Genuinely, the guy is complaining that the game, that we know practically nothing about, will probably give you a questline to liberate slaves.

At the most basic level (I.E. role-playing as an evil character) I sort of agree. But, like, they're not going to force you to do the whole quest. Ignoring the prompt is the evil option. If you ignore the questline, the slaves remain slaves.

The problem isn't wokeness. I doubt anyone would object to the concept of role-playing as an evil character. Hell, it can even be beneficial to role-play as an evil character, as it can provide insight into what motivates evil in the real world. Bethesda isn't trying to take away evil options because they have a woke agenda. Bethesda isn't going to give us evil options because Todd Howard is an idiot who believes having broad gameplay is the same as having deep gameplay.

Every morning I recite Count Frightenstein's pledge, right after I offer remembrance to Lenin and Mao.

Jokes aside, this show has been kind of in my aether for a very long time. When I was a kid, one of my uncles tried to buy the rights to it. When I was a teenager, I knew a guy who used to work with Billy Van (The Count) and he would reel of tales of how they made the show. Apparently they would get Vincent Price to come in once a season and just read off little bumper poems for a day. At the end of the day, Price would gift the crew with cases of beer and some of his own cooking. What a guy.

In the mid-50s, TV executives discovered that you could license cheap horror/suspense movies, air them late at night, tie the whole show together with a hokey character providing lead-ins, and get pretty big ratings. So began the trend of Horror Hosts, like Shock Theater with Roland "The Cool Ghoul" or Sir Graves Ghastly or Svengoolie. However, the inarguable progenitor of it all was Maila Nurmi in The Vampira Show.

The Vampira Show ran from 1954-55, and featured Nurmi as a Morticia Addams-like character in a tight, low-cut black dress. Throughout the night's entertainment, she would make jibes about the low-budget horror movie while reclining barefoot on a dark couch decorated with skulls. Between segments, she would play with her pet spider, talk with "ghosts" around the set, and torment her producer. This was enough to draw big viewing numbers in LA, and eventually media outlets across the country were talking about Vampira. While her show was based in Los Angeles, she would appear on a number of other shows and even a handful of movies, including Ed Wood's legendary Plan 9 From Outer Space. However, when Nurmi refused to sell the rights to the character to ABC, they cancelled the show.

Cut forward to 1981, and executives were looking to cash in on the resurgence of horror movies. They reached out to Maila Nurmi to re-create The Vampira Show for a modern audience. However, Nurmi was well aware that the primary appeal was that she wore a tight, low-cut, black dress, and she didn't think audiences would be as interested in watching her do it all over 27 years later. So she referred the producers to Lola Falana, a younger actress whom she had mentored. Executives looked into Lola Falana, found out she's black, and turned her down. Incensed, Nurmi refused to give them the rights to Vampira.

And so it came to pass that LA TV executives went about 'creating' Elvira, shamelessly ripping off everything that had worked on the original Vampira Show to create Elvira's Movie Macabre. In later interviews, Nurmi openly accused Cassandra Peterson of emulating Vampira through the Elvira character. Though as time went on, Evira became more of an 80's goth chick and less of a vampire.

Lola Falana would appear a handful of times on TV and in movies before calling it quits in 1997.

That's a real fact. That happened. At the beginning of the movie they say it's based on a true story. It's against the law to put that in a movie if it isn't true!

Who wins?

Awh yeah 2000 AD Drokkposting is back bay-beee!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/261026

Featured song: Rumble by Link Wray and The Ray Men (March 31st, 1958/Cadence Records/New York, NY)

I find myself commenting about punk history a lot in this place. Seems a lot of you have questions and misunderstandings about the genre. Thought I'd throw my hat into the "Post something every day" ring, but with an informative twist. Of the things I'm encyclopedic about, punk history might be the one thing I'll never run out of stuff to say about.

To begin, I'd like to answer the most hotly debated question in punk rock: Who was first? There are a number of oft-cited answers but this one's mine.

It's winter, early 1958, in Virginia. While trying to lay down a guitar-centric version of The Stroll by The Diamonds, Link Wray's amp makes a noise it's not supposed to. Might have been some faulty electrics, might have been some bizarre environmental variables. All we know is that nobody had ever heard distorted guitar like this before, and that the world just wasn't the same afterward. The resulting instrumental, originally called 'Oddball' becomes a crowd favorite, with audiences requesting it multiple times a night. It also becomes one of Link's favorites, because he gets to make that noise again.

But it's never quite the same as that first time. Whatever the circumstances led to this early distorted guitar, they were too arcane for 1958 to fathom. Legend has it that Link destroyed a number of speaker cones trying to replicate the sound. Including the studio speaker he used to demonstrate the original sound to producer Archie Bleyer. Bleyer didn't like the song, didn't see the appeal. However, his stepdaughter was enamoured with it and convinced him that it should be released on Cadence Records.

When you listen to the song, are you picturing a bunch of 50s teenagers squaring off for a fight in an alleyway? If not, why not? Also, what would you call those kids with the greasy hair and leather jackets rolling around in gangs? Would you call them punks, per chance?

Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers noticed this too, and suggested the title Rumble because it sounded like a street fight. In fact, this imagery was so powerful that, to this day, Rumble remains the only instrumental to ever get banned from US airwaves. Despite being banned, it reached #11 on the R&B charts.

Rumble is my pick for first punk rock track because it was the first to mix ideas about punks and ideas about rock. When The Ramones got together 16 years later, they based their look and feel on the street toughs that came to mind when people heard the song in '58.

Further reasoning:

1. "Punk is about being ugly." - Jehangir Tabari

Sure, Michael Muhammad Knight isn't the guy to tell the story of punk and Islam, but he made a good point there. The whole point of Rumble is that an electric guitar wasn't supposed to sound like that. But Link went ahead with it anyway, because despite being "ugly" it was cool and slightly menacing. What's more punk than that?

2. They banned an instrumental!

It's the hysteria surrounding rock music and juvenile delinquency in its barest form. Rumble was so in-your-face for the time that it got banned for indecency despite having no lyrics. It pissed off parents across the nation and what's more punk than that?

Recommended Reading: None (homework is for squares, anyway)

Recommended Viewing: Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World (2017)

Tomorrow, Punk Goes West

Can't wait to see Ravnica get compleated.

"WATCH OUT GUILDLESS! THE PHYREXIANS ARE RIGHT BEHIND YOU! oh no they all have airpods in they cant hear us oh shit oh fuck"

Edit: Wait I just realized this means Krenko is at risk :kitty-cri-screm: