The Fastest Transformer
There are a bunch of episodes, across the entirety of Transformers media that care about being the fastest. Most series have at some point a race episode, and Transformers Animated – the best Transformers series – has two. Sometimes it’s outracing a train, sometimes it’s racing a virus, sometimes it’s just a race for a race’s sake, and sometimes it’s got an extra dose of time travel.
Presented with the question of it, though, I wondered: Who’s the fastest Transformer?
Continue Reading →Speedrunning the Hbomberguy Plagiarism Video
Plagiarism is bad. Plagiarism is Plagiarism. Plagiarism is mostly vibes.
A bunch of people you don’t need to know and may not have cared about before this conversation started all failed this vibe check.
Plagiarism is bad because it erases the work of a lot of people, who aren’t rich and successful and don’t have huge audiences.
You know about this now thanks to a guy who is successful and has a huge audience.
And Time.
Story Pile: Appare-Ranman!
When you’re an anime fan you have the beautiful luxury of being able to talk about ridiculous ideas that most people in your normal media sphere turned into something pretty pedestrian or never really expanded on, given a level of seriousness and gravitas that allows for a truly adult-level presentation that then usually also has some banging music and maybe a great combat scene or two. Such is the case of Appare-Ranman, which is an anime that can best be summarised as ‘Wacky Racers if it was a serious crime action drama,’ and you may think they did that, it was called The Great Race and it came out in 1965, to you I must say, why are you killing my buzz here. There’s only so much room to get excited about this speedrun of an anime and by providing that example of how my opening joke isn’t actually that good you’re forcing me to present a blunt metaphor for the way that Appare-Ranman! is an anime that’s about exactly as good as this opening paragraph.
Like it starts fun. There’s definitely something fun happening here.
But wew.
Continue Reading →Story Pile: Godzilla Vs Megalon
Godzilla is a venerable franchise of modern cinema, that serves in its own way as part of the spine of all cinema of the 20th century. An intense, thoughtful, iconic movie with exciting special effects and a grim, painful perspective that seems informed by its relationship to a very real place and time in history about a cultural pain. I mean that’s what informs what I know about Godzilla, which is to say, I have studied the same 1954 movie everyone else has and read the same cultural critiques from non-Japanese authors.
Since then, Godzilla, as a character, is just an icon. Godzilla signifies Godzilla. Godzilla is used in so many different ways to signify so many different things that Godzilla is less of a character with its own distinct personality and values and more a sort of genre signifier of its own. ‘Godzilla shows up’ is a way an entire genre of media works now. Godzilla was special effects movie star in the 60s, a spectacle fighter in the 70s, a kid’s cartoon icon in the 80s, a gritty reboot in the 90s and a metatextual signifier throughout the 21st century. There is a wealth and a depth to every single one of the Godzilla movies that can be put into a greater and broader context of its appearances and what it means to be a Godzilla movie.
Anyway, nuts to all that, let’s talk about Godzilla vs Megalon.
Godzilla Vs Megalon is a 1973 film, made out of scrap parts over what you would probably consider ‘the rush season’ of a retail work period. Three weeks of filming, with upwards of months of pre-planning, script-writing, character designing and buying props from the local toy store. The whole movie was designed to be a star vehicle for Jet Jaguar, the robot in the movie, who was not named Jet Jaguar when the child that made it designed it. When they realised they didn’t have the star power they wanted in this little robot, they decided to, in a way that reused stock footage, bring in two completely unrelated ringers from a previous movie, Gigan and Godzilla, and then, they fight.
Continue Reading →Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Critique
I did a podcast with Fox where we looked at every Disney Animated Canon movie and got to consider what I, a millenial adult with a lifetime of brain worms from an oppressive cult thought of the Disney Animated movies that define Disney Adults and Disney Magic and the Cultural Zeitgeist and if you’re not familiar with my opinion of these, almost all these movies are terrible. I dislike them often in terms of their ideologies, their moral and ethical positions – like, not just the invisible ink elements, but often, a lot of the things in them that they very clearly, explicitly want to be true.
The big one is The Lion King.
Story Pile: The Sopranos
Back in the 90s, a TV show dared to ask: What if a bad guy?
But the main character?
And oh we were off to the races.
Decemberween ’23 — The New Music From This Year
How do you listen to new music?
I understand it’s really common for most people to listen to music in their cars or using systems like Spotify, which I don’t like and don’t drive. That’s right, I don’t like cars and I don’t drive Spotify. I listen to podcasts when I travel, usually, and I listen to music while I work at my computer, because I want something that affects my mood while I’m doing, like, this work.
