AMA: Radio Call-in Hour

[radio414 906]

21 minutes ago, Yui said:

What's a pun you've always wanted to drop on someone but could never find the window for it to happen naturally?

Most of my puns happen in the moment. Sure, that means they're very surface level, but most puns are anyway, so that's never been too big a deal for me. And I like to think I've gotten pretty good at spotting opportunities, too, so it's not like I have any huge regrets about missing any.

That doesn't mean that I haven't tried to get people to fall into traps ever. The first time I saw one of these Pearls Before Swine strips I wanted to walk someone down that same narrative path. It failed.

Most recently I've been wanting to tell "the horse joke," a long-winded story about the highs and lows of rock-and-roll fame that ends, like all horse jokes do, with "a horse walks into a bar. the bartender says, 'why the long face?'" but I've never found the time to tell it yet.

[LordCowCow 840]

Opinion on anime idols?

[radio414 906]

10 minutes ago, LordCowCow said:

Opinion on anime idols?

I don't really have one? Like, I'm aware they exist but it doesn't really seem like my thing.

[LordCowCow 840]

What's your opinion on the MCU movies? In general and what the best/worst of it are

[radio414 906]

2 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

What's your opinion on the MCU movies? In general and what the best/worst of it are

It's important to start with some history, since Marvel movies have been "a thing" for twelve-ish years now, starting all the way back in 2008 with Iron Man. My parents were the "no seeing PG-13 movies until you're thirteen" sort of people, so I didn't even see any of them right away. My mom has a celebrity crush on Robert Downey Jr., though, so she got into them on the ground floor, relaying information to me (because of course I was curious about them) until she took me to my first Marvel theatre experience in Iron Man 2. From there it was a straight shot to The Avengers with my dad, and as I grew up, I continued to see them with family or friends.

Of the twenty-two movies released thus far, I've seen ten of them. I know that comes out to less than half, but that also comes out to one a year for that first decade, with the last one I saw being Black Panther. I was a casual viewer even at the best of times, completely ignoring any of the supplemental materials like Agents of SHIELD and overall my opinion of the series kind of reflects that. They're fine. Casting finds decent-to-inspired actors and gets them decent-enough scripts with decent-enough directors and crew including a second unit that, I imagine, stays the same throughout the series. They're adventure serials, and outside of the big Oscar push Black Panther got, I don't think they're intended to be much more than that.

But that same "fine-ness" is also probably my biggest problem with them. Because my favorite ones always have an extra style to them, whether that's the eighties aesthetic of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies or Taika Waititi's improvisational charm in Thor: Ragnarok (my actual favorite, to answer your "best" question). Other movies, like, say, Captain America: the Winter Soldier, don't. Winter Soldier is set up as a spy thriller -- a unique style to the Marvel movies in a bubble, but not to anything in the spy thriller genre. I'm not getting into details because this isn't a video essay but compare the Bourne movies (especially starting with Supremacy where director Paul Greengrass and cinematographer Oliver Wood came in). I don't think the Russo brothers, or anyone else who worked on that movie, get it to stand out from the crowd those movies inspired.

My least favorite is The Avengers because of similar reasons combined with not finding Joss Wheadon's dialog charming, though I desperately don't want to turn this into a negative rant. Again, they're fine, and I know I keep saying that phrase like it has ulterior meanings, but I truly believe that. I have concerns with how bloated the superhero film genre is becoming, but that's just me being cynical at the Hollywood machine, nothing more.

[yui 575]

What is your favorite word in the English language?

What is your favorite word outside of the English language?

[radio414 906]

15 hours ago, Yui said:

What is your favorite word in the English language?

What is your favorite word outside of the English language?

well if we assume "in" to mean "within the set of these three words: 'the, english, and language'" then i would say "the" is the most useful and therefore my favorite

More seriously, this isn't a question I think about too often, and I don't know if I can narrow it down to just one, but there are some goodies out there like "praxis" or "dialysis" that are more fun to say than anything else. "Colloquialism." "Xenial." I learned that last one from A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Outside the English language is a bit trickier because, although I know significantly fewer words, a lot of them, like "schaudenfreude" are technically loaner words so I'm not going to count those. I do have "Götterdämmerung" which I'm pretentious enough to use as the title of an RP, so I guess that?

