#this turned into an august defense essay huh

[petrichoraline]

they should have left august have genuine feelings for day imo like we already saw him kinda disappointed it was not a date with mork... the whole kiss thing felt so wrong they did day (and august too tbh) dirty

to start off, thank you for indulging me with a ltts message 🥰 also I hope this isn't too long, i havent had the time to seriously think about this episode so this is my chance 💓

throughout the episode I began wondering if august was a legitimate contender and the thought bothered me for a few reasons: i had been under the impression the plot isn't really about that; that there would be no space to fit in a love triangle of this size if other conflicts were to be explored and resolved. basically that mork and day would have enough on their plate without august in the picture and focusing on those two would only slow down the development of the main couple. I did find the thought of august's intentions being serious intriguing though, a bit frustrating, yes, but also interesting.

now, I had a bit of trouble understanding your point but im guessing you mean we already saw that day was disappointed the party wasn't a date so we're aware of his feelings and they are not aimed at august anymore? so it wouldn't have been an issue if august just continued liking day because day doesn't like him that way anymore, right? because I get that, it wouldn't have been the first time that's happened on screen haha but also that's exactly why I'm not that fond of the idea. day and august having a mutual crush and that going for a few episodes? THAT I find intriguing, an actual relationship trying to figure itself out while it's doomed by the narrative because it isn't the main romance.

but august having actual romantic feelings for day and stepping aside (because the show wants this couple dealt with by the end of the first half, apparently, and it would have cut him off somehow) would be something both sad and also, in my humble opinion, redundant. I've seen it before, it's just a bummer for everyone involved and I don't need it here.

what the plot actually did was very nice, as weird as it sounds. it gave us a character who loves his mate a lot. I do not doubt that august has strong feelings for day. everyone is pissed at him at the moment, day is hurt because there was pity, mork is angry because there was lack of consideration but that boy cares for day, a lot. i suppose there are feelings of guilt, they were on the court together when day lost his vision and then he didn't contact august for over a year. august probably felt some sort if personal responsibility for day's condition or for his behaviour towards him while they were partners, for the fact day felt he couldn't tell him the truth. so there is guilt and there is pity but also there is affection for a friend, for a partner, for the person alongside which you aimed for your dreams. they have a bond (and im sure people have expressed a lot about their sync and dynamic that I haven't picked up on but a bond is undeniable).

august tried to be a better person, a warm one, someone day doesn't recognise. he tried to be everything he wasn't before because thats what he decided day wants and needs. the night at the bar he was already feeling bad about leaving day to hang. on a side note, while the episode was airing i ran to check whether the cast was there that night and if it was on the same arm. it was. august didnt lie and im paranoid lmao anyways

the scene was crushing for mork and us, sure, but it was also very hard for august. he had had an accident, he couldn't contact day and still went as soon as he could after midnight. when he heard the confession he ran which honestly felt like an appropriate reaction - indicating he was there would make day embarrassed and pretending to come in later also wouldn't work because his partner who recently came back into his life with shocking news after ghosting him for a year suddenly confessed he's in love with him. while he's exhausted and hurt. of course the kid needed time to process what the fuck is going on! and he came back the very next morning, ready to make things right.

the issue stems from the fact he had no clue what right is, his underdeveloped brain told him to be a better friend than before but it went too far off in the direction of that thought and landed at "be what he wants you to be to a T" which includes, well, a romantic interest. and that's just not something you can force but alas, earnest, stupid august tried to check off everything on the "make day happy" list.

that boy ran off crying (I would too if mork glared at me like a maddog but still) because he kissed and got kissed by someone he didn't want such contact with ( the reciprocated kiss was A Lot for him) and then realised he'd hurt the person he wanted to satisfy in every way. his words indicate he didn't intend the kiss to be just one, that he wanted to actively change the way he feels about day, that he considered being his boyfriend. I figure he truly realised that was not an option while the kiss was happening hence why the second one had him running away again.

we know august is impulsive and earnest, his intentions were coming from a good place but he couldn't plan to save his life. he acts with his heart and so he was relying on falling for day till the end with no backup plan. it's either that or he knew before the kiss and intended it to be a single gift and I can't tell which is worse. in any case he was aware of the big possibility him and days weren't going to work out so his actions were majorly irresponsible.

