratosphere.

Dynamite broke records of every kind: on Youtube the MV set a new record of over 3 million peak viewers during its premiere, almost doubling the previous record, and set a new all-time record for the biggest music video premiere on the platform and the most viewed YouTube video in the first 24 hours, earning 101.1 million views and setting three new Guinness World Records.

In the U.S., Dynamite debuted a #1 on the BBHot100, and is BTS' first #1 single in the US. The song became both the longest-running number one on the Digital Songs chart by a Korean artist and the longest-charting song by a Korean artist on the Hot 100, when it spent its 18th non-consecutive week at #1 the Digital Song sales chart and 32 weeks on the Hot 100, three of those weeks at #1.

Hobi said it was overwhelming that their sincerity had reached all parts of the world. Jin said it was a song to simply enjoy with fans.

Bang PD said he knew what this would mean for their future and what a positive impact it was.

Yoongi said they did the song in the hopes of giving everyone strength during the trying times of the pandemic. Namjoon says because of the situation (the pandemic) they lost so much (cancellation of the MOTS tour) so during that time, the strength of music and performances were their way to give comfort and support to the fans.

With the ongoing pandemic, they had to adapt. In October 2020, they produced Map of the Soul ON:E ... two online concerts that had a record-breaking 993,000 paid viewers from a total of 191 regions across the globe. It was performed at the Olympics Gymnastics Arena. It was elaborately produced. It was expensive. Lots of man-hours went into it.

They said they enjoyed doing it, they worked hard but it was a challenge because the missing element was a live audience... Army was missing. It would never replace a live concert's energy but they were still thankful they could even do it to begin with. It would be another year before BTS was in front of a live audience again.

Overnight on Nov. 24, 2020 they gathered in front of the television in their dorm to watch the 63rd Grammy Awards nomination announcements. Only four of them were there: Jimin, Namjoon, Jungkook and Tae. I had heard the others had schedules the next day and needed to sleep.

They had never known how the Grammy nominations were announced, this was their first experience and when BTS was announced you could feel their astonishment through the screen. The first Korean artist to ever be nominated.

During the Grammy Award broadcast (done remotely), they also performed their own song, Dynamite.

Alas, they did not win but they'd made so much history and broke so many records in 2020, the year of deep lows and the highest highs.

They felt motivated, knowing they still had room for success and had something to strive for.

They were proud to show the world that there are singers like them from Korea and that Army and BTS exist.

[crashlapine]

"people just don't seek out music anymore and that's why spotify is such a vital service in helping artists get discovered and paid"

hey. buddy. listen 2 me. my fixation on the band sElf is because twenty seconds of a song of theirs was backing a monster hunter world gameplay clip someome posted to a now-dead twitter account. A hand-curated music playlist for a VRChat world I accidentally typo'd my way into introduced me to Superorganism's "It's All Good" a few years ago. Crumb's two albums Jinx and Ice Melt are among the highest number of full-album playthroughs in my library because i caught a shitty recording of Locket playing in-car over a snippet of someone's dash cam footage audio that was lifted for a youtube clip compilation channel someone else runs. back in 2011 my high school forced my entire grade to watch an anti-bullying PSA that ran on for 40 minutes but the credits had Dabrye's "Making It Pay" playing over it and that set me on the path to exploring all of Ghostly International's available music releases i could get my paws on at the time.

like. i've discovered music in the most obtuse places, often via the most unlicensed conduits those tunes could've possibly accompanied, and i can say with one hundred percent sincerity that the $9 i've spent just once on a digital album or two so i could listen to it again and again has probably put more food on the table of these musicians than spotify's "minimum one thousand streams annually per-song before payouts" discovery playback ever could achieve across a decade for many of these folks. i promise this isn't a brag, I just don't know how else to explain that spotify really isn't the only viable path forward when music permeates every facet of this world and all you have to do is take note when something catches your ear. the only thing truly making it harder to discover new music is licensing restrictions, automated Content-ID matching, and the universal/sony/warner music trio regularly leveraging both of the former to ensure your favorite song has an expiration date by tamping down on all of this, and unless you can hunt down a copy to save locally, a time will come when you'll never be able to hear that favorite song again. this isn't a threat; you and me both are going to outlive this service, as we've outlived many other online-only services before it.

(and i say this with complete sincerity to those not in a financially viable place to buy albums on the reg: just slurp the .wav off youtube homie. compared to spotify, the net gain to the individual artist is exactly the same. who knows, maybe you'll be able to inadvertently pass it along to someone else who's able to go and make that purchase, as others have unknowingly done to me. word of mouth alone is a /very/ powerful discovery tool)

[heejinkwan]

FALLEN ANGEL is the second mini album by ASTELLA, a South Korean soloist. It was released on February 23, 2024 by StarShip Entertainment. The album consists of seven tracks, one including title track NOBODY KNOWS. It is available both physically and digitally.

ASTELLA promoted the album for 4 weeks total, promoting NOBDODY KNOWS and b-side MANIAC for 2 weeks each. NOBODY KNOWS peaked at 2 on the gaon charts while MANIAC peaked at 11. although unpromoted, Kingdom Come and Lucid Dream also charted, peaking at 19 and 25 the week after the album's release. The album received global attention as well, peaking at 10 on the US Billboard 200, also charting in 20 other countries including Japan, Brazil, FinLand, Thailand, and the UK. ASTELLA won a total of 9 music show awards for this album, NOBDOY KNOWS winning 7 with MANIAC earning 3.

˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆ i. the tracklist !

i. ✭ .   nobody knows ( title track )

ii. ✭ . maniac

iii. ✭ . rewind

iv. ✭ . lucid dream

v. ✭ . kingdom come

vi. ✭ . automatic

vii. ✭ . thirsty

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ get your photocards here !

*ੈ♡⸝⸝ ii. the styling !

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ iii. the reception !

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ iv. the notes !

₊˚ෆ the concept of this album was basically an omen to her performance on fictitouscore, her being a fallen angel, like the title of the album says.

₊˚ෆ the album was automatically a banger, earning a 7.2 score on pitchfork, astella garnered many new fans off of the release of nobody knows itself.

₊˚ෆ a lot of stellars believe that they should’ve made kingdom come be the title track, seeing that it’s gone so viral, but others understand why nobody knows was chosen for the title track.

₊˚ෆ astella blew up on tik tok! people already saying that nobody knows is soty and that it was the best release so far!

₊˚ෆ she did many challenges with julie and hanuel of kiss of life, karina of aespa, joy of red velvet, and yeji of itzy.

₊˚ෆ she made many new friends including yeji, who she met from being friends with karina.

₊˚ෆ and all the rumors are true! the album may or may not be about yeonjun, who she has been rumored to be dating ever since 2020 west they had a minor acquaintance.

₊˚ෆ she began being close to him while being in promise, but after leaving he was one of the only people she talked to all the time, the rest being her family, the promise members, and karina.

₊˚ෆ they began officially dating in 2022 but never actually confirms it so nobody knows is like her saying it but not actually saying it.

₊˚ෆ when it peaked number two on billboard, heejin’s family called her and they celebrated with a cake, congratulating her on her success.

₊˚ෆ she literally did a live at like 1am happy, which turned into her crying because of how overwhelmed and happy she was that the song was doing well, the comments were congratulating her and telling her not to cry.

₊˚ෆ during maniac promotions, a lot of people felt like the song did not fit the album and complained that it was being promoted and not kingdom come, which was gaining more streams than maniac.

₊˚ෆ starship released two videos of the recording process of both nobody knows and maniac, which gained so much traction on twitter and tik tok with videos with over 1m+ likes and views.

₊˚ෆ even though she hadn’t planned it, heejin ended up finding out that she will be performing at coachella 2024 in california alongside other kpop artists such as lesserafim and ateez.

₊˚ෆ even though no one expected it, rewind also ended up getting popular! after many stellars posted the song in a sped up version, making people who did even stan heejin wonder what the song was, it even got non kpop fans bopping to it!

₊˚ෆ after catching onto it, heejjn ended up posting a lyric video of rewind on her channel, and after a week it charted at number 8 on top 100: south korea on apple music, youtube music charts at number 1, and gaon chart at number 5.

₊˚ෆ stellars can really say this is their favorite era of astella so far, when the music is good how can you not stan?

₊˚ෆ very much inspired by this by @dr3amluc1d

[podcastjam]

Project Spotlight #3: Eart(h) FM

The year is 2072, and we're talking about the solarpunk sci-fi pilot Eart FM with team member Ari!

Tell us a bit about yourself and your teammates!

Hi, I’m Clover! I’m a writer, voice actor, and audio engineer. I’m helping edit Eart FM, and potentially voice act in it. I’m working on a few podcasts, but none of them have released yet. My first and favorite podcast is Wolf 359. I technically have a tumblr account, but I don’t use it, so you can find me lurking on various podcast discords, mainly the official WOE.BEGONE discord.

@lotsadeer: My name is Izze Sykes, I'm an illustrator, writer, podcaster, game designer, voice actor, and wearer of many hats. I'll be doing the cover art for this podcast! The first podcast I ever listened to was Welcome to Night Vale, don't ask me my favourite podcast that's like asking me to choose children, and I'm involved in a few podcasts at the moment! Hope's Hearth, an actual play podcast; Abbey Archives, a Redwall reread podcast; SCP Research Archives, an SCP article podcast; Colchis, a sci-fi audio drama; and Cauterized, a horror audio drama. Plus a few podcasts that are in the works. I like podcasts.

@aclickbaittitle: Hello, I am Ari! I like to say I am a storyteller. I am the organizer (?) for Eart FM and I also plan to sound-design and write.  Like a lot of people I got into audio drama through Welcome to Nightvale and then it was history. My most recent project is a little short-fiction podcast called “Broken Hearted: The Friendship monologues”.

Hello, I'm Laurel. I'm a writer, digital artists, and self proclaimed voice actor. I will be voicing the role of "The Host" in Eart(h) FM! I have not participated in any projects publicly but I have be doing voice work for fun with friends and a bit on my joint youtube channel. My favorite podcast is definitely Penumbra Podcast, my younger brother showed it to me and I was hooked instantly. I don't use my tumblr anymore but you can find me on discord @ cyanosiis!

@timberfins/@elijahharpermusic: I'm Eli, or Timber, and I'm providing music! The first podcast I remember falling in love with was Welcome To Night Vale, but my current favourite is probably Within The Wires (unless we're also including non-fiction, where it's competing with Lingthusiasm). I sing with the Anguilliform Chorus in Eeler's Choice, and you'll also hear me in two Law of Names productions: Season 4 of Breathing Space and the upcoming Waterlogged.

