Chris

Idle Thumbs 214: Ship It, Droopy

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This episode was wonderful. The positive energy and enthusiasm was contagious.

 

 

I'm sure we all have the band members of the group playing in the cantina in Mos Eisley memorized, right? How could anyone forget Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes?

 

Band leader Figrin D'an on Kloo Horn,

Lirin Car'n on backup Kloo Horn,

Tedn Dahai and Ickabel G'ont both on Fanfar,

Nalan Cheel on Bandfill,

Doikk Na'ts playing Doremian Beshniquel (or as you might call it, the Fizz)

and of course Tech Mo'r holding it down on the Omni Box

 

 

Man, so iconic.

 

The Modal Nodes are maybe my favorite jizz band, but sometimes I like Max Rebo's early work with Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-Wailers

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I'll be that person who complains about the Life is Strange spoilers. I skipped ahead a couple of times and thought I'd gotten past the Life is Strange discussion, but heard a minor spoiler, and decided to just shut off the episode. Don't really care about the spoiler I heard, I'm more bummed I didn't get to hear the rest of the cast. Oh well, such is life.

Did you skip forward before they said when to skip forward to? Because they did actually put in a "skip to xx:xx" this time.

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I'll be that person who complains about the Life is Strange spoilers. I skipped ahead a couple of times and thought I'd gotten past the Life is Strange discussion, but heard a minor spoiler, and decided to just shut off the episode. Don't really care about the spoiler I heard, I'm more bummed I didn't get to hear the rest of the cast. Oh well, such is life.

 

I'm super happy to hear more Nick on the cast and am really looking forward to whatever disaster happens next week.

We specifically called out when spoilers were going to begin, and put a timestamp there. Did you jump into before that timestamp or something? Or are you saying you disagree about what we consider spoilers, and stuff after the timestamp is still considered a spoiler in your estimation? If so, what was the spoiler?

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I must have skipped before the notification then, sorry. I guess I was a bit paranoid because my wife wants to play it with me :)

 

Edit: Funnily enough I stopped as soon as you said "Warning, watch out, he can't be stopped!" I appreciate you looking out for those of us who like to wait for all the episodes to be out before playing.

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I turned it off when Chris said that people complain either way, taking that as a sign that there wouldn't be time stamps, but was helpfully informed of the time stamps by Vasari in the IRC channel. Thanks for going to the trouble, I would have missed out on the end of the cast otherwise :tup:

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The pay-per-play arcade on Xbox they talked about at the very end was called Game Room

 

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Game-Room/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d530901

 

It was literally a virtual arcade room with cabinets and everything. You could purchase single games for a quarter, or 'unlock' unlimited play for a few dollars. It lasted less than a year before it was pulled from the marketplace. 

 

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Game Room reminds me of this website I came across

 

http://www.myabandonware.com/

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I love the Life is Strange talk on the podcast, I'm really into that game right now and I'm enjoying it far more than I ever could have expected to. I'm looking forward to Life is Strange slowly taking over the entire podcast until it's the only point of discussion.

 

Failing that, I made a thread for it.

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McCool is a slightly less silly name than it might appear. It is similar to the common Anglicisation of the name of Fionn mac Cumhaill, a major figure in Irish mythology. The Irish pronunciation is a a bit more 'nuanced' than McCool, but there you go.

 

Alternately, Star Wars more like Blarp Blores

 

EDIT: Droopy remains a silly name.

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Oh wow, I forgot D4 was coming to PC, thanks Danielle!  Totally playing that tonight.  That makes me do a straight up little happy dance.

 

 

Also, the conversation about chowder is similar to the how bbq is treated in Kansas City.  People (including me) argue about some serious minutia in the differences of between various kinds of bbq, sauce, preparation, etc.  I love regional food obsessions, and how people become very possessive about particular types of food. 

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The Star Wars name talk reminded me of one of my favorite games:

 

"Hockey player or Star Wars character?"

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Oh god, that Good Reads thread.  I was a little afraid that Chris was overselling it, but nope, it's just as good as claimed. 

 

I'm not embarrassed at all. And all of you who are taking Cait S's side, what you're doing in the bigger picture is waging war on the consciousness of humanity. The end.

 

A thread about a 1 star review on Good Reads is "waging war on the consciousness of humanity."

 

Today is full of many good things. 

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Good on you, Bail. Or is it Ba'al?

Oh my god. Oh my god. This is the best.

"If you don't want to read my book, you are literally the devil." This is exactly the entertainment I needed today.

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I listened to the entire spoilers section for Life is Strange and that's probably what sold me on the game, weirdly enough.

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I listened to the entire spoilers section for Life is Strange and that's probably what sold me on the game, weirdly enough.

Same!

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I'm the only person I know that prefers Manhattan clam chowder to New England clam chowder. I probably like it because it isn't really a chowder at all, it's a tomato sauce and therefore more like a soupy version of a stripped down cioppino. I'm really not into the cream base used for a proper chowder; it's far too heavy for my taste.

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I first discovered there was a red clam chowder after watching Ace Ventura

 

 

Man, Reboot!  I loved that show.  I could go on about it here, but I think I'll do what Chris said and send in a reader mail instead.

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They're bringing Reboot back! It's a Reboot reboot!

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I was happy that spaff decided not to spoil episode 3 of life is strange because I, too, was sold on that game after that discussion

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There was a couple years where I thought I'd get into 3D animation and ReBoot and Beasties (Beast Wars for you Americans) being made in Vancouver was a big part of that.

