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Classic City Vibes
Classic City Vibes Podcast - Conversations with people in the Athens, Oconee and surrounding communities who help make this such an amazing place to live. Learn what is going on in one of the nation’s most famous music, film and art scenes, learn about some of the amazing opportunities around us where you can be active and interact with others who have similar interests. This podcast is put out by the Athens Regional Library System where we are committed to helping build strong communities and celebrating our diversity. Engaging Communities, Exceeding Expectations.
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Classic City Vibes
Mothrea Immortalis: Resin Artist and Vtuber
Learn about Vtubing, Resin art and more with local artist Mothrea Immortalis.
Bio: "this bug knows some stuff or something like that"
You're listening to Classic City Vibes. My name is Zach Wilder. I am your host. And with me is my IRL son, Mothra Immortalis.
SPEAKER_02:Hello.
SPEAKER_05:Could you introduce your freaky little self, pronouns, and give us a little overview of all the kinds of works that you make, especially the digital ones? Anything you want to talk about, just go ahead and and give us uh a primer for it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so uh my name's Moth. Uh I use He De Pronouns uh and I uh do resin crafts and make like dice boxes and stuff. Uh I stream on Twitch. Uh it's literally just those two things. Well I mean cosplay also, I guess. I have a cosplay TikTok account.
SPEAKER_04:Cosplay def oh I Oh right, right. But do you do you update that often?
SPEAKER_03:Uh only when I go to cons and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we're doing conventions and then nine times out of ten I forget because I'm just like, I'm here. I'm gonna be here.
SPEAKER_05:I mean that oh god, that's that's the like paradox of social media to me, is like you have to take yourself out of the moment to document it. And like if you're an artist, you just kind of have to do that now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:It's not really you don't or you you traditional wisdom or now conventional wisdom is that you should be doing it, but like it's like why would you want to do that when you're you know at the place having the having the time?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:If you're in cosplay at the convention, like you should be doing cosplay convention stuff and not pointing a camera at your own face.
SPEAKER_03:I think the only time that I actually made anything for my TikTok. I mean, I think the only time uh it was this it was last year for Dragon Con, was the last time that I posted on my cosplay TikTok, and it was literally just me dressed as Chilchuck, went with the intent to make this video to the bar in the hotel, ordered a beer, and sat and videoed me drinking it. Was the video that I made. Did I even see you in the Chilchuk cosplay? I think I think so, because I played it was when I was in the full fit that we played Commander.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, I I was probably focused on the Commander.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:I was uh eyes on the prize trying to win that game.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. And I was just sitting there, hey, it's me, Chilchuk Dungeon Meshi.
SPEAKER_05:It's me, Chilchuk Dun Dunge.
SPEAKER_02:It's me, Chilchuk Dungeon.
SPEAKER_05:So you were you were saying a second ago that you only did like two kinds of art forms, but the the thing about those art forms is that they have a lot going on with them, right? There's like many subdisciplines. Um when you say you make resin crafts, there's a lot that goes into that. And maybe uh the folks listening aren't like super uh knowledgeable about that sort of thing. So there's like you know, construction, con concept, and then there's the actual pouring and curing, and then you have to make the molds and all sorts of stuff. Um there's a lot that goes into it, is what I'm trying to say. And the same thing with uh you were the other thing you mentioned was streaming, right? And there's a lot that goes into that too. Like the your specifically the way that you do it. Uh is you have like camera work and lighting, and there's all the technical stuff of like you're you're probably using what? Uh OB OBS probably.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Using OBS, and it's like, I don't even know how many people who are listening to this even know what OBS is. So it's like maybe maybe we're I hardly know what it is.
SPEAKER_01:It scares me.
SPEAKER_05:It scares you?
SPEAKER_01:A little bit.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:It's it's actually very good software.
SPEAKER_03:Most I mean, it's just a little I haven't updated it in a bit, but just because I'm used to the way that it's laid out that I have it installed, and it's just like I'm scared I'm gonna touch it and it's gonna break, and it's just like, oh god.
SPEAKER_05:Do you have like custom scenes that you're using, all that? Yes.
SPEAKER_03:I don't have like not like custom custom ones, but like ones that I had bought from a scene pack that doesn't, I don't think, get sold anymore. So I don't know how many people have access to this pack anymore.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying.
SPEAKER_03:Because it was uh it was a Streamlabs scene pack that I bought when I still used Stream Labs, and then I was able to port it over to OBS, and I have not found the pack again on Stream Labs when I because I went to look to see what other scene packs they had, and I could not find it again. So I don't think it's even on there anymore. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_04:Is is Streamlabs a paid program?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. It's not. So Streamlabs is also free, but you can like buy certain things like on it. It's like a you can buy extra content and stuff for it, like scene packs. Some of the scene packs on there are free as well that you can use, but the one that I have I bought because it was an animated one and I wanted to.
SPEAKER_05:And uh open broadcast software is ha is and always has been free. There's probably I I don't know. Can you can you buy stuff for that? Or is it like individual creators are making things for it and that you can do it?
SPEAKER_03:I was gonna say I think there are specific similar with Streamlabs, I think there are specific things that you can purchase, like extra little like add-ons and like stuff to put onto your stream that OBS on their website they offer, but I don't think that it's like a specific you have to buy this stuff to obviously you don't have to buy the stuff to use the to use the app. But I say app computer application.
SPEAKER_05:I mean it it is an app. I mean there's probably I don't know. Is is there like a is there like an iOS app version of OBS or isn't it? Yeah, I think I think it might just be a uh Windows um application. And and when I say Windows, I mean like the the actual computer operating system.
SPEAKER_03:There is an app that is a camera for OBS, but there's not so you can download an app to use your phone as an OBS camera.
SPEAKER_05:I see and and it will probably just send it to whatever machine is running OBS. That makes sense. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:Which if I could figure out how to get that to work with my VTuber model, then I wouldn't have to use my really bad webcam for that.
SPEAKER_05:Webcams are cheap these days. Um I'm this one up here is a 4K camera, and it was like I don't know, somewhere between 100 and 200 bucks, probably.
SPEAKER_03:The webcam that I have currently is free because someone didn't want it anymore and was like, eco. And I was like, sick, thanks.
SPEAKER_05:Um Well, I mean, you probably don't need super high quality camera if it's just catching your body movements to map on your rig, right?
SPEAKER_03:It's not just capturing my body. Uh my model in particular.
SPEAKER_05:Capturing your soul.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, my soul, it's gone. I lost it in the war. Um it's also tracking the direction of my eyes.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, right.
SPEAKER_03:It's tracking my eye movement. It's tracking if I had it rigged up that way it could do my hands. Uh it does do facial movements, sort of. It doesn't have like the full animation for it, but it tracks like I open my mouth, the mouth-t model's mouth opens, that kind of thing. I blink, it blinks. I can I can close either eye and it tracks everything. There are some crazy ones where it like Oh yeah, where it's like you frickin' puff up your cheeks and the model does it too. Stick your tongue out, tongue sticks out. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_05:It it it is kind of spooky. It it triggers that part of the brain, uh that lizard part of the brain.
SPEAKER_03:It's like this is this shouldn't look like a human person, but it does. Yeah. Creepy ligand.
SPEAKER_05:So those are pretty like cutting-edge uh styles of of art and broadcast. But take us back to uh a a pupa uh of a monster.
SPEAKER_01:A wee a wee caterpillar.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, a larva. Uh take take us take us back. Um how did you get started making art? Do you have like early artistic memories or projects that you want to uh like talk about or?
SPEAKER_03:Uh ooh. I think he was just like as a kid doing coloring books and then just like kept doing stuff. Uh a lot of the time when I'm not doing like actual proper resin craft or just like messing around with digital stuff on my computer, I still prefer watercolor. It's still my I don't know if I've seen any of your watercolor art. It's don't you what? It's bad. It's a it's bad dump. Oh, come on. It's not great. I'm not good with watercolor. I'm an art teacher.
SPEAKER_04:I've seen bad art. I like bad art. You know what I'm saying? Like I've taught literal children.
SPEAKER_03:That's fair. Um but like I have I still have it is in my room in my house right now. I can like I can't see pictures in my brain. I can close my eyes, I can see where this box is in my house.
SPEAKER_04:Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I you made a watercolor card for Ash, didn't you?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, I did. This the stupid fish.
SPEAKER_04:I I sa no, it's not stupid.
SPEAKER_05:It's stupid.