[Skaia 578]

If you could host a show on the radio what kind of show would it be?

[radio414 906]

1 hour ago, Skaia said:

If you could host a show on the radio what kind of show would it be?

If I had the stamina and the wherewithal for it, I'd like a late-night block of time (preferably an hour, maybe 4 to 5 AM, though I could settle for thirty minutes) that would be dedicated to ambient soundscape dj sets or production. No ads (obviously), no commentary aside from maybe an introduction at the beginning, just chill. Something akin to Surf Solar or XYZ, which aren't technically ambient but are in the same wheelhouse, would be as intense as it would get.

Why late at night? I mean, I'd imagine that'd be the best time for it. Not that I wouldn't want listeners or anything, just that I'd want those listeners to talk about it in these mythical tones a la "if you tune your dial just right at such and such a time..." and that seems like a good way to add to that effect. 

[Skaia 578]

If you could make a board/table top game from any one series that currently does not have one, what would it be?

[radio414 906]

1 hour ago, Skaia said:

If you could make a board/table top game from any one series that currently does not have one, what would it be?

The term "golden age" is kind of loose, but I'm not the only one who says we're in a "golden age" of board games. There are so many good ones, offering so many different experiences that not only is standing out from the crowd difficult, so is finding a liscense that doesn't already have a board game attached. Even Portal has a board game.

Maybe something like Risk of Rain? I'm imagining a deckbuilding game (deckbuilding is a pretty standard mechanic these days, popularized by Dominion) where monsters spawn in and loot is randomly generated -- roguelikes and deckbuilding games probably go hand-in-hand in that regard -- but what I'd be most interested in is how Risk of Rain handles time. It seems simulatable enough, using some sort of counter, and the obstacles get more difficult the more counters there are, but the devil's in the details and this is just an elevator pitch.

An alternative would be to have an actual timer, and have it be a real-time sort of deal, I don't know how that plays with deckbuilding, but I'd be interested to find out.

[LordCowCow 840]

What things do you like on burgers?

What's the weirdest thing you've put on a burger and how was it?

[radio414 906]

5 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

What things do you like on burgers?

What's the weirdest thing you've put on a burger and how was it?

I'm probably the opposite of a burger purist? Tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cheese, whatever condiment, it all goes on. I understand the people that find that way of thinking unnatural and blots out the taste of the patty itself, but I really don't care. I don't get a burger because I want to taste something, I want a burger so I can mash a giant sandwich in my mouth.

I never had any "weird" things, but I have heard of a Luther burger, and if you have not, well, it's real simple. Imagine a normal burger. Now replace the bun with doughnuts. That's it, really. If I ever do try one, I'll let you know.

[LordCowCow 840]

Copy/pasting this so to cover all bases...

What's the five RP characters (from YCM or NCM) of yours you feel most attached to? And why; if not too much trouble?
If there's less than 5 you can think of just give the ones you can think of.

[radio414 906]

2 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

What's the five RP characters (from YCM or NCM) of yours you feel most attached to? And why; if not too much trouble?
If there's less than 5 you can think of just give the ones you can think of.

I only have ten characters worth talking about, and four of those didn't get more than, like, four or five posts. But I guess I can condense the remaining six down into a top five for you.

Number Five

Spoiler

Peter James Wilson III (Yu-Gi-Oh! Horizon) and Christopher Ellwood (Of Magic and Dungeons)

Okay, I lied about cutting one, but also, like, these characters are really similar? We talked about this elsewhere, and it's gotten better recently -- the last subway scene in Horizons really helped, at least for me but for a while, the "snarky, put-upon planner who has a weird relationship with his parents" could have described both of them equally. Now that Peter got to be a bit playful what with his magic trick, and with Chris (probably) about to get more character building in a round or two, they'll probably seperate in my mind, but for now, they're rather alike.

Number Four

Spoiler

Thomasin May Farros (Persona: Philosophy of Man)

You don't forget your first (okay, first after a decade-long hiatus). While looking back, I don't actually like her app that much, I end up writing a bunch of other stuff surrounding her that still sticks with me a bunch. So really, she's here on potential, and I keep wondering how I can adapt what I have written into something more substantial than an outline and a picture of some tarot cards. When I eventually did get to introduce her, I had a lot of fun with her posts, too; I think the "two truths and a lie" gimmick she introduced herself with was a good way to talk to her fellow classmates and I would recommend it to other school-set characters in the future.

Number Three

Spoiler

Felix the Starly (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Vernal Ventures)

Had a lot of fun making him and had a lot of fun playing him. This was the first character I made that was much more ready and willing to throw himself at other characters, which was a new and good experience for me, I think. He also had a few contradictions in him that were fun to write with, like his fear of heights leading to that dreadfully long collab or his desire to be liked even though he knows he already is. His "Core Memory" was also one of the better scenes I've written, I thought, or at least, the one "story bit" I had the most fun writing.

Number Two

Spoiler

Elsie Moonwort and Corbin (Grimm Nights)

This one isn't cheating, I promise. They're from the same app, and Corbin is, in flavor, as much a part of Elsie the Witch as he is his own raven. But as the posts have gone on, he's proven to be basically a natural foil for Elsie. It's good to set up character contrast early in an rp, I think. It helps people play off each other. And while there is some there between Elsie and other player characters, the fact that these two are frequently inseperable does help a lot with my own posting habits. Plus, I love the "better than you and knows it" attitude Elsie just naturally exudes.

Number One

Spoiler

Melissa Thomas Ashforth (Yu-Gi-Oh! Skies)

Speaking of character foils, Melissa is slowly proving to be one for most of the rest of Skies' cast? Like, I know Sai is also shy, but first of all, we never see him, and second, when Melissa and he did interact, it was still great, so, like, nyeh nyeh nyeh. I haven't seen a bad interaction involving her and someone else, and, with seventy-two posts under her belt, she's progressed as a person enough that she's starting to be really mutable in my mind. There are always defining "Melissa things", but also, like, I don't think she would have been making any school-saving plans seventy posts ago, and yet here she is doing just that, for example. It feels like she could fit any niche with a little finangling, which is good, because sometimes she has to. Oh, and her bible verse gimmick is fun to play with too. 

 

[Sethera 290]

1. What got you into RPing?
2. What do you enjoy most about RPing?
3. What question do you want to be asked most here? And what's the answer to it?

[radio414 906]

On 7/24/2020 at 11:36 PM, Waluigi said:

What got you into RPing?

It's a ramble of a story but I'll try and tell it as best I can.

Ten years ago, when the world was young, I was much more into the card-creation aspect of YCM. Yu-Gi-Oh was the recess game of choice for me and a rather small group of kids at my school, and, like any middle-schooler with a hobby, I wanted more of it. I couldn't tell you how I ended up on the card maker specifically; it's been too long for that. I guess what I wanted at the time was more people who played the game to talk to, but also I felt like I could conceive of a card or two. So for a few months I hung out in the card creation boards, making largely not-great cards that, thanks to some recent updates, I couldn't even show you if I tried, but I also never lost sight of my original goal, which was to try and play more people.

There were clubs that I could join (this was when clubs were more active) and I tried some of that, but I still felt out of place there? I can't really describe why; it's been too long for that. If I can guess, though, I think I had this subtle realization that playing by private messages wasn't really the experience I was looking for. There was a little part of me growing up that was always like, "I'm going to do this and I'm going to be the best at it." You know how young teens are, yeah? But there wasn't a lot of recognition in just messaging the club leader the results for recordkeeping.

Plus the club I joined died, like, weeks after I joined it. Not because of me, I'm sure, but it sure did die.

Right around that time, though, I spotted a few Yu-Gi-Oh RPs starting up, and decided that, if real dueling wasn't going to go anywhere, I could manage some fake dueling. Back then, there wasn't even a "hundred words a post" minimum to steal my moxy, or even any sort of quality control at all. Making an app seemed simple enough, and off I went.

I posted once, about a single sentence worth of contribution, and then disappeared.

The second time I tried to join an RP, I got into an argument with the host regarding some 5Ds lore. Not, like, minutiae or anything, it was about the signer tattoos. That's a bit of trivia for you: I'd seen, like, one Duelist Kingdom episode and one movie of the anime, and, outside of a few dozen Abridged Series episodes, that hasn't changed. So I ended up not joining that one. But I still felt the hooks sinking in. Now I could contribute to stories! I could be the best at that instead.

