Topic Lords Jim Stormdancer

Lords:



Abby


https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/10813

Pat


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperheartcom/gotchacards



Topics:



The pear scene
Capsule machines vs. claw games
Designing UIs for TV
This be the Verse, by Philip Larkin


https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse



Microtopics:



My Brother the Car.
A card game that is not totally random.
Deciding to focus on something else in 2020.
Rock Paper Scissors vs. Rock Scissors Paper.
Which of the twins to take a kidney from
Committing to a bit that breaks the rhythm of what people expect you to say.
Making a game where people get crushed by debt but making it fun.
Everybody Loves Raymond.
Sitcoms that have plenty of opportunity to disappoint you.
A show that lives and dies in the performance.
Nine years to stop trying.
The most profitable sitcom of all time.
Adapting Raymond.
Ray Romano explaining the concept of having parents to a puzzled audience.
The kind of argument where both people make sense and are both trying to be nice.
Trying to be nice but failing.
'Til Death.
The demeanor of a revenant.
Whether Brad Garrett listens to this show.
Hitting 100 episodes and going into syndication.
Musicians needing a body that can strike.
Writing an increasingly ludicrous sitcom for an audience of nobody.
A son who is always on the wacky tobacky.
A sitcom husband who notices that his wife has been recast and realizes he's on a sitcom.
Continuing to give Brad Garrett chances to star in sitcoms because he's so tall.
A sitcom that made you feel seen.
The workplace sitcom vs. the domestic sitcom.
Aimlessness in a post-Seinfeld era.
Abed Ghaith's striptease.
Is that Abed Ghaith's penis in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Claw game skill issues.
A billionaire trying to figure out how best to do good in the world and who decides to operate several generous claw machines.
Decorating a desk space with a pocket full of miniature delights.
Mona Lisa Breakdancing.
The rice cooker that King Piccolo was trapped in.
Rubik's Cube but all the faces are Mahjong tiles.
The coolest and most popular racial atrocity.
Ramen Man vs. Kikko Man.
A bowl of ramen in the shape of a tube.
Homer Simpson: visual ripoff of Kinnikuman.
Seeing an aquarium fish that looks just slightly too human.
Reading a book about bugs and itching like mad.
Worrying that you are ruining eyes for yourself.
Famous JAV title "Reincarnated as a Spider"
Conveying the idea of receiving a DM on social media to a television audience.
My face in a tube dot com.
Saying "youshmoob" really fast and hoping nobody notices.
Wanting to put a Russian Roulette scene in your TV show but being unable to negotiate the rights to Russian Roulette from ELORG so you need to hire Alexey Pajitnov to design a replacement game.
A joke that is very funny when you explain it but impossible to convey in any known medium.
The flag that says "bang!"
The Joker not being confident enough in his jokes so he has to use laughing gas.
Silent Comedy Joker has to work a bit harder.
Naming a difficulty level after a pop culture allusion to babies.
The ending of a Clockwork Orange in the UK depicting the protagonist as deciding to renounce violence and become a better person, but in the US they omitted that chapter because it's unrealistic.
The UK edition of A Clockwork Orange depicting the protagonist renouncing violence and becoming a better person so he joins the police force, whereas in the US edition the protagonist decides to remain brutal and violent so he joins the police force.
Where's the bridge, Larkin?
This be the verse you grave for me.
Poets being jerks to all different kinds of people.
Kefka creating a tower of garbage in Final Fantasy while everyone tries to convince him it's worthwhile to have a family.
Which kids inspired Lord of the Flies.
Suggesting that your mom read Chainsaw Man Part 1 so that you can talk to her about grief.
Support Topic Lords

Lords:



JP
Shepard


Topics:



Damn it, Microsoft added something worthwhile to Office.
Favorite DOS game soundtracks?
The Balatro Discourse
Faith is a Fine Invention, by Emily Dickinson


https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/faith-is-a-fine-invention/



Microtopics:



Artist Alley.
Scrolling down a web page and seeing a bunch of cool stuff.
Seeing a list and wondering "how did this list happen"?
Steam Farming Fest.
Trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up.
Eating eggs and rice when you have tummy troubles.
The file you all edit to make the deposit slip.
Taking data from multiple columns and putting them all in a single list.
Becoming the spreadsheet wizard.
Installation wizards.
Why nobody calls a software feature a "wizard" any more
A window into the dialectic of wizards.
The LLM hype tornado.
Renting video software from Blockbuster.
Back when any media was a "tape"
Enumerating the kinds of MS-DOS audio hardware.
Emitting a blast of data.
Enjoying a video game in 4, 16 or 256 colors.
How Doom sounded on the internal PC speaker.
Playing multiplayer Doom on a four computer LAN where two of the computers don't have sound cards.
The Doom source port family tree.
Whether Linux supported the internal PC speaker.
Playing each MIDI note with the off-the-track square wave.
Holding on to a joke for several minutes.
Doing sound effects via the Roland MT-32.
FM synth guitars sounding more evil than real guitars.
Synthesizers that are fancier than other synthesizers and are therefore better.
The ambient music on the Doom soundtrack.
The Lost Vikings soundtrack.
Games with tracker soundtracks.
The tracker music era.
A roguelike deck builder kind of a thing.
A huge hit within your social horizon.
Beginners hoping to project intelligence and competence.
The kind of mixing of data and code that Lua makes easy to do.
How to deploy a Love2D game to consoles.
A cool game idea that's just a bunch of cards doing stuff.
Sean Barrett's STB libraries.
The ability to change your mind without having to throw away a bunch of work.
Ambient complexity vs. intrinsic complexity.
Hot takes escaping containment.
The Celeste character controller.
Software security practices that do not apply to a single player indie game.
Looking at code and seeing all the things that it used to be.
Looking at code solving a problem in a domain you are unfamiliar with.
An Emily Dickinson poem that reads like a response to an argument she had at dinner.
Situations where you can directly observe what's happening.
All the filters preventing you from bursting out into song.
Esprit de escalier.
Who was Emily Dickinson owning?
A contempt for faith and a sense that microscopes are good.
Knowing that nobody reads your blog, but taking satisfaction in the knowledge that someone hypothetically could.
Excavating spiritual truth from apocryphal ramblings.
The app that holds all the texts you don't send for ransom.
Digging through people's trash but with fewer steps.
Support Topic Lords

Lords:



Abi


https://shielddoespixels.itch.io/

Eva


https://eslee.bandcamp.com/
https://eslee.itch.io/
https://eslee.dev/portfolio/



Topics:



Will 2024 be the year of Snoopy girls?


https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/will-2024-be-the-year-of-snoopy-girls
https://www.deviantart.com/shenki/art/Human-Snoopy-393886831

Are living fossils inherently better creatures or just really lucky?
Helious


https://www.mobygames.com/game/12740/helious/
https://toot.cat/@smp

Certain Women


https://www.hazeljaneplante.com/songbook

Emulators are finally available for iOS, which is exciting until you realize you have to play Mario 64 with a touchscreen
Miko asks: "Public Universal Friend"


Microtopics:



Working through mental struggles in the form of Zelda dungeons.
Donating to Red Cross for Snoopy Merch.
Snoopy's place in the cultural zeitgeist.
Transcending Peanuts.
Who doesn't want a fun bird friend?
Crocheting and knitting making a major comeback.
Every year is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
Influencers wearing a Snoopy merch.
NASA sending Snoopy to the Moon.
Giving your merch to NASA for free but charging the shit out of movie makers trying to make documentaries or authentic space movies.
Animals that are already so good they didn't need to keep evolving.
Leaving bacteria off your list because you couldn't even see them.
A little blobby thing.
Scientists trying to write for the general public.
Naming an organism after the concept of having three eyes when it only has two eyes.
Having two good eyes but evolving a third s****y eye just to annoy people.
Running executables of completely unknown provenance.
A game that was plausibly created by aliens if you haven't played very many interesting games.
Making up an incredible back story for your game to explain why you have no idea why colors work.
Good Wild Combo vs. Unused Insurance Bonus.
Looking up the artist of a work you loved in the 90s and they're still out there tooting.
Wizened game developers posting on social media about their farm animals.
Designing interfaces for the phone.
Finding out that a person made a work you loved and preferring to have imagined it came from space.
Striving to be a cozy follow.
Retweeting a thing that does not make people angry.
Putting the poise in poison.
Inherently terrifying bodies of water.
A big fish that's touching you now.
A level of repetition that is bordering on too much.
Songs of Love, Death and Pleasure.
Deliberately blurring the line between poems and songs.
The Emulators-on-iOS era.
Kirby Canvas Curse.
Playing Super Mario Land on a TI-84 calculator.
What old Nintendo games work well on an iPhone.
The EU repeatedly forcing Apple to get its shit together.
One- and two-thumbed smartphones.
The Society of Universal Friends.
The thought process that led to the creation of Human Snoopy.
The Cat Snoopy phenomenon.
Snoopy as a Psychonauts character.
Snoopy enjoying a pile of human femurs.
The Notorious PUF.
Someone who was interesting enough to enter the historical record.
An attempt to seize the Friend and carry them off in an oxcart.
The distinction between abstinence and celibacy, and whether it exists now or in the 19th century.
The Mouth of the Lord.
Naming yourself after a branch of the government.
DMing people on Discord.
Support Topic Lords

Lords:



CisHetKayFaber
Jenni


Topics:



Interesting/weird foley sounds in games
Finding out about pop culture when it shows up in ASMR videos


CisHetKayFaber, correcting small breast mammography takes: "Mammograms seem to suck for everyone, and my initial take of, 'they just keep going' is correct while later discussion where I used it as an example where 'best effort,' in the healthcare system feels like lack of care wasn't appropriate even if that broader point is generally true."
https://www.healthimages.com/how-are-mammograms-done-on-small-breasts/

Going to see the eclipse


https://archive.org/details/canonofeclipsesc0000oppo

He peels off my clothes like a starving man would peel an orange, by Sharon Cherski


https://www.mscl.com/characters/sharon_cherski.html

Generational punctuation differences


https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-millennial-captcha



Microtopics:



Plugging the enormous void in your soul by playing Balatro.
A card game with really good balance and numbering.
Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on the Rusty Lake series.
Giving everybody grace except for yourself.
Corpse looting foley.
Looking through a sound library for the sound of a spider dying.
Buying a chair from an estate sale because you love the sound it makes.
The Looney Tunes cartoon where some foley artist invented everyone's conception of what a pneumatic tube sounds like.
Running around outside and deciding to drop a soup can into the pool.
A school project where you rerecord all the audio for five minutes of television.
Showing your project to someone and you did such a good job that they don't even notice your project.
All the clothes that you're wearing making all the clothes noises.
Watching a porn clip overdubbed with Minecraft noises at just the right time in your life.
Does two tails mean two assholes?
Putting an acronym on the Tails experience.
If you've got a cloaca, it's gotta go in the acronym.
Only getting horny when an earth, somewhere in the multiverse, is being hit by a comet.
Two-Tails has two assholes, and I'm one of them.
Forming the Megazord.
Lance from all the various things that have Lances in them.
Who is Lance in love with Voltron?
Google giving you sports results to make incognito mode more plausible.
Ironic ASMR.
Doin' it for the tingles.
When Dora the Explorer asks you what your favorite part of the show was and she says "I liked that too" except it's a video of a doctor asking you about your health.
The doctor explaining that this is just what your life is like now.
Hot dogging it on the blood pressure cuff.
Changing your blood pressure just to f**k with your doctor.
Deliberately choosing a femme-presenting chubby doctor.
Needing to lose about 40 pounds so you get a leg amputated.
Checking a box on your insurance form saying "do not give me lifestyle advice."
Carrying around your patient in a folder.
Doing the Barium test every time.
I'm in a Barium rotisserie, I need you to work with me.
Checking the quality of your stomach lining.
Trying to banter with the person giving you the mammogram and deeply offending them.
Getting small mouth shame at the dentist.
Rude Doctor ASMR.
ASMR videos where the dentist tells you your mouth is big enough.
Assuming Hugh Laurie is not on Cameo for the purposes of the bit.
Sourcing an entire podcast through Cameo.
The most stony-faced magical realism twin assassins.
Topics episode topics.
How to personalize a stair.
Hiring Mike Ehrmantraut to tell you how you're gonna do your taxes.
Mike Ehrmantraut administering the mammogram.
Visiting friends who live near the totality.
A stump that is freshly cut so it's exuding sap non-stop and is covered with bees and flies 24/7.
Whalefall but on land.
Chekov's oozing stump coming back in the third act.
Going to the astronomical society web site to be sure that the eclipse glasses you get are not the counterfeit eclipse glasses.
Looking at where the sun used to be.
Looking at something that could only be a visual effect