SPEAKER_01:It's a the fish itself is a stupid fish, but it's a good it's a good I see. Good card, stupid fish.
SPEAKER_05:I we were rearranging um this uh a couple weeks ago and I f I found that and was and was like, oh it's so derpy.
SPEAKER_03:It's a little fish. Um I nearly did a gar instead because Ash's picture in my phone is a gar with its face touching a piece of bread because it's garlic bread.
SPEAKER_04:What is a gar is a type of fish?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it is a type of fish. It's called a gar. Okay. And it's the kind with the funny long snoot face, and it's a picture of a gar.
SPEAKER_05:Just show me show me the image that you have in your phone. What is it?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I did change it. Yours is I I forgot I changed it to a different thing. But yours is the picture that was the edit that I made of your face with my face on the wizard pondering the ponder card in the orb.
SPEAKER_05:So like brand new image. Yes. I see. I mean that that was a good one.
SPEAKER_03:Do I still have I know I have the garlic bread picture somewhere.
SPEAKER_05:Our uh our penchant for editing each other's faces into memes is uh is one of my favorite things that we do.
SPEAKER_01:It's so good. Yes, I have found it.
SPEAKER_05:We should make that a uh uh a uh Discord emote for the the the server.
SPEAKER_02:Garlic bread.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, okay. Okay. Does but does a gar even have a tongue to lick with?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:I don't care.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe.
SPEAKER_05:Um you were a minute ago you were talking about the uh shoebox in art and uh and I cut you off.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so it's it's not it's not even a shoebox. It's a big like one of those like big clear plastic Tupperware, big boxes that you put in the attic for like storing clothes for the winter and stuff. It's one of those. Yeah. I don't know what the brand is called. Anyway, it's it's big, it's clear plastic, it's big Tupperware. Anyway, it's uh it's a big one of those, and it is just full of those little yellow ringed uh sketchbooks, like mixed media notebooks. Uh it is completely full of those from like I wanna say sixth grade to the end of high school.
SPEAKER_05:Hmm, okay. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:One of them somewhere in there that I need to find. Uh I brought to a con with me that I went to once and got one of the pages signed by a man that was cosplaying Man Ray from the SpongeBob. So I have an autograph from Man Ray somewhere in my box of sketchbooks.
SPEAKER_05:Oh man. And it had the page has nothing to do with Man Ray, I take it.
SPEAKER_03:I don't think there's anything on the page. I think it's literally just the signature.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, I was like, including the signature? What happened to you?
SPEAKER_03:I think it's just the signature.
SPEAKER_05:That's incredible.
SPEAKER_03:Because a lot of my sketchbooks, I shamefully would not utilize all of the page to do all of the things. It would be like I would draw one thing on one page and be like, this is bad. I'm gonna not look at I don't want to look at that anymore.
SPEAKER_05:I think that's just a phase that most artists have to get through. Because I I was when we were rearranging our house uh uh that I mentioned a minute ago, um I was kind of looking through old sketchbooks of the same way. And you know, I keep those um the uh moleskin notebooks now for game design and and drawing and everything. And I was looking at one of the early versions of that, like the I think the very first one that I got, and uh I it would have like a sentence written very terribly in like bad handwriting and like a little meme drawing in the corner, and it's just like so much wasted paper. Now I'm like blocking it out with all because I use all the gridded paper now uh for dungeon crawling and stuff. Yeah. Uh so I'm like gridding it out. But uh I was kind of like reflecting on on that same idea of like putting down something kind of bad and being like, I hate this. Moving on. I think I think most artists uh have to, especially visual artists, have to get through that at some point.
SPEAKER_03:There was a notebook that I have, it's in that box somewhere that I need to find because it was like a fancy notebook that I had bought online that the paper was made out of, like it was like stone paper or something. Like the paper had been made out of like really, really finely milled rock powder or something. So it was like the paper was waterproof, it was tearproof. The only way to tear a page out of the book is to actually use scissors to cut it, because instead of tearing, if you pull it, it stretches. It was really weird. I still have that notebook somewhere. I need to see if I can find it.
SPEAKER_05:If you do find it, I'd be interested to look at it. Um I've I've heard of that before, but I've never seen one of those.
SPEAKER_03:I think it's like karst. Karst stone paper, I think.
SPEAKER_05:It's not carter paper. Oh man.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, karst stone paper. I did find it. It was a little I ha it was a little red plain page, like it wasn't lined or anything. Just because they ha they sell different versions of it as well. Like you can get that notebook made into grid paper as well, I think. Um I think they sell them as grid paper. They sell them as lined paper.
SPEAKER_05:In case you're uh you're trying to build a dungeon while uh at the beach or underwater.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah. Use the use the waterproof paper with that one waterproof pen that's like the you can write underwater with it for some reason.
SPEAKER_04:I who's that for divers, I guess.
SPEAKER_03:Just scuba divers who are trying to Someone that for some reason is at the Titanic and just really wanted to write down the word Titanic while they're at the Titanic or something. I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:That's real deep down there. I I hope that I mean we we have we have seen uh in in recent memory what happens when you try to go down there and look at the Titanic in person.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I don't think they did it very good. I think they did a bad job. I think they might have just done a bad job a little bit.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, you know, yeah, that's um that's one way to put that.
SPEAKER_03:Um I hear there was a video game controller involved.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Yeah. There are many documentaries out there uh on it, and there was a little while where I was obsessed with that, and I would just have it like just people talking about it on in the background. And it's like it's it's a sad story, but it's also like you have to admit it is darkly kind of humorous.
SPEAKER_03:I gotta play to beat this level Mario real quick. Oh no.
SPEAKER_05:Little submarines.
SPEAKER_03:I need an edit of a side-scroller Mario game of the Oh Jesus.
SPEAKER_05:That like I'm sure I'm sure someone out there finds that distasteful, but it's not me.
SPEAKER_03:It's not me either.
SPEAKER_05:Uh I I when you were talking about the notebook, I was thinking of like the only application would be like if a scuba diver was trying to like do a life drawing of an octopus like underwater, like at the reef, that would be kind of cool. Like I could I can see that.
SPEAKER_03:My brain immediately goes, scuba diver, waterproof pen, waterproof paper, sitting there, the the dive mask is filling with water because he's crying and he's like, fish.
SPEAKER_01:And it's just like a really bad drawing of a fish.
SPEAKER_03:And it just says the word fish, and it's just fish, fish. He's just like so upset that he can't do a good drawing of the fish.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, I imagine it's probably really hard to uh do a drawing underwater.
SPEAKER_03:Probably.
SPEAKER_05:Um So you uh used to do underwater drawings of Octopi, and uh that's why you had this notebook. And you used to do watercolor. When did uh when did Resincraft kind of like enter the picture?
SPEAKER_03:Um I wanna say it was when I had first got like like not when I first got into, but like when I started properly getting into tabletop games, and I was like, I want something to put my dice in. And I started like looking into things, and it was when I was looking for and found the dice bag that I wanted that I also saw on Amazon that they sold resin molds to make dice vaults. And I was like, well, I might as well. So I it was literally just a might as well give it a go type thing. Okay, but it turned into something that it was actually really enjoyable for me to do because it's fun, except for the fact that I uh hotbox myself in my room with the windows closed with the fumes.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, you know, uh when when uh when Ash was over uh doing the um the sleepover art uh thing with you uh the like the next day or like a couple days later, uh we were talking about it and she was like, I I I don't I don't know how safe that is. He's he's in there just doing it.
SPEAKER_02:It's not.
SPEAKER_05:It's goopy, it's sticky. I don't she was like, I don't know what I expected, but uh it's messy.
SPEAKER_03:It is, it's not great. I mean the table was also in my defense, the table was also really, really messy because I had literally just been doing stuff the day before. I I So it was a big freaking nuts.
SPEAKER_05:I don't know if you know, I I haven't It's definitely not safe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I definitely should be wearing at least like I should definitely be wearing like a respirator or something. I wear gloves.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, well this that there's that at least. Um this about it. I haven't I haven't done like resin craft, but I did used to have that resin printer. And um I was talking to the the guitarist in my my band uh years ago who he also used to have a resin 3D printer. And we were talking about like the safety of of it. And and he was like, I don't know, man. I read them for him and said, as long as you ain't bathing or drinking it. I was like, that that's it? That's all you got?