This continued for a year or two? The timeline starts to get fuzzy here. No RP promised to get, like, really off the ground, though there were some I had more fun in than others. I was around for some of the bigger changes to the RP culture, from OOC getting it's own subforum to the advance clause being introduced to the advance clause being mandatory (I can even tell you it was "four lines of text" not "one hundred words" back then), but, due to some personal issues, I ended up leaving the site, ghosting a couple rps in the process.

Anyway, several years later, after realizing I wanted to tell stories for, like, "realsies" (whatever that means) (also coming to that realization was a whole process that I won't get into here), I got nostalgic for the site I'd cut my teeth on, and so I figured I'd pop back in and see what was going on. There was a RP just starting up that looked interesting, and, well, here I am again.

On 7/24/2020 at 11:36 PM, Waluigi said:

What do you enjoy most about RPing?

This is a little hard to describe because I know just enough about the brain to know not everybody gets this, but there's this feeling I get when a character I've made jumps off the page. If I were to compare it to a similar feeling, it would probably be to when I realized I was ace? And yeah, making that comparison probably trivializes the struggle of coming to terms with an identity, but it's that same sort of "*Click!* 'Oh, that makes sense'" sort of idea. I don't know. It's not having the character talk to me in my head, which I know some authors describe their process as, it's more like when an idea comes into my head and I immediately realize that the character I'm writing for would totally do that. To use meme-y, reductive language, it causes my brain to make the good chemicals.

Anyway, that's my favorite part. It doesn't come for every post, or even for every character I've made (though it's not like I don't still enjoy the process without it) but that probably helps keep those moments special. It's something to chase.

Kind of as a logical conclusion of that, if you look at my list from the question above, the higher up you get, the more of these moments that character got. So that's a nice correlation.

On 7/24/2020 at 11:36 PM, Waluigi said:

What question do you want to be asked most here? And what's the answer to it?

I don't have one? LIke, there's no yearning for any specific question that I want to answer. If I did, I'd ask everyone else that question as a hint to ask me too, but I haven't, and I don't. I guess that makes me a quantity sort of person with regards to AMAs.

I will say, when I was playing Larry the Cucumber for Halloween, which I guess was my AMA by proxy, while I expected (and enjoyed) the vegetable and Christianity questions, I was kind of hoping for more out-there questions overall. Just something to throw me for a loop and get me really thinking about how to answer it in-character. Would Larry rather fight a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses? The answer is probably the horse-sized duck, because while both animals eat and enjoy cucumbers, there'd only be one gargantuan duck to fight.

Just because Junior Asparagus played Dave in their David and Goliath short doesn't mean Larry wouldn't be able to do it too.

Edited July 26, 2020 by radio414

[yui 575]

what is your favorite meme from 2010 or earlier?

[radio414 906]

13 hours ago, Summer Yui said:

what is your favorite meme from 2010 or earlier?

I'm not a memeologist, I just play one on the radio. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to pretend this is a "Top Four" question because I like those and I have opinions.

Honorable Mention

Spoiler

Dunking on "Three Chords and the Truth"

"But radio that's not a meme that's a cultural trend stretching back at least to the fifties and probably even before that." And that's true, sure. Maybe that's why it's in the honorable mention category rather than the list itself. But also, like, they're funny songs, Bront. Besides, ignoring the fact that our understanding of memes was drastically different in the aughties (apparently "viral" as in "going viral" or "viral marketing wasn't common until 2009? What's with that?), what is a meme besides a cultural trend?

Just a couple additional notes: yes that Axis of Awesome video was published in 2011 but they were doing this act for at least a year before then and also also this isn't the only video like it.

 

Number Four

Spoiler

Kilroy Was Here

Obviously not the first meme (it's based even on older graffiti symbols) but it's one that people point to when they think of "first meme", and I wanted to pay respects to its legacy in that way. It's just so dopey, the guy peeking over the wall and a guy attatched to it is instantly recognizeable. Interestingly, in the research I was doing for this bit, I learned that the character displayed isn't even named Kilroy. His name's Chad.

Chad.

Shoutouts to the Super S, by the way. They're similar enough that I had to choose one, and my bias went to the older one (Wikipedia says the S started appearing in the seventies, though obviously I wouldn't be surprised if there was an S and a Kilroy hanging out somewhere, waiting to be discovered).

