JohnnyEnzyme

NYC, 1968...

(https://i.imgur.com/jNJiR3A.jpeg)

https://i.imgur.com/upeJYFT.jpeg

So, I posted this at the other place the other day, and got an interesting reply just now:

Comedically, I think they made the right call pivoting to a Bob Newhart style telephone bit where we have to imagine his side of the conversation.

XD
I guess without all his usual stammering and pauses? (IYKYK)

Note: for the record, I love Bob.

Honestly tho, I'm continually impressed by how so many actors across so many shows I watch (I'm currently watching "Nero Wolfe" and it's the same there) are so utterly great at imaginary phone conversations!

Yet it also makes me realise that the situation can be incredibly empowering for a competent actor. As in-- the phone is the prop that represents the other person, and you get to have *total control* over it in a way that you wouldn't otherwise, trying to properly sync well with real actors delivering their lines, which can sometimes be a total mess.

(if you've ever been in acting at almost any level, I think you know what I mean)

NOTES:

• When first looking for a place to post this, I tried searching the Fediverse for an acting community, but sadly couldn't find one. Any idears, mateys?

• I love the clip itself (from my favorite ep "Tuttle") but it's a bit embarrassing in some ways, just for the record. 1) it reinforces the idea that Margaret slept or consorted with total horndogs in the 1950's USA army, as long as they were generals and such, and 2) Hawkeye was a chronic chauvinist, something seen across many, many eps in this otherwise great, great series.

Yesterday I saw a post on r/Lemmy labelled Reddit Wins, bitterly complaining about how OP had given "Lemmy" their best shot, but unfortunately, kept running in to too many extremist communities across the LV (Lemmyverse). Me, I gave them some props for effort, but also said, basically-- "I'm not convinced; here's what you do for best results."

Funny, and now today, I'm seeing a post over here titled "What's the best way to fuck over sites (like Reddit)." [link], and I similarly get the basis of OP's hatred, and yet... and yet... I'm wondering if there's a sort of middle-ground that might exist between the two poles, so to speak?

Following is one of my 'solutions,' but I'd enjoy it if anyone reading wanted to chime in with their own thoughts & ideas:

Cutting to the chase-- creating our [needed community] has worked surprisingly well for my group in the FV, with the understanding that we need to populate it a bit before it 'soars like an eagle' via it's own accord. But, point is-- our 400+ subscribers in less than four months of existence tends to indicate to me that: 1) our community really *is* appreciated, and 2) niche communities like ours get a vastly outsized, opportunistic share of the "ALL" stream, compared to Reddit, in which a little 'venture' like ours would barely get seen, typically.

Now say what you want about Lemmy, but isn't that a pretty dang cool opportunity, on the whole?

Thoughts..?

This mini-essay is in response to THIS post, which explored the idea of doing a 'Heathcliff without Heathcliff' strip as a response to its competitor Garfield's succesfull 'Garfield without Garfield' fan-made series.

Now to be frank, Heathcliff is a comic I already considered far more interesting & amusing than Garfield long ago, yet I've been generally disappointed by it since around 2010, and feel that creator Peter Gallagher recycles way too many jokes these days.

Which I consider to be a real shame, because for a while there he was not just evolving past the formulaic, funny-animal template his uncle George Gately started with back in 1973, but taking it to genuinely wild new heights. Indeed, starting around 2000 (I think it was), Gallagher started taking the strip in some pretty gonzo, surreal directions, breaking various comics conventions along the way, but doing so mostly successfully. In truth, he added an enormous breath of new life in to the strip as I see it. You can check this out yourself starting in 2002, HERE.

A couple years ago on Solrad there was even a pretty amazing series of unusually complimentary articles, exploring what made modern Heathcliff so unique and interesting. Those can be read HERE.

I agree a lot with @[email protected] about this strip in question not really needing the cat's presence to work, but what's more interesting to me is that you can also see traces of Gallagher's weird inventiveness going on. For example, how does one *possibly* drop a reanimated mummy (lol) in to a surfing / beach scene, and how is it that the kids view the spectacle as anything remotely ordinary? The delight here is that there's no context whatsoever, and little of anything helpful in past strips to help explain it, other than the likelihood of the character being used before. Or quite possibly used many times, as with "The Garbage Ape" who typically runs along the streets, swinging welded-together trash cans for no apparent purpose. (I wish I was making that up)

Somehow and unexpectedly, as a one-off event, it simply works. And really, as a very occasional repeat, I think it also works. For me, where it begins to annoy is when it's used more often that that, in which the lack of any added information & context actually works against the gag. So we rarely if ever learn anything more about the demented ape (or the surfing mummy), or see him in an amusing new light, but are still expected to be entertained as readers, so to speak. That's kind of emblematic of the problem with modern Heathcliff, in that there's somewhere under a known set of a ~dozen types of once-gonzo gags, with Gallagher mostly rotating endlessly between them, calling it a day and expending little if any artistic effort in the process.