SPEAKER_03:I mean I'm not gonna lie and say that I haven't gotten resin on my skin res fully mixed resin on my bare skin before.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, well that means that's no, that's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03:I definitely haven't drank it either. What? No, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_05:Okay. Well, I thought that's what you were gonna say. I thought you were gonna be like, I just I definitely haven't gotten resin in my mouth and then swallowed and then took another sip.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't do that.
SPEAKER_05:Well, I didn't think you did, because you'd probably not be here. You would have turned into uh uh uh karst. Is that what we were talking about a minute ago?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, karst stone I would have turned into to I would have turned into stone paper.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, stone stone man.
SPEAKER_03:I would have turned into stone man.
unknown:Stone man.
SPEAKER_03:Um there are many things that I have tasted that aren't edible, but I'm but I'll tell you resin's not one of them.
SPEAKER_05:Oh good. We should keep it that way.
SPEAKER_03:It will be it will be done.
SPEAKER_00:Keeping it that way, I'm gonna taste it. I'm not gonna eat resin.
SPEAKER_05:It will be done. I will drink it. I will do it. I will drink it. Uh so it really just started with uh you wanted one of these dice vaults. And for the folks at home who are not uh the initiated initiated uh the incredible world of tabletop role-playing games, uh, we're talking about like, you know, a little a little it's almost like a jewelry box that is has usually bespoke shapes for you to fit your polyhedral dice in, like your D20s or your D6s or your D4s or you know, any of those. But sometimes you also uh you you uh also make little jewelry box style, right? Where it's just like one one container and not like it's specifically shaped for a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:Just kind of put stuff in it. I have one that I've made that I literally just like have. I think actually that box has teeth in it right now.
SPEAKER_04:Like real teeth?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Whose teeth?
SPEAKER_03:Dog.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay. That's fine.
SPEAKER_03:Not my dog.
SPEAKER_04:What how were the teeth were the teeth ethically sourced?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I found them on the ground.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, okay. Was the dog nearby?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, oh. How do you know the dog's teeth?
SPEAKER_03:Because so I used to work at a dog daycare. There were there were dogs around. I just don't know which dog the teeth but the tooth belonged to.
SPEAKER_04:How many how many teeth?
SPEAKER_03:94 of them. I counted? Did it how many teeth? We have a lot of we had a lot of puppies that would rough house and their teeth would fall out while they were bumping.
SPEAKER_04:So okay, so you weren't you didn't find 94 teeth in a pile.
SPEAKER_03:No. Individually individually cor individually collect here's the thing though. Individually collected teeth over a single year of working there, 94 are still too many.
SPEAKER_04:How uh do how many how many teeth does a dog normally have? Is it is it comparable to a human? Is it like 30-ish? Google, how many teeth does a dog have?
SPEAKER_05:Google, how many teeth should I find at one time?
SPEAKER_01:How many teeth should I have?
SPEAKER_05:Oh man.
SPEAKER_03:Um has 42 teeth.
SPEAKER_05:42, okay.
SPEAKER_03:So actually not not not too bad, I guess.
SPEAKER_05:So like 2.2 dog's worth of teeth.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, just about.
SPEAKER_05:Something like that.
SPEAKER_03:I may have lost a few though because the box fell on the floor yesterday.
SPEAKER_05:Oh my god. You're just gonna be finding teeth in your eye.
SPEAKER_03:I had to pick them up. It's gonna be like it's gonna be like dropping D4s, only it's gonna be teeth, and I'm gonna get like a disease if I step on one.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, okay. Until you said that last part, I was not following.
SPEAKER_03:I'm gonna get a disease. That's just I'm just gonna get a disease.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, we're we're all gonna get a disease. We're all gonna get a disease. Are you uh so do you have do you have plans artistically for them? Or you this is just one of the freak things you do.
SPEAKER_03:I was thinking about eventually, because I want to start, I haven't started doing this yet, but I want to start making full proper dice sets.
SPEAKER_05:I want dice from you so bad.
SPEAKER_03:And one of the sets that I want to make is going to be personal dice that will be my dice for me, is putting the teeth in the dice. They probably having a dice set of dog teeth. Because they're also like hollow on the inside, so it's not gonna like weight the dice because they don't weigh anything.
SPEAKER_04:That wasn't gonna be my own.
SPEAKER_03:Because I don't think they weigh- they don't weigh very much. Okay. Like just holding the box, the only weight of the box is the box itself.
SPEAKER_05:What what would do you know if there would be any kind of legality in selling that stuff?
SPEAKER_03:Um I mean, I imagine it'd be the same amount of legality as, oh hey, I found this rock on the ground, I'm gonna cast it into a die and sell it.
SPEAKER_05:I don't think that's true. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, it's like the people whose dogs they belong to, I don't know that if they know that I have their teeth.
SPEAKER_05:Well, I mean, of of uh how could they? But I I think there are rules about how you can sell biological matter, like especially if it's like from an animal. So for instance, the folks who are like finding uh roadkill and like putting it on an ho anthill and like letting it naturally decompose and then taking the bones and picking it jewelry. Uh I have heard, I think, in the past, of uh artists talking about like there are certain ways you have to uh like prepare and or sell those kinds of creations. Uh because I I feel like that if you were like, hey, there are dog teeth in here, they're ethically sourced. Um I feel like you would that would be something that people would be genuinely interested in.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I just don't know how I would get more teeth once I sold these ones because I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:That's why I said ethically sourced.
SPEAKER_03:Ethically sourced once there's a lot of things.
SPEAKER_05:Every dog you find, you're just like plying it, just like snatching a teeth. Hey bud. Hey bud. I have something for you to bite down on.
SPEAKER_03:I have something for you to bite down on. It's not gonna take your teeth.
SPEAKER_04:What have you have you done anything with that D20 I gave you?
SPEAKER_03:Uh I've still been sanding it because I'm trying to get it as perfectly smooth as possible at all of the sides. I don't ever like specifically just because it's like one of those things that like it's very time consuming to do, I don't like ever sit down with the intent of, okay, I'm gonna do this. I just kind of sit and it's like while I'm watching something, I'm just casually doing it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:But you're still you're still working on it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Um I I am looking forward to the day where that turns into a resin dye in my um in my care. Uh there's a patron uh that I uh am friends with. Uh we're gonna do an art trade where I'm gonna do a a Kara creature for him, and he is carving a set of D6s for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yuh. Yes.
SPEAKER_05:He said that's what uh I assume would. But he used to do scrimmshaw, so who knows? It could be bone or some other like crazy stuff. But uh he's he's making he's making me two uh uh two bespoke D6. And he has no idea what they're used for. He was like, you're not gonna be gambling with them, are you? I'm like No.
SPEAKER_03:Not not with currency, but like Gambling the lives of my P of my players as characters.
SPEAKER_05:I'm gambling with imaginary Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna dungeon a dragon.
SPEAKER_03:Um I'm gonna drag in your dungeon.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, you're gonna drag in my dungeon? Uh I'm gonna put a dragon.
SPEAKER_03:I'm gonna I'm gonna play a ca I'm gonna play a dragon specifically to go in your dungeon.
unknown:Oh god.
SPEAKER_05:You're gonna dungeon in my dragon? Uh this dun this dragon is a dungeon.
SPEAKER_03:Oh This dungeon is a dragon!
SPEAKER_05:You got it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh! It's like the the Alaskan bullworm from SpongeBob. This dungeon is a dragon.
SPEAKER_05:I yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that's a pretty popular kind of style, right? To do do a uh a dungeon inside of a a big creature. That's kinda I mean, that's just like one of the most, I think, primal human fantasies, right? There's like um what is what is the one from Pinocchio called?
SPEAKER_00:What is uh oh the the whale?
SPEAKER_05:The whale, yeah. It's kind of it's like it's like uh Esgordous Pinocchio. It's like Giganto or something along those lines.
SPEAKER_03:Monstro.
SPEAKER_05:Monstro! That's right. I've played Kingdom Hearts.
SPEAKER_03:I haven't.
SPEAKER_05:That's a d oh really?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Well, I mean that it is, it might be.
SPEAKER_03:God, it's literally the only thing that I know is that the dark side heartless is a hear me out for some people. The big one. The big buff heartless. Yeah, is a hear me out for some people.
SPEAKER_05:The people who don't know what that means in the audience don't look it up. Um and those same people that are we're talking about are probably uh f the same folks for whom question four is for, which is uh, you know, can you describe you know what a VTuber is, this thing we've been talking about?
SPEAKER_03:So basically, I actually wrote this down for this heart because it's like yeah. So basically, a uh a VTuber, the original uh like the word itself is actually a shortened version of virtual YouTuber, but a VTuber can also be a streamer. It's basically an uh an online entertainer that uses a virtual avatar, often resembling like an anime character or like a little 3D model to create content and interact with their audience instead of like showing off their real face. They use the model instead that tracks their physical movement uh to do that. There are there are two different kinds as well. Technically, there's a VTuber and a P and G tuber. VTubers are the ones that do the physical tracking. P and Gtubers is literally just it's a picture that has like two different versions where it's like one with the mouth open, one with the mouth closed, and it tracks the it tracks the audio of your voice rather than tracking your physical doing of things.
SPEAKER_05:I feel like if we were if we were going to in the future do um tabletop actual play, uh I would like to try to make to do that. I because I feel like that's something that like you know you and I could throw together.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because like it's really because like there's software that I use that's literally just screenshots of my current VTuber model that I put into an app to use as a PNG tuber in case I didn't want to open the software for the VTuber model.
SPEAKER_05:And you would just need the images for it to swap back and forth between.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Um The only thing I feel like that would be slightly more complicated with if uh for doing it in person would be either animating it ourselves, dubbing like dubbing the mouth movement over top of us speaking when we speak, because usually it's like tracks individual people's talking. So if it's multiple people talking in a room, all of the mouths are gonna be opening and closing all at once. Um it's just like one person says something and everybody's model goes. Everybody's model goes as if they're all talking at once.
SPEAKER_05:I know I think if we were to do that, we would probably do uh like separate setups. So there's like two kinds of setups that I think that we we could try. One uh which is basically what we're doing now, uh where we just have uh multiple people in a room with mics pointed at us and we're just you know playing tabletop in person just with microphones.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Um but then the other version, which is like kind of like probably the more dominant version of of actual play now. Um where it's everybody at their own computers with their own setups and their own cameras. Yeah. Um but I it's not like that would require much, right? It would just be the same, same kind of thing. But instead everyone would have their own webcam and their own microphone.
SPEAKER_03:Um because it would just be a matter of everybody make sure that they have their thing set up so it's like we can be recording whatever. Because the other thing as well with that that would be able that we would be able to do is there is a website that is called uh Foogie Reactive that is connected to your Discord that you put pictures into. To so that when you and your friends are streaming, you can put it as a source into your OBS using the browser link, and you can have your friends show up as little PNGs of themselves on your stream. Me and my friends, when we're streaming, we use that. I just have mine is currently it's just screenshots of my VTube model, one with the mouth closed, one with the mouth open. And then like the muted and deafened show up as different images as well.
SPEAKER_05:Would would only one of us need to be running all the software then?
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Oh. As long as everybody has the Fuji Reactive thing at least set up so it has like the picture that you want it to be and has it like ported into because you can have them set up both as individual, like each person has their own separate browser source on the thing, or you can have them all lined up in a row at the bottom. But only one person would have to run the actual like recording software because through Discord audio we'd be able to hear each other. With the Fuji Reactive, it only lights up when that person is talking because it's connected to their Discord specifically.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, you know what? Now that you've described it that way, I'm fairly certain I have seen this setup before. It's just like their characters like grayed out until they're talking and then it like comes forward. Yeah, I think I've seen that.
SPEAKER_03:And lights up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um, because I use that on my streams when I'm streaming with people. I know I think uh Ace has done that as well, uh because he started streaming as well, and he set that up for his last stream that ended up uh crashing.
SPEAKER_05:So I've only seen him do the ones, I think uh his very first one where he was just playing uh Mortal Kombat.
SPEAKER_03:Uh he tried to do one playing the newest Mortal Kombat the other day. Um and we were gonna call it together while I was playing uh I told him to do that. Yeah, I was uh it it cras the game ended up crashing, and we were just like, we'll try again later, and also because I was sitting in the call muted uh playing Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and after a minute he was like, I think I'd have more fun watching you play this than playing this and trying to stream it right now because it was starting to make him really frustrated. So instead he sat and watched me play Tears of the Kingdom.
SPEAKER_05:Everybody watch party. We're watching uh Mothra play uh Tears of the Kingdom. So uh what what is your Twitch handle?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell It is Moth is Immortal.
SPEAKER_05:Moth is Immortal.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, Capital M, Moth, Capital I is, Capital I immortal.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_05:And currently it's just variety streaming, right?
SPEAKER_03:Just whatever you feel like kind of depends. The last few times I'd streamed, it was uh I played Dead by Daylight. Uh and then before that it was a couple streams of m the most recent Mario Party, Mario Party Jamboree. Um and then before that it was mostly just Minecraft because that's really just what I played the most. I still mostly play Minecraft. Um because I don't really stream many Nintendo games. I did stream part of my playthrough of Twilight Princess at one point. My first time playing Twilight Princess. And then I forgot that I was playing that, streamed something else, and then remembered, oh yeah, I was gonna play Twilight Princess, and then just didn't stream it. I still haven't finished Twilight Princess because I was like, well, I want to stream it.
SPEAKER_05:How far are you?
SPEAKER_03:Uh ooh.
SPEAKER_05:Just like what's the last thing you remembered happening?
SPEAKER_03:Being in Hyrule Castle.
SPEAKER_05:For the first time?
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, so you're not very far at all.
SPEAKER_03:No.
SPEAKER_05:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:I wasn't.
SPEAKER_05:I think I got to the You're still Wolf Link?
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're you're you're you're like right at the cusp of the part in the game where like you're actually given any freedom. Like you're you're pretty much on rails up into that point.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Is this your f this is your first time playing Twilight Princess? Yes. That's Ash's favorite um Zelda.
SPEAKER_03:Because I've I've seen because like most of the most of my experience with Zelda media media in general is the little bit that I've played of Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. And then Yo, you haven't played Wind Waker? No, I haven't.
unknown:Bro.
SPEAKER_03:I need to.
SPEAKER_05:Um That's that needs to be like a family playthrough. Because uh Ash and I have been talking about playing it. We that's that is probably my favorite Zelda. Um it's it's between that and Majora. Um but Wind Waker was the first Zelda that I had that I owned that was mine that I I played and uh and beat essentially on my own. Yeah. I had a neighbor that had the N64 games that like I uh essentially was like back seating as a child, uh doing exactly what I do now with with Ash, where she plays a game and I'm just around.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Um that's a really fun uh fun one because of how uh whimsy. I feel like Breath of the Wild actually takes a lot from Wind Waker. So if you if you like Breath of the Wild, you'll probably see a lot of those uh same same things in Wind Waker. In the way that Twilight Princess is kind of rhyming um Majora a little bit in in the terms of like the tone in their own.
SPEAKER_03:Um because a lot of, because like I said, a lot of my experience with Zelda media in general is the little bit that I've played of Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom that I've actually played, and then binge watching videos that's like, listen to this stuff about Zelda on YouTube that's like five it's like seven hours long, and I'm just like, yes, this is what I'm going to do with my free time, and not even do anything else like over top of it. Like I'm not watching it in the background. I'm sitting there at my desk, hands folded, like this is my job, and I'm just sitting there watching this seven-hour Zelda video. Like, yes, this is how I spend my time.
SPEAKER_05:There is a lot of lore in in Zelda.
SPEAKER_03:I like the lore, like lore theories. Like one of my favorite ones that I watched the other day was actually a theory video about Wind Waker, about why in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the Zora and the Rito are two different things. Oh, yeah. Because they Because in Wind Waker, the the evolution theory, like in general concept, thinking about it at face value, it should not they should not coexist simultaneously because the Zora evolved into the Rito.
SPEAKER_05:Kind of yeah, kind of weird how like in in Wind Waker the whole thing is like the most water there is, and it's the only game that really doesn't have any Zora. It has one Zora character.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Uh, and and they're dead.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Um the if I remember correctly, the theory that was posed was that uh Queen Ruto took some of the Zora off somewhere else outside of the kingdom and maintained their own Zora's domain somewhere else in a place where it was easier for them to exist in the water without the monsters coming and killing them or whatever. And that's why in Tears of the Kingdom there are two different Zora's domains, technically, because in Tears of the Kingdom, we meet Sidon's new fiance or wife or whatever that is wearing exclusively golden jewelry. Her and her attendants are only wearing gold. In the Zora's domain in Hyrule, they only wear silver, which means that it's two separate things. Is that a theory or is it? It's the theory, but it's also visually, you can tell in the game.
SPEAKER_04:Sure.