the kiss had me screaming NOO literally and then the second one nearly had me gripping my hair, idek what sounds I made from the beginning till the end of that scene but "felt wrong" is something I can understand though it didd feel wrong but maybe not in the way you mean?

i didn't know nor suspect august's intentions and thought process so the kiss felt real to me and though I was against it as an avid morkday shipper, I didn't think that narratively it was bad. day was done dirty a 100% (though he gets mork acting on his feelings finally so..glass half full..?). let's not forget that mork actively supported day's perception of the situation as flirting - not his fault, that's what august was doing after all - but it's something that made the fall that much worse. day was getting hyped up by mork the way he was by gee ABOUT mork before that. he gets affected by his friends' opinions because he relies on them to read the other's body language and intentions. so there is this feeling of helplessness not only because of the pity that guided august's actions but the fact he couldn't assess the situation himself. so yes, for this and many other reasons, day was done dirty by every definition of the phrase.

but as for august and the plot I'm not so sure. august as a character is, to me, much more interesting as this confused and, frankly, unintelligent young man whose heart seems to be in the right place..? but whose actions are totally misguided than if he were, let's say, a good guy finally acting on his crush after years. I suppose he could've stopped before the kiss and told day the truth and maybe day would be a bit disappointed but definitely more forgiving and less heartbroken..

but then how would we see that day can help mork tame his anger with just a touch of the hand? and we needed an act so grotesque that would lead them to have a conversation that makes mork want to scream "I do not pity you, I haven't pitied you for a second, you are so strong and smart and loveable, i love you, how could you ever focus on a nobody like him when you are everything, you deserve so much more, how could you not know that, why did i ever let him near you, i should have never allowed for this to happen, i love you so much god I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU" (yes thats what those eyes at the rooftop said, idk what yall heard.)

i believe the charm of this scene and this whole conflict is that no one there is acting out of malice. it's just people doing what they think is right. mork stepping aside was not the right move technically but it fits his character and the plot as well. imo august wasn't done dirty, he was made interesting and also he isn't a bad guy. he did some really harmful shit but by the end of the scene i didn't feel an ounce of malice from him. there could still be love between the two but one that's not based around day walking on eggshells and one that doesn't rely on august to be something he is not. when they arent forced by the outside to be in close proximity and make things work, when they can just tease each other comfortably without taking all of the other's happiness and well-being as their own responsibility, thats when they could have a nice casual friendship with a lot of appreciation for the other. i believe him and day would reconcile at some point in the future when day is ready to forgive and august is ready to stop running.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Space Ereshkigal: The Anatomy of a Quasar

Myself, August 8th, 2024: I MUST GIVE CREDIT WHERE ITS DUE THEY KIND OF COOKED WITH THE MECHANICAL DESIGN

Space Ereshkigal Beast-Class (Has 1.5x Class-Advantage against Extra Classes except Avenger; Has Class-Disadvantage against Avengers) Max HP: 14,530 Max ATK: 11,427 Attribute: Beast NP Charge ATK: 0.33%

QAABB Card Set Quick: 5 hits; Arts: 4 hits; Buster: 4 hits; Extra: 5 hits

Goddess Sugar A: Increase party's Attack by 10-20% for 3 turns. Increase party's NP damage by 10-20% for 3 turns. Increase party's NP gauge by 10-20%. Increase party's Instant-Kill resistance by 50-100% for 3 turns. 500% chance to inflict Poison with 500 damage to party for 3 turns. Cooldown: 8-6

Beast Driver B: Gain 10-20 critical stars. Increase own Star Absorption by 300-500% for 1 turn. Grants self on-Attack buff for 1 turn of: Increase own Critical damage by 50-100% for 1 turn before dealing damage when normal attacking. Charges own NP gauge by 30-50%. Cooldown: 9-7

Missing Starling EX: Grants self Invincibility for 2 attacks, 3 turns. Grants self a 2000-3000 HP Guts for 1 time, 3 turns. Recovers own HP by 2000-3000. Removes own Debuffs. Increases own Buff Removal Resistance by 50-100% for 1 time, 3 turns. Reduces own Skill Cooldown by 2. Cooldown: 9-7

Anti-Magecraft EX: Grants self Debuff Immunity 3 times. Spatial Storage A: Grants self on-Attack buff of: Charges own NP gauge by 5% when attacking. Goddess Essence E-: Increases own damage by 140. Increases own Debuff Resistance by 14%. Authority of the Beast E-: Increases own Critical Damage against Servants by 20%. Independent Manifestation E-: Increases own Critical Damage by 1.5%. Increases own Instant-Kill Resistance by 1.5%. Increases own Mental Debuff Resistance by 1.5%. II: Infinity Indicator: *looks forlornly into the camera, sighing* We'll get to this one.