Nice gig if you can get it, I suppose, and maybe that works for some readers, but personally I moved on ages ago. Still, I thought the strip had a brilliant run and evolution in the 2010's or so, not unlike the Simpsons animated series having a great run in the 1990's, so maybe we should just be satisfied with that?

Mon français est assez mauvais, mais... haha!

<click the bolded for Play Store links, which includes pics & more info>

• Asterius - Terrific, sprawling, puzzle-ish roguelike, easy to play but with lots of secrets to discover, and a long learning curve to win. (note: I've written a guide with hints, which I'd only recommend using as a last resort)

• Bounty Hunter Space Lizard - Ah, so delicious. It's a fun roguelike, a bit like Pixel Dungeon, but with more condensed runs, and loads of character. As with PD, you'll move through different stages and battle different end-bosses.

• Caves Roguelike - If you're a fan of Pixel Dungeon, but want a different roguelike experience, then here's one with huge amounts of variance upon each run, and devilishly challenging foes the deeper one descends. More than just being a pure 'RL,' it also offers RPG-style levelling up, meaning that even terrible runs can be useful. Indeed, I feel pretty confident in saying that Caves is the most detail-oriented RL that's ever been created.

• Choppa - This is a ridiculously fun, hilarious, physics-style helicopter game in which you set out to rescue disaster survivors amidst annoying obstacles and deadly explosives. It's got a nice leveling-up system so that you can build yourself better whirlybirds over time, and features a small but excellent collection of scenarios to try. Let's face it, tho-- altho it's a real challenge stringing together a series of successful rescues, it's just as much fun getting blown up, drowned, or causing a chain-reaction of explosions, especially when carrying a survivor, who hates getting wet or covered in soot, and will endlessly berate you when that happens. ^ ^

• Daddy Was a Thief is a highly-original, vertical-style, platform-runner mashup. The love & humor are in the little details, in which you'll be trying to avoid a mad scientist's shrink ray and an angry granny trying to kick you to the moon, meanwhile trying to hop in to a bathtub, going for a short, smashing ride, collecting bits of loot. The game is a wild-ride rush of dynamic comic sequences, which will entertain you for a good while before eventually getting repetitive.

• Doug Dug - Probably the best action-drilling game I've ever played, but one that requires both slow & fast decision-making, such as how to handle various rock formations, risks & enemies, and what to do in an emergency. (costs US$1)

• Enyo - And here we have an absolute masterpiece, something of a chesslike game, but with all new pieces, in which you battle the enemy across a paved lava pit (which becomes progressively un-paved). It's fortunate that your small army of enemies aren't very bright, because you only have one piece to play with, which features a deadly grappling hook and (Captain America-style) a flingeable shield. Not only is this a highly-inventive game design, but it's fun, and endlessly replayable.

• Gurk 3 - This is a tile-based RPG, roughly in the style of the classic Ultima series, in which a three-person party explores a vast map, upgrades & levels-up little by little, and ultimately defeats the realm's greatest of evils, i.e. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Ron DeSantis (just kidding, it's actually just a generic evil villain). This isn't a ground-breaking game in any particular way, but it's good, solid gaming fun, in classic style, that for some reason doesn't have many analogues in Google's Play Store. (it costs US$2, and is well worth the price)

• Hoplite - If I was stranded on Gilligan's Isle, allowed only one digital game to play, I think I might just choose this masterpiece of a tactical/strategic roguelike. The idea is to progress through a number of levels, past archers, bomb-tossers, assassins and spellcasters, in order to grab the fabled Golden Fleece, then step through a portal, returning home. Alternatively, one can choose to play on, encountering tougher and tougher waves, before ultimately succumbing, leaving a huge swath of dead bodies in your wake. At the same time, one can perform minor feats along the way to unlock special abilities. It really is these abilities that you earn that make the game so interesting and long-lasting. For example, stringing together a series of special moves to defeat a gang of enemies can be an artistic, movie-like, dopamine-rush feeling. No joke.