SPEAKER_03:She her and her attendants only wear gold. The rest of Zora's domain. Yeah. Um so the theory is that Queen Ruto, who in the games, in like the game lore stuff, her crown that you can find is a silver crown. She wore silver jewelry. Sidon is also canonically a direct like this is written on things in the game. Sidon is canonically a direct descendant of Queen Ruto.
SPEAKER_05:Makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:So the whole theory is that the Zora that are in Hyrule proper in Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild came in from wherever the the cursed ocean from Wind Waker was specifically at, even though in the lore it's supposed to also be on top of Hyrule. Um but that they came in, created the Zora's domain, they were silver jewelry because Ruto did, and then the other Zora from somewhere else.
SPEAKER_05:I think you just demonstrated live for our audience why the the whole like everything must be in a canonical timeline thing is just a bad thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's stupid. It doesn't make any sense. Because it's like what? I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:They could be separate dimensions or or you know realities or whatever.
SPEAKER_03:But I mean, I guess there could be more than one high rule in a place somewhere else, I guess. It's just like a different one and they moved. I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, and those are the DS games, and that it's like what they they they literally left the the Great Ocean to go, I don't know, find a new Hyrule or whatever.
SPEAKER_03:And they're like And there's like a there's like a train as well at some point. There was a train, Spirit Tracks.
SPEAKER_05:You nailed it. You nailed it.
SPEAKER_03:Sometimes there's a train and the fish become birds. Why not?
SPEAKER_05:Why why so you should definitely the next variety stream should just be you ranting about Zelda lore. You've only played two or three games.
SPEAKER_03:Ranting about the Zelda lore that I know nothing about.
SPEAKER_05:These are things that I have heard on YouTube and I'm spitting them back out at you uncritically.
SPEAKER_03:She's like, here's things that I know about Zelda. And it's literally just like that and so you're you're kind of doing Zelda.
SPEAKER_05:You're uh maybe sometimes doing Minecraft. Um the Dead by Daylight um stream you mentioned, is is that are you streaming that regularly or is it just for the charity?
SPEAKER_03:Um it was just for the uh so a friend of mine was doing a charity stream for stand-up to cancer, and I had been invited to come in and join in some of the games that he had been playing while he was doing that, and I was like, yeah, I'll stream it too, so that way I can also like pin in my chat, like, hey, because I'm not a Twitch affiliate, so I cannot connect links to my account, so I couldn't link the actual charity itself. So I basically put a little pinned message in my chat saying, Hey, if you want to donate to the charity, click on this link or go into the shared chat and go to his chat to do the link to do the donation link.
SPEAKER_05:Um And he is a Twitch affiliate.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:What is it what does it take to become a Twitch affiliate?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell Um I'm trying to remember exactly because there's two different there's the Twitch affiliate and there's the Twitch partner, which are like two different things.
SPEAKER_05:Are they different tiers or are they different patterns?
SPEAKER_03:I think it's diff I I'm not entirely sure what the big difference between the two is because I'm not either of those things. Um but the main thing for like becoming an affiliate is like you have to meet certain requirements with your channel before you can apply for the affiliate program. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_04:Like with YouTube or any platform.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, where it's like minimum number of viewers per stream, minimum number of hours stream.
SPEAKER_05:Per stream.
SPEAKER_03:Per stream, minimum number of viewers.
SPEAKER_05:Does it get revoked?
SPEAKER_03:Well, it's like uh because it doesn't um it's just like for becoming an affiliate in the first place. So it's just like at minimum have at least your viewership can crash and you're fine. Yeah. Okay. So it's essentially just like how many p like have at least five viewers simultaneously for a certain period of time or whatever during the stream.
SPEAKER_04:Is it that low or is that just an example?
SPEAKER_03:Just an example because I don't remember exactly what it is off the top of my head.
SPEAKER_05:Do you do you know your own uh numbers at this point? Like are do you keep track of that sort of thing? I know like I was I was interviewing um someone else for the podcast uh earlier this week, and I was asking him about his um analytics, and he was like, I don't look at that. You shouldn't look at that.
SPEAKER_03:I do just I do just to look at it. Um I know that my last stream, which was on the 8th of this month, uh my average viewers was two, which is plus none from the stream before, because that's how yeah, I only streamed for two hours. Um unique viewers is something else that it tracks. Uh for example, when I streamed back in June, I had 22 unique viewers. It's just like people click on your stream, open it, and look at it, whatever.
SPEAKER_05:Um It's trying to make sure no one's multi-boxing your stream.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. How many followers? Which is 145 currently.
SPEAKER_05:Moth has uh did have a minute ago Twitch open in their lab.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, like I'm looking at the because you can also use the phone. I use the phone to uh to keep track of my Twitch chat while I'm streaming. Because you can have the creator dashboard open on mobile while streaming on PC to like look at it and because I can also stream from my phone if I wanted to. I don't I really don't want to do that, but I could.
SPEAKER_05:And you can also do like um PlayStation 5 uh stream straight to Twitch, but you can't really do a whole lot in terms of like uh admin for for it through the PS5. So like uh I know it's very common for folks to either have uh a computer or their phone open on the side while they're streaming through uh a game console if that's what they're they're doing. Um what do you have like plans for for this uh for this art form, for this career? Or are you just keeping it open and having fun?
SPEAKER_03:I sort of just kind of do it because it's enjoyable. Like if I don't want to stream, I don't. Like it's just kind of a no schedule. Just kinda yeah, just kinda whenever I whenever I feel like it, and then I'll just like copy the link and paste it places that my friends are like, yeah, you can send your Twitch link in here or whatever. Um But like plans, I have a few. I want to redesign my app my VTuber model and get a new version of it commissioned. Um I haven't decided yet if I'm going to go through the same artist or not, because there's like a very particular style that I'm kind of hoping to try and find to be able to do that. So I'll probably I don't know. Um but yeah, I've got a couple of silly goofy little plans for ways that I'm going to uh redesign the model, still based on the original art that I had used, but just like changing a couple of things around specifically. I want parts of it to be transparent because I want to be a ghost.
SPEAKER_05:Okay. A tiefling, a demon? Um I think I think I think demon is probably that that's what I would if if I weren't trying or if I was explaining it to like the layperson, uh I would probably describe it as like a little uh a demon. Like a little a little demon man.
SPEAKER_00:A little demon guy.
SPEAKER_05:A little demon man.
SPEAKER_00:A little demon.
SPEAKER_05:Um I would be interested to see what if you were to take this uh seriously on the level of like creating a schedule and trying to maintain that. Um I would be interested to see how much that would grow your channel. Because I I think that you have the right vibe and the right personality to do well at this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's just a matter of finding it in my soul to put in effort. Effort.
SPEAKER_05:That's that is well there you go, that is the the number one roadblock in every artist's life is how do I overcome the crushing reality of being alive to make stuff uh doing things. But the cool thing about about streaming as your art form is like the art form is like creating the hangout.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Is like that you're you're streaming to audience and people are in the chat who are like interacting with you and you're interacting with them, and sometimes you're playing a game and you're even playing a game with them. Um I could see how that would be like a lot easier to motivate yourself to do than to like sit down and make an oil painting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I don't think I've ever used oil paints actually. I've used oil pastels, I've never yet used oil past.
SPEAKER_05:Oil paints take too long.
SPEAKER_03:It takes it It takes too long. That's why I I the oil pastel piece that I did three years ago, I can still touch it and it comes off on my fingers.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know how you're supposed to make it not do that. I other than like spray it with a top coat. I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:That that's yeah, that would be my my suggestion is to is to uh seal it in.
SPEAKER_03:Mod Podget.
SPEAKER_05:Um uh real quick with that that stream, um, the charity stream, do you do you know numbers off the top of your head? How much money did that raise?
SPEAKER_03:Um I actually don't know. You don't know because I never got to see because obviously I didn't I wasn't able to put the link in my chat. Sure. So I was never able to see the official numbers for how much had ended up getting donated.
SPEAKER_05:Do you want to shout out anyone from that project that that stream?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, definitely. So my friend Truth, who is the one that head that was like the that headed up the whole thing, did a did a streamed every day for an entire week, essentially, to do this charity stream. And it is uh void of truth on Twitch. I love that guy. He's great. He's actually setting up a DD campaign uh for sometime next month for me and some people that we're gonna be playing in. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05:Is in that is that going to be streamed?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know, actually. It's going to be like a Hunger Game style battle royale that our characters are meant to be based off of our uh Minecraft characters that we're doing in the lore series that we're doing on Minecraft right now. You said lore series is So it's basically like we we it's like DD, but in Minecraft, but also just kind of like you can log on whenever and whoever's online, you can just be like, hey, I'm doing this thing, or what like that kind of thing. And all of our characters have like all of our little Minecraft guys, we've got powers and stuff. I'm a banshee, so I can scream at people and they get hurt and stuff, and I can go through walls.
