sideways: (►other upper echelon)
If you are like me and often don't pay much attention to the DW news page, you may have missed the notice that there are some significant design changes coming!

There is a window somewhere between a couple of weeks and a couple of months to comment on those changes and help the dev team address any major bugs.

Personally, I switched to the new Create Post mode earlier this year and have found it visually less 'pretty' but mechanically more workable, and I'm interested to see what doors might open up for the dev team once they're no longer strapped to maintaining ancient code, heh.

tempest

Nov. 10th, 2023 10:29 am
sideways: (►them roads are winding)
Title: Tempest
AO3: Link
Rating: G
Series: The Rider Series (Danny Fisher, Carlo Goss)
Wordcount: 1,730
Summary: Foul weather begets foul moods.
Remarks: This is the kind of fic that gets written when I'm frustrated with not writing fic, which is to say I won't argue it's my best work or particularly meaningful but by GOLLY at least I wrote something. 

◘◘◘

a sea of mud to greet them )
sideways: (►another opportunity)
I've gotten so far behind my media round-ups that I think this is going to have to be a 'greatest hits of the interim' post or it's going to go on for far too long.

• I have a soft spot for cephalopods, so the premise of The Mountain in the Sea was instantly attention-grabbing: a scientist is hired to investigate the possibility that a population of wild octopuses have developed a level of consciousness and intelligence comparable to humans, and the consequences of this possibility slowly spiral outwards through adjacent plotlines. I ultimately enjoyed this book, as there were a lot of interesting ideas thrown around, and the writing style was refreshingly brisk. I don't think it rose to its full potential, though; the octopus were there and I loved every second of them, but in a way the story was less about the discovery of a new, non-human culture as it was a treatise on communication and social identity, explored through a series of near-future sci-fi thought concepts. The character voices in particular were pretty weak. This is the author's first published novel, though, and it will be interesting to see if he grows more adept at spinning a truly extrapolative story with more long-form writing experience.

• From the future to the past: We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my first Shirley Jackson outside of The Lottery, and whoo. Whoo. There really is just something about the greats and their ability to re-write your brain a little, isn't there? I find myself fascinated with the way Jackson works with absence; the story is as much, if not more so, about what isn't on the page as what is, and it leaves so much room for the reader to insert themselves into the experience. This book troubled me for days.

Galavant is easy and fun. Apparently its creators claim it as a mix of Princess Bride and Monty Python, which are some rather large boots I don't quite think they fill, but I'm a sucker for musical comedy and the cast is very charming.

• I never dabbled in Critical Role, mostly because that is just a lot of time to give over to a single story good grief. Thank goodness for cliff-notes then! The Legend of Vox Machina promised well-animated fight scenes, which as usual is an easy sell for me. There really aren't many complaints I can make that aren't immediately explained away by the fact this is a fan-funded project based on a tabletop game that a bunch of friends played together for the lulz, and given that foundation I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the accompanying storytelling. Like, yes, it could use a pre-season to actually get to know everyone before we launch into major dramatics, but I know why it doesn't exist and I accept I'm not the priority audience. Maybe the pacing could be better; it does well enough. Maybe the quantity of crude jokes aren't to my taste; I guess they were to somebody's. The animation and soundtrack are both fantastic. I'm looking forward to season three.

• A couple of movie nights with [personal profile] weirderwest worked us through Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves and Alien, which were entertaining in, um... very different ways. D&D was very silly, but wow, loved the platonic life partnership at the centre. Alien was also sort of silly, but mostly in the sense of watching a pop culture tragedy and going noooo stop making all these inevitably terrible decisions!! Love that old school sci-fi aesthetic though, truly we've gotten more boring.

• A whimsical rewatching of the ever-classic Muppet Treasure Island ended with me starting to pick through a sampler of The Muppet Show itself. I keep thinking 'wow, why haven't they brought this back, it's such a simple but fun formula' and then I remember they did do that and it apparently sucked. Something something worst timeline.

• Like ten months after my parents showed me the first couple of episodes I've FINALLY finished Deadloch - the delay was less because I didn't want to continue and more because it's taken me this long for me to grudgingly sign up for Amazon Prime. The ratio of comedy to drama was weighted rather more in the latter's direction than I expected over the course of the show, but I ended up really invested in the mystery, and the character arcs were compelling as well. I think my only real whinge is I wish they'd folded Tammy and Miranda's B plot more snugly into the A; for a second in the final episode it looked like they would, and then they weirdly veered away from it? Let the girls be plot-critical! The actors were great, they deserve it.

