willidleaway

[willidleaway]

this is the thing that I actually wanted to make work for the 32nd anniversary—an arrangement for piano/uke/Andes—but I completely ran out of time to polish it. but hey it's not an awful demo

#ill-fated attempts at making music

[willidleaway]

well for Kirby's 32nd anniversary month, I took Kirby to see a total solar eclipse, so that was a bit of fun.

happy 32nd anniversary to the pink puffball and many happy returns!

#travel debriefing

[willidleaway]

I feel like I need to offset the recent non-Kirby programming on this tumblelog so have some photos featuring Kirby in a sailor suit from earlier in the year that I just hadn't gotten around to posting

[willidleaway]

and with Davina McCall's first appearance in Doctor Who since 2005's 'Bad Wolf', the summoning ritual is complete. we have now fully returned to RTD-era new!Who

#doctor who #doctor who spoilers #the church on ruby road #(I would write more about my thoughts on Disney!Who but honestly it can be summed up as 'average RTD') #(except Wild Blue Yonder which I would classify as firmly 'above-average RTD') #(that may sound dismissive but honestly after the Chibnall years it's good to have 'average RTD' humanist storytelling back on the menu)

[willidleaway]

in a moment definitely completely unrelated to any Internet goings-on,* I finally watched my used DVD of Shattered Glass and it is an excellent movie about intellectual fraud that I highly recommend.** probably long out of print but maybe your local library has a copy, and I'm sure there's a streaming service out there somewhere that has it. Hayden Christensen's portrayal of Stephen Glass feels eerily spot on if you go watch the television interview Glass did years later (which is included in the DVD). and if you don't care about good storytelling then you get to see people use antiquated cell phones and Windows 3.1 PCs, and that's got to be worth something to someone

[* it would be unfair to not note the source of the inadvertent reminder that I own this movie]

[** meaning I recommend the movie, not the fraud. don't try intellectual fraud kids]

#shattered glass #(OK seriously this tumblelog will return to its regular Kirby-based programming at some point I promise) #(there's been Kirby stuff going on but I have had frustratingly little time to record it properly)

[willidleaway]

Quick note: this tumblelog will, of course, be monitoring the situation with the Disney+-ified version of Doctor Who. However, I won't be live-tumblelogging or reviewing the specials until we're through everything including the Christmas Special, to avoid rushing to judgement. Count me in the sceptical but hopeful camp for now.

Anyhow, two minutes left until the reboot. Good luck.

[willidleaway]

"We are at the point where after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr since the acquisition in 2019, we have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have revenue and usage above its previous peaks," the posted memo reads.

irreversible damage was done to user interests between 2017 and 2019. the site was never going to return to (let alone exceed) its previous peaks in usage. I'm shocked that Automattic thought this was a realistic goal.

The cultural reach and cachet of Tumblr has long exceeded its business prospects.

true enough, which is why I would have thought Automattic acquired tumblr as a loss leader, using it to enhance their overall image and maybe redirect businesses and professional users to other more profitable offerings under their corporate umbrella. again, shocked that they expected to return to peak revenue in any way. Flickr's new owners, on the other hand, are actively embracing the fact that Flickr is an absolute financial albatross but culturally invaluable, so much so that they've managed to spin up a nonprofit organisation to this end. just as you don't treat Flickr as a competitor to Instagram, surely the absolute worst thing to do with tumblr is treat it as a high-revenue competitor to mainstream social media?

anyway, if this site zaps away into oblivion, you won't know where to find me. unless you do. which you might.

#meta post #this has been a tumblr service announcement

[willidleaway]

ace week, innit

[willidleaway]

I'm working through my second Star Allies save file at the moment and somehow managed to get through Soul Melter EX again. I still don't quite have the timing to get through the 3D shooter segments without being whittled down to minimum health, but I guess when in doubt spam Sparkler Turn at every opportunity???

as a small bonus for myself: I've always imagined that the Void battle should specifically end with Kirby throwing a Friend Heart at Void at the very tipping point, and curiously that's exactly how this run ended, with Kirby reviving an existing friend before trying to make friends with Void. a dream of friends indeed ...

#kirby star allies

[willidleaway]

I recently had the occasion of visiting Kraków, and while I had the opportunity to see a number of remarkable sights—including some sobering ones that lend perspective to the tragedies of the Second World War—instead here are some of the best pictures involving the travelling sailor Kirby plush mascot

#travel debriefing

[willidleaway]

June, innit

[willidleaway]

it’s the 31st anniversary of Kirby’s debut in Japan! unfortunately no art from me this time. to make up for it, here’s Kirby out in the world taking in a range of exciting European sights. many happy returns!