SPEAKER_05:Aaron Ross Powell And that is not meant to be uh a broadcast art form.
SPEAKER_03:That's just I think some people I th I think some people are streaming it. I'm just not because it's like nine times out of ten I log on, I do hardly anything, and then I log back off and I'm just like around doing like just it's it's always one of those things where it's like I'm doing just like I log on with a specific purpose and I'm doing just little enough that it's like this isn't worth going live for because I'm hardly doing anything right now. She's like I log on, I go, okay, I need to take this from this chest and put it over on the other side of the frickin' map or whatever, and then I then I log off.
SPEAKER_04:I don't you never know, man. Like uh kids are really into watching videos about Minecraft.
SPEAKER_03:That's fair. It's like I'm definitely gonna I'm probably gonna live stream it when I go to build the build that I'm gonna be living in on the server, but I haven't done that yet. Because I still have to like go and get all the materials and stuff for it first.
SPEAKER_05:I would be interested in seeing what a coordinated streaming effort uh for that would look like. I could it's a it's a good enough concept that I feel like if enough people were streaming their own character and their own like perspective that there could be the a whole metagame aspect to it. There's a there's a lot of fertile ground, I feel like, in in that concept to make uh something really cool and unique and freaking weird.
SPEAKER_03:Because it was like a because it was kind of like streaming doing Minecraft lore specifically was a big thing back in 2020. Sure. Um and it's it's starting to come back again, especially with like the content creators that used to do that particular thing that got it really, really popular in the first place, being horrible, awful people, and everybody's like, I want my fix of watching people play Minecraft and doing lore, but not those guys.
SPEAKER_05:I um way back in the day, uh when I was living with um some friends in college, uh this would have been like 2015, probably some no, it was like a decade ago, we uh tried to do a let's play of a challenge run of Minecraft where um uh I we were calling it the spirit tree. I don't there's probably like a a better name for it, but the idea was like you you st you log into like a random seed, pick a tree, everybody climbs under that tree, now you're not allowed to touch the ground. And it was like you have to use materials from the tree and then stuff that you can grab from the tree but not touch the ground. Um and it was like you we were like uh building a tree fort in it and then like trying to essentially I guess like conventionally beat Minecraft, like get to the the ender world and fight the ender dragon, all that stuff. Um and we we got really far. I want to say we had managed to make it into the nether with the tree, like the the tree's trunk was like growing through the portal. And we had we had like uh trees or however you can make that happen. I don't remember if it was before or after, like when you plant a tree in nether if it catches fire, like beds explode, you know that stuff. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um beds do still explode. They have they have nether trees now. That's like a specific, it's like two different kinds that are like fancy, fancy nether wood that you can get. That's only that you you can grow it in the overworld, but by default it only grows grows in the nether. I think it's like warped, and then there's the the warped one is the blue one, and then there's a red one that gives you like a cool purple wood.
SPEAKER_05:We we gave up on it because uh the dude who was uh capturing all the footage, uh his computer crashed. And the hard drive died, and we had it must have been like we were trying to get, I think like twenty twenty sessions in or whatever uh of content before we started like uploading it. Yeah. And the hard drive died, uh, and that just completely killed interest in in trying to do that again. Because it w it was rough, man. It was rough. We were we were l really putting our hearts into it. It was like every day after work, every day after school, spend like two or three hours doing it, and and the process was fun enough, but um just one of those deals where it was like, you know, you you you have a good idea and you feel like it it like would do well and then the y the universe or fate or whatever, or a certain dude's frickin hard drive uh and just gave out. Uh I so I feel like there's probably still an audience for that that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um I'd be interested to see uh if you tried to do that on a schedule, how fast you picked up a following.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't I don't know, because like I've done stream I've done streamed Minecraft lore content before. Um just not like on a super huge scale. Uh because usually it would be like get on the server, see who's streaming for that day, see if any of the people that you do con that you do have like have lore stuff with is streaming that day. If they are taught, like coordinate and get like, and it's usually like a like it'll be a small group of people out of the whole server that are like doing specific things that will uh that'll log on and do and do stuff together for that. Um I think the last stream I did for that was maybe two years ago though because it was like getting towards the end of the season for that server, and then I was not going to be returning for the next season because I was going to do something else. I don't remember what it was I was going to do though, but I was gonna do something else. I don't remember what it was.
SPEAKER_05:Hopefully that thing uh actually got done.
SPEAKER_03:I think it did.
SPEAKER_05:Um I don't remember.
SPEAKER_03:It was two years it was two years ago, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Post COVID destroying people's memories and uh and concept of time. Oh yeah. Uh when you're when you're not being a digital fashionista, you'd be serving them looks IRL. Uh what what got you into fashion and cosplay?
SPEAKER_03:Um for fashion, I don't really think I am fashion. I just dr I just wear clothes.
SPEAKER_04:That's not true. You coordinate outfits.
SPEAKER_03:I coordinate outfits, but it's like I just put stuff on.
SPEAKER_05:Bro, we're going to uh freaking uh escape room in two days, and you have a look for that that you're gonna put together. You do. And the fact that you're gonna do that has inspired me and Ash to make characters. Like we're gonna do the we're we're gonna go LARP the whole thing. Do you want to shout out the the place we're going?
SPEAKER_03:Like Yes, we're going to uh to Netherworld in Stone Mountain. Um, because they have because they do they do Haunted House every year, where it's like a big giant place. They have like a full-on proper walk-through haunted house with like people hanging out outside the building doing like in-character, like character work while people are waiting in line. You go through the thing and they have like a monster museum afterwards or whatever. Um and they also do year-round Wednesday to Sunday, they do themed escape rooms. Uh so we're going to do the Nosferatu theme that is set, I believe, in this in the 1600s.
SPEAKER_05:No. No. Big no. 1900s. 1900s. I can't really. You gotta flip that 69, 69, 9.
SPEAKER_03:Probably have discalc whatever it's called.
SPEAKER_05:Discalcula. That with how often I get numbers. Uh yeah, we you were like, we're gonna see a number. You were like, it's Nosferatu themed. And I was like, what does that mean? Does that mean because like Nosferatu is a word that is just just means vampire in its you know traditional usage. But then there's also like the movie and then uh many characters that are named to Nosferatu and uh in uh certain games that we play, that's like a faction. So I was like, Ash, look it up, what what are we doing? And then it like had this whole write-up about how the the characters who are you know, the the players, the people who are going to do this escape room, uh essentially the concept is that you're going to solve the mystery of Nosferatu, which is uh the escape room. So we're we're obviously we've we've picked like we're gonna do live action roleplay. Yeah. We're essentially gonna LARP as we're doing the the um escape room. So I have a character that I have created. I don't know about Ash, and obviously you have because you're you've got a whole fit plan. That is fashion.
SPEAKER_03:I was gonna say basic because so I have the fit planned. I don't have my character planned, planned yet. I'm gonna kind of like once I see the fit put together, I'm gonna build the character based off of the fit, essentially.
SPEAKER_05:I'm I'm doing the reverse.
SPEAKER_03:I I yeah, I'm I so all I know is ASUS being the professor, whatever that means.
SPEAKER_05:Oh god, I would that I think Asa.
SPEAKER_03:Whatever that means.
SPEAKER_05:I was going to be, I was I my first idea was to be a professor. Uh and I was like, we should build characters, and then immediately Ace sniped it, and I was like, all right.
SPEAKER_03:I think the only reason why he said that is because he wore an outfit once, and I made a joke that he looked like a he looked like a goofy professor. And it's just like I think it's because he's going to be wearing that specific outfit, is why he's being the professor.
SPEAKER_05:The the Epic professor with a B.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah. Epic. The Epic professor.
SPEAKER_05:Um I I'm gonna be uh like a a spiritual detective. Uh yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna do a whole voice for it and everything. Um I'm gonna be uh spiritual advisor, uh Hannibal O'Malley. I'm here to solve this Nosferatu business. I'm down from the bayou. Uh so I you know I've got like a whole thing. I'm gonna wear um the the shoes that I wore or my my wedding shoes and my wedding vest. So I'm gonna be very green. Uh I'm essentially like trying to be uh Hannibal Chow from uh Pacific Rim. Uh but like in the terms of uh like being a weird mystical like inspector.