• Life in Adventure - I'm a fan of the 'choose your own adventure' genre, and there are many fine ones out there (such as the excellent Choice of Games series). What makes LIA stand out from the crowd is how much one can customize the experience, for example in choosing which subplots to mix in to your character's main storyline. That's on top of choosing your profession, traits and stats distribution. In addition to the usual text experience, this game adds lovely, retro, 8-bit art to liven things up. All the tokens needed to do unlocks can be earned through watching ads when needed, a perfectly fair deal, I'd say.

• Mind Wall - Another simple, original, action- gaming idea, flawlessly executed. In this one, you're holding a Tetris-like shape, and can choose one (and only one) block to punch out of a fast-approaching wall, in order for your shape to fit through. That may or may not sound like an interesting concept, so I'll let these guys have their say. There's a good number of options and modes to keep this one fresh for a long time.

• Miniature Land 3 [iOS link] - A pleasant, atmospheric little outdoor adventure, but this one uniquely features a doll-house sized landscape. The puzzles are of medium-difficulty and satisfying to solve. Unfortunately, looks like this just got pulled from the Play Store, so you'll have to look for an APK or play it on iOS.

• My Friend Pedro - Yet another cool, stylish game I've never seen the likes of before. In this mafia/assassin-style platformer, you swipe and press to perform n-style (remember that classic Flash-platform ninja game?) acrobatic leaps, but in this case it's in bullet-time, which adds a strategic element to the fight.

• One Epic Knight - Sure, there are plenty of RPG-style endless runners out there, but the personality of the main character really makes this one stand out. He's a Valley Boy (think "Snake" from The Simpsons) dressed in Knight's armor, running through a dungeon, dodging the usual enemies & traps, all the while keeping up a hilarious commentary. But more than just that, the game is nicely balanced in the powerups & upgrades category. It's tough, but fair.

• Retro Highway - Smooth, fun, RPG-ish racing game with lots of challenges to beat over time. Also, there's an impressive amount of technique to be learned, such that simply upgrading bikes won't instantly make you better.

• Rust Bucket - Aaron Steed has dressed up his minimalist-classic Ending puzzle-roguelike with snazzy new graphics & characters. Features all new puzzles with each playthrough, and gets progressively harder. There's endless gameplay here.

• Seedship - You're a sentient AI in charge of navigating a colony ship to a new world on behalf of a crew of frozen colonists. You have an array of sensors to examine each new world, trying to find the best possible one (they all have flaws). Meanwhile, your systems are slowly dying, and the ship will eventually stop functioning one day. What to do, what to do? Finally, after you choose your new planet, time will flash-ahead, and you'll be given a score and a long assessment of how things worked out in the new civilisation.

• Tactikon 1 & 2 - These are some great remakes of the classic Empire strategic wargame. If you're familiar with the Advance War series, these are similar, but without all the talking heads. Note: As usual, Google seems up to its old tricks, so you'll have to hunt down the APK if you want to play.

• Total Party Kill - Very clever puzzle-platformer, in which you coordinate the actions of a warrior, an archer and a wizard in order for one of them to escape each level. That's right-- everything's fair in love, war & "TPK," including ruthlessly snuffing your buddies if it helps one character make it to the exit. For example, in which the warrior kills a buddy and kicks him on to a switch that otherwise isn't accessible, or the archer shoots & pins a buddy against the wall so as to help him climb up. Etc, etc. It's a delightful naughty concept, perhaps best played with a game controller instead of touch screen.

• Lemmings - This one differs in being fairly well-known, but offers a tonne of casual gameplay via thousands of puzzle levels inspired by classic Lemmings. In this version, the levels are very easy at first, but become much harder as one progresses. There's also special challenge levels that can be played at any time. HINTS: I strongly advise hoarding coins & resurrection powerups (you'll eventually need these for near-impossible levels), and avoiding offers of free lemmings. The whole 'collectible Lemmings' concept can similarly be ignored. Drawbacks? Well, there's a micro-transaction system that's completely optional, and voluntary ads for extra items. All in all, there's a load of long-playing value here for the cost of nothing more than letting an ad play when you want a free perk.

--Johnny

The attached art is a high-quality scan from the book Go Team Venture!: The Art and Making of The Venture Bros.

For those unfamiliar, "The Venture Bros" is both glorious tribute & pointed satire to Hanna-Barbera's Jonny Quest, as well as dozens of other media franchises, classic tropes, as well as the gimmicky superhero industry. It originally aired on Adult Swim in 2003, and currently has an 8th season coming out soon, in the form of a movie called Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, set for a late July '23 release.

The creators of Venture Bros are Doc Hammer (real name Eric Hammer), and Jackson Publick (real name, Christopher McCulloch). Below is an interview snippet in which they address the clonic, morbid nature of Hank & Dean: (i.e. the titular Venture Bros)

...

JP: The dead clones running around was pretty hot. In the parade of zombie boys, many of them do match the deaths that we did see.

DH: We've gotten a couple of additional ones from what we saw previously, in the rundown of their various deaths. I don't think we had seen the drowning ones before.

JP: When Brock and Doc are talking about how many times they've done this, they name how many times the boys have died. But that doesn't mean that they each didn't have a death. It's not necessarily a total.

As to what they'd do if a Dean died but a Hank didn't die, it might depend on whether or not the Hank was around to see it happen. If Hank's out of the room, maybe they say, "Dean had to go away for a few days:'

We almost had a gag about Brock having to snap the other one's neck when that happens, which may explain why he's so quick to answer Hank when he's turning into a living bomb in season 1. Brock answers, without a thought. Probably because he's had to do it.

DH: These are the sorts of things that plague Dr. Venture—that he has murdered his kids so many times—but only on a very deep, subconscious level. It's something that he's so good at lying to himself about, and that's part of what makes Dr. Venture not Benton Quest. Benton Quest is a cardboard cutout of a human being. Everything he does is right and righteous, and everything that Doc does is kind of an inherited con-struct that he lies to himself about. And he lies to himself perfectly, so when you get into his subcon-scious, you have all the suppressed lies to himself. His inadequacies, the fact that he has to murder his sons, and just that sense that he doesn't quite know who he is and he has a soul divided.

Mario's work appears only occasionally in his two brothers' classic series, but I always find it interesting how different it is in form & tone than their work. Personally, as someone fascinated by life processes, this short story reminded me a lot of how wild certain planktonic life cycles can be, with animals going through multiple stages before reaching their adult forms. Side note-- I loved how Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama got in on that action, hehe.

Ah, and the language! To me it's just as original and unique as the art & concept, with new words being invented, familiar words being used as different word-forms, and so forth. Not unlike the wonderfully inventive short poem Jabberwocky, which appears in Alice in Wonderland.

Note: if it's not clear, the six-page story is viewable by clicking the title, or right here.

Btw, the story title is almost certainly a tribute to a YES song from their 1971 album, Fragile. If you'd like to give it a listen, check it out below:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=YES+shindleria

This roughly corresponds to my guide "My 12+ steps to improving your Reddit experience", but in this case is written as a brand new Lemmy user (as of 6/18/2023). To be clear-- I'm a Redditor who's interested in giving Lemmy a full test drive, entertaining the idea that I might fully move here one day.

EDIT: Here's an update, two months later. The question was "How do I find the FV?" and here's my reply:

I agree with others that it's not yet suited to take on a mass exodus of Redditers. While the basic look & feel is mostly there, many advanced features are *not*, including ones provided by the great "RES" (Reddit Enhancement Suite).

For example, right now there's only the "All" or "Subscription" streams available, and no "multi-reddits" or "Friends" streams. Multi-reddits in particular were incredibly useful, as they provided a way to build an unlimited number of custom-themed subreddits.

Another problem it seems to me is that the ability to page through a stream is very limited right now. Only 20 topics show up on a page, and getting to new content can be a bit of a chore unless one keeps the tab open, I suppose. The current inability to hide posts just exacerbates all that.

Btw, HERE is an interesting thread, with lots of people making interesting points about what they like & dislike, currently.

I'm not quite done with the new comments above, so I'll add more, later. Original comments are below:

Now let's see what I can figure out. :D

• I'm currently using "lemm.ee" as my homebase, but there are in fact almost 900 current "instances" (i.e. servers or server groups) within which to access "The Fediverse." [see handy chart] That said, this particular instance (server) seems to be one of the best across the Fediverse, and so far I'm very happy with it.