Lords:



Avery
Chris


Topics:



Cross-Country Skiing
Putting art where advertising usually goes
Running Pico-8 on a Raspberry Pi
The Day I Fell Down the Toilet by Steve Turner


https://ramblinglisasbookreviews.com/2016/09/20/poem-the-day-i-fell-down-the-toilet-by-steve-turner/

I thought "snow" was one thing but it is about a million different things


Microtopics:



Looking for a job as a programmer but finding one as a bard.
A Transformers the Movie style power ballad.
Stopping having a job on purpose.
All the fun things you can do on mountains.
Carrying around a VR helmet so you can take photos of a mountain.
Snowy mountains on one side and lava fields on the other.
Towns named after regular guys.
Yelling at your barista that you live in Frisco.
The tier list of San Francisco's rarest nicknames.
The wrong kind of skiing.
A kind of hiking that is faster and also you can slide down the hill.
Cross-country snowboarding.
Repeatedly popping out of your ski boots and landing in the snow barefoot.
The most winter you've experienced in your entire life.
Taking snow home from the mountains and putting it in a cup in your freezer.
Breaking your toe while stage jumping.
Best ways to not save a hypothermic toe.
Devoting a portion of your massive intellect to making your friend's life interesting.
Back before the Internet was threatening.
The Avery ARG (or AARG).
Writing a short story about your friend in the form of a dating personals ad and posting hundreds of copies all over town.
Miranda July.
An app that crowdsources uncomfortable personal interactions.
A KFC billboard that has been defaced to unrecognizability but the life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders right next to it remains untouched.
Partnering with Safeway to distribute your zine on the back of Safeway receipts.
Mixing up your ammo with your pharmaceuticals so your mugger no longer feels iron deficient.
Whether it's morally okay to appreciate a well-made advertisement.
The advertisement where the guy is now on a horse.
Spray tan parties happening in your area.
Going to the buying place with your earth money.
Your favorite deodorant being discontinued and buying the very last crate and rationing them even though you go to the gym every day.
Handling Smellium with your bare hands.
Smelling what happened to the scientists who discovered Smellium.
Asking for a fun tool for Christmas even though you know you'll never have time to use it because maybe the idea of fun is enough.
The screen saver only paying attention to mouse and keyboard input so when you're playing games you need to jiggle the mouse every few minutes or the screen saver kicks in
Looking at headlines first thing in the morning to make yourself angry enough to get out of bed.
Seeing a headline saying "10,000 people join Mastodon" and thinking it's talking about the metal band.
A touring photographer whose job is is to photograph EDM acts staring at their laptops.
Software developers figure out a more effective way to make money than making their users happy.
Nonconsensual updates.
Writing demos, like in the 90s, back when computers were fun.
The optimism of feeling like computers were going to make people's lives better.
Finding cool programs to download onto your computer.
Getting a job writing Picotron BBSes in Lua.
Waiting until Chat GPT learns how to use Picotron.
Clippy but it's self-aware and hates itself.
Asking Clippy for stories about Bill Gates.
Desktop Pets.
Bonzi Buddy pointedly reminding you that he has your credit card number.
Writing a poem to get your dad to stop asking you if you're off the toilet.
The scene from Trainspotting where the protagonist dives into the toilet.
In twenty years when Winston is hosting Topic Lords and making Frog Fractions sequels.
downpour.games
Look at this, look what I did!
Seeing snowflakes for the second time in your life.
Snow: it's beautiful, unless it's in Avery's freezer.
A frozen lake that you can just run around on and dogs love it.
Snowboarding with a