• I've hit a bit of a wall with Baldur's Gate 3... Act III is definitely the roughest, aheh.
sideways: (►in mexico)
I finally made it to Act III of Baldur's Gate 3 today, and immediately ran headfirst into what I refuse to believe is anything but a very deliberate prank constructed by the developers... and it got me so bad I had to walk away and lie down for a while because I was crying with uncontrollable laughter and couldn't see the screen. It was like getting cursed by Tasha's Hideous Laughter in real life. Devastating critical hit.

(For the curious, this article describes much the same situation I ended up in.)

some broad and nonspoilery observations )
sideways: (►lest we have to settle down)
It has been an unquestionably crummy year for writing, which probably makes it a little ambitious on my part to join [community profile] tinyfandomflash. I just find the premise charming, and there are a good number of fandoms with fewer than 500 works on AO3 that I could conceivably write for - Raksura, Widdershins, the Old Kingdom, A House of Many Doors, my favourite Cherryhs...

(I say, like there are any Cherryh series that wouldn't qualify. The entire Alliance-Union universe rates 132 works apparently. Dire.)

Otherwise, it is just as unquestionably the year of Larian so far! Good grief. Firstly, [personal profile] syntheid and I finished Divinity: Original Sin II towards the end of August, proudly clocking in over a hundred hours of gameplay, eight months of dedicated Friday/Saturday timezone alignments, a solid collection of achievements, and only, uh, three attempts to get through the final boss fight. (Fuck you, [redacted], and your giant fucking [redacted].)

I wish I'd done better at keeping notes of things as we went through because there were so many funny and/or awesome moments. Pressing buttons that should not have been pressed. Fighting statues that should not have been fought. Lane constantly telling me not to eat people like an exhausted owner prying souls out of their dog's mouth (and then I impulsively ate a screaming flower and got superpowers so who's to say the impulse was wrong really). "...Did you just- did you just walk directly into the lava." Both of us cringing and wheeze-laughing our way through the romance / sex scene because this was Not Our Thing. The moment in the hectic final battle when a mostly-dead Lane went, "Hm, now seems a good time to use my Equaliser move" and completely flipped the outcome of the fight on its head. Chef kiss.

It was good times. I would definitely recommend the game to anyone looking for a very enjoyable and accommodating co-play game with a truly staggering amount of content. I don't know if I would have completed it alone, as I would not call it particularly compelling character work, but the plot has a few fun twists and the combat stayed novel.

Fortunately, Larian is doing solidly compelling character work in Baldur's Gate 3, which has been my next jaunt! I was a little worried my wee laptop wouldn't be able to run it, but it's doing admirably so far. I have next to no experience with Baldur's Gate as a series, so the experience is so far paralleling that of Dragon Age, where I similarly launched straight into a later title and paddled blindly around with a fairly generic player character. It seems a good sign I am already itching to try again with a more well-conceived PC despite having barely broached Act II.
sideways: (►got a double side)
A couple of song recs from recent roamings!

Ghost of My Hometown, The Strike
Kind of an 80s pop vibe.

Barnacled Warship, Johnny Flynn
Hough. Strings and a fucked up narrator. Always here for that.

Grifters, Charming Disaster
The overlapping sequences are a little rough around the edges, but I still enjoyed this 'two liars in concerning love' song.

Gold, Sir Sly
I left my heart in the Sierra Madre dot song.

Alive, The Scarlet Opera
Theatrical self-actualisation!

Footprints, Escondido
Dark feminine vengeance in the lawless west.
sideways: (►plant begonias)
• I enjoyed the TV adaptation of The Sandman comics enough that I figured I ought to go check out the original - I never had much exposure to comics in general as a youngster, so they'd passed me by until now, though I've been vaguely aware of them as gothic and well-regarded. Some elements have aged clumsily, but I was overall very tickled to find the series is exactly as queer as the show suggested, and the tale/s it spun were a fantastical journey complemented by a succession of stunning art. It took me a little while to come to grips with the ending, but I think I've landed on the side of it being a fitting conclusion for the characters and themes even if it's not entirely the ending I'd most like. Very curious as to whether the TV series will remain faithful; of course, that relies on it winning enough seasons to reach the end point, which [waves hand at Netflix] good luck and all.

