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description=Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;

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Text of the page (random words):
d myself in writing fiction when this video dropped from bookborn now to be fair i ve found bookborn s videos engaging and i don t agree with all of her takes on things but i found that her videos do make me think which is a good thing this one is about fandoms and how fandoms have gotten more strident and whatnot in the past several years with the rise of the algorithm controlling what is on your feed in social media as an example she mentioned that she s a taylor swift fan and with the new album release she went ahead and listened to it by herself first before she got online when she got there she discovered that all hell had broken out about the album this is but one example she had about how toxic fandoms had become these days to my mind my first comment would have been since i ve referenced it once you bet i m gonna bring it out from time to time it s not as if the internet created gatekeepers and assholes and purists in fandoms like any item of technology it is an accelerant i m not going to say that we were all one big happy family in ye olde days of sf f and music and whatever fandom because everybody had opinions and frequently there were assholes you had to deal with typically however the reach of said assholes wasn t very far typically the local area you lived in it was only with the advent of the internet and various forms of social media did people become louder and more obnoxious over a much more distant area just remember kids that whenever you re seeing someone espousing something on the internet that s just one person s opinion go and form your own and remember when someone says everyone believes this don t believe them just don t that could be the social media algorithm s fault that you re not seeing the other opinions examine sources and trust but verify posted by redbeard at 12 56 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels fandom memes musings videos thursday may 11 2023 what the f is filk if you re not familiar with the term filk it s a specific subgenre of music that references sf f media placing the sf f topic into a musical framework we re not talking about a soundtrack or even something like toss a coin to your witcher but typically a replacement of lyrics of an already existing piece of music like oh say replacing the lyrics in the beatles song penny lane with an ode to middle earth from my copy of the tolkien scrapbook page 144 apparently a lot of people on goodreads don t understand that the tolkien scrapbook s origins are long before tolkien himself was ever taken seriously by academia much less the peter jackson films filk appeared with the rise of the sf f convention scene and i suppose you could argue that the bastardization of the words folk music is where filk got it s name my guess is that we re talking about oh the 1960s or so given the rise of folk music in the popular consciousness at the time despite it s age some people have issues wrapping their heads around filk even if they are inclined to accept cosplay there tend to be raised eyebrows at filk songs and performers my suspicion is that because cosplay is primarily a visual medium and let s be honest there are a lot of attractive cosplayers out there it s easier to accept cosplay than filk you get the idea from blizzardterrak via pinterest now if you like your football soccer you re probably familiar with the replacement or insertion of lyrics specific to your team such as that found with such creative editing of classical music or hymns so the basic concept isn t completely unfamiliar to people this isn t the adoption of an existing song as your club s theme song such as cincinnati bengals welcome to the jungle liverpool fc s you ll never walk alone or crystal palace s glad all over by the dave clark five but something like a full version of this sort of thing taking the melody from land of hope and glory to tell nottingham forest among others to go piss off you re probably wondering where the hell this post came from and i ll be honest this wasn t what i had in mind when i sat down to write on tuesday that post will come later in this case i pulled up youtube to listen to something i was originally thinking of something mellow to get through my morning workload such as french impressionistic pieces but instead this old chestnut appeared on my feed and so i went down that rabbit hole for the next half hour listening to piece after piece because when you start youtube just starts throwing everything vaguely similar at you a lot of those pieces are listed as wow parody or insert franchise here parody which i guess filk could fall under but i also would argue that the term parody makes light of what is clearly a labor of love it s fine for the music to be self aware and not take itself seriously but i typically think of a parody as something that can be easily dismissed when people want to discuss real music sometimes however the real music gets overshadowed by the parody to the point where the parody is more well known than the original piece it was based on such as weird al s i lost on jeopardy eclipsing the greg kihn band s our love s in jeopardy this isn t a plea for filk to be taken seriously after all it already has its own website at bowling green state university in northwest ohio but more a celebration of the form or raising some visibility to it locally we have a true community radio station waif fm 88 3 mhz there are only a handful of community radio stations in the us these days where you can donate money become a member and actually get air time for your show program these are distinctly different than public radio stations which are far more organized and tend to be affiliated with colleges universities or other non profit organizations community radio stations are just that they take their mission very seriously even if the programs themselves can skew very oddball at times i personally recommend listening to the rockin and surfin show on saturday nights if you like your surf music you ll love that show from waif fm and when i said anybody could put on a program i meant anybody back when i first started working in it in the mid late 90s i knew a guy from work who had a radio show on waif that was strictly filk music you might think that a once a week hour long show might run out of filk music to play after a short time but he was able to come up with new filk pieces on a regular basis i ve no idea when he stopped producing the show as it s no longer on their lineup but it s still a nice reminder that there have been people out there raising filk music s visibility so have a couple of pieces of filk music for your day it wouldn t be christmas without hp lovecraft i suppose for those honor harrington fans and it wouldn t be a filk session without a star trek song by way of kermit the frog that s not to say that some people don t expand the definition of filk to cover new pieces of music based on sf f topics or rpg topics or video game topics i mean there is the band harry and the potters after all posted by redbeard at 10 44 am 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels cosplay fandom filk music musings monday july 12 2021 just a pinch of thyme i wanted to put aside some of my foibles in the burning crusade classic for the moment and talk about something near and dear to my heart food you know this stuff from masterclass com but apparently it s an adobe stock photo if you ve ever gamed with friends whether it s playing d d or settlers of catan around a table playing smash bros around a television or kicking a soccer ball around in the yard you know that food and drink makes a good gathering great it never has to be fancy but it does have to leave you full food is also a window into a culture the various cuisines around the world pay homage to the immense cultural variety out there and you could spend a lifetime exploring various cultures through cuisine the late chef anthony bourdain strove to put that exploration into his television show parts unknown i remember distinctly his episode in libya not too long after the revolution there you could feel the danger anthony put himself in just to explore the cuisine that few americans have ever experienced as much as food is a window into a culture it is also a window into our fictional worlds i am a big tolkien fan and i used to scour the bookstores and library for books about tolkien and lord of the rings books by j e a tyler and robert foster found their way onto my bookshelf as did a book that i discovered when perusing the shelves and the downtown branch of my local library the library s version was in hardcover it was a book made for fans by fans yes there were articles by some scholarly critics and a short biography of j r r tolkien but what fascinated me were the fan related sections there was a map of middle earth as it looked in the first age as a fan noted the blue mountains were in both maps and simply combined the maps of lotr and the silmarillion another article that fired my imagination and no doubt planted the seed of my blogging career was about the lotr fanzines that sprang up all over the world in the wake of tolkien fandom there were also fan made scholarly articles poems filk songs and even a listing of the more popular fan clubs and fanzines and their addresses in the back alas those fan club addresses were out of date and yes as a middle schooler i did try them which is how i know but there were also recipes i may try to take another pic but i didn t want to damage the book these were fan inspired versions of foods found in lord of the rings or as in the case of scotch eggs strider a scotch eggs recipe with aragorn s bree nickname attached to it while i remained fascinated by the recipe section i knew my parents were less than thrilled by my tolkien obsession already without me turning the kitchen into tolkien fan food zone so my interest in these recipes slumbered until they were revived by another book i slightly tweaked the coloring to make the bottom left corner more legible i d somehow managed to sneak the original dragonlance chronicles past my parents despite their being published by tsr the publishers of the satanic dungeons and dragons so when a cousin of the tolkien scrapbook for the world of krynn appeared it was a no brainer that i d grab a copy and yes among all of the other articles there was a recipe section again not the greatest of photos but it ll do also actor and lifelong d d fan joe manganiello referenced this book in a review for well you ll see being just out of high school by the time leaves was published i kept those recipes in the back of my head for a time when i could try some out that came later after college in my then girlfriend s now wife s apartment considering my cooking skills needed a lot of work she tolerated my interest if it meant cookies were going to be made and they were still i never really had the time to follow through on this interest to the extent i wanted so leaves went back on the shelf ages came and went and the world changed first came the rise of the themed party no longer chained to birthdays variously themed parties became popular in the 90s and have stayed with us until today just go look at the magazine aisle at any craft store and you ll see what i mean second was the 800 pound gorilla that was harry potter harry potter became such a phenomenon which continues to this day that harry potter themed parties are a cottage industry all to themselves some parties are more elaborate than others from stuffmumslike com so with an environment like this food from leaves or the tolkien scrapbook fit right in and believe me as i was to discover themed foods from other sf franchises are very much a thing my kids gave me this as a gift this past christmas yeah this is the book joe reviewed the inside of heroes feast is gorgeous it looks like a modern cookbook complete with the luscious food pics and i have to admit that i didn t see this coming i mean i expected that there d be harry potter cookbooks out there and i ve even seen one for a star wars themed party but something like this where the authors tried to imagine what the food in a d d setting would taste like and interpret that like this and that they d convince a publisher to actually you know publish it that i wasn t expecting with this in mind i started poking around the internet because surely d d was not a harbinger of the fandom cookbook revolution and wow there s a ton of cookbooks out there for all sorts of gaming and literary fandoms such as the elder scrolls lord of the rings naturally fallout really and a game of thrones oh and there was another cookbook that caught my eye i collected some of my birthday money and picked up this in a world of 200 18 statues this cookbook gift set was a bargain you didn t cardwyn oh yes i did me you could have just asked me my sister could have written half of this cardwyn you do realize you re a figment of my imagination right me cardwyn and yes your eyes do not deceive you it comes with a 2 sided apron alliance on one side everybody ignore that 80s era door behind the apron horde on the other i have to admit that the horde side does look better and the interior is just as beautiful as heroes feast is yeah i could go for some chops right now okay i want to try these recipes all of them but at the same time i realize that i ve got responsibilities things to do and so i can t commit to doing all the recipes at once so i m going to have to pace myself picking and choosing what makes the most sense for the moment i have kind of a hard and fast rule about cookbooks if i can find about a half dozen recipes that work their way into my regular rotation it s definitely worth picking up if i can then find about another 6 10 recipes that i ll occasionally go to then i ve got a real keeper so these two cookbooks have a tall order to fill but i think that they re up to the challenge and if nothing else there s the drink section to keep yourself lubricated right not nearly as big as stephen colbert is but when i was much younger i could have possibly claimed that level of obsession filk are fan made songs with a particular sf fantasy or horror theme and frequently utilize the music from a popular song for their lyrics in that way it s a cousin to the spoof genre as popularized by weird al yankovik and doctor demento just like weird al used the greg kihn band s our love s in jeopardy music to create i lost on jeopardy filkers took the beatles penny lane to create middle earth or converting peter paul and mary s puff the magic dragon to smaug the magic dragon most of the time i get gift cards to hardware stores because there s always something around the house that needs repairing but this year i just got cash which was fine with me posted by redbeard at 9 15 pm 7 comments email this blogthis share to x share to 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