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Fuent, I am a MBA student trying to survive in this trying world. I am a huge nerd, and love to travel. I have been to over 14 different countries and plan to expand that number. I also host my own podcast as well. My first podcast that I listened to was Campfire Radio Theater, and my favorite podcast is Midnight burger. Currently I am a writer for the podjam and happy to be here.

What's your podcast about?

Solar-punk sci-fi with anti space-colonialism sentiments. It is the year 2072, the poles have melted and humanity has taken for the stars, except for the HOST, . To cope with being the only human on earth, they’ve decided to create a Radio Show where they broadcast music from various times and places of the world. One day someone finally calls to the radio station an ECOLOGIST, living on the skirt of the iztaccihuatl bearing news that the earth is healing. Together they embark on a quest for other humans that still live on planet earth, finding various communities and people, and begin to help the earth one day heal.

What are you most excited about in this event?

To collaborate with other creators in order to tell a story that is very dear to my heart.

Any advice for other participants, or those on the fence about joining?

Consult it with the pillow, but if come morning you discover that is just the nerves and impostor syndrome keeping you from participating, take that leap. At the end of the day, we are all just a bunch of people trying to tell stories the same as you.

This team is still looking for new members, adding: "We are currently looking for the ecologist voice actor. We are specifically looking for a chicane / mexican-american voice actor since we are writing the ecologist with an experience specific to said identity (don’t worry, you don’t need to know spanish or anything, as long as you have a connection with the ethnicity or identity, you are welcome to join!)"

If you're interested in joining their project, you can find their casting call here, or you can reach out in the Podcast Book Club Discord server. If you want to know more about the jam first, be sure to check out this post as well!

[am--f]

TikTok, Seriality, and the Algorithmic Gaze

Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies, 2024 Princeton University

If digital moving image platforms like TikTok differ in meaningful ways from cinema and television, certainly one of the most important differences is the mode by which the viewing experience is composed. We are dealing not only with fixed media nor with live broadcast media, but with an AI recommender system, a serial format that mixes both, generated on the fly and addressed to each individual user. Out of this series emerges something like a subject, or at least an image of one, which is then stored and constantly re-addressed.

TikTok has introduced a potentially dominant design for the delivery of moving images—and, potentially, a default delivery system for information in general. Already, Instagram has adopted this design with its Reels feature, and Twitter, too, has shifted towards a similar emphasis. YouTube has been providing video recommendations since 2008. More than other comparable services, TikTok places its proprietary recommender system at the core of the apparatus. The “For You” page, as TikTok calls it, presents a dynamically generated, infinitely scrollable series of video loops. The For You page is the primary interface and homepage for users. Content is curated and served on the For You page not only according to explicit user interactions (such as liking or following) or social graphs (although these do play some role in the curation). Instead, content is selected on the basis of a wider range of user behavior that seems to be particularly weighted towards viewing time—the time spent watching each video loop. This is automatic montage, personalized montages produced in real time for billions of daily users. To use another transmedial analogy—one perhaps justified by TikTok’s approximation of color convergence errors in its luminous cyan and red branding—this montage has the uncanny rhythm of TV channel surfing. But the “channels” you pass through are not determined by the fixed linear series of numbered broadcast channels. Instead, each “channel” you encounter has been preselected for you; you are shown “channels” that are like the ones you have tended to linger on.

The experience of spectatorship on TikTok, therefore, is also an experience of the responsive modeling of one’s spectatorship—it involves the awareness of such modeling. This is a cybernetic loop, in effect, within which future action is performed on the basis of the past behavior of the recommender system as it operates. Spectatorship is fully integrated into the circuit. Here is how it works: the system starts by recommending a sequence of more or less arbitrary videos. It notes my view time on each, and cross-references the descriptive metadata that underwrites each video. (This involves, to some degree, internal, invisible tags, not just user-generated tags.) The more I view something, the more likely I am to be shown something like it in the future. A series of likenesses unfolds, passing between two addresses: my behavior and the database of videos. It’s a serial process of individuation. As TikTok puts it in a 2020 blog post: these likenesses or recommendations increasingly become “polished,” “tailored,” “refined,” “improved,” and “corrected” apparently as a function of consistent use over time.

Like many recommender systems—and such systems are to be found everywhere nowadays—the For You algorithm is a black box. It has not been released to the public, although there seem to have been, at some point, promises to do this. In lieu of this, a “TikTok Transparency Center” run by TikTok in Los Angeles (delayed, apparently, by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic) opened in 2023. TikTok has published informal descriptions of the algorithm, and by all accounts it appears to be rather straightforward. At the same time, the algorithm has engendered all kinds of folk sciences, superstitions, paranoid theories, and magical practices. What is this algorithm that shows me such interesting, bizarre, entertaining, unexpected things? What does it think I want? Why does it think I want this? How does this algorithm sometimes seem to know me so well, to know what I want to see? What is it watching me watch? (From the side of content creators, of course, there is also always the question: what kind of content do I need to produce in order to be recognized and distributed by the algorithm? How can I go viral and how can I maximize engagement? What kinds of things will the algorithm want to see? Why is the algorithm not seeing me?)

