#the idea of telling sonic fans to stop being so gay is so fucking funny to me

[penroseparticle]

Just fyi the sonic subreddit has been having a very... fun past couple days

#the idea of telling sonic fans to stop being so gay is so fucking funny to me #like you know that 90% of them are furries right? #do you know the significant demographic overlaps there? #do you know anything? #oh you don't? Oh ok sorry my bad for assuming #anyways kudos to their mod team #1k notes #10k notes

[maxwell-grant]

i have been watching old (and sometimes new) gmod animations and i grew up watching enough ytps to know the general idea behind them, and i recently gained a sort of fascination for them. there's something special about them that i couldn't quite put into words, but i think you got it down perfectly in your post about grand guignol. basically, thanks a bunch for that.

Well thank you! And, yeah, I pretty much grew up watching GMOD and YTP constantly and even today I still come back to those a lot when I'm restless and taking a break from work, and I think there's genuinely a lot that can be learned or discussed from them as uniquely 21st Century art forms.

I've been rewatching a lot of Raxxo's content lately and I think it was his content in particular that kind of convinced me that the "GMOD/SFM - Grand Guignol" analogy wasn't nearly as much of deranged word salad as I assumed it was, because in all honestly, if you had to try and condense his videos into a genre or definition or something of the sort, what the hell else can you possibly call this that in any way comes close to describing what you experience?

Like, all of his videos are described as "GMOD animated in SFM", because SFM is usually associated with more straightforward dramatic content while GMOD has been cartoon madness from the start (and it's fascinating to watch just how tame even the early Rubberfruit videos are compared to the kind of stuff Eltorro64 or Dr Lalve are putting out), and Raxxo is the latter in the style of the former.

And his videos are not just a non-stop barrage of brain-breaking, because they have weirdly dramatic pauses, and moments of straightforward action, or simple sentence mixing, and there's continuity between his videos, and incredibly smooth and natural gestures following by the characters stretching and deforming like jello monsters on the next second as their screams warble to drown the soundtrack and then everything's back to normal, and then they start doing things that kinda even make some sense as a narrative, but you cannot even begin explaining properly why, and I've watched these so many times that I even kinda start to see what makes sense and what doesn't, even though literally no one other than Raxxo is ever going to guess why he made the choices he did, and god these jokes must have taken hours if not days to render, why does the scretching Soldier head saying "Sputnik!" shows up in everything he does, and oh did I mention he also makes up the soundtracks he uses himself and they don't match in the slightest most people's perception of his content?

And for the finale of the Soldier Dispenser saga he created maybe the most batshit collaborative animation effort on Youtube, which is about an hour's worth of 200 animators all creating their own little batshit mini-stories in reference to his own and, seriously, who the hell could have possibly predicted something like this existing back when computer game Team Fortress 2 was announced in 2007? Or when Youtube was created?

Who could have possibly predicted something like this existing at any point in human history? Where else could anyone possibly experience this much audiovisual chaos anywhere? I can't even bring myself to watch the video in full again, but that this exists at all, and that it's far from the only one of it's kind, and that Team Fortress 2 fan content has spiraled so hard past anything the creators could have possibly predicted that it has self-sustaining meme ecosystems (Remember when smexuals were a thing? Or the Freaks?), that it's still fucking going 15 years past the game's debut, is, it's kind of a lot, is what I'm saying.

Like, I'm speaking as someone who studies a lot of pop culture and combs through it's most obscure and weirdest recesses to find stuff to write about, I'm still just as baffled by how far these things have gotten as I was when experiencing it for the first time. And you can find a lot of stories like these digging through Youtube Poop and the specific styles of certain creators or certain developing memes for franchises that grow and grow and permutate.

Think about what has to have happened to make a video like iteachvader's What'll It Be? happen.

Long John Baldry, blues musician extraordinaire, voiced cartoon villain Dr Robotnik in a Sonic cartoon. Said Sonic cartoon and performance was lucky enough to survive through Youtube clips. People noticed one of said clips of his performance has him saying a word that sounds like penis in a funny way, so they start making jokes about it, and parodies, and then literally hundreds of parodies popularizing the concept as a source of comedy, some of which take the form of music. Said music is done by cutting, remixing and splicing audio from said performance over music beats, which can be a PAINSTAKINGLY LONG PROCESS as someone who's tried doing that several times now, all this to make something with "Poop" in it's name (which I guess isn't that different from pulp writers spending weeks and months breaking their fingers to put out a novel's worth of content every month, for newspapers and magazines that were literally going to be used as toilet paper later)

These parodies catch on a bit and die out for a bit, until iteachvader comes along, and he proceeds to build a career not just by making funny parodies of said cartoon, but also knocking out genuinely really, really good musical parodies, editing voice clips of said performance to make it sound like the villain's singing (and additionally, he also creates his own tunes, and he's shown that literally every sound he uses is taken from the show, which is just, absolutely mind-boggling effort). He's also created over the years a running joke of Tails being Dr Robotnik's son that people liked enough to ask for more, and then we come to the video above, which is a song about Dr Robotnik spoiling his son Tails asking him what he'll want, which is not at all in line with how the two characters are canonically. And said remixes would eventually get remixed even further, even with crossovers with other characters or musicians, and so forth.