#travel debriefing

[willidleaway]

finally the content this tumblelog needed: changing almost every instrument in a Kirby music track to be The Synth and then underlining it with the Amen break

#ill-advised mashup demos #THE SYNTH

[willidleaway]

oh my god someone says it! I’m probably going to mostly write in verbose agreement here, but ...

my translation would weaken that first sentence even more, ending up with something closer to:

Kirby, I don’t know what to do with you. Even after all my tricks, you just stare back blankly like that ... I resent relying on you time and again, but ... fine. Kirby of the Stars, quick, break this thing on my head. Then, I’ll be back ... heheheh ... for another prank!

it’s also interesting to look at the Korean translation, which generally ties very closely to the Japanese when Kirby games are concerned.

커비, 나는 너를 모르겠어. 속임수에 당해도 멀뚱거리기나 하잖아. 몆 번이나 네 도움을 받는 �� 분하지만… 됐어. 별의 커비, 얼른 내 머리 위의 관을 부숴 줘. 그러면 내가, 크크큭… 골탕 먹여 줄게!

Kirby, I can’t figure you out. Even after falling prey to my tricks, you just stare back blankly. It’s maddening to have you help me out time and again, but ... fine. Kirby of the Stars, quick, break this crown on my head. Then I’ll, heheheh ... play a right trick on you!

there are some minor if interesting differences (like how the Korean version explicitly says ‘crown’, which might just be a grammatical thing), but both the Japanese and Korean versions emphasise the fact that Magolor is just a troll, whose modus operandi is constant mischief and trickery and who lives to see the look on the faces on the receiving end. to me, the JP/KR versions don’t suggest Magolor is insulted by Kirby’s (lack of) reaction—he’s puzzled. stringing along this innocent, kind hero under false pretenses to help him achieve control of the universe?! surely his greatest trick yet! and yet ... no reaction? well, that’s ... new ... and he doesn’t really know how to work with that.

and where in the EN version it reads like Magolor’s taunting Kirby, still trying to test Kirby or at least cause trouble for Kirby one last time with this challenge—in the JP/KR version it’s a desperate cry for help. he tries to save face—how did he, who now should have control of everything, come to rely on this pink puff over and over again?—but in the end the situation is long beyond that and Magolor knows it.

while my heart of hearts leans towards the JP/KR tone of desperation, both these tones are entirely plausible in the end. after all, this is Magolor still under the Master Crown’s domination, and he’s probably flashing between his internal desperation and the aeons’ worth of hate and anger infused into the Master Crown through its previous history. so what he’s truly saying in his original tongue is probably something just a little ineffable in human language that has nuances falling somewhere in between all of these translations into English and Japanese and Korean ...

what do you think of magolor soul’s true arena desc? makes me think he isn’t truly sorry.

I wanted to save this ask to write something MUCH more comprehensive about this but, um, serious RL stuff (it's positive stuff, no worries. I'm just kinda anxious about it...) popped up during my break so since I'm going to need to duck away for a few days to cool down (and because I'm currently super mega obsessed with True Arena Magolor) I decided to hit this one quickly.

So, in brief, this game has an excellent translation. Forgotten Land quality. I'd say even a little bit above that, since Magolor's writing in the epilogue is so good. (Biased?)

But there is a slight shift of TONE in Magolor Soul's True Arena description, the 2nd phase, where he talks directly to Kirby. (Honestly, this is probably just an issue of spacing. Magolor talks a LOT and you can see this screen is packed with text. Amusingly, spacing was my guess for the loss of a few details from Magolor Soul's pause screen in the original game.)

(Photo nicked from willidleaway)

Here is a quick "alternate" translation from me:

"Kirby, frankly, I found you a pain to deal with. And the way you looked at me with that blank stare even after I betrayed you? It irks me that I keep having to rely on you but... I've had enough. Kirby of the Stars, hurry up and destroy this thing on my head. When you do, I'll come back and... heheheh...I'll tease you plenty!"

The part TumblingPotatoes is referring to is probably the part I translated as "...found you a pain to deal with." The word in question can mean "dislike" as in "We've invited Magolor to dinner tonight!" "Ugh, I really dislike that guy!" but it really just means someone that, for a variety of reasons, you may struggle to deal with.

The fact that Magolor is a consummate liar but Kirby approaches everyone with honesty and openness is a quick and easy answer for why Magolor might feel that way about Kirby. Not to mention, as he says in both versions, Kirby is SO honest they didn't even react with shock or hurt when Magolor betrayed them. It's hard to say WHY Kirby didn't have that kind of emotional reaction, maybe they just knew better? Maybe Kirby figured, "Huh. I guess it's just time to beat the evil out of you like I've done with all my friends to date!"