• I honestly wasn't expecting Parable of the Sower to be such a straight-forward 'journey across a dystopian landscape' novel. What elevates it in this crowded genre is Butler's unshrinking commentary on class and race, the philosophical discussions around human nature and the proposition of Earthseed as a new spiritual driver, and her disturbing prescience. It is a very unsettling feeling to crack open a 90s novel on civil unrest tied to deep economic depression, callous corporate interests, and the pressures of climate change, and immediately get hit in the face with "2024". The sequel apparently features a tyrannical president spouting 'Make America Great Again' as a slogan, for heaven's sake. I don't know what she did to become Apollo's favourite, but I guess I'm glad her timeline was off by at least a decade or two.

• My parents showed me the first two episodes of Taskmaster AUS while I was visiting, and between those and [personal profile] rionaleonhart's enthusiastic recommendations from a while back, I started watching Taskmaster UK from the beginning once I returned home. Really fun! I love Greg Davies in general, the humour ranges from slapstick to absolutely wicked, and I appreciate that it doesn't really encourage binge-watching in me. I've made it through the first two seasons so far (enjoyed the first, howled with laughter throughout the second), and while I'm taking a bit of a break for now I fully expect to get through the remaining ten seasons eventually. Good dinner entertainment.

• I never read the Nimona webcomic, so I could only judge the movie adaptation on its own merits: cute if fairly standard animation, topical but weirdly shallow messaging, and the emotional pacing of an epileptic grasshopper. Not a big winner for me, but hopefully kids have a good time.

• Known mountain-lover [personal profile] killyhawk recommended The Summit of the Gods to me, a known animation-lover, and boy this film definitely ticks both those boxes. A French adaptation of a Japanese manga, the film follows a young photojournalist's fascination with the story of Habu Joji, a talented climber dogged by tragedy, and their inevitable path to Everest. The movie managed to unflinchingly depict the brutal hardships of extreme mountaineering that have always made this hobby seem insane to me, while still pushing a sympathetic (and I would argue a little overly romantic) view of the people who pursue it - I kept flashing back to passages from MacFarlane's 'Mountains of the Mind' throughout. The animation was incredible, though, and it also had an unexpectedly lovely soundtrack! Double thumbs up to this rec.

• I went into The Favourite thinking it was a comedy and I don't know where I got that impression because it is uh. Not what I would call a comedy. Stunning acting across the board, though, and another fantastic entry into the genre of "man, monarchies aren't even fun for the monarchs".

• Had a stupid amount of fun rewatching first The Chronicles of Riddick and then Pitch Black, remnants of my teenaged tastes. The only downside is my long-standing regret I don't live in the timeline where the high space fantasy nonsense of Chronicles was its own movie series, and the sequel to Pitch Black was instead a more character-focused story in which the Imam hires Riddick to break Jack out of Crematoria and there is literally any sensible continuity to the character histories and general worldbuilding at all. Chronicles says "Carolyn Fry whomst? Time for another one-sided battle in which Vin Diesel I mean Riddick is Flawlessly Cool" and like, babe, love that for you in general, but why are you doing PB so dirty.

eee!

Jul. 23rd, 2023 07:35 pm
sideways: (►I wish you well)
I don't acquire commissions nearly as often as I could, mostly due to the Mortifying Ordeal of Deciding What You Want And Then Asking It Of Another Human Person. Horrendous! What if I just threw myself very dramatically onto a sword instead.

Fortunately I managed to get over myself long enough to commission an artist I've admired for a long time; though she mostly does Destiny work, it was her Pillars of Eternity art that inspired me, and I now have a gorgeous portrait of Neus :) One of the game's fun quirks is it allows you to upload custom portraits, so I no longer have to settle for the generic pre-builts and can instead enjoy all the fungal, sharp-toothed glory that once only lived inside my head. The downside is I am spending too much time staring at the character page.

I also just today 'purchased' an adorable little ficlet from dear Nem for the price of a donation to a raptor centre, as part of her 'Horizon Day of Service' - Shepard/Jack/Shiala in the same pocket universe as this fic. They are deeply weird and I love the way Nem packs in the xenobiology.
sideways: (►got a double side)
So I am a big fan of AMVs as a medium - it's all about the timing and the thematic resonance with the music for me, though occasionally some flashy effects will catch my eye. I used to keep a collection on Twitter of some that have made me seriously hoot and holler over the years, and decided I should probably transfer them over here as well so they don't get lost! There are already a couple that have simply vanished over time :'( I will forever mourn that one Firefly 'Adiemus' AMV. Where did you go, my lovely.

various vids below the cut )
Anyone got any personal favourites to share? I always love recommendations.
sideways: (►lest we have to settle down)
[personal profile] syntheid linked me to the video below, where people have used ChatGPT to create a fully voiced companion for Skyrim who responds to voice prompts.