Anti-Rider Attack Damage Append

Edin Shugra Collapsar AoE Arts, 5 hits Increase Master Affection Points by 0-20, based on Overcharge. If Master Affection Level is 4, grants self 100% increased Instant-Kill success chance for 1 turn. If Master Affection Level is 7, grants self Ignore Invincibility for 1 turn and Ignore Defense for 1 turn. If Master Affection Level is 10, grants 50 Critical stars. Deals damage to all enemies (450%-750%, based on NP Level). Deals 1 + 0.1*N extra damage to enemies, where N is Master Affection Level. Removes their Offensive Buffs. 60% chance to Instant Kill them.

You know what sucks about all of this. She's actually really fun to use. NGL. We got a whole essay to go. Also I did manual NP generation calcs for this one, so I better get some credit for that.

So the new Anniversary Servant huh. It's really something to say that Anniversary Servants more and more have been designed to really push the mold on what you could put in a Servant's kit, but Space Ereshkigal feels even more than that.

NP and Star Generation:

This might come as a surprise, but Space Ereshkigal's base NP generation is actually quite low. Her AQAE chain for example will only generate about 22% of her NP gauge, and that is usually the kiss of death for a Servant like this. Even as the 3rd card in an Arts chain, her Arts card will only generate 9%. That's quite low! But her passive gives her an additional 5% NP charge on hit for just...existing I guess? So that bumps up her single card generation to about passable, while benefiting her card chains in a bigger way. Considering you generally want to prioritize Space Ereshkigal's Brave Chains whenever possible, this is nice, I suppose.

Her star generation is a bit shakier, thanks to having single Quick card. A QBBE chain will generate about 15-16 crit stars on average, and a ABQE Mighty Chain will generate about 20-21 crit stars on average. She has good hit counts on her Quick and Extra, but only having one Quick card in her kit naturally really limits how many crit stars she can generate on her own.

Skills:

Goddess Sugar is just a good skill. Like all of Space Ereshkigal's skills are good, great even, but it really does need to be said that this is a very compact skill with a lot of good effects. It gives Space Ereshkigal an additional 44% damage on her NP, and the party-wide NP charge is appreciated. An important thing to note is that the Poison demerit applies to the entire party, so it will eat into one of the Debuff immunities that Space Ereshkigal comes with.

Beast Driver is another strong skill, but this time focused on single Brave Chain crit damage numbers instead of much else, with a 50% NP charge for good measure. Her face cards will have a 100%, 200%, and 300% increased Critical damage for that turn respectively, allowing Space Ereshkigal to pump out some crazy good crits. The 50% NP charge is arguably the most important part of this skill though, as it always tends to be.

Missing Starling is the type of skill that exists to bind a kit together. It's Invincibility, its healing, its Guts, its debuff cleanse, and perhaps most importantly, it's cooldown reduction. See, you might have noticed that Space Ereshkigal's kit isn't super synergistic, and there's a reason for that we'll get into later, but while all of her skills are good, they aren't amazing together. She's, nominally, meant to perform Brave Chains constantly, which makes sense considering that is something that Space Ishtar is also trying to do. But having her skills essentially be on a 4/5/5 rotation instead of a 6/7/7 rotation massively improves how consistent and good she is.

There's really only 3 passive skills that matter here. Her three instances of Debuff Immunity are quite niche, giving Space Ereshkigal a nice buffer against debuffs and makes her super resilient to debuffs in general, and the NP charge on hit mostly exists to make up for her really poor face-card numbers. The third passive...

The Master Affection Gauge, and You!

This is by far and away the most complicated part of her kit. You could even argue that it functionally acts as an additional 4th skill on her kit. The Master Affection Gauge is a Gauge that starts at Level 1 and caps out at Level 10, and each level requires 10 points to reach. There's a ton of conditions for how to fill it up, so I'm going to split it up into parts to make it easier to understand.