And that is the story of how dozens of creators working separately, and with little intent other than goofing around, single-handedly revived a dead man's music career, as the voice of the fan reinterpretation of a animated adaptation of a videogame villain, popular to the billions if not dozens of billions of views over a decade in the making, on a broadcasting platform said man didn't even live to see being created.

I think sometimes we like to think of ourselves as advanced and jaded enough that nothing surprises us anymore, and if we went back in time and showed an iphone to our great-grandparents they'd start screaming in sheer confusion. And, maybe they would, yeah, but imagine if you were Long John Baldry at any point in his life, even after he finished recording his lines as Robotnik, and someone showed up to you and explained that all of this was going to happen to you, to your voice, to your performance. Imagine if you were one of Valve's lead developers working on Team Fortress 2 during the nine years it spent in development, and someone showed you Raxxo's work and Soldier's Dispenser Quest and just, everything that had happened to characters you hadn't even fully created yet.

I imagine Long John Baldry would have taken it well enough eventually, by all accounts he was a fun person who loved to try new things, and he was an openly gay British vocalist in the 1960s when it was literally illegal to be gay in Britain, so I imagine nothing could possibly rattle his cage that deep in the long run.

But can you honestly tell me you wouldn't freak out at least a little trying to understand just what exactly the future was showing you? Can you honestly tell me your cynicism and world-weariness would be worth anything in the face of all this knowledge about what the world was going to do with your creations and work?

Can you honestly tell me, just now, that you have any idea what the hell is your legacy or reputation as an artist, or even what your art is known for, going to look like in a decade or two from now? And that things aren't going to get weirder than they are now?

I find that fact both frightening and strangely assuring at points, and exciting above all.

#replies tag #ytp #youtube poop #sonic #long john baldry #dr robotnik #kfad2 #silvagunner #iteachvader #raxxo #tf2 #sfm

[eurydicees]

thoughts on the musicals y’all recommended!

tysm for all the recs! i had so much fun listening to them, i really appreciate it! always feel free to rec more :)  

to preface, there’s no actual judging system. it’s all about the vibes. so, in the order that i listened to them: 

the mad ones

i already made a post abt this one, but i have to mention it again. i’ve been listening to it on repeat. like. straight up on a loop. 

i’m obsessed with this

the storyline is so put together, and you can really feel the heart of the show

the characters were well written (with the exception of the boyfriend tbh, i could have done without him), and i’m so fascinated by sam and kelly’s relationship (writers were cowards for making them not gay) 

the songs felt super cohesive, and the repeated drum loop was super well integrated. the sound techie in me is fascinated by the way this show was put together, and i’d love to see it performed (like. fr. i was getting ideas for the design. which is always so much fun) 

19.75/10

romeo es julia

holy shit this slaps

costumes were weird

but the music was brilliant

some of the captioned lyrics were ???? bad translation or bad lyrics??? but the sound was incredible so i don’t even care 

mercutio and tybalt were spot on

the moms were GREAT. i LOVED their voices, like. could FEEL the emotions, even if i didn’t know wtf they were saying 

pretty much everyone was like that, like idk what’s going on via words, but i def can feel it, which is the best kind of song

my mother didn’t like this one but whatever, she didn’t get to see the choreo that went with it so what does she know 

the SET. the LIGHTS. the SOUND. the SET. the LIGHTS. the SOUND. chef’s kiss. 

14/10 

ordinary days

eh

i liked “favorite places” and “beautiful” a lot, but the rest of the songs were only okay

i wasn’t super attached to the characters and the singing was just. like. okay for me. i didn’t love any of them in particular 

my mother also didn’t like this one, rip. she has a lot of opinions on musicals. 