Have to say... I'm not into it T-T Even setting aside everything that is already troublesome about ChatGPT, even setting aside the reflexive grimaces every time the demonstrator here says something particularly Stereotypical Male Gamer (it is weirdly infuriating to me that this guy never does say her name right), I can't get past feeling like this defeats the purpose of having companion characters in games. Skyrim is perhaps not the best hill to die on in this respect, since most of the characters in it are very flat, but on a wider scale the companions that linger fondly in memory are those who are well-rounded characters in their own right; written with a personality and a deliberate purpose within the narrative. Herika seems to mostly alternate between snarky and fawning - there are no hints of any actual goals or history or deeper traits, at least within the scope of what's shown in the video.

It's not a total negative, of course - the fact the AI can react more responsively to the gear that's equipped, remember past enemy encounters in its commentary, and respond to vocal requests and orders in combat? Genuinely pretty cool. And there is a certain wistful dream inherent in the idea of actually having a conversation with a character that's a little more fluid than a wheel of pre-determined options. To get to push the limits on what can be realistically achieved with a static script.

Alas, I cannot escape the general crawling uneasiness of watching voice actors being already undervalued in cinema, where people have come to prioritise star power over professionals, and now threatened in this corner as well. ChatGPT is a ways off being enjoyably immersive or human yet, but one has to expect that technology will improve. Not into it! At least Oblivion came by its terrible voice acting honestly!
sideways: (►happy being someone)
I fired up the first Pillars of Eternity game on a new save with the vague idea that maybe if I re-familiarised myself with the mechanics I'd be able to get back into Deadfire, and instead I've kind of just… kept playing >> So I guess this is happening, for however long 'this' lasts! I did at least sheepishly tack on the White March DLCs so there's some fresh content waiting for me.

"New save file, new character?" Haha, of course not. There's always something fun about a first replay, though; taking all the character development and worldbuilding knowledge garnered over the course of the story, rolling it back to the beginning, and going oh, so this would have all landed way differently had I not been in the role of a blank slate blindly hoovering up knowledge.

'Ware spoilers for both PoE and PoE: Deadfire below!

the arrival at gilded vale )

backstory details )
sideways: (►I wake)
1) Today in web antics, Tumblr had a collective heart attack before staff hurriedly clarified they were not making random 'algorithmic' content the default dashboard (I'm still counting it as another early warning light tbh), AO3 got briefly bombed, and Dreamwidth apparently has a whole beta alternative create post mode that's friendlier on mobile?? And has since like 2015? I am bad at actually paying attention to Dreamwidth's various features.

The mode does not solve the issue of clicking to other mobile tabs, only for the DW page to refresh when you click back and erase half your damn post, but it's something.

2) Yesterday I bought two painted rocks from children for $20. One of them is a 'vegan rock' that has pictures of various fruit upon it, helpfully labelled with "pees", "bananananas", and "vegables". My coworkers are making fun of me but I think it's an excellent purchase.

3) My toilet is finally fixed. For real this time. (I hopE...)

4) Believe it or not, I've never used eBay before this year, but I realised I could buy Spider-Man comics there and have been having way too much fun. The hardest purchase so far has been the Peter/MJ wedding issue - I think John Romita Snr's recent passing may have made it a bit more of a premium than usual, I got outbid on two sets before I found one I could just buy outright - but I've just about snared all the key Peter/MJ issues I want, plus a bunch of the Web of Spider-Man run which I quite enjoyed when I first began exploring the classics. I can see how people get Really Into This as a hobby.

5) Mum and Dad have booked flights to come up in early September for a visit, which will be very nice. We've been making use of a new cheap airline to trial these quicker 'weekend' visits - I went down in June to stay with them while I visited my grandmother, who has recently moved into an aged care facility and is obviously going through a bit of stress and emotional adjustment with that transition. We also belatedly fulfilled Mum's Christmas present and went to the local zoo for a VIP tour, where we got to feed tamarins, ruffed lemurs, meerkats, and Mum's most favourite animal of all: the binturong.
sideways: (►in mexico)
...Well dunk. Incredibly funny I managed to reignite some old nostalgia for Red Vs Blue (thanks to a dream, no less) literal days before the trailer for the final season dropped.