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When I first saw the episode title, I assumed it referred to 'shipping, and there was going to be some joke about someone with the internet pseudonym of 'Droopy' creating romances between fictional video game characters.

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When I first saw the episode title, I assumed it referred to 'shipping, and there was going to be some joke about someone with the internet pseudonym of 'Droopy' creating romances between fictional video game characters.

 

That's a game jam.

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As a person who has 10 books worth of opinions about Deadly Premonition, I have found D4 to be very disappointing. You're right Danielle when you say the game is just wacky. While Deadly Premonition had a lot of ideas that no one except me found interesting, it did at least feel like it was trying to push something forward. It really committed to creating an environment that felt lived in and well-realized. I am the kind of person who can forgive terrible early-3D PS1/PS2 graphics because they are what I grew up on, so maybe that helped me get into the world, but there was also the fact that all the characters had routines and actual personalities, as opposed to D4's one-gimmick "characters".

 

I know I'm especially harsh on the game compared to people who didn't like Deadly Premonition or who just thought it was wacky, but as much as it feels stupid to say, Deadly Premonition felt reserved and subdued compared to D4. Yeah, it was goofy. The music was often mis-timed or just completely out-of-sync with the tone of the scene. The dialogue had a lot of awkward pauses, strange turns of phrase, and just baffling character moments. But behind it all it felt like there was actually an interesting story to be told, and the characters (even the side ones) felt like they had something to them. Even the Pot Lady (Log Lady stand-in), who you only meet to drive around and hear her rant about her pot, had a backstory that you could learn about. Plus if you explored enough you'd find characters interacting in ways that never even come up in the main game, like Diane (museum owner) going over to visit Polly (hotel owner) on certain nights to have dinner and keep her company. That is a subtle character moment that is never shown in a cut-scene; it is purely player-discover-able and actually quite fascinating to people like me!

 

In D4, I felt immediately annoyed by the completely one-note "woah isn't this a wacky idea for a guy" characters. David, Forrest, and Amanda are OK, but - forgive me for forgetting the names - the panicked lady in the airplane, and the fashion designer just blew me away with their complete nothingness. They are catchphrase characters. They are nothing. It blows my mind that it is even the same person making these games. D4 feels to me like a game inspired by Deadly Premonition, not one by the same person. I do really like the art style though, for what's that worth. 

 

(Also this is super just me but I don't like the swearing in D4. It just feels weird.)

 

Sorry for the rant. I'm really lame and care a lot about dumb Japanese video games. 

 

Speaking of those, I too played Neko Atsume! I am a person who tries to know Japanese so I found it kinda fun to see how well I could get around those menus and the cat animations were pretty cute. After a few days I saw all the cats I wanted to see and then I thought "Okay!". 

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By the way, here are some of the quotes from that Goodreads dude. They're awesome.

 

Do you have empathy? Do you know what it’s like to make something for a living? Are you human? Or do you just look at other people like they’re automatons that you can slander as though your actions don’t manifest consequences? Trust this. Me confronting someone that defaces my work says nothing about me other than the fact that I address it when someone goes out of his/her way to do so. But you left a 1 Star review on someone’s life’s work, someone who is trying to warn people what’s going on in this world so that they can protect themselves and help others, and think that is a moral action. 400,000 children go missing each year in the US alone. Do you know where they’re going? Do you know who’s behind it? Do you know why the media is silent about it? Do you know how much a person risks to confront the evil that’s running amok in this world? YOU don’t know right from wrong. And that’s what a review like this says about the person that wrote it.

I’m not embarrassed at all. And all of you who are taking Cait S’s side, what you’re doing in the bigger picture is waging war on the consciousness of humanity. The end. If this interaction prevents you from reading my work, it’s okay. I’m not offended. I don’t want your money, nor do I want you having a bad experience by reading my books. What bothers me is when people that operated at a low level of consciousness defame the work of people that are trying to help humanity, and no one helps humanity better than artists.

NO. I don’t want you to do anything because you’re immoral. Leave this up so that every person henceforth can see ALL OF YOU for what YOU ARE. DESTRUCTIVE to consciousness and humanity. What you’ve done to me, you do to YOURSELF, because if you KNEW anything about anything, you’d know we were all connected to each other, and instead of destroying each other’s work, you’d be supporting each other, which is why I will NEVER behave like ANY of you immoral people, and I won’t go seeing what you’ve written or done in the world so I can destroy that. No, I will only defend my work against EVIL.

And today, all of you see why EVIL IS KICKING HUMANITY’S ASS, and why the human condition is SLAVERY.

THAT’S what The Tale of Onora is about, and if you can’t grasp that, then BE GONE!

To you, that you may awaken to understand that the whole universe is a dance of energy, and that energy is God, and that energy is you. You are something that the whole universe is doing, that God is doing, just as a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. The real you, the energy, the soul, is not a puppet that life pushes around. The real you is the whole universe. The real you is God, destined to follow no one, destined to ignite the ether and experience life from an individual perspective and take part in the creation. So this is for you, my fellow creators, my fellow gods, and my fellow selves, that coincidence may never disguise itself with the mask of fate and torment you, that every moment be meaningful, and that no experience be lost.

 

His name is Dylan Saccoccio, and his book is The Boy and the Peddler of Death, which was mentioned on the podcast.

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