SPEAKER_03:With most of the with most of what I have in mind that I'm gonna be wearing, I think I'm gonna be very blue.
SPEAKER_05:Because a lot of Well I'm gonna be very green.
SPEAKER_03:Uh-huh. Is it clu are we playing clue now?
SPEAKER_05:I'm gonna be very blue, because if I was green, I would die.
SPEAKER_03:I wasn't even thinking about that. It's just what I'm like I like if I remember right, there was a skirt that I was gonna wear that's blue. Yeah. And then I have a corset that's blue, and then I'm the rest of it's gonna be black, but like I I have no idea what what Ash is gonna do. But um I feel like at this point we're turning ourselves into the we're turning ourselves into into clue characters. You're Mr. Green, I'm Mrs. Peacock at this point.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, okay. Yeah. Is there a professor in clue?
SPEAKER_03:Uh there is a Professor Plum.
SPEAKER_05:Plum, there you go. He's purple. There you go, he's purple. You hear that, Asa? You're gonna he's not gonna hear this. He's never gonna listen to this. He's not. No. Make him wear purple. You should turn him into like an owni character. You just like spray paint his entire body one color.
SPEAKER_01:Then it's just like the face with the bug eyes, just Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Well, the listeners can't see. We were just making faces at each other. Yeah. This is just what uh a father and his son do when they're recording a podcast. Absolutely, it is. Uh well that that kind of um naturally segues into item number eight on my list, which is um uh how does your fashion play into the LARPs you participate in? Uh can you give the the culture boomers? I was really on this like talking this this episode is for the boomers. If you're out there and you're a boomer and you're listening to this, I you're gonna learn so much. You're valid. Even if you have no idea what what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02:You're gonna learn so much.
SPEAKER_05:For the culture boomers listening uh on my wiretap. Man, I I was feeling myself when I was writing this question. So um yeah, I just talk about uh the LARP C does.
SPEAKER_03:So currently. Currently, I only do the one, which is uh the uh theater of the mind LARP of Vampire the Masquerade, which uh usually, like when most people think of LARP, they think of, oh yeah, I dress up as a knight and I go sword fight strangers in a field or whatever. I have been to one of those. Yeah. Um but ours, it's essentially just we dress up as we dress up as vampires, we go to a game store, and we stand around, and anytime we want to fight anybody, we play rock, paper, scissors, and whoever wins wins the fight.
SPEAKER_05:Um Is is the rock, paper, scissors portion of playing uh or LARPing vampire that way is that common? I bel yeah, pretty much.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, because I most theater mind LARPs, we just it's throwing chops. Because it's the the because it's you're doing the the chop with the hand, it's throwing chops.
SPEAKER_05:There's a there's a dude that Ash and I used to know uh here in in town um who uh I don't I don't know if he ran Athens by night or if he was just like one of the storytellers. But they would like go to the location in Athens or the you know greater Athens area where the story was taking place and they would whenever they had conflicts, he had like a pocket full of coins that he would like flip like five or six coins for folks.
SPEAKER_03:So a lot of uh some people as well in our game, like I know I do this, is we use cards instead of just playing rock, paper, scissors normally. I have a deck of cards that is specifically a rock, paper, scissors themed deck that's just like a stack of cards that have each card has either rock, paper, or scissors on it, and I draw a card and that's what I that's what I throw for my chops. Um instead of having to like worry about, okay, yeah, I'm gonna decide to do this. Instead I just draw a card.
SPEAKER_05:Uh Are they playing cards that have them? So like the they're actually the numbered.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So not so the the ones that I have is specifically there is a rock, paper, scissors themed card game that I purchased.
SPEAKER_06:I see.
SPEAKER_03:That's literally just all of the cards either have a picture of a rock, a picture of scissors, or a picture of paper. Um and they're like all different themes and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_05:It's not like a traditional deck of cards that has uh the numbers and scissors. No, no, no, no. No. I have I have cursed sets of uh cursed decks of cards.
SPEAKER_03:Um but yeah, the deck that I have, it's literally just like each of the cards either has a rock, paper, scissors on it, and then I just draw a card. That's what I do. I know some people in our LARP as well have uh like most people will just carry around just the three cards. Like like just three cards. I know one of the people in our LARP uses uh magic cards actually for that, where it's like each of the cards that they have, they only have three cards and each one represents one of the things.
SPEAKER_05:Um There's uh Insole Artifact. Is that one of the cards they're using?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. I haven't actually looked at which cards they use for it.
SPEAKER_05:There's a blue enchantment that it's like enchant artifact becomes a five-five artifact. But the the art is literally just like a a colossal pair of scissors. So I could I could see that being It could be. Yeah, I could see that being cool. Like flip flipping that card and it being used for scissors.
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell Uh But yeah, I just have like the the deck that I bought, it just came in in like a little fold, like a little cool little fancy folding box. So I just keep the cards in the box and then I take them out and shuffle them and then just draw from the top of the deck, and then that's what I have for my chop.
SPEAKER_04:Um Do you wear uh do you wear the same fit every time for your character?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell Uh Sometimes it depends because I'm also in this particular LARP, I am playing two characters.
SPEAKER_06:That's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_03:Um I alternate every month. So uh last month, the character that I can that I went to the game as this month is not the same character that I will be going to the game as next month.
SPEAKER_06:Right. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:So I wear different outfits for those characters, but then sometimes I'll alternate like a few things about like what my character is wearing for a game or whatever. Like if there's like a like for example, one of the things that we're doing this month, uh, or I guess next month, is we're doing like a talent show event type bit where it's like uh it's like a specific vampire thing. And I do not remember the word for it off of the top of my head. But it's basically like specifically magnifique. It's like specifically for it, I mean basically, but it's just like uh for the younger generation of vampires to like show off to the elders, like, haha, look at how cool I am, look what I can do. And the elders are just kind of like, wow. Is it and if people do cool, then they get like favor or whatever from the code.
SPEAKER_05:Is it in the fiction or is it like the people who are showing off their actual talents?
SPEAKER_03:I'm pr it's it's mostly in the fiction, but some people are still going to dress up as if they were actually attending this event.
SPEAKER_05:Aaron Powell I I could see like doing a legit talent show or something like that earlier.
SPEAKER_03:I was gonna say because it's like one of the things that we do as a group is occasionally uh we'll like send a message in the Discord and we'll go do like karaoke.
SPEAKER_05:That was the very next thing I was gonna mention. I could see that happening too. Uh of like the the IRL thing that's happening is karaoke, but like in the fiction, it's like you're at an opera house and everyone's having to do um something for the masquerade.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm trying to see if I can find what the thing's called.
SPEAKER_05:A big performance in an amphitheater or something.
SPEAKER_02:What is the thing called?
SPEAKER_05:What is the thing called? Um You're getting uh everyone's getting the more casual version of what we're doing. So we're just it's just kind of like hanging out. It's less of an interview.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, pretty much.
SPEAKER_05:Um anything else you wanna you wanna say on the LARP?
SPEAKER_03:Um, one of my characters is very cool and important, and the other one is a freak.
SPEAKER_05:The dichotomy of man.
SPEAKER_03:The dichotomy of many. Really important guy that's imp that's in charge of where all of the vampires are supposed to hang out, and a freaky little guy that eats dead people.
SPEAKER_05:Are they the same um I don't know, f I don't they're not called factions. What are they called? Clan clan. That's right.
SPEAKER_03:Uh the character that is the important one is they're also in different sects as well. So uh the first character that I introduced, well not the first the first character I introduced is dead. I killed him. Um the second character that I introduced, which is the character that I played this past month, is uh the his official title is the keeper of Elysium, and he is of the clan Lesambra, specifically of the subclan Chiosid, so he's a vampire with Fey blood, so he can do magic and stuff. And then my other one is uh is an anarch who is of the clan Nagaraja, and their whole thing is they are the flesh eaters. They don't just drink blood, they have to like eat human flesh in order to sustain themselves. And mine in particular has to entirely consume a singular organ to do that. So he's I zombie style, he's the coroner of a county and works in works in a morgue.
SPEAKER_05:And it doesn't necessarily predate on prey on people.
SPEAKER_03:Right. He does not prey on people living at all.