That said, huh! Actual final season! Like, plain thank goodness, for one thing, meandering around forever is kind of a terrible fate for a story; and the trailer itself looks promising. I haven't watched since season 12 though so I'm hoping vague fandom osmosis will be enough to track what happens in it because I don't particularly want to wade through everything in between, lmfao. That's so many episodes of varying quality.
sideways: (►not today or tomorrow)
Today on "playlists I will never make": something something Church and Tex, something something The Forgetting Room.

We were children when I met you
There between the autumn trees
You consumed me and I let you
Burn me in the fallen leaves
A thousand winters each more serious
Separated earth and sky
The blood was angry, blood was furious
But the heart cannot recall just why
sideways: (►I wish you well)
1) Always a little fascinating, and sometimes perversely satisfying, to take a look at what's in the top kudos'd category of a fandom and conclude none of it's what you're after. RIP to 3,000 odd strangers I guess but we're clearly different people. (Other times it's exactly what I want and I am one of the triumphant sheeple. Ever a gamble. The best strategy ofc is finding someone who writes what you like and raiding their bookmarks ad infinitum.)

2) Weather's been absolutely stupid. Slightly cold for two days. Sudden rain, in June. Hot again! Wait, shit, it's still winter. Uh, mildly warm? Fuck it, hot.

3) Had my first home repair incident because I went to the loo in the middle of the night and put my foot in a puddle. Spent an embarrassingly extended few seconds trying to figure out if the roof was leaking or if I had somehow wee'd on the floor before concluding the toilet itself was the problem, and then commenced the journey of trying to get a plumber in, which was also a rather meandering process. Seems good now though, fingers crossed.

4) Honestly this time of year is awful financially, I feel like my bills are lining up to kick me around in a gutter and loot me for spare change. Peacock dryly reflected that you know you've crossed out of a certain life bracket when you go from "tax return, whee, free money!" to "tax return, whee, QUICK PAY THE CAR REGO".

5) Had a nice "oh I have come a ways" moment at work when I held my own in an argument over grass species. The old Winger could not have thrown down about the fact that white speargrass is, despite the common name, Aristida, and what's more there IS more than one species of Heteropogon commonly found in our region! Listening to people argue grass ID sounds is so funny though, there's a reason this image decorates my desk. We're trying so hard and guessing so much.
sideways: (►oh no)
It's the show long weekend, which is ideal timing since I am approaching the critical mass of intolerance with my own mess. The hair tumbleweeds have grown too large.

Yesterday was game time with [personal profile] syntheid and a birthday party; today I have done laundry and groceries, re-organised my cupboards and pantries, and gone for a nice long walk to the weir and back. Tomorrow it shall be the floors and more laundry at minimum, and perhaps also some dusting etc. Then I shall at last have re-attained locational sanity.

I'm also still slowly fussing around with digital archiving, and have begun making sure all the AO3 fics are also cross-posted here. Fortunately most of them were anyway, so there are only a few to scrape, and of course none of them are terribly long, haha. Shortfic life finally coming through for me. 

I'll also need to go through and start ensuring I have all the Twitter logs saved, GRIMACE. Still very funny having DW just standing quietly in a corner as everything burns around it. It's not cool and popular, and unfortunately it'll never be an ideal haven for artists, but damn if it doesn't just keep going.
sideways: (►city life has crumbled)
Throwing up some 'sketch page' style noodling in the absence of any completed fics of late - a couple of incomplete drabblets featuring my Fallout: New Vegas characters and their borrowed best beaus. One of FNV's strengths is the complex web of power and politics it builds around the Mojave, and it's always interesting to dip into different characters' takes on the factions and their personal histories with them and the region.

Larkin & Vivian ([personal profile] killyhawk)

under the boot )

Avery & Wyn ([personal profile] weirderwest)

two mojaves )
sideways: (►another opportunity)
The web's sure getting wobbly. Twitter's a hole, Reddit's rioting, Tumblr keeps crowing about its invincibility even as worse features are being implemented directly in front of their salads, and AO3 is undergoing the kind of drama I am not equipped to summarise beyond "someone opened a can of worms and oh god the worms are everywhere and now the worms are fighting each other and the birds that were meant to eat the worms are also fighting each other oh god oh no".