Number Three

Spoiler

Neil Cicierega

What do you even put for this man? I mean, the video one of the very first Animutations (again, deferring to the oldest, I guess that's what happens when you're the older sibling), but what hasn't Neil done? Animutations (probably) paved the way for Youtubepoop. Potter Puppet Pals led to a horde chant of "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape" while Alan Rickman was doing press for a Harry Potter movie. The Mouth albums in their entirety. Lemon Demon. If we're talking about shaping aughties culture, like, these efforts certainly contributed a lot.

Number Two

Spoiler

 

Rickrolling

Listen just having a picture of a duck with wheels instead of legs instead of whatever the title of the post purported to be was never going to gain traction outside of the 4chan circles that created it. "Duckrolling? What's that?" and so on. Meanwhile Youtube had a burgeoning comment section that I'm sure was all to willing to explain to the incoming crowd right away just how they'd been duped. Add in an instantly-recognizeable intro, sincere to the point of cheese lyrics, and, well, you've got an icon.

Obviously it helps that Astley is such a good sport about it, even participating in the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade for such a purpose. He's said he doesn't really see much money from it, though I imagine the cultural memory (meme-ory?) didn't hurt his comeback albums. Of course, 50 is full of bangers so maybe he wouldn't have needed the help, but still.

Number One

Spoiler

Demotivational Posters

Just like you can trace a line from birds all the way back to dinosaurs, you can do just the same thing for image macros all the way back to demotivational posters, which, yes, makes these the dinosaurs of memes. I mean, unfortunately the biggest thing holding these back was the strictness of the format, especially with how like a third of the image basically always had to be taken up by a chunky black border, but hey, we all have to start somewhere. I won't go so far as to attribute these things to the gestation of the irony-poisoned culture the internet has today, but it'd be difficult to say they weren't a part of it in some way.

Bottom text.

 

[radio414 906]

Figure I should at least bump this past the monster amas, so here's some trivia about me in the meantime:

I played Chuck Tingle so obviously I should have a favorite tingler, right? I do, in fact. It's Slammed in the Butthole by my Concept of Linear Time, which was why I mentioned it when talking about Rammed By My Realization That I Am Not, In Fact, Chuck Tingle, Just Somebody Who Dressed Up As Him For Halloween.

I was in band in middle school. I played trumpet, though I jumped the band/sports divide to play soccer in high school. I wasn't very good at either.

I've never been to Boston in the fall.

[LordCowCow 840]

What's a phrase or saying you wish was used/acknowledged more?

Less?

[radio414 906]

On 12/7/2020 at 3:30 AM, LordCowCow said:

What's a phrase or saying you wish was used/acknowledged more?

I'm impressed that, with how Mean Girls seems to have such staying power with millennials, "fetch" never caught on, even ironically. I guess that's because "stop trying to make 'fetch' happen, it's not going to happen" kind of overtook it, and by the time we got to gen-z we got things like "gucci", but yeah, I'd try to make fetch happen.

On 12/7/2020 at 3:30 AM, LordCowCow said:

Less?

"No homo" can go jump off a sea cliff. You're allowed to be aesthetically attracted to people without being romantically or sexually attracted to them. You don't see me saying "No allo" every time I compliment somebody.

[LordCowCow 840]

If they made a Sacred Stones remake what would you want to see from it?

[radio414 906]

4 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

If they made a Sacred Stones remake what would you want to see from it?

Given that Sacred Stones is God's Perfect Game(tm), I'm not really expecting too much of a change. I might nerf Bishops because of how powerful they are in the endgame (plus you get, like, three of them), and I'd probably want more variation out of the Tower of Valni and Lagdou Ruins -- maybe even something procedurally generated? That's probably more work than they'll put into a remake but it's interesting to think about.

Actually what I really want to see is more difficulty sliders. From what I've heard, other FE games are already doing this with things like turning permadeath on or off, but I'd want to go further than that. Let me set enemy health percentage, whether or not weapons degrade (and how quickly), how aggressive the AI is, and so on. The more options I have the more I feel I'll replay the game (more than I already do, I mean).

Oh and fix that glitch where a wyvern knight can crash the game if they roll too well.

[Thar 502]

Who in Utena do you identify with the most so far?