These seem to be questions involving an algorithmic gaze. That is to say: there is something or someone watching prior to the actual instance of watching, something or someone which is beyond empirical, human viewers, “watching” them watch. There is something watching me, whether or not I actually make an optical image of myself. I am looked at by the algorithm. There is a structuring gaze. But what is this gaze? How does it address us? Is this the gaze of a cinematic apparatus? Is it the gaze we know from filmtheory, a gaze of mastery with which we are supposed to identify, a gaze which hails or interpellates us, which masters us? Is it a Foucauldian, panoptic gaze, one that disciplines us? 

Any one of us who uses the major platforms is familiar with how the gaze of the system feels. It a gaze that looks back—looks at our looking—and inscribes our attention onto a balance sheet. It counts and accounts for our attention. This account appears to be a personalized account, a personalized perspective. People use the phrase “my TikTok algorithm,” referring to the personalized model which they have generated through use. Strictly speaking, of course, it’s not the algorithm that’s individualized or that individuates, but the model that is its product. The model that is generated by the algorithm as I use it and as it learns from my activity is my profile. The profile is “mine” because I am constantly “training” it with my attention as its input, and feel a sense of ownership since it’s associated with my account, but the profile is also “of me” and “for me” because it is constantly subjecting me to my picture, a picture of my history of attention. Incidentally, I think this is precisely something that Jacques Lacan, in his 1973 lecture on the gaze in Seminar XI, refers to as a “bipolar reflexive relation,” the ambiguity of the phrase “my image.” “As soon as I perceive, my representations belong to me.” But, at the same time, something looks back; something pictures me looking. “The picture, certainly, is in my eye. But I am in the picture.”

On TikTok, the picture often seems sort of wrong, malformed. Perhaps more often than not. Things drift around and get stuck in loops. The screen fills with garbage. As spectators, we are constantly being shown things we don’t want any more of, or things we would never admit we want, or things we hate (but cannot avoid watching: this is the pleasurable phenomenon of “cringe”). But we are compelled to watch them all. The apparatus seems to endlessly produce desire. Where does this desire come from? Is it from the addictive charge of the occasional good guess, the moment of brief recognition (the lucky find, the Surrealist trouvaille: “this is for me”)? Is it the promise that further training will yield better results? Is it possible that our desire is constituted and propelled in the failures of the machine, in moments of misrecognition and misidentification in the line of sight of a gaze that evidently cannot really see us? 

In the early 1970s, in the British journal Screen, scholars such as Laura Mulvey, Colin MacCabe, and Stephen Heath developed a film-theoretical concept of the gaze. This concept was used to explain how desire is determined, specified, and produced by visual media. In some ways, the theory echoes Lacan’s phenomenological interest in “the pre-existence to the seen of a given-to-be-seen” (Seminar XI, 74). The gaze is what the cinematic apparatus produces as part of its configuration of the given-to-be-seen. 

In Screen theory, as it came to be known, the screen becomes a mirror. On it, all representations seem to belong to me, the individual spectator. This is an illusion of mastery, an imaginary relation to real conditions of existence in the terms of the Althusserian formula. It corresponds to the jubilant identification that occurs in a moment in Lacan’s famous 1949 paper “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in which the motor-challenged infant, its body fragmented (en morceaux) in reality, discovers the illusion of its wholeness in the mirror. The subject is brought perfectly in line with this ideal-I, with this spectacle, such that what it sees is simply identical to its desire. There is convergence. To slightly oversimplify: for Screen theory, this moment in mirror stage is the essence of cinema and ideology, or cinema as ideology. 

Joan Copjec, in her essay “The Orthopsychic Subject,” notes that Screen theory considered a certain relationship of property to be one of its primary discoveries. The “screen as mirror”: the ideological-cinematic apparatus produces representations which are “accepted by the subject as its own.” This is what Lacan calls the “belong to me aspect so reminiscent of property.” “It is this aspect,” says Copjec, speaking for Screen theory, “that allows the subject to see in any representation not only a reflection of itself but a reflection of itself as master of all it surveys. The imaginary relation produces the subject as master of the image. . . . The subject is satisfied that it has been adequately reflected on the screen. The ‘reality effect’ and the ‘subject effect’ both name the same constructed impression: that the image makes the subject fully visible to itself” (21–22). 

According to Copjec, “the gaze always remains within film theory the sense of being that point at which sense and being coincide. The subject comes into being by identifying with the image’s signified. Sense founds the subject—that is the ultimate point of the film-theoretical and Foucauldian concepts of the gaze” (22).

But this is not Lacan’s gaze. The gaze that Lacan introduces in Seminar XI is something much less complete, much less satisfying. The gaze concept is not exhausted by the imaginary relation of identification described in Screen theory, where the subject simply appropriates the gaze, assumes the position created for it by the image “without the hint of failure,” as Copjec puts it. In its emphasis on the imaginary, Screen theory neglects the symbolic relation as well as the issue of the real.

