To celebrate the Arthur and Vivi plushies getting fully funded, here's all of my frantic improvised screaming, running and knife evasion from the end of the Makeship campaign video. Some of this made it into the final video, but there's also some stuff that went unused. If you liked that audio of me screaming a lot for The Future, you're gonna love this haha.
If you haven't see the full video yet, you can do so here:
youtube
You can pre-order the Vivi plush here.
You can pre-order the Arthur plush here.
(If you get both, you get 15% off)
Okay, people of the MSA Fandom. I need a quick hand from y'all there was a Mystery Skulls Animated post stating that there was going to be an epilogue with the main cast having full voice acting. Help a fellow fan out, please.
The Greatest Pilot That Could Not Keep My Attention
I watched the Digital Circus pilot beginning on Monday, it took me watching bits of it throughout the week to just FINISH watching one viewing of it.
The animation? Stellar, stylistic and wonderfully designed.
The Voice Acting? Top notch, and you could tell the VAs had so much fun with their lines.
The Concept Plot and Writing? Intriguing, and the pilot set up a good story that leaves you wanting more, and with good jokes all around. The characters themselves are well rounded and have good dialogue and personality.
So when everything is at least and 8 or 9 out of 10, why could I not spend more than 2 minutes watching it at a time?
The Answer: The show doesn't give me ENOUGH of a reason to care.
The characters are lovable in their own ways, and you're meant to root for Pomni in wanting her to get out. And yet, The central theming of the show off the bat is... apathetic nihilism. That nothing matters and this thesis is only reinforced by the most "grounded," yet equally the most malignantly neutral characters so far: Jax.
Jax is the kind of person, and I say person instead of character, that is fully content with watching the world burn with a bag of popcorn in his hand. While everyone is suffering, Jax is lapping up a heaping fill of schaudenfreude, relishing in everyone's torment. Jax in this scenario, is as much the story's "villain" as Caide is. As a horror, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
However, when you hammer in the idea in the audience's skull that it's pointless to try, you've already made the villain win from the get go, and so watching the villain KEEP winning is your narrative irony that you've made the audience subconsciously MIRROR Jax's sentiment:
"The story doesn't matter, as long as I get to see something funny."
So, instead of the self proclaimed psychological horror, What Digital Circus presents is a SOCIAL horror with comedic elements, and thus narratively remade Seinfeld: a show where nothing matters and shitty people, the audience included, get to make fun of other's suffering.
Apathetic Nihilism.
NOW, to its credit, The third act was the part of the pilot that DID keep my interest, but by the end of it reinforced the thesis even more, with a LITERAL SNAP of Kaide's fingers, the episodic conflict is deus-ex-machina'd away, the CENTRAL conflict is nebulously brushed under the rug, so the only thing left to hold onto the interest is the mystery of the show's symbolism and imagery to tease us, which, while a good thing to do, is not enough when your biggest message to the audience was already SHOVED down was that it's useless to try and figure everything out when none of it matters and you shouldn't care, which could be found insulting, but therein lies the rub:
The theming and thesis that this narrative has effectively told its audience is that it's childish and naive to care, and you should just sit down, shut up, laugh, and try not to go insane watching it.
There's writing to purposefully make your audience uncomfortable, there's writing to make your audience squeamish, there's writing that make your audience challenge their ideas and preconceived notions. There's writing to make your audience feel conflicting emotions
This is writing that purposefully makes your audience not care. It's written incredibly well, standing out and executed with shining applaud, but it's writing that makes your work mirror your thesis mirror your characters mirror your narrative mirror your audience mirror your writing mirror your message: It's meaningless and we're all Jax just along for the ride.
"Full of sound and fury... signifying nothing." - MacBeth
NICKNAME: Mostly just Mike or Mikey lol. Some people who have known me for a long time might still know me as Junk or Machi, but I don’t really use those anymore.
SIGN: Scorpio. I don’t really believe in this kind of stuff, but it’s fun. :)
HEIGHT: 5'4", but I’m 6′5″ in my heart!
LAST GOOGLE SEARCH: “Red Dead Redemption 2 Walkthrough”. I just started playing the game after years of watching other people and I needed to refresh my memory lol.