One good thing to come out of this for me, personally, has been the drive to do a lot of backing-up and digital filing! I still keep chewing my thumbnail over whether to try and digitise the DVD library too... some of 'em are getting a little old and are in danger of your more standard physical decay. Woe to life on this ephemeral earth.
sideways: (►couldn't be more opposite)
• Mum leant me a copy of Water for Elephants, which I read during my trip into the mountains. She liked the colourful writing style, and it did have that! It also hit unexpectedly close to home during the elderly Jacob's reflections - we've been going through the process of moving my grandmother into aged care, and my lower lip may have done some quivering. It otherwise seemed fairly standard mainstream book club fare, if with at least one moment that genuinely upset me. I can't say I particularly liked most of the characters save Walter, who deserved better.

The Greatest Showman had a far more romantic take on circuses, including a list of foot-tapping songs and some fun choreography. They titled the movie well, though - it's not about the circus or family or class struggles, and it's certainly not about the burden of discrimination or a group of outsiders finding a home. It's about Hugh Jackman getting to prance around as the star of the show, flawed but so, so, so good-hearted, really, look how much he loves his children and he was poor once so he's not really exploiting anyone, right? Right. I'd almost rather they'd just owned the shallowness of the motivations rather than trying to bake weak meaning into it.

• Speaking of gratuitous male flexing, I got about nine episodes into Suits and had to bail. Couldn't do it. The cases were interesting, but the narrative positioning of the majority of the women was so off-putting, and instead of using Mike's status as the underdog outsider to interrogate an established system of rich and powerful people, it was mostly used to emphasise how Cool and Awesome it is to be rich and powerful. What. Why.

• [personal profile] weirderwest and I had a movie night reliving the joys of Pacific Rim. I think the funniest thing was both of us confirming how hard Tumblr gaslighted itself in some respects - can we all now finally admit Raleigh is a poorly acted blank space of a character who sucks up screentime that should have gone to Mako, the vastly more interesting protagonist? Still, the wish fulfilment of PacRim is at least fun, and there is ample glee to be had in its shameless love and indulgence of the appropriate tropes. The giant robots? Epic. The giant monsters? Even more so. Worldbuilding? Cool. Drift compatibility? Great concept. Music? SLAPS.

• I stubbornly dragged my ass back to the first season of the His Dark Materials TV show and successfully, if not enthusiastically, finished it. I'm sorry. I really tried. The visuals are on point, I'll cop to that without reservation; it was seeing some lovely gifsets that lured me back, in fact, and the second and third season title openings are as incredible as the first. The show's interpretations of the characters are often very different to the books, however (though I quite liked what I saw of Will), the depiction of dæmons remained clunky and inconsistent, the pacing was all over the shop, and the dialogue was just... awkward, to me. I know there is a lot going on in the setting, but like. C'mon. The books are literally right there.

• In contrast, I had a marvellous time re-reading and re-watching Watership Down! Now there's an adaptation that knew what it was doing, and I say an emphatic fie to all those reviewers of the time who dared suggest it would have been better to do it Disney style. Things get lost, of course - most of the supporting cast gets flattened out, for one thing, but you can tell the writers still clearly understood who they were meant to be. The condensing of plot events are logical, the physical depictions of the characters are striking, and they fit in as much of the lore as they can manage. The only really questionable decision is the amount of time we spend on Fiver's weird Bright Eyes fever dream. 
sideways: (►she keeps my heart)
The passing of Tina Turner is sad news, of course. It also sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, as I consequently learned a) she is the singer behind Nutbush City Limits, the classic backing track to my childhood social life, and b) this song is apparently not associated with a goofy line dance anywhere but Australia!



A little fishing around suggests it originated in the 'Blue Light Discos' of the 80s, when the Queensland Police would fund and run dance parties as a way to keep the youth entertained and out of trouble. It became a cultural staple, with public schools baking it into the curriculum to Pavlovian effect - my generation learned it in phys. ed. classes and carried it forward to school dances, birthday parties, and weddings. I still distinctly remember being at a bowling night with the Girl Guides, hearing Nutbush come on over the speakers, and taking a timeout with the rest of the establishment to obligingly boogie.

We even hold a world record for it. Apparently there are plans to break it this year, in fond memory.

From there I ended up idly looking up the Macarena as that other Dorky Dance Everybody Knows, and accidentally stumbled into this enormously charming competition where swing dancers are paired up at random and have to throw together a short routine on the spot! The pair below absolutely nail it.


I also quite enjoyed this Mamma Mia pair (though it took the lead a while to come around!), and then had to look up the lady dancer from the first video when she's not improvising - she's just so stunningly fluid.

Gives me a bit of a wistful itch to try out dancing. I mean... the Nutbush is a starting place, right?

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