Lords:



Mark
Shirley


Topics:



Egypt sweater!


https://www.etsy.com/listing/233409089/amazing-1940s-egyptian-fair-isle-jumper

At the end of this film, are we supposed to want Indy to save Elsa? To go off happily together? (I say no.)
Kazim is the best character in Last Crusade


https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IP54S-ZZtyE

Portrait of my Brother as Indiana Jones


https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/poetry/portrait-of-my-brother-as-indiana-jones-by-amorak-huey/

Sallah: The hardest brownface to swallow
Are pits of snakes effective as circus attractions?
The visual of them closing themselves in a giant box while on the motorcycle


Microtopics:



A nerd of the second-highest caliber.
Working in tech on the internet.
Quality guests on a quality show.
Savage Oaf vs. Savage Oath.
Getting on Metal Archives and figuring out those bands are.
Swearing an Oaf.
Reading "Lord of the Rings" because you are pregnant.
Recommending pregnancy to someone who wants a child.
Wonder Weeks.
Your child is about the size of a mid-sized sedan.
A delightful looking creature about the size of a Micro Machine.
A sister who is a chimp and other wild shit from the 1970s.
A screwball comedy about lions living with Tippi Hedren and mauling the director of Speed.
A movie about an archaeologist who is beloved by all his students and one of them is wearing this sweater.
1940s Egyptian Fair Isle Jumper.
Getting unprofessionally close to the professor you have a crush on so he can notice your cool Egypt sweater.
Why Dial of Destiny didn't do that well.
An entirely tolerable movie according to Mark circa whenever that movie came out.
Deploying the tense night-time action music.
Going to Fiverr and paying someone the fair value of their labor.
Elsa's a Nazi and then we're mad at Elsa.
Emotionally elevated moments between Indy and Elsa.
Proposing to your girlfriend on the Golden Gate Bridge in a last-ditch attempt to save your relationship.
The payoff of Henry Jones Sr.'s character arc.
Elsa choosing the wrong grail on purpose.
The 50 grails on the other side of the room that Elsa didn't even look at.
Coffee cup movie magic.
The expeditious nature of film storytelling.
The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword.
Kazim falling off the dock.
Kazim showing up to beat the shit out of a kid who is spending too much time reading about the grail on Wikipedia.
The two-part episode of MacGyver where MacGyver looks for the Holy Grail.
Stealing artifacts because they belong in museums, not with the people who originated them.
Going on a series of heists to steal artifacts back from museums and returning them to their people.
Sometimes chased, sometimes chasing.
Amorak from Kalamazoo.
Love on her eyelids.
A certified Wocust.
Compensation for my brother-in-law's car.
The depiction of Sallah in Raiders vs. in Last Crusade.
Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit.
A movie you can give up.
John Rhys-Davies playing a dwarf even though he's not even from Middle Earth.
Middle Earth being flat for elves but round for humans.
A huge vat filled with undifferentiated snakes that is a circus attraction somehow.
The guy who lays down in the bed of snakes.
A 1920s-era circus putting on a performance of the play that Snakes on a Plane was based on.
Giving a garter snake to every kid who comes to the circus and if their parents don't like it they can just set the snake loose in the back yard because it's the midwest.
Not thinking to ask a question until 30 years after you've seen the movie.
Liking art that is flawed.
Dying from a recreational drug situation.
Safely ensconced in the box.
Being chased by Nazis and taking a moment to pry open a wooden crate just in case there is a motorcycle in it.
Batman scrolling reddit while hiding behind the curtain for the guy he's going to surprise coming back into the office.
Of course that's what they do, and of course it worked, because you just saw it happen and it worked.
The pitfalls of googling your own medical symptoms.
Support Topic Lords