In Seminar XI, Lacan explicates the gaze in the midst of a discussion on Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Again, Lacan’s gaze is something that pre-exists the seeing subject and is encountered as pre-existing it: “we are beings who are looked at, in the spectacle of the world” (75). But—and this is the crucial difference in emphasis—it is impossible to look at ourselves from the position of this all-seeing spectacle. The gaze, as objet a in the field of the visible, is something that in fact cannot be appropriated or inhabited. It is nevertheless the object of the drive, a cause of desire. The gaze “may come to symbolize” the "central lack expressed in the phenomenon of castration” (77). Lacan even says, later in the seminar, that the gaze is “the most characteristic term for apprehending the proper function of the objet a” (270). As objet a, as the object-cause of desire, the gaze is said to be separable and separated off from the subject and has only ever existed as lack. The gaze is just all of those points from which I myself will never see, the views I will never possess or master. I may occasionally imagine that I have the object, that I occupy the gaze, but I am also constantly reminded of the fact that I don’t, by images that show me my partiality, my separation. This is the separation—between eye and gaze—that manifests as the drive in the scopic field. 

The gaze is a position that cannot be assumed. It indicates an impossible real. Beyond everything that is shown to the subject, beyond the series of images to which the subject is subjected, the question is asked: “What is being concealed from me? What in this graphic space does not show, does not stop not writing itself?” This missing point is the point of the gaze. “At the moment the gaze is discerned, the image, the entire visual field, takes on a terrifying alterity,” says Copjec. “It loses its ‘belong-to-me aspect’ and suddenly assumes the function of a screen” (35). We get the sense of being cut off from the gaze completely. We get the sense of a blind gaze, a gaze that “is not clear or penetrating, not filled with knowledge or recognition; it is clouded over and turned back on itself, absorbed in its own enjoyment” (36). As Copjec concludes: “the gaze does not see you” (36).

So the holes and stains in the model continuously produced by the TikTok algorithm—those moments in which what we are shown seems to indicate a misreading, a wrong guess—are those moments wherein the gaze can be discerned. The experience is this: I am watching a modeling process and engaging with the serial missed encounters or misrecognitions (meconnaissance—not only misrecognition but mistaken knowledge—mis-knowing) that the modeling process performs. The Lacanian point would simply be the following: the situation is not that the algorithm knows me too well or that it gives me the illusion of mastery that would be provided by such knowledge. The situation is that the algorithm may not know or recognize me at all, even though it seems to respond to my behavior in some limited way, and offers the promise of knowing or recognizing me. And this is perhaps the stain or tuche, the point at which we make contact with the real, where the network of signifiers, the automaton, or the symbolic order starts to break down. It is only available through the series, through the repeated presentation of likenesses.

As Friedrich Kittler memorably put it, “the discourse of the other is the discourse of the circuit.” It is not the discourse of cinema or television or literature. Computational recommender systems operating as series of moving image loops seem to correspond strangely closely to the Lacanian models, to the gaze that is responsive yet absent, perceptive yet blind, desired yet impossible, perhaps even to the analytic scene. Lacan and psychoanalysis constantly seemed to suggest that humans carry out the same operations as machines, that the psyche is a camera-like apparatus capable of complicated performance, and that the analyst might be replaced with an optical device. Might we substitute recommender media for either psyche or analyst? In any case, it’s clear that the imaginary register of identification does not provide a sufficient model for subjectivity as it is addressed by computational media. That model, as Kittler points out, is to be found in Lacan’s symbolic register: “the world of the machine.”

[quonka]

The Lasting Effects on Writing Concentration That an Aggressive, Near Insatiable Childhood Obsession with Neopets: The Darkest Faerie Can Inflict on a Man

The first console that I ever owned was the PlayStation 2, and while we had many games, most of them were nearly and completely unplayable. Mostly because I was like, eight.

That's why I made my sister play them.

Maybe "made" is a strong word, it was technically her console-- her games-- but I definitely begged her to play certain games more than others, just so I could sit and watch on the teeny tiny little box television, its frame decorated with neon orange and white acrylic paint, and SpongeBob stickers.

I had a couple favorites I liked to cycle through, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom, and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa -- but no game was I more annoying about than Neopets: The Darkest Faerie.

Just a Bit of Background Research

Neopets: The Darkest Faerie is a third person, single player action-adventure game released in 2005 and developed by Idol Minds Digital Entertainment for publishment on the PlayStation®2 system.

The console game is based off Neopets.com, which was an extremely popular fantastical pet collection and care browser game published to the internet all the way back in 1999. While still active today, it has gone through multiple dubious changes and similarly perhaps questionable owners. However, the current owner of the site, Dominic Law, is looking to really dig in and overhaul the site for a modern era, with a budget of four million dollars.

I did play on the Neopets website when I was younger, but not as much, or as well as my sister knew how to. I more just played the minigames to earn Neopoints for my sister's account-- Neopoints being the sites currency.

Nostalgia Brained

despite my lack of relative interest to the site, I was completely enamored as a child with Neopets: The Darkest Faerie.

The game was, and still is, fantastic.

The graphics are... well. PlayStation®2 graphics, with the console's technological limitations making for a better experience when played on a much smaller, less detail-oriented television screen in the early 2000's than the ones we have today.

But despite the game generally being a little blurry, in my nostalgia-coated opinion, it still holds up pretty well. With its characters and semi-open world all being taken and expanded on directly from the Neopets website and put into 3D; there's a lot of gorgeous design and color and creativity given to the environments and the anthropomorphic Neopets inhabiting them.

You can even switch between the two main characters, a knight named Tor and a sorceress named Roberta whenever you want, only having to press two buttons at the same time once you get to the third act of the game where they meet. This allows you to instantly be able to change between their respective brute melee sword attacks and ranged magic attacks.

There's magic, and monsters, and multiple heroes and villains, all thrown into a medieval fantasy setting-- and despite how many video games I've either played myself or watched others play over the years, I really can't think of a single other game like it, in both gameplay and soundtrack.

"I'll Do it Myself"

Being a game made in 2005, there is nowhere to buy the official Neopets: The Darkest Faerie soundtrack like you can with many modern-day games. The cinematic scoring producer of the game, Jack Wall, doesn't even have the soundtrack listed on his website with his other projects, or on his Spotify. The In-Game music producer Keith Leary doesn't even appear to have a website or Spotify.

This has left the creatives of YouTube to render their own easily accessible versions of the music.

In 2019, user monster860 uploaded their three-hour seven-minute render of the OST to YouTube, "This music was rendered using the tool I wrote, so it might not be totally accurate."

Then, in 2021, they uploaded an eight-hour five-minute render of the soundtrack, "This is the new and improved Neopets: TDF soundtrack video! Now featuring all of the variations, adding up to 8 hours, and also in stereo. In addition, certain issues are fixed, such as the flute part in the Bazaar District music not having the trills."

While not being technically official, it sounds very much like how it does in-game, and the inclusion of all the minor variants, as well as any cut and discarded tracks make this cataloguing of the game's OST perfect to study to for me.

Cause and Effect

In last week's post about Darkwood, I talked about how the horror game's OST was such an essential part to the horror atmosphere, that the intense focus I carried in-game, transferred out of the game when simply just listening to the soundtrack, and that it helped me with concentrating on my work.

Neopets: The Darkest Faerie OST has a similar effect, but in a different manner.

I have kept my PlayStation®2 specifically for the purpose of playing this game every couple years or so, with my oldest save on the disc being from 2014, and my newest being just from last month, 2024. I have beaten the game in entirety at least three or four times, and created a new save file much more than that.

Because I have played the game so incredibly often since childhood, whenever I have the soundtrack on, I can remember exactly where each song plays in the game.

It of course helps that monster860's video has its chapters titled with song currently playing, which is where it is found in the game-- but most of the time as I'm writing in a different tab, just through memory I am able to recognize the specific area, what its main color palette is and what character is available to play, and how far that specific song is in the game.

Instead of the soundtrack promoting a bit of healthy fear in order to get me working, the Darkest Faerie OST is calming, comforting really.

Don't get me wrong though, there are a lot of really fun and intense tracks in the game, my favorite specifically being "Brightvale Battle" at 4:39:32. Just starting off with that call and response melody at the beginning, on what I assume to be some sort of keyboard, is immediately effective at grabbing one's attention, which is apt for fight music. Then a little later into the song at 4:40:05, when the flute comes in on top of all the lower instruments, it sounds pretty and adds a bit of contrast while still feeling just as powerful as the heavier drums.

My absolute favorite piece of that song, however, is when the piccolo comes in at 4:40:41. It immediately pierces through the other instruments, sharp and passionate, and extremely impactful for how little time it actually stays in the song.

There are so many songs on the soundtrack just like this one that definitely don't inspire the horror that Darkwood's does but are comparably exciting-- and I think this drive that I get from more of the battle tracks, in combination with the calmer, atmospheric tracks-- in further combination with the nostalgic familiarity I have with the game and its idiosyncrasies-- leads to the Darkest Faerie OST promoting a similar concentration on the direct task at hand for me.

Recommendations

Honestly, I definitely would recommend for anyone struggling with concentrating when writing to try listening to the soundtrack of a beloved childhood videogame, or one that just meant a lot to you at some point. I'm not certain it will work like it does for me, but it'd be interesting to see more people talk about what their specific "work music" is and the story behind it.

Unfortunately, with the game being so old and so niche, the only way to play Neopets: The Darkest Faerie legally now is through buying a PlayStation®2 that works, and then also the disc. This is a lot to ask, I recognize.

If anyone is interested though, there are countless playthroughs on YouTube, so just find a commentator that doesn't annoy you and enjoy!

With the 25th anniversary of Neopets coming up, along with Dominic Law's aforementioned four-million-dollar plan to renovate the site, hopefully there is at least a miniscule possibility for a remaster of the game. I realize this is incredibly unlikely but considering both Spyro and SpongeBob: Battle For Bikini Bottom got their remasters semi-recently, maybe it's not completely out of the cards.

[markerofthemidnight]

did you get the digital ticket??

Indeed I did!

(some more, slightly spoiler-y details under cut!)

From now on, all I’ll hear when I go to sleep at night is “Halt the column! The prince needs a shit!”, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Definitely a lot… shorter than I was expecting. Well, not short- it’s longer than TGWDLM, for God’s sake- it just feels about half as long as it actually was, or maybe that’s just me.

I gotta say… I wouldn’t quite consider it as good as Hatchetfield or Twisted? Though that might just be me underestimating it since it’s so fresh in my head: I tend to do that a lot. My opinion will probably improve by the time the YouTube version releases and I have more time to think it over.

And I’m not saying it’s bad, either! There’s no such thing as a bad Starkid show! Like I said, my opinion will likely improve: I’m still processing it in my head, after all. I only saw it 2 hours ago.

My favourite song, off the top of my head, is Facade, which I enjoyed a whole lot more than I was expecting to.

My favourite character… actually, you know what, I don’t think I can choose? They’re all amazing in their own ways.

And, since the possibility of this being a series was brought up by Starkid multiple times: the way that gods and religion work in The Lands that Are is definitely something I’d like to see expanded upon! You can expect me to think of worldbuilding for that for awhile.

[stopandimagineloveforever]

NOW AND THEN. THE LAST BEATLES SONG. November 2, 2023.

Now And Then' is the last Beatles song – written and sung by John Lennon, developed and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and now finally finished by Paul and Ringo over four decades later. On November 2nd, 'Now And Then' will be released worldwide at 2pm GMT/10am EDT / 7am PDT.

Pre-order/pre-save 'Now And Then' in a variety of digital, vinyl, and cassette editions, including Beatles Store exclusives.

A 12-minute documentary film will debut on November 1st on The Beatles’ YouTube channel at 7:30pm GMT / 3:30pm EDT / 12:30pm PDT telling the story behind the last Beatles song, with exclusive footage and commentary from John, Paul, Ringo, George, Sean Ono Lennon and Peter Jackson.

EXPANDED RED AND BLUE ALBUMS. 🔴🔵 → On November 10th, The Beatles’ ‘1962-1966’ (The Red Album) and ‘1967-1970’ (The Blue Album) collections will be released in 2023 Edition packages with expanded tracklists. All the songs are mixed in stereo and Dolby Atmos, and new 4CD and 180g 6LP vinyl collections pair ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ in slipcased sets. Digital, CD, and vinyl available to pre-order/pre-save now, including some you’ll only find in The Beatles Store

[jules-has-notes]

Daddy Sang Bass — VoicePlay music video

Since two of the guys had become dads in recent years, VoicePlay decided that the spring of 2018 was finally time to record their toe-tapping version of this Johnny Cash classic. They all brought in family members to celebrate with them, and released the video just in time for Father's Day.

Details:

title: Daddy Sang Bass

original performer: Johnny Cash

written by: Carl Perkins

arranged by: Geoff Castellucci

release date: 15 June 2018

My favorite bits:

those lovely simple harmonies behind Geoff's clear melody

that first contrast of Geoff's depths and Earl's heights

the canon of ♫ "Oh, the circle" ♫ passing down the line from Earl to Eli to J.None

J and Eli both pointing at each other on the second ♫ "little brother" ♫, since one is the youngest and the other is shortest

Layne's quickened percussion under the break section

♫ "Singin' in harmonyyy" ♫ Heck yeah, they are.

Earl hucking an entire hay bale like it's nothing, and Eli's reasonably confounded "Well, okay then" reaction

Layne gleefully plopping miniature hay bales the size of snack cakes into the other guys' hands

everyone's surprised reactions to the extra high ♫ "Mama sang tenor" ♫, including Earl

the way all the guys' faces light up when their families join them

the two babies smiling and laughing, such adorable little nuggets

Geoff's final rumbling ♫ "skyyy" ♫ Daddy sang bass, indeed.

Trivia:

This song had been a part of VoicePlay's repertoire since their 4:2:Five days. They first started performing it in 2006, and there are clips from as far back as their 2009 promo reel with Ryan and Danny.

They had originally planned to film this video the year before, but it was delayed by the fact that Geoff's son arrived three weeks earlier than the projected due date. Rather than dragging two sleep-deprived parents and their newborn into the woods, the group simply stuck it in their pockets until the next Father's Day.

Their social media posts leading up to the video's release caught the eyes of their buddies from Home Free.

That corn snake the guys encountered while they were recording the hay bale sequence was a sizeable specimen, but luckily they're not venomous.

This video was filmed at Big Oaks Ranch in Chuluoata, FL. VoicePlay returned to the same location for their "Billie Eilish in 3 Minutes" video a little over a year later.

Geoff later used other parts of the property for his "Take Me Home Country Roads" and "Man of Constant Sorrow" solo videos.

Layne and Tony also used the woods on the ranch for a Villains Lair two-part episode in 2024.

Most of the guys were joined by their spouses at the end (and kids for the two dads). Eligible bachelor J.None was joined by his mom, step-dad, and big sister.

The video reached a million views on YouTube in just over a year.

This track was later included on VoicePlay's "Citrus" album, which compiled most of the songs they recorded from 2017-19. Because the individual songs had already been made available digitally, that album is exclusively a physical item that can only be purchased at live shows or through their website.

[syn4k]

digital media i watched this year that i really really enjoyed: a (non-exhaustive, non-ranked) list

hi everyone! ray keys here. i'm writing this on Dec 21st because I know I'll forget to post this on time if I don't schedule it beforehand.

i don't watch things on streaming services because i don't have any of the apps downloaded on my phone and most shows just aren't my thing anyways (ATLA has been the only exception) so all of the links here go to YouTube or other (free) sites

here we go!

Misc. Series and Standalone Videos

17776

17776 is a multimedia webnovel (?) about American football in the year of, you guessed it, 17776, written in 2017 by Jon Bois. It's told through the communications of three space probes made by humans and it's genuinely comforting as someone who's generally terrified by the concepts of eternity and immortality. Trigger warning for unreality at the start.