• As I understand it, on any of these instances, someone can create a user name just like mine, and create "communities" (like subreddits) named exactly like other communities on other instances. This confuses me on one hand, but OTOH, seems like a natural property of the P2P nature of the Fediverse. [NOTE: Haha, you can create anything, anywhere, but populating it with material? Good luck, son!)

• As has been explained to me, my posts & comments made on this one particular instance (again, "lemm.ee") are stored locally to its servers, but also copied to other instances just after my submissions are created. In other words, if this instance permanently goes down for whatever reason, at least some other instances will preserve any content I'd created while they were online.

• There's no restriction at all (far as I know) from creating multiple ID's across multiple instances, and indeed, it seems to be a pretty decent way of 'locking in' my username across The Fediverse, such that bad actors & copycats will have less opportunity to cause trouble for me one day.

• I'm not sure whether the same approach is a good idea in terms of communities. I'd rather think not, actually, as I see little reason multiple name-matching communities shouldn't exist across multiple instances. Friendly competition and all that... let the users decide where to go.

• As a longtime Redditor, finding communities can be tricky, but one can do it from both one's home instance, as well as resources like these: [1], [2]. So far I find that those latter sources catch more communities than my home instance, with the caveat that one most manually paste in any communities that one wishes to subscribe to. So again, the decentralised nature of The Fediverse makes the Lemmy experience slightly trickier than the 'one-stop-shopping' nature of Reddit. Still, that's also the safeguard against Lemmy trying to go profitable one day, and against CEO power trips, as there isn't a CEO in The Fediverse.

• As a small-time Reddit content creator (commonly graphic novel reviews and sample scans), I'm not quite sure where to post new material. For example, most of the subreddits I'm used to publishing in don't seem to exist as communities here.. yet! My working idea then is to try publishing either here, on my homepage, or possibly on my blog, than cross-posting my content to a range of communities here that might be able to appreciate it. I'm frankly not a huge fan of that, but am unsure what other approach would be best at this time.

• I have utterly no idea how able Lemmy's instances are going to be able to handle sudden influxes of Rexxiters, for example when the 30th comes, and the 3rd party apps die en masse. For example, our local admin seems to imply here that there can be a certain amount of strain to these things, and I recall seeing a couple admins on a Dutch instance publicly complain that the increased traffic has made it much harder to meet their agreed-upon development goals with the NL govt, which cuts in to their actual salary. As I understand it, that's because their two-man dev crew has been almost totally consumed with customer support and patching bugs & stuff.

• This is perhaps a little premature on my part, but I'm going to add it anyway-- knowing how Reddit mgmt operates, is it possible they one day make a concerted effort to crash the Fediverse via bots, spam, DDOS, false actors, false controversy and whatever else? Do the body of Lemmy instances have a way of combatting things like that. I wonder. EDIT: Even now, there's evidently massive bot signups going on. Whose are they, exactly? My admin is responding thusly.

• My eyes aren't the best, so I'm happy to see that in Chrome (and hopefully Firefox), increasing text size up to 125% works well with Lemmy's sidebar. (CTRL-plus and CTRL-minus to play around with that)

• Some major features of Reddit (and RES) seem to be missing, such as the ability to hide posts and to create "Multi-Reddits," which are custom streams, i.e. a different set of communities in each stream.

• I see talk of Kbin 1) currently having better features than Lemmy, and 2) Lemmy core devs & their home base having a questionable stance on human rights. So at the very least, seems like a good idea to make a Kbin acct as well and try surfing from that side of the Fediverse.

• Despite fiddling with sort methods, the ALL stream seems to pull new content to the top (beginning) of the list, which makes it a lot harder to keep my place and make sure I've glanced at everything. In other words, it means that I need to scroll both forwards and backwards to find new content. Very strange.

• Despite whatever little kvetches & complaints I'm making, it must be said that I also feel a sense of excitement & empowerment, hanging out here and learning how things work. On Lemmy, I feel like I'm part of something legitimate, maybe even noble, as opposed to being part of a corrupt machine, as with Reddit. And while I'm still confused about how lots of things work, I'm loving the challenge of learning and adapting.

• Altho I'd hoped to full transition over in a relatively short amount of time, I'm coming to realise that it's probably best to see the Fediverse as a long-term adjustment (and investment). There are multiple reasons for that, such as the general learning curve, hooking up with communities that correspond to my favorite subreddits (many of which don't exist yet), and letting the Lemmy & Kbin suites & instances improve and catch up to the load of Rexxiters.

--Johnny