Frustratingly, just because it’s usually there and ad-free, I let Youtube throw mixes at me. Then when I’ve noticed I’ve done that enough that some songs are part of my personal lexicon, I go and acquire those songs some other way, whether bandcamp (in the case of small bands) or
I want to nakedly recommend an mp3 collection to you. You don’t need special software to manage it. You can just dump all your music in a great big heap and use the search function on any mp3 player you like to find the songs you want. You have paid for music, you have paid for the right to use it in different forms, spotify subscriptions are not paying artists and they are rent-seeking on things you can buy directly, or in many cases have already bought.
Anyway, here’s the stuff that I added to my mp3 collection this year.
Continue Reading →Story Pile: Yuru Camp Christmas Episodes
Happy Decemberween everybody! Fox and I didn’t want to just rain on your parade today, so instead of pointing to a crappy piece of media that sucks butts, we decided to instead enjoy some nice, happy, chill anime about friends being friends at Christmas, and definitely not girlfriends right.
Decemberween ’23 — The Poorhammer Podcast
I don’t play Warhammer. I don’t have the little miniature boys, I don’t have the equipment for painting them, I don’t have the space to paint them, one of them cool little lamps for making them look good while you paint them. I can’t really identify the mechanical differences between Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar and what the point of the play experiences are and how they differ one from another. If I’m sitting down at a table with at least one friend and some miniatures and hours of investment, I’m going to play 4th edition D&D —
— the best edition of D&D —
and not the heavy metal gameplay experience that is Warhammer Of Some Variety. None of this is to say, however, that the game lacks appeal, and like a gawker on a roadside attraction, I still pay attention to the space. Mostly, however, through the podcast Poorhammer, which is about getting into the game while spending as little money as possible.
Story Pile: Cobra Claws Are Coming To Town
Once more into Decemberween product, this time I recruit the help of Canadian Wildermyth Doc Destructo to talk about the shockingly enjoyable christmas special episode of the 1985 GI Joe Cartoon!
Here’s the audio of the conversation:
And here’s a link to the episode in question:
And here’s a link to Doc’s Youtube and Patreon!
Decemberween ’23 — Survivor Histories
Last year I spoke about how I had taken to leaving a channel of ‘horror movie summarised’ videos up on a second screen while I watched. It was effectively, asking a nerd with some very shallow media analysis skills to advertise horror movies at me and while I found it meaningfully engaging for just long enough to get my brain around the problems I was facing at the time, it was remarkable the ease with which I completely dropped the entire idea this year. I think I wrote that article and immediately forgot even the name of the channel, which is why I haven’t gone and looked it up since, even though as you read this and as I write it, I should be linking it. It’s a blog, it should be cross referenced.
But nah.
Anyway, I think it’s important to recognise the junk food you eat. This year, I spent a month or so learning everything I ever wanted to know about Survivor, and then forgetting it just as quickly.
Decemberween ’23 — This Year’s ASMRtists
If you’re not familiar with it, ASMR is an abbreviation meaning ‘autonomous sensory meridian response,’ a science sounding name for a reaction that some people get to a range of stimuli. This effect can be caused by a whole host of triggers but at least in the community on Youtube there’s a body of people who engage with it because of its ability to affect relaxation and restful mindsets. If you’re not familiar with what this looks like, it looks like a bunch of people making long videos with a strangely hushed affect.
And I watch and listen to them, to help me relax!
If you are familiar with it, hey, here’s some of the artists I’ve been watching this year, as the ASMR effect shifts around in my head and how I respond to it. One thing that people who don’t experience ASMR might not realise is that you can rely only on the effect being modestly unpredictable. Some stuff may cause it reliably for months and then suddenly, nothing. It pushes me to partake of new things regularly, and to that end, every year, I try to look at what artists are ‘new’ to me that I haven’t mentioned before.
Here then are four artists that I started paying attention to this year:
Continue Reading →Decemberween ’23 — Behind The Bastards
I like depressing media, apparently.
Produced by Robert Evans and a bunch of other people I can’t immediately credit off the top of my head, Behind the Bastards is a podcast that releases about three episodes a week, with a standardised format of Robert, with research on hand, explaining a historical narrative about the worst goddamn people in history, both current and in the past, and the ways in which their ways of being have resulted in a suckier world. Evans’ particular style of journalism is extremely dry and sarcastic, but also seems to project just holding tight on a deeply white hot held rage about the world and the way it is.
And he podcasts about it, reading this story to a friend, who gets progressively more sad and upset over the course of the episode.
Continue Reading →Story Pile: Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
Fox and I bring back the Disney Animated Canonball band together for one last ride as we look at the attempts of Disney to use their existing characters to tell a Christmas story. It’s not good! In fact, it’s pretty dire!