17776

20020 (the sequel, written in 2020 by the same author)

Code MENT

Code MENT is a YouTube series made by PurpleEyesWTF, of which the first episode was released in 2010. It's a fan-made abridgMENT of the anime Code Geass, voiced entirely by one guy (or at least i think so), and some parts of it have become legendary (see: Soup Store). Trigger warning for murder, infrequent use of the R slur, and depictions of blood and gore.

Code MENT playlist

Star Wars The Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West

Star Wars the Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West, uploaded to YouTube by GratefulDeadpool in 2017, is a video where somebody put the entire script of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in Google Translate, translated it to Chinese then back to English, and dubbed over it. Yes, it's the entire movie. No, it somehow hasn't been taken down yet.

Star Wars the Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West

Mianite (S1)

At least some of you should be familiar with Mianite, seeing as how it has taken over my entire blog over the past month or so. The World of Mianite is a vanilla Minecraft SMP launched in 2014. It was streamed live, but the recordings of those livestreams were later uploaded to YouTube. The main members of the serverlist are CaptainSparklez, II_JERIICHO_II, SynHD, and OmgItsFirefoxx. Mianite has had three seasons so far, but I've only watched the first from one perspective so that's what you guys are going to get.

CaptainSparklez' Mianite S1 Playlist

MAMASb0y's Mianite Animations Playlist

Mianite Purge Highlights Playlist

Alan Becker (and his Team)'s Work

Hi! This channel gets a special section all to itself because I just finished the Animation vs Minecraft series and I'm pretty sure my life has been irreversibly changed forever.

Animator Vs Animation

Animator Vs Animation (shortened: AVA or AvA) is an animated YouTube series by Alan Becker. The first episode was originally posted in 2006 and was later reuploaded to the platform in 2018. I recently binged the entire thing and was NOT expecting it to be as fucking incredible as it was. This is the de facto best place to start if you want to jump into Alan's other works featuring these characters, which I highly recommend because all of them are fantastic!

Animator Vs Animation Series Playlist

Animation Vs Minecraft

The stick men play the block game. Do not read the comments of any of the episodes until you have finished the entire series. Do not go in with any prior knowledge if you're able to. Set yourself up with a bowl of popcorn and a big ol' glass of ice water, sit back, look really closely for continuity because it is there and it is GLORIOUS, and enjoy.

Animator Vs Minecraft Series Playlist

[hit-song-showdown]

Year-End Poll #67: 2016

[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: Justin Bieber, Drake, Rihanna, Twenty One Pilots, Desiigner, Adele, The Chainsmokers, Justin Timberlake, The Chainsmokers. End description]

More information about this blog here

We're now in 2016. A year that was at one point considered to be the worst in recent memory, a title that would only be surpassed by every year that came afterwards. But in terms of music, 2016 brought us a lot of heavy hitters. Anderson .Paak's Malibu, Rihanna's Anti, Frank Ocean's Blonde, Drake's Views, Beyoncé's Lemonade, and David Bowie's final album, Blackstar -- I would be here all day if I tried to list every release that came out this year.

But what's notable about this year of releases isn't just the albums themselves, but the music business landscape they were being released into. After the fall of physical media, the rise of music piracy in the MP3 era, and the popularity of digital storefronts, streaming services like Spotify seemed to be this great equalizer. This is an easier opinion to have if you forget that Spotify is a massive corporation, and if you're not an artist living off royalties. The controversy over streaming is nothing new. But this is when we start to see the landscape of streaming splintering.

Drake's Views and Beyoncé's Lemonade were not released to the wider streaming market, with exclusive releases on Apple Music and Tidal respectively. Much like the current debate over streaming services for movies and TV, listeners were suddenly finding themselves stretched thin between different streaming providers. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, SoundCloud, and many others. This wasn't a new phenomenon (both SoundCloud and Pandora predate Spotify by almost a decade), but now we're seeing more platform-exclusive releases. Listeners responded in a variety of ways. Some people switched platforms or kept multiple subscriptions to different services. Some bought physical copies of exclusive releases and imported them into their preferred platform. Some just didn't listen to the releases. And others went right back to piracy, repeating the same problem the record industry had been trying to snuff out for several decades now. Platform-exclusive releases aren't that common anymore.

As far as the music itself goes, as the sound of electropop wanes in mainstream popularity, dance music is starting to incorporate influences from a variety of Caribbean styles of music, specifically dancehall as seen with Rihanna's Work and Drake's One Dance, and tropical house, as seen with Justin Bieber's Sorry and Sia's Cheap Thrills (not featured on poll). However, I do want to differentiate the two, because dancehall originated in Jamaica in the 1970's while tropical house is a relatively recent genre that incorporates stylistic elements of dancehall and other subgenres of house music.

When it comes to mainstream rap and hip-hop, trap music is continuing to dominate. With music platforms allowing artists easier access to distribution, a sub-sub genre sometimes known as SoundCloud rap started to find mainstream footing. Some people also call this style "mumble rap". I will not, because I find the term needlessly dismissive and kind of obnoxious. All of these rising genres put together helped to contribute to a musical landscape that was moody and generally at a slower tempo than the pop music of previous decades. It's often reductive to attribute popculture at the time to the current zeitgeist, but considering how today's poll features songs with titles like "Work" and "Stressed Out", it's too tempting not to.