In additional, an important caveat. Space Ereshkigal will only have the Master Affection Gauge if you have a copy of her. Supports will not work! This is the part of the kit that actually makes me angry, because it means that a Support Space Ereshkigal is just fundamentally missing a part of her kit. She will have an Affection Gauge level of 0 and won't be able to gain affection points.

The Basic Modifiers

Space Ereshkigal will get 5 points for being Bond Level 5, 5 points for being in the starting 3 members, and 10 points for being on a Waterside battlefield. This is not at the start of the fight by the way. You can in fact get a free Affection Level out of having a Servant who sets the Waterside Battlefield buff onto themselves and get the +10 points. The battlefield doesn't even need to stay Waterside for this to be applied.

Reusable In-Battle Modifiers

Space Ereshkigal will get 3 points for selecting any of her face cards and proceeding into combat, and in addition, she will get an additional 6 points if she has a Brave Chain. This means, without using her NP card, she has 15 points just in selecting her face cards, with an additional 6 possible if you can pull 3 in a single turn, for 21 additional points.

Simply selecting her NP will not give her any additional points, but it will mean that you can potentially squeeze out an additional Brave using her NP card as leverage, giving you a possible 27 points in total. This is where the bulk of her affection points comes from typically, and this also means that there is a fair amount of RNG regarding how quickly you can ramp up her affection gauge. Pulling too many face cards in a hand can reduce your potential output by either having wasted cards or reducing the number of brave chains available to you.

Using one of Space Ereshkigal's skills will give 3 affection points, and using one of Space Ereshkigal's skills before using anyone else's will give an additional 2 points. This means there is an additional 15 points to be gleamed out of three turns by staggering her skill use, and this actually explains a lot about her kit. They're three skills that are designed to work well when not used together.

The Somewhat Harder to Fulfill Modifiers

Using Ereshkigal's NP in an overcharged state will also increase her affected gauge by +5 points for each Overcharge level over 100%. This is, importantly, applied before any other effect on her NP. At 500% OC she will generate 25 Affection Points, but this is generally quite hard to accomplish as it often means giving up her Brave Chains in order to chain together NPs. This does give Ereshkigal an interesting use case for "The One Who Desires Salvation" as a CE choice, since it will essentially add 3 or 4 Affection Levels by itself.

Space Ereshkigal will also get 5 points for being affected by a Mystic Code skill. This will apply to any targeted MC skill and any AoE MC skill, but not to stuff like Order Change and skills that affect an enemy. The skill doesn't even technically need to succeed to count, such as the case for the Atlas Academy Uniform's debuff cleanse. I put this here because this does mean that some Mystic Codes can only generate +5 or +10 Affection points than the full +15.

She will also get +10 Affection points if you use a Command Spell on her. Now that Command Spells regenerate three a day instead of one this is more viable to quickly turbo-charge Ereshkigal to a higher Affection Level, but this is generally more applicable to Challenge Quests than farming.

Noble Phantasm

The main point to that entire fucking essay up there is her NP. This NP does a lot, but most of its effects are dependent on her Affection Gauge levels, so to go over what is consistent. This is an AoE Arts NP that removes offensive buffs on hit and has a 60% chance to instakill enemies after damage. These are fine and would make the NP middling at best but there's a ton we need to go over.

First, the NP does 10% more damage with each Master Affection Gauge Level she has. Since Space Ereshkigal can start a fight with an Affection Gauge Level of 2 or 3 depending on the Battlefield, this means that she will do at base 20-30% more damage than you would expect. At a Level of 10, she will do double damage with her NP, which is quite strong. This can be considered similar to something like Charlemagne's NP, but a lot easier to perform on average.

If her Master Affection Level is 4, she will double the success rate of her instakill. This...could come up, theoretically? It will probably be relevant in a 90++ quest in all honestly. This gives her a guaranteed instant kill against enemies with 100% death rate, and a 96% chance to instakill enemies with an 80% death rate. If her Master Affection Level is 7, she will ignore Invincibility, Evasion, and Defense buffs for a turn, which is a potent combo, and at Level 10, she will just generate 50 crit stars.