SPEAKER_00:He doesn't eat the living, just eats like it's like let me just have a bar let me borrow your kidney real quick.
SPEAKER_05:He died of kidney vanishing from his body disease.
SPEAKER_00:It's what happens when you're kidding.
SPEAKER_01:Where does kidney go?
SPEAKER_05:When your kidney disappears, you die?
SPEAKER_03:Question mark? Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Yo, uh what's next for Mothra? Um new art forms, projects.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, obviously Big D twenty is gonna happen at some point.
SPEAKER_05:I would hope Big D20.
SPEAKER_00:I would like to have that in my collection.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, uh Big D20. Um probably gonna get my model recommissioned at some point. I don't know how much I'm gonna be able to do resin as I had been, because I'm moving.
SPEAKER_05:That's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_03:And two of our root or one of our roommates has a cat that is likely going to be wandering the house.
SPEAKER_05:You should resin cast the cat.
SPEAKER_01:Resin cast.
SPEAKER_05:Just a statue of the cat.
SPEAKER_01:Here's your cat back. I would I I cat sat for you. Here's your cat back.
SPEAKER_05:I made your cat indestructible. He is safe. Completely safe, utterly safe.
SPEAKER_03:Nothing bad will ever happen to your cat again. Also, he doesn't know how to breathe anymore, but that's okay. He'll be fine.
SPEAKER_05:Whoever this is, I'm sorry. If you're listening to this, um it was Moth's idea.
SPEAKER_04:Uh no!
SPEAKER_05:If you if your cat gets uh gets statufied, did you know you know pet petrified, you know who did it.
SPEAKER_01:No uh it wasn't we it was the demons that live in the house.
SPEAKER_05:The yeah, you we just Dang it! We spent like 30 minutes talking about how you you're a virtual demon.
SPEAKER_02:You're right.
SPEAKER_05:Virtual demon.
SPEAKER_02:Carson's failed again.
SPEAKER_05:So uh, you know, we're sitting in a a library, a p a house of book. Yes. You want to talk about a book that's had an impact on your life?
SPEAKER_03:Ooh. Um, a really good one that actually is literally in my car in the parking lot right now. It is S by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst.
SPEAKER_00:Ooh, okay.
SPEAKER_03:The book itself actually comes sealed in a box because in between different pages of the book there are loose papers and like little it's like it's like a mur it's like a murder mystery box, but a book. Yeah. And essentially, like inside the box is a book by a different title. That's like the whole plot of it is it's like two college students going back and forth trying to solve the mystery of the novel by writing in the margins of the book. So it's like there are notes written in the. Yeah. And there's like a little desk. There's like little news articles in between some of the pages, and there's like a little cipher, little spinner thing in the back of the book. It's so dope.
SPEAKER_05:So it's like a puzzle box kit in the form of a book.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Have you solved it?
SPEAKER_03:No.
SPEAKER_05:How far do you think? If you need to gauge how far you are, how far are you?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell Uh Less than halfway.
SPEAKER_05:But okay, sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I imagine that's there's a lot of information.
SPEAKER_05:I imagine it's one of those sort of things that could take like way longer than just reading a book. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because it's like I could read through the book all the way through without like looking at any of the and I'd have nothing. I would I would have read a f I would have read an imaginary book because the book in the box is But it's real.
SPEAKER_04:It's a real book.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so it's like the physical book itself is a real book. But if you look at the title on the actual book, it's the faked it's a fake title that's meant to be an in-universe book. In like even the physical copy of the book is part of the story.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, but that's a real book, though.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but then the the name of the author, the name of the author on the book is also fake because it's not a real person.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, but it's a real book. It's a it's the the words are fake, I guess. The idea is fake, but it's a real book. It's a physical book that you could read.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Have you read that book?
SPEAKER_03:Not all of it. Okay, but you're like, but it's like, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Do you have to is it so like when you're reading the book, do you hit a point and you're like, oh, now I have information to be able to like engage with X, Y, or Z part of the entire puzzle box kind of thing?
SPEAKER_03:Sort of. It's like it's hard to explain it. You just gotta like read the book.
SPEAKER_05:You gotta read that book. Read the book, man. Kind of I guess in very much in a uh Danieluski and it's like you could explain the Navidson account or like any of the many plots going on within House of Leaves, but it's like without ha without someone physically cracking open the book and experiencing like the the uh manic hysteria of the form. Like the literal form of the book. You can't really exp you couldn't get across that the experience in the same way.
SPEAKER_03:Like I could read look, I could pull it up on my phone right now and read like the synopsis of the book to you, or like the thing that's on the back. I can read you the back of the book.
SPEAKER_04:I don't think I've had anyone do that. Go go get the synopsis real quick and read it very much. I haven't already.
SPEAKER_03:I took a picture of it just in case it could be.
SPEAKER_04:Hit us with it.
SPEAKER_03:One book, two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.
SPEAKER_05:No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Roll that back. A dramatic voice. Come on.
SPEAKER_03:One book, two readers, a world of mystery, menace, and desire. A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and it by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown. The book, Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic arter. Writer, I can't read. Arter. Arter.
SPEAKER_04:That's we're all just artists in here. Arders.
SPEAKER_03:We're arders. We're arders in here.
SPEAKER_05:It's JJ Abrams's world, and we're all just arders in it.
SPEAKER_03:Uh duh, I lost my spot. Uh a prolific but enigmatic writer named V. M. Straca, in which a man with no past is Shanghai's onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched on a disorienting and perilous journey. The writer, Stracca, the incendi the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world's greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him. The readers, Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they're willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.
SPEAKER_04:You know, now that you have read that out to me, I f I feel like someone has told me about this work before, and I don't think it was you.
SPEAKER_05:I think someone else I know has has engaged with this work before.
SPEAKER_03:It's really interesting. Because it's just like you'd think at first it's like, okay, the name of the book is gonna be on like the name of the book is gonna be on the physical book and also in the box it comes in. You open the box, it's like, whoa, it's a completely different title on the physical book. Because it's meant to be like this is the book that they were actually physically writing in, which is why the title on the book is is the title on the physical book is Ship of Theseus, but the title on the box is S, because S is the name of the story, but the Ship of Theseus is the name of the book.
SPEAKER_05:I I think it was like a uh YouTube essay of uh someone that I follow who talks about experimental fiction. Um I think described this.
SPEAKER_03:It's like a really neat concept, too. There, yeah, we're like the it's also in the box, so that way you can keep all the papers from the book.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we're starting to see like these interesting experimentations in metafiction. Um probably I would assume um guided by or inspired or prompted by the way that the internet now forces us to think about fiction. With uh there are fictional pieces that exist in the world, but they're always in conversation with comments and uh cultural conversations that are happening on social media, unfolding live as the work uh exists or as when it comes out and people are engaging with it. Uh it seems like this is kind of a a piece that's like b designed to have all of that uh physically contained within an analog uh package.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, kinda. It's just like it's so neat.
SPEAKER_05:I can see how that would be very influential on on your works, uh the the way that you create things that contain other things, right? Like literally in your resume.
SPEAKER_06:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Um the way that like a dice vault could contain a dice, and the dice represent like all these different possibilities for stories that are happening.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:You know, ad infinitum, I guess. Um Yeah, that that sounds dope, man. Um you should you should show me some time. You should show me some time. Uh last before we we uh we sign off. Yeah, he's uh patron. Um before we sign off, um you want to remind folks where they can find your work online or if there's anything else you want to plug?
SPEAKER_03:Um let me pull up what my Instagram account is even called because I have my res in Instagram.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we we didn't we didn't mention cryptid crafting.
SPEAKER_03:We didn't, yeah. So it's just uh cryptid crafting, which I'm still surprised was an account name that wasn't taken.
SPEAKER_04:I was too when you that's crazy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I was like, it was not that long ago that I made this account, and I'm still shocked that it was not taken. Uh so yeah, cryptid crafting on Instagram, and then you can find me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash moth is immortal. Uh I do streams uh sometimes. And maybe you can make maybe if you're lucky, you'll catch me in your but in your bug net with my net gun.
unknown:I'm done.
SPEAKER_05:I'm yelling. Uh Moth, my son, my child. Thank you for coming on to Father's Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, of course, Father.
SPEAKER_05:Um absolutely. Um when I was like, man, who haven't I talked to that I should have on the podcast? I was like, we haven't had Moth. Why haven't you had Moth yet? So here we are. We finally did it.
SPEAKER_03:Huzzah.
SPEAKER_05:Huzzah, indeed.