6/10

venice

oh my fucking god???????? 

not what i expected at all. right from the first lines i was like. 😲😲😲 

like. this was so good??? wtf???? hamilton meets shakespeare meets the mechanisms meets les mis meets post-9/11 politics meets dystopia. i thought it couldn’t be done, but here i am, in awe

i was going to include some favorite lines but. it’s just all of them. ALL of them. 

further confirmation that i’m in love with jennifer damiano. 

also angela polk?? incredible 

it’s weird bc it’s so clearly Not Broadway Music, but it’s also not trying to be, which i enjoy. i can see why some critics hated it (read some really funny reviews lmao), but i really loved the sound (haven’t seen the show, though, and that’s half of a musical, so maybe gonna try and find a bootleg) 

18.99/10

count of monte cristo 

damn from the overture this was. Intense. like. damn. i’m a slut for any dies irae sequence, so i was a big fan of that

that being said. gonna be real. i had no idea what was happening throughout the entire musical. it’s a pretty music-light show, so that’s probably why? 

maybe it would make more sense if i watched a performance rather than just listening to the soundtrack??? idk. anyone got a bootleg? 

thomas borchert has a nice voice. very distinctive. googled him to see where else i can listen to him. he was rum tum tugger. anyways. mad respect for this man

sonically, it didn’t feel like a very cohesive show? like it felt like there were a lot of diff vibes going around

lots of good songs for my evil musicals playlist though 

11/10 

once on this island (2017 revival)

ok turns out musicals are a lot better when sung by professionals than by sixth graders who think they can belt even tho their voices are still cracking 

also turns out that stories can be much more complex and interesting-- and have much deeper themes of racism and classism-- when on broadway than when in a sweaty middle school auditorium in an upper middle class white neighborhood 

funny how that works, huh 

i’m still a little unsure abt it, and probably wouldn’t listen to it just because i can, but i definitely don’t object to it anymore 

ty for making me give it a second try 

hailey kilgore is brilliant in this

the singing in general is REALLY impressive and beautiful 

12.68/10 

death note

i cannot express enough in words how mad i am that i actually liked this

genuinely don’t know how to feel 

i do think that i would get more out of it if i watched the anime, but it was still pretty easy to follow, just knowing the premise 

idk who the cast is bc i found a weird shady playlist on spotify rather than a cast recording, but the girl’s voice (idk character names) was beautiful. “i’ll only love you more” was SO good

reminded me a little of jekyll and hyde? which? huh

also i’m now getting tik tok videos with audio from this musical can my iphone stop stalking me for ONE second

fucking unfair that this is actually a good soundtrack. the desire to find a bootleg is unholy. 

14.87/10 

35mm

why did no one tell me that alex brightman is in this!!!!

i listened to a few songs and really enjoyed them, but didn't get through the whole album lmao

but i did really enjoy what i did listen to, and i'm gonna come back to it

9/10

ghost quartet

i wanted to like this one. SO badly. i REALLY wanted to like it.

but i couldn't really get into it? 

there were a few songs that absolutely slapped, but overall, it was just kinda. eh. which sucks bc i have heard such good things about it

i LOVED "the astronomer," "the telescope," and "lights out" 

but i didn't get through the entire album

i'll come back to it eventually and give it another try, i think. i might just not have been in the specific mood for it

9.8/10

#ty again! #i always appreciate recs #the mad ones #romeo es julia #35mm #venice #count of monte cristo #ghost quartet #death note musical #once on this island #elektra #ordinary days

[the-fallen-blue]

To be clear, I don't hold DS9 as the best of Star Trek or think all its deconstructing woked, but from what I remember, the "easy to be saint in paradise" is more about criticizing the arrogance and borderline xenophobia of Gene's vision, or at least aspects of it and (which DS9 did as a whole) contrivences that kept it unchallenged. If nothing else, IMO it's a fair game to show that a society as dedicated to peace and avoidance of armed conflict would leave some people feeling unfought for.

“It’s easy to be a saint in paradise” is in fact in reference to the Maquis, and Starfleet’s treatment thereof. The official judgement of the Federation is that the Maquis are terrorists (a matter of perspective), a threat to the peace with the Cardassians (potentially, but certainly not more so than the Cardassians themselves), and deserters and thieves (absolutely fact; a majority of Maquis are active duty Starfleet who walked off the job with Starfleet weapons, ships and intel). Thus the Starfleet policy toward Maquis is pursuit, capture, or destruction without quarter.