It is actually not particularly difficult to get Space Ereshkigal to Level 10 within a matter of about four or five turns, and it's entirely possible with just good cards and knowledge of how to apply her kit to get her to Level 7 in three turns. She ramps up surprisingly quickly, and the rewards that you get for ramping her up are pretty great. Free damage, crit stars, defensive piercing, and even swingy insta-kills.

But as a result, she ends up a fun, dynamic Servant to use. Maximizing the most out of Space Ereshkigal means putting in practice and reacting to what you need out of that exact moment. Managing her face cards, her skills, your Mystic Code skills, your NP chains, and even your Command Seals is interesting! You do lose a bit of that once she fully ramps up, but the process of getting there is great. Fundamentally, she's actually a pretty cool mechanically designed Servant.

Append Skills

Space Ereshkigal is slightly frustrating in that there is a good argument for, exactly, every single one of her append skills. This being said, she doesn't need any of them to function, and as a 5-star, I would not recommend rolling for the additional copies you need in order to do so, but because you will naturally get the coins to unlock one append by reaching Bond Level 6, and enough to unlock another append at Bond Level 14, if you are willing to get that far, it is worth talking about them.

The Extra card performance buff is the least useful of the bunch, but because Space Ereshkigal uses Brave chains often enough, it can be worth unlocking for the extra benefits it gives. Mana Loading is a fine enough skill on Space Ereshkigal, but it is arguably not even needed since she has a number of NP charges already on her kit. Anti-Rider Attack Damage gives her a bit more reach when farming since it allows her to deal more damage to a different class than normal. Her base class effectiveness is only okay, so this can be used.

The Critical damage append and the Skill cooldown reduction appends feel basically made for Space Ereshkigal. While Space Ereshkigal does have good crit damage for a turn with her S2, it is lacking during the cooldown period and because she can constantly crit thanks to her NP, she enjoys the passive crit damage a lot. Against Servants, she will do 50% more crit damage without any assistance, which is quite powerful. The skill cooldown append is crazy on her, reducing her first skill cycle to 3/4/4, numbers that probably shouldn't be real. This, notably, gives her the ability to re-use all of her skills on Wave 3 with the cooldown reduction ability of the Atlas Academy Uniform.

Is this necessary? No, it is not really her best team composition overall. But is funny? Hell yeah.

Craft Essences

One of the biggest strengths to Space Ereshkigal in general is that she is a supremely flexible Servant. She can function with a wide variety of Craft Essences: NP damage, Crit damage, Arts performance, Overcharge, NP generation, Buster and Arts performance, etc etc. What CE you equip onto Ereshkigal, fundamentally, depends on what exactly you are trying to get her to do.

It is at this time worth bringing up her Bond CE, Epitaph of the Star Sword. This gives her an additional 30% NP damage, 30% Critical damage against Servants, and increases her Master Affection Level by 1. Usually Bond CEs are not worth using because of having lackluster effects in addition to very flacid stats, but this one is actually worth considering. All three of the effects are great, and she can potentially start off with Master Affection Level 4, which is crazy.

Team Composition

We haven't really discussed her existence as a looper yet, and that's been partially deliberate. Her damage numbers are pretty good in a neutral vacuum, but due to her class, she doesn't hit many relevant enemies for SE damage. When she does, her damage numbers are impressive even despite having the 1.5x SE modifier. With two Castorias, a Level 100 Black Grail, and a Master Affection Level of 7 (the highest possible without situational buffs on Wave 3) she will hit for 155,703 damage neutrally, which is generally impressive. The Atlas Mystic Code set up will allow Space Ereshkigal to hit a Master Affection Level of 8 as well as allowing her to double up on her S1 buffs, letting her hit for 204,017 damage neutrally.

Where a lot of good ideas unfortunately tend to fall short is her refund. She only generates about 47% of her NP gauge back with double Castoria, which while generally fine enough to allow her to do farming, can require specific supports such as Xu Fu or Oberon to help patch up where her NP refund can fall short. She can also work in multi-DPS farming comps, where her NP having the ability to reliably insta-kill enemies can be important. But it is worth noting in all of this that she does compete with Summer Ibuki in the farming role, and Summer Ibuki is often better, so.

In terms of her use in general content and in Challenge/Exhibition quests, again, Space Ereshkigal is so flexible that she works with pretty much anyone you pair her with. She likes better crit damage, she likes Overcharge, she likes Cooldown reduction, she will even take increased buster performance thanks to her two Buster cards. She's actually quite strong as a Challenge Quest servant, packing on the table a lot of individual qualities that are welcome. These also tend to have a higher concentration of enemies in the classes that she hits for SE as well, being another big benefit.

Conclusions

Space Ereshkigal is good. Great. Maybe broken even. One of the issues with the previous Anniversary Servant, Aesc the Savior, is that she has a kind of awkward kit. There's individually powerful pieces but it requires often quite a bit of work to push all of them together. This was also true of the previous collab 5-star, Aoko, whose kit would sometimes feel clunky to deal with.

Space Ereshkigal feels a lot smoother by comparison. While Space Ereshkigal does not necessarily end up demonstrably better than Aesc or Aoko by any means, her kit feels a lot more tuned in comparison, as they continue to experiment with more and more mechanically unique and interesting 5-stars. She's a good farmer, even a great one, and a great challenge quest servant.

In essence, while she is a Servant who requires time to actually learn to maximize, it's hard to use her wrong, to use Space Ereshkigal in a way where it will make her feel worse. I do think in some way that reduces the charm of using her in comparison, but she ends up being fun and good to use besides that so I'm okay with it.

Hate to give Servantverse crap a W but. Yeah.

[adultswim2021]

Ephemera Week (2002)

I really wonder how effectively I’ll be able to do this in 2003. In 2003, Adult Swim started doing the black and white text bumps, where they give max sass and NO EFFS (fucks), so every week had unique content. I definitely don’t have the resources to catalogue every bumper or even come up with a decent “best of”. Ephemera Corner 2003 may look very different. To quote my good friend Zorak, “Brak, do you ever think about the future?”. To this I say, yes. Yes, Zorak, I do.

BROADCAST ANOMALIES AND SPECIAL NIGHTS!

Adult Swim Action (and other stuff) | February 23, 2002

February 23rd was the first installment of Adult Swim Action. Up to this point, Adult Swim aired a block of mostly comedy capped off with Cowyboy Bebop. This was the first formal separation of Action and Comedy. I remember the bitter rivalry between the two fandoms on various message boards I posted on. It really did seem like a venn diagram with almost no overlap; action fans hated the comedy shows (maybe they liked one or two but hated the rest) and the same went for the comedy fans, except most of the comedy fans I knew were devout anime haters.

At the height of my anime animosity an internet ex-friend of mine started a message board called ANIME SUCKS. It was an experience I’ll always remember fondly. At it’s peak it had over 1000 members. All but about a dozen of those members were actually ANGRY anime fans who just stumbled on the board and were FURIOUS at us for being anti-anime, and we’d just act like obtuse dickheads about it. Like, we’d act stupider than they were and just wind them up.

We developed a few tricks to really set somebody off. For example: they’d write an impassioned defense of anime as an art form, and say something like “it’s not all like Pokemon or Dragonball Z”, to which we’d reply “actually those are the only two animes I like”. This really got them. There was a special thrill to just replying “miyazaki is an idiot” to a guy’s 6-paragraph essay about why anime was “good, actually”, prompting an even longer response. It was really fun! We didn’t have to harass people online, they’d just come to us to get abused. I’ve never seen bait get taken so effortlessly. One day that guy just closed the message board, locked everyone out, and disappeared forever.

That was some aside, huh? Anyway, the arrival of Adult Swim Action meant that Adult Swim stopped airing the Thursday night repeats of Adult Swim Comedy, which was a shame. It Also meant Adult Swim’s Sunday night had an extra hour to fill, which they did with Rocky & Bullwinkle and the Popeye Show. People complained. I didn’t. Vintage animation is just a different take on the “adult” label. Besides, I was used to tuning out by 12AM anyway, so even if I didn’t like those shows (I did!) I wasn’t missing anything, really. But yes, if it were a full hour of Space Ghost repeats I guess that would’ve been better.

The Lewis Lectures | May 19, 2002 - 12:45 AM

A repeat of Lewis Lectures? IT HAPPENED! But what was so different about this broadcast of Lewis Lectures? Well, they accidentally scrambled the SAP audio with the default English audio, causing the Spanish soundtrack to play in tandem with the English one. It was bloody well fucked mate. This is simply no longer England.

I remember becoming an Adult Swim completist and taping this, considering it some kind of void in my collection. Part of me wishes I saved the recording, so I could combine it with the inferior YouTube rip currently up and have a closer-to-pristine copy than the one that’s available. But also, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS LEWIS LECTURES WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. How much pain can I inflict on myself?

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law Mini-Marathon | September 15, 2002 - 11:00 PM

On this night they aired a little Harvey Birdman marathon of the 4 episodes. This was kinda baffling, as Birdman had 6 episodes to its name and they’d been repeated into the ground by this point. I guess it goes to show that Adult Swim kinda considered Birdman to be their prestige program. I’m hard-pressed to call any one Adult Swim show “smart” in a way that’s apparent on a shallow level. Birdman is set in a courtroom, animated the most competently out of all their other shows, and involved cultural references in a showy way. Like, Space Ghost having Dave Willis absurdly shout “UP THE CHAIN” in the background of a Space Ghost episode is almost just a weird easter egg. But Birdman? Birdman was name-dropping Hanna Barbera characters the same way Frasier would talk about whatever gay shit Frasier talked about.

They aired The Dabba Don, Shaggy Busted, Shoyu Weenie, Very Personal Injury in that order. I would’ve swapped Shaggy and Shoyu and for Bannon Custody Battle and Death by Chocolate, but that’s just me, I guess.

Adult Swim New Years Bash hosted by Carl and Brak | December 31, 2002 - 11:00 PM

Adult Swim officially ended 2002 with this: a night hosted by Carl and Brak in Times Square, watching the ball drop (which was FREAKING MEATWAD!!!!). I remember this night fondly. Unfortunately I can’t find the whole thing, but here’s a single segment I found on vimeo to give you some idea. I think I had it up at one point and Turner very annoyingly had it taken down.

I used to have this massive physical media collection; stuff on VHS and DVD and DVD-R that was meticulously catalogued. I ditched a lot of it in favor of digitizing stuff like this, eternally keeping it on hard drives that I meant to back up but never did. It seems more convenient, but it isn’t. If this were 2003 and I needed to show you this, I would be able to retrieve it from one of my many shelves. I might still have this, but would have no idea where to look for it and it would probably involve me getting in my car and going out to my storage unit and pulling every single box out. I turned it into ones an zeros and stuck it on a nondescript black box that could very well be dead. And now it’s not even on YouTube. Sad? Sure, it’s sad.

PEAK EPHEMERA

(phrase stolen from Grifthorse podcast)

Hey, here are some videos I found on YouTube in case you wanna go down a wormhole of watching old Adult Swim commercial breaks. May the gods of posterity keep them online forever:

February 4, 2002

Spring 2002

June 16, 2002

June 30, 2002

July 27, 2002

August 2002

November 17, 2002

November/December 2002

MAIL BAG:

This ends EPHEMERA WEEK. We’ll do actual episodes soon!

What's the scariest thing you seen on adult swim?

I don’t know if I have a real answer for this. I don’t think I actually get scared by stuff in movies or TV shows. I can’t even come up with a funny answer. Remember the end of that Metalocalypse episode where the little sick girl is dead and her eyes turn into maggots and you hear that screechy voice was like I’M DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!!! I’ll just go with that even though it made me laugh really hard

Ever watch Limmy's Show

I am content just being vaguely aware of Limmy (no, I never watched his show. Seems good).

Please don't do such a big mailbag. I couldn't believe how many r-words wrote inane bullshit to you. Let keep this blog about the real stars: Master Shake, Space Ghost, Brak, Zorak, Meatwad, Frylock, Debbie, Black Debbie, Carl, Sparks, Stormy, Hesh, Moltar, Harvery Birdman Captain Murphy, Dr. Quinn, Paula, Marco,  Brendon, Jason, Melissa, The Mooninites, the Plutonians, Peanut, Coach Mc Gurk, Mentok the Mindtaker, Virjay, Antoin, Colby, Trotter, Adair WE ARE THE UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE :)

I can’t believe this IDIOT doesn’t get that by typing such a long message he very IDIOTICALLY contributed to the length of the Maili Bag... LMFAO, what a IDIOT

This is maybe the funniest blog on tumblr. You really think these nasty little cartoons are special, huh?

Hey than-- oh :( Yeah, I guess so :(

would you like master shake if he did the whole thing

I’m sorry what