SONG STUCK IN YOUR HEAD?: Randomly remembered this gem from my childhood the other night and it’s been on replay in my brain since.
FOLLOWERS: 82.
LUCKY NUMBER: Don’t have one. I have dyscalculia, so numbers are evil.
SLEEP: I have no sleep schedule, but I sleep a lot,,, I plop down whenever I’m tired...which is often...
DREAM JOB: Broadway Actor! I love musicals and acting is fun. Voice actor or let’s player would be cool too!
WEARING: A very old National Geographic shirt that used to belong to my grandpa and black shorts.
FAVORITE SONGS: I always have trouble with this question because I very rarely go looking for new music,,,
What Could Have Been by Sting (from Arcane)
Who Is In Your Heart Now? by Studio Killers
Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne
Stardust by IAMX
Ghost by Mystery Skulls
I’m also OBSESSED with the Hadestown soundtrack! Highly recommended musical!
FAVORITE INSTRUMENT: I think vocals count? I’m not actually very knowledgeable when it comes to instruments, but a good vocal performance gives me chills.
AESTHETIC: I mostly go for a creepy/cute feel with a mix of kidcore and horrorcore, but I don’t actually believe in sticking to one aesthetic. There’s a lot of vintage, grunge, gothic, and fantasy laying around here too.
FAVORITE AUTHOR: Uhh, I don’t really have one! I pay more attention to the books than who wrote them, if that makes sense. Watership Down is my all time favorite book though, so I guess Richard Adams?
FAVORITE COLOR: Any shade of blue, but any color can be beautiful with the right scheme! I tend to lean towards schemes with blues, blacks or purples the most.
FAVORITE ANIMAL SOUNDS: Tiny cat mews. :,)
LAST SONG: Africa by Toto. It was on the radio in the car when my mom and I ran to the store yesterday lol.
LAST SERIES: Like a show? I don’t really watch a lot of series, I have trouble starting new things,,, I think the last thing I binged was Arcane. Can’t wait for the next season! Now, if we’re talking video games, I’m working through Psychonauts! Finished the first game a while ago, watched a playthrough of ITROR and am now working on Psychonauts 2.
RANDOM: Uhh, have a spider character I drew. I got really mad about how much potential the character Angel Dust from Hazbin Hotel has and decided to make my own spider character loosely based on him, but more suited to my personal tastes lol. His name is Magenta. (PLEASE ignore how uneven the back pattern is. I’m aware. I am not a great artist.)
Tagging @sofarfarout and @n0bodyshere because you’re the only people I feel comfortable tagging, but you absolutely don’t have to!!
Some updates on the latest mystery skulls animated video, we’re not getting halloween update this year, the video will most likely get done get done sometime in 2024 ideally. But they’re making lots of progress!
I’m excited to learn that there’s an epilogue with actual voice acting! And the whole videos shaping up to be almost 8 minutes long! It sounds like their most ambitious project yet and I can’t wait to see it. MSA fans, we’re gonna be eating good when the video comes out
(VOLUME WARNING, ESP TOWARDS THE END!)
so wow i haven’t voice acted in a while, but with the official MSA voice actors being a thing, well... i got a little inspired, to say the least! I’m a little rusty on doing sound stuff so forgive a couple of errors here and there but, otherwise hope you enjoy!
MSA is back, and after having as much fun as I did dubbing the last scene from “Hellbent” two years ago, I caved pun DEFINITELY intended and decided to give the opening scene from “The Future” the same treatment!
The animation belongs to @mysterybensmysteryblog, @artsyfeathersartsyblog and the rest of their amazing team!
There’s a lot of amazing fan dubs and voice acting for Mystery Skulls Animated here on Tumblr. So I thought I’d give it a go myself. This is honestly just an experiment to see if this fits Vivi or not. And I was hoping to use my new microphone. But due to technical difficulties, I just decided to use my phone. Hopefully I’ll get my mic working tomorrow. And I’ll have better lines that I didn’t make up on the spot. But hey, it is what it is. Let me know what y’all think!