The reason I prefer the Japanese slightly is because the English had to combine the "...it irks me to rely on you" and "hurry and break this thing on my head" into one line which, while Magolor is meant to be speaking from a place of pride (he doesn't want to admit he needs help. But of course, he really, really, REALLY needs help) it does sort of give him a cocky attitude in English. (The addition of "Ugh" does something similar. It does a wonderful job showing he's having to fight his own nature to admit this.)

But in Japanese, his desperation ("hurry") comes off better. It makes him sound a little bit more sad too (Something about Magolor using "this thing" in Japanese, 「頭のコレ」, even though it's the same phrase in English... but the context behind refusing to identify the Crown always gives me the feeling that at this point in the soul-consuming process, he's too frightened to even say it's name.)

...And this all hits especially hard because he uses the key phrase "Kirby of the Stars." Any time anyone invokes Kirby's "full name" you know things are serious.

His last line, his "threat" to toy with you/tease you is basically just the same Magolor you see in the epilogue. He can "turn over a new leaf" and still be a villainous & mischievous little egg. Saving his life isn't going to give him a personality transplant. It isn't going to mean he doesn't like playing pranks on people - or that he thinks that hitting a bomb with a frying pan isn't one of the multiverse's greatest games and definitely needs a space in his theme park. ^^

Again, he may also be trying to preserve some of his tattered dignity there. The long and short of it is... Magolor is being "tsundere" (I hope I don't need to explain that one...?)

Yes, he cares about Kirby as a friend. (Will he say it? No.) Yes, he feels bad for what he did. (Will he say that? Also no.)

...He CAN'T. It's not the way he communicates. But remember that Magolor has lied to you throughout the whole game. And it's the Liar Magolor that always tells you how "thankful" he is, how "happy" he is you two met. How "wonderful" and "amazing" Kirby is.

The fact that Magolor is willing to say "yeah, you kind of annoyed me" is a sign that Magolor is giving Kirby something he's potentially never given ANYONE before...

The truth.

So yes, this experience HAS changed him for the good and he absolutely, undeniably cares about Kirby.

--

Last Minute Addition:

It's interesting, in light of the very likely sounding theory that Magolor has already been fully consumed by the crown in this fight (his eyes disappear right as he uses "the last" of his ability to fight against the crown to leave you a single apple) and CANNOT be saved that the English text "...then someday..." and "...I MAY get to toy with you..." when the Japanese doesn't have these vagueties on Magolor's behalf. (I was influenced enough by it that even I included the phrase "when I come back" when Magolor just says "I will again...tease you")

Does he know it's already too late? It kind of gives you the feeling that Magolor is either lying to sooth Kirby from what the puffball has to do (kill him) or he's trying to goad Kirby on into finishing this. Really just makes the whole thing more heartbreaking.

#kirby spoilers #rtdl dx spoilers #rtdl spoilers

[willidleaway]

so like @desultory-novice​ I’ve been thinking a bit about the voice clips that you can hear in the new remix of the final boss track. the exact parameters are a little lost to me but in Audacity I attempted the following on the original track:

Vocal Reduction and Isolation, Isolate Vocals. Leave the frequency band at the default settings (120-9000 Hz), and set the strength to somewhere around 1.5 and 2. (Too high and Audacity just returns silence!)

Filter Curve EQ with this curve:

and then the only change is to turn the volume back up to max out at -3 dB with Normalise.

this doesn’t work amazingly, unfortunately—the orchestral samples mix hard with the vocal samples so isolating the vocals would probably take a lot of manual artisanal spectral suppression. but! this processing is enough to make things a little less distracting, and I’ve compiled a set of three samples from the resulting output where I think I can particularly clearly hear things:

kaa—bi ... (this was taken from ~04:25)

i ... iroha ... (taken from ~05:00)

ma ke ... fu ... kaa ... bi ... (taken from ~06:30)

(oh, also, these timestamps are for the full track, to avoid confusion.)

and this leads me to my conspiracy theory. keep those audible syllables in your head as you read on. i-ro-ha ... ma-ke-fu ...

if you go look at the Star Allies OST website, there’s a sound staff roundtable discussion (kindly translated previously by Kai), where they discuss how Void Termina’s voice was created (Kai’s translations in square brackets):

（熊崎）そうですね、4人の声です。ゲーム内のボイスではおなじみの安藤さん、比較的若い声の小笠原さん、それから女性の声も欲��かったので『みんなで！カービィハンターズＺ』ディレクターの東藤さん。そして私。4人の演技、声が混ざった鳴き声をやってみよう、って。[Kumazaki: Yes, it was the voices of four people. You, Mr. Ando, being a regular with in-game voice clips, Mr. Ogasawara with his comparatively younger voice, as well as Mrs. Todo, the director of “Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, because we wanted a woman’s voice, too. And me. We wanted to try out a cry made by mixing voice lines from the four of us.]

（安藤）そういえば何て言ってたか、覚えてないなあ。[Ando: By the way, what did we say? I can’t remember.]

（熊崎）「イロハニホヘト、カービィ〜」です。[Kumazaki: It was "Irohanihoheto, Kirby”.]

（安藤）あー、そうか。[Ando: Oh, right.]

（熊崎）全員同じ言葉で、「イロハニホヘト、カービィ〜……」みたいに発して別々に録りました。私が言ったら安藤さんが、「あ、それでいく」って言ったんですよ（笑）。[Kumazaki: We each uttered those same words, “Irohanihoheto, Kirby…”, all recording seperately. When I told you, you said “Oh, we’re going with that”. (laughs)]

hmm. let’s go look at Iroha (emphasis mine):

いろはにほへと ちりぬるを わかよたれそ つねならむ うゐのおくやま けふこえて あさきゆめみし ゑひもせす

some of these look familiar? here, a romaji transliteration (again, emphasis mine):

Iro fa nifofeto Tirinuru wo Wa ka yo tare so Tune naramu Uwi no okuyama Kefu koyete Asaki yume misi Wefi mo sesu

so my conspiracy theory is ... it’s Iroha again. the Iroha is basically a ‘the quick brown fox jumps’-type pangram, and while it has actual literary meaning, it’s often used to simply iterate through all the kana. I think Ando went to record himself reading the Iroha and saying ‘Kirby’ once in a while, and then shuffled the different segments around, and that constitutes most of the discernible vocal samples that aren’t crying or screaming. I say it’s a conspiracy theory because I haven’t gone through all of the vocal samples, so there could be something extra hiding in there (and of course I could be mishearing some things).

and if it holds up? not terribly exciting, I know, but still interesting from a development standpoint!

#kirby spoilers #rtdl spoilers #rtdl dx spoilers

[willidleaway]

oh! I thought it was going to be at the start of the second loop :P

I can actually kind of hear it myself. the only question is: if you take the Star Allies version and put it through the same procedure, can you actually hear it in there too?

For those of us who want to follow along at home: what's the timestamp and what parameters did you use for the Audacity filters? I'm having the opposite problem where I can start getting at the Magolor vocal samples but can't get at this mysterious voice ...

Absolutely! Frankly, I'd love to do more digging into this!

First, I used "Supreme Lord's Coronation ~ OVERLORD ~ Phase 2 Extended", ripped from the YT channel "B-cah"

Audacity > Vocal Reduction and Isolation Action: Isolate Vocals Strength: 2.00 Low Cut: 120.0 High Cut: 9000

I caught the sound at approx. the 00h00m15s mark (My original clip stretches from 00m14.8s to 00m18.5s)

--

I have no idea if audio actually works this way, but it feels like, since the base of the song is the one from Star Allies, you should be able to inverse the original track, lay it over the DX version and have them cancel each other out, leaving only the chirps? Am I thinking of some sci-fi BS or would that actually be possible...? ^^;;

#kirby spoilers #rtdl spoilers #rtdl dx spoilers

[willidleaway]

and that’s Crown% (which I guess here is also 100%) on RtDL DX! I have to say that the True Arena is mighty impressive. sure, some of the epilogue bosses don’t really put up any more of a fight than their Story Mode counterparts, but the True Arena version of Magolor Soul alone (new music! new attacks! new pause lore!) makes the whole thing worth going through. and while the Colosseum’s feature of ‘carry on from last boss’ didn’t make it in here, you can still use as many souvenir items from Merry Magoland as you have, so I managed to refill my health multiple times and even regain Stone (the ‘Random’ Copy Ability star’s roulette slows down over time).

overall this is a wonderful version of the game that will probably be a bit more future-proof than my slightly precarious Wii and the equally precarious optical disc, although I really wish they had put the New Challenge Stages in Merry Magoland and had a Classic Kirby mask instead of Gold Kirby. well, there are old-fashioned Kirby sounds that go with the Gold Kirby mask so I’ve been met halfway, I guess.

#kirby spoilers #rtdl spoilers #rtdl dx spoilers