Mailbag 2: Replies of Samantha
Welcome back to the Samantha Arantes Mailbag Extravaganza! It's been a quarter (3 months), and so we've got a very heaping helping of questions, most of which are sourced from the asks on the Gadfly Goods Cohost account. On account of them being sourced from Cohost, the answers tend to be longer because I can't seem to help but ramble in response to those kinds of questions on that platform.
Anyhow, if you want to send me a Cohost ask, click here -- no registration is required.
Now without further ado:
Our first question here is sourced from an anonymous coward. It's hard to suss out any details about this person, but I suspect they are a plant of some sort (not sure what type, but I think it should be obvious):
Anonymous asked:
hi i'm a nervous little eggbug who doesn't know what to ask. do you have any good advice or pointers about where to start?
hello fellow nervous insect thank you for asking this!
you can ask me about anything! sure, you might be tempted to just ask me questions about videogames --- such "what are your favorite Channel F games?", "how about some lore for this zzt game of yours?", or "metroid????" --- but i assure you that i can also answer questions about non vidcon things! bad cooking tips, goofy goobers, ancient sumerians, hot singles in your local area, names of various colors, and maybe even my deep dark secrets! don't let your imagination be your limit!
Next up is a question from the venerable and pleasant kkzero. I didn't know until a few weeks later (reading some completely unrelated post) that it was cribbed from Blade Runner. I guess that shows you how cultured I am!
kkzero asked:
You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
I am simply engaging in good old fashioned "praxis," as the kids would say. The tortoise in question is none other than the notorious fascist Yertle the Turtle. He thought the desert would make for a good escape route after he was ousted as king of his pond, but he didn't account on me tracking him down and finding him.
Now here's our friend Cania giving us a question for a second mailbag in a row. Frankly, I respect the commitment and/or hustle at work here. Keep it up.
Cania asked:
what's the best thing you've ever eaten?
This is a really tough question because the taste of food is at least 80% psychological. The same tasting food can elicit dramatically different taste responses based on my mood, the ambient temperature, how much of it I've had recently, how hungry I am, etc. Moreover, I'm of the opinion that most staple dishes can taste Quite Good with the right preparation, quality ingredients, balance of flavors, spices, etc.
Anyhow, that previous paragraph is just me stalling. I'm having trouble extracting one single, definitive answer from my memory banks, so I'll just list off some things that are occupying inordinate amounts of my headspace right now:
- Salmon (especially with a dash of lemon pepper)
- Any burrito that manages to strike the ineffable, correct balance of ingredients
- All the best burgers I've had in the past few years have been from Wendy's (?!?), but I think that might just be from my memory-keeper falling prey to the Branding Trap.
- My mom liked to make an absolute killer copycat version of Olive Garden's "Zuppa Toscana." I will admit that there is a bit of nostalgia at work here though, since this is the most labor-intensive recipe that I often helped my mom make (usually in a ridiculous 4 gallon pot where we save several containers worth of frozen leftovers).
- As far a desserts go, I love a good root beer float. The ice cream has to at least be a decent quality vanilla (that actually tastes like vanilla). The root beer has to be good as well. I don't remember what exactly the best brand of root beer is, but I remember several years ago one of my brothers invited several of his friends for a root beer tasting party (yes, really). He got his hands on dozens upon dozens of different brands of root beer, and after all was said and done the clear winner turned out to be some rather unassuming store-brand-looking root beer that you normally wouldn't give a second thought (the taste difference was surprisingly distinct). Anyhow, I never had any root beer floats with that root beer, and I also don't know if root beer floats should be categorized as a comestible or a drinkable item, so I'll just leave this list item hanging here awkwardly.
Apologies for the lack of definitiveness and specificity in this answer. I hope the rambling was an acceptable substitute.
P.S. This post received the most incredible reply on Cohost. I won't copy it here out of a misguided sense of politeness, so please just go and read it there.
This question here is from another anonymous coward, though this time I don't think the person is an obvious plant of some sort. Regardless, it is yet another interlocutor with a penchant for fantastical hypotheticals.
Anonymous asked:
if there were two guys on the moon and one of them killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what
That would be both "tenderly loved up" AND "what".
With that said, I think we can construct a similar scenario that amplifies both of those qualities.
For instance, what about the two guys? Are they coworkers, friends, lovers, and/or brothers? I would say that the combination of brothers/coworkers would add the most drama to the situation. Some might argue that the brother/lover combination would be more messed up, though at that point it sounds more like some low-rent tabloid hoax so I wouldn't go with that.
As for the moon, we should consider if Earth's capital-M Moon is the craziest moon for this to happen. While many moons in the solar system are just Big Rocks of Varying Gravity (BRoVGs), some moons like Europa and Io have extreme weather that would heighten the dramatic impact of the kill. After all, what does it mean if we can make technology to survive the most extreme of conditions, but we are still incapable of surviving each other? With that in mind, I'm tempted to go with Io because that place seems the most hellish.
The immediate cause of death is also another point of interest. In the context of Space Murders, it is tempting to just make loss of oxygen finish the job. However, it would show a greater degree of malice on the part of the attacker for them to beat asphyxiation to the finish line. If you're interested in learning various ways you could do this, then I would recommend playing the documentary game series known as "Mortal Kombat."
As for me, the most important factor in determining if a rock-based murder is "frakked up" and "what" is the type of rock used. Just using a rock from the moon on question is child's play --- it's the kind of weapon an amateur would use in a crime of passion. Using a rock imported by a third party from another moon or planet would be much the same to me. What would really make this murder special is if they managed to ~~snuggle~~ smuggle a rock with them from their original destination (likely Earth). The degree of premeditation needed to hide a sufficiently massive rock from mission control (who likes to measure these payloads down to the gram) would elevate the fricked up-ness of this element to the stars.
With all of these elements combined, you would have the most "flipped up" and "what" murder since Cain killed Abel.
Thank you for asking this question! Use this knowledge wisely.
This next question is interesting because it was also asked by an anonymous fella, but they then repented of their cowardice by outing themselves in the comments.
sanctumsys asked:
does samantha arantes is gay
that;s a good questiob
short answer: yeah, but not at first
Long Answer: When I originally created the character Samantha Arantes (original character🍩⚙️) for the original demo of The Continuing Adventures of Samantha Arantes vs. Karid-X2, I didn't have any thoughts about her sexuality besides "she is easily smitten by and pretty nervous around hot guys." The motivation for this was purely because I thought it was a funny bit. The cliffhanger ending cliffhanger ending (pictured above with some New Art) exemplifies this ("Oh no! He's hot!!!").
For several months this was about as much thought as I put into the subject.
About a year later I had various thoughts amounting to "man I wish I was vtubing as this character." A few months later I successfully got her set up as a PNGTuber avatar, and she's who I stream as now (not