Decemberween ’23 — Skip Intro
I think I’ve done a great job of making this month’s festival of free media for your engagement particularly educational, and I’m not planning on stopping. Part of Da Ween is revelling in honestly appreciating the things I really like, and so, I should, surely, share these things that make me laugh, make me smile, and make me think.
Anyway, I watch Skip Intro to learn about American policing systems as represented in media and provide a comprehensive breakdown of the different facets of copaganda, an insidious practice that’s used to reinforce racism and classism and just all the isms that capitalism likes.
Wheeee.
Continue Reading →Decemberween ’23 — Drawfee
If you’re passingly aware of being funny on the internet, a discipline started with Seanbaby, perfected by Loading Ready Run and then monetised by College Humour, you might already know about Drawfee. The Dropout network, the continuation of the thing that once was College Humour, has its own spinoffs, and its own subscription service.
I don’t have the subscription service, mind you. I just look at the stuff made by their artist spinoff, the artists who run a channel now known as Drawfee.
Drawfee is an artist channel, where the general gimmick, as repeated, is that they take your dumb suggestions and make even dumber drawings. They don’t, usually, the art they produce is full of character and life and there’s all sorts of ridiculous joy to be seen while these friends draw and talk to one another about drawing. There’s some stuff that talks about general trends in art – like the Octobertober, where they do a bunch of October art challenges, every day grabbing a bunch of random prompts from a different kind of art challenge, whether Cutegirltober or Inktober or Cringetober.
There are typically four standard artists – Karina, Jacob, Nathan and Julia – and they have distinct voices, art styles and interests. You’ll pick up pretty quickly who likes doing what, depending on the subject matter. Nathan has a very low key, chill vibe, Karina is a gremlin cat with a knife, Jacob is Standard Male Art Nerd, and Julia ignores the brief. And… that’s it. That’s the show. They show up, they make a video about them drawing, and that’s half an hour show, every few days. There’s a stream channel as well, for more long form art where they talk to one another, which has the energy of, well, hanging out with other artists.
Continue Reading →Decemberween ’23 — Technology Cult Documentaries
About a month ago now, I had a chat with a peer at work. We were talking about the way that one of our cohort had started research into the NFT Marketplace, and it was a rough place to be because he had to open every talk and presentation with ‘I know, but,’ and that was just fundamentally rough as a place to be as a researcher. We got talking about it and I mentioned, offhandedly, how all of the conversation around these things were obviously fake to me, and something like this followed:
Haven’t any of these people seen a cult before?”
“No, uh, I do think that that’s really a you thing.
And this stuck with me. I know about cults because I was in one. I had to dismantle the experience for a long time to get a handle on it. And right now, the way that cults had formed in digital spaces, meant that that kind of weird social experience might be so decontextualised people might not even notice them.
Fortunately, Dan Olson of Folding Ideas has done some great documentaries about cults that coagulate on the internet.
Continue Reading →Story Pile: The Christmas Shepherd
This Decemberween, Fox and I continued our tradition of watching a Hallmark movie, about Christmas and Dogs, with the amazingly named The Christmas Shepherd. Did we get dog training weirdness like we saw last year?
No.
We got something way weirder!
Content Warning: Dog Theft?
Story Pile: Do It Yourself!!
If your particular thing was anime about cute girls with a special interest where you could very easily interpret pretty typical social engagement as in fact, boilingly obvious non-heterosexual romantic attachment, then this time last year, you were probably one of the many people extremely into the extremely good anime Bocchi The Rock. Funny, energetic, vibrant and extremely focused on its own particular aesthetic representations of a hyper-real relationship between the modern capitalist landscape and why we are people who are not suited to exist in it when there are far more important things you can do, relating to one another, and how difficult it is to say what you really mean when what you are really trying to do is to reach out to another person, someone you may have never met before or someone you may know deep as your own family and tell them hey, I want to be loved, by you.
And that obviously arch and highly poetic description of Bocchi that I’m using in a way that definitely elides some of the details and decentralises some of its more obvious themes is nonetheless also a summary of Do It Yourself!! an anime from the same season, same time slot, but a different channel, meaning that at least in the time when we make anime fight for our attention in capitalist landscapes, meant that Do It Yourself!! got to lose to Bocchi’s immense stardom, a fact that I am sure would leave Bocchi herself so overwhelmed she would hide in a box like a Metal Gear protagonist.
A box that could be made exquisitely well by the crew that make up Do It Yourself!!
Continue Reading →T-Shirt: One Flesh One End
I didn’t start this year expecting to be profoundly affected by The Locked Tomb books. As I write this, I have only finished three of them BECAUSE THE FOURTH ONE ISN’T OUT YET, but sometimes, a design haunts the brain and wants to get out. Hey then, here’s a fanart design that I hope doesn’t violate a fanart policy.
And here it is being worn by a digitally stitched-on model
If you want to see this design on things, you can get it here! I would personally recommend, if you are in some way a giant jacked gay lady, that you should get a version of this shirt without sleeves, as it would make Gideon Nav proud (I think).
Story Pile: Bocchi The Rock
Deep breath Delightful, charming, lovely anime, great, thought it was funny, songs are a banger, basic premise is really well iterated on, minimum of Anime Bullshit, characters are all well realised and have interesting dynamics that relate to one another and the story is satisfying as it covers a number of small distinct enjoyable story beats and yeah okay, good. Good! Great! I really liked Bocchi The Rock and I think that if you like anxious girls and music and anxious girls who make music, then you’ll probably find the series pretty enjoyable!
I want to get that out of the way first because I don’t think you’d be well-served in any interesting way to see me talk about what happens in Bocchi The Rock! or if you ‘should’ watch it because it is ‘good.’ Anyone can tell you that, and so far, we have yet to find a ‘good’ anime, in part because no anime is good, and in part because the idea of ‘good’ media is silly. Instead what I want to do is talk about the things that Bocchi The Rock made me think about as I watched it, and the ways it made me feel, and why.
Continue Reading →Story Pile: Wave, Listen To Me!
Fox and I watched this really interesting non-weird comedy workplace story and talked to one another about it!
Story Pile: Deca-Dence
Hey, Fox and I watched this together, so we made this article together!
Story Pile: Willy’s Wonderland
Hey, you heard about the Nicolas Cage Five Nights at Freddies knockoff movie that was made in a single month? Have you heard it’s good?
Spoiler Warning of course, I’m going to discuss things in this movie. But also, Content Warning! This is a movie with a lot of your typical schlock tropes, there’s a needless sex scene where you Don’t Get To See Anything, there’s a lot of splashy, gory, wet violence against angry animatronics.
Continue Reading →Unmasked
You are become witness to a great becoming. As you look at the media before you, you are seeing a parallel reality constructed in front of you, as two different images of what is reasonable and typical and normal grow in front of you, and the one that is realistic and focused on what is actually true and actually existed and actually happened is the quieter, smaller, less seen one.
Content Warning: COVID-19 and related medical problems.
Continue Reading →Dread Readings — Granddad’s Gifts
T-Shirt: Valid To Eat Fingers Jujutsu Kaisen Shirt
I like the anime Jujutsu Kaisen. I like odd memes that make sense mostly if you’ve boiled your brain in Tumblr long enough that the conversation has cooked away and left nothing but meaning-chunks behind. Together, that resulted in this design:
And here it is, on a shirt!
This design has enough permutations that I thought it best to make a whole collection of them. You can have them in solid black, solid white, transparent lines, black text and white background, and of course, the gradient version I favour. They’re also on masks if you’re particularly weird about people being near your mouth!
Story Pile: Halloween (1978)
Continuing my ongoing experience of watching the classic horror movies that all the horror movies I saw was referencing, I decided to investigate what’s probably the dawn of the horror-slasher-serial killer genre of movies that fascinates me. I grew up in a world shaped by these movies, and the movies of my adolescence that wanted to be scary were often made in response to, or conversation with, these classic movies, so it’s time to pop open a movie about a relentless, unstoppable super-human killing machine that will not stop hunting you or delivering interesting, creative kills, until you’re dead.
This… is Halloween (1978, because I have to specify, because there was a 2018 movie).
Content and spoiler warning! I’m going to talk about some general suburban horror themes, and also, stuff that happens in the movie and its conclusion. You might not feel this particularly merits a warning, but in case you haven’t seen Halloween and wondered if it’s worth watching, and want to check it out without knowing what I think ahead of time, I liked it a lot, and it was very different to what I expected.
Continue Reading →Dread Readings — No Rez For The Weary
Story Pile: Jujutsu Kaisen (Spoiler Free)
Ya heard of this Jujutsu Kaisen thing?
It’s pretty good, I like it a lot.
Don’t worry, there are no spoilers after this point. Not even for the first episode. Jujutsu Kaisen is a really approachable series, if you accept up front you’re going to watch a violent horror anime full of likable characters who you’re going to see suffer as the show climbs to the latest peak of the latest heap that is The Next Big Shonen Battle Anime.
Locks Meant To Fail
Pretty much every lock you’ve used in your life sucks. Even the ones that aren’t meant to suck, suck. Let’s talk
Content Warning: I’m going to talk about chastity as a christian virtue, the spookiness of knowing locks don’t tend to work, about penis-having, and about guns.