Sisko cheerfully enforces this policy - he literally committed a war crime in order to catch his former security officer, so he’s obviously on board with “stop the Maquis” as a concept - but he also takes a moment to be judgey about it when the issue first comes up. The people at Starfleet headquarters, he implies with the quote, are arrogant, ignorant, and cold. The Maquis had their homes traded away right underneath them by the Federation, traded to the very enemy who was attacking them in the first place. Even worse, the Feds didn’t even really make an effort in the war - consensus among the sort of fans who Figure Out Things Like That is that if they’d tried at all, Starfleet would have crushed the Cardassians and lost nothing. And now the Federation attacks its own betrayed citizens for fighting back? Sisko, and apparently the show, want us to consider that perhaps the Liberal Elite in their Ivory Towers pushing Peace and Reconciliation with the Bad Guys even to the point of punishing the former Good Guys to maintain it are showing a disgusting lack of 1) compassion for the people they’re supposed to be prioritizing, who suffer the consequences of their decisions and 2) understanding of how the Real World works, because they’ve never lived in it.

Unfortunately, this is patent fucking nonsense.

Consider:

Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime?

Really?

Even though the Japanese were the aggressor? Even though they committed absolute atrocities against American citizens in the Pacific territories? Even though Truman’s literal job description was “protect American lives and American interests,” meaning he owed his soldiers a strategy that risked their lives as little as possible and ended the war as quickly as possible, and owed the Japanese absolutely nothing? If you’re still out here saying “yes,” congratulations, you’re what Gene’s humanity is supposed to be all about. Someone who remembers that the enemy is still people too, and you have a moral obligation to use exactly necessary force and not a single Newton more. To value their lives, society and culture equal to your own.

If the Federation negotiated peace with the Cardassians even from a position of power, it was because they deemed the potential loss of combined Federation and Cardassian life to be of greater significance than the (easily substituted in a post-scarcity society) homestead rights of Federation citizens on those contested worlds. They chose life over land, even enemy life over their own land. This is the decision we want them to make. We want them to be the people who would not have dropped a nuke on Japan. We want future humanity to be in a place where we consider the Maquis to be in the wrong for choosing bloody war to avoid giving up property.

But the thing is…. how the fuck do we get there, because humans do not, humans cannot make that decision. Humans get emotionally invested in things. Humans get angry and scared and humans are wildly fucking tribal and we make self-serving and short-sighted decisions in order to protect the things that are ours whenever we feel threatened. Poverty creates crime because when people are scared for their survival they don’t care about the rules, strange cultures interacting generates bigotry because new things are frightening, and power breeds sociopathy because losing that power frames itself to the human brain as a loss of identity and safety. And Gene’s humans are not actually different from the real ones. They didn’t develop telepathy like Betazoids to make them physically incapable of forgetting that the enemy is a person. They haven’t altered their own brain chemistry through ritualized philosophy like the Vulcans. They are still giant bags of reactivity, violence and malice. So. What do?

Well the really funny thing is that the answer to this question is within DS-9 itself. One of fandom’s other favorite lines from the series is Quark musing on the nature of humanity:

Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people… will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.

WELL JUST FUCKING INVERSE THAT, GENIUS!

DS-9 is fascinated by the idea that humans are Not As Good As You Thought, Gene, but it seems to persistently overlook the fact that he understood that completely, and that’s why the Federation exists. That’s why they have the free holosuites and free food and Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. It is easy to be a saint in Paradise, and the Federation wants to be saints, so they put the people who make the decisions in Paradise. Hell, they try to put everyone in Paradise, because it lets us not be massive shits to each other even without telepathy or Logic™. The whole origin story of Trek humans is that they went through a decade or so of Mad Max hell and went “holy fuck never again, what do we do to make ourselves stop being assholes,” and utopian socialist paradise is what they came up with.

Sisko seems to think that not getting on board with the Maquis’ decision to fight for their homes is a sign of blindness and elitism on the part of his bosses, because those bosses aren’t facing the tribulation of losing their own homes. But in fact, that very tribulation means that the Maquis are the blind ones - they can’t be objective or adhere to the principles they normally value, because their lizard brain has knocked all the way down Maslow’s hierarchy to “YOU NO TAKE CANDLE,” while the guys back home on Earth, explicitly because they’re not involved, can act from the top of the pyramid with compassion for all involved parties.

Now, you can disagree with this moral perspective, certainly. You can say that leaders have a greater responsibility to their people than to the enemy and that protecting homes is worth lives and that the Federation should be secretly supporting the Maquis (like the Cardassians are supporting their own “renegades” attacking Federation colonies, something the series really should have spent more time on), and you wouldn’t be wrong. These are matters of perspective, not absolute truth. But that isn’t the argument Sisko is making. He’s arguing that the froofy safe Feds just don’t ~get~ it, which is a shockingly limited understanding of the history and principles of Trek Earth’s culture for a Starfleet captain.

#ask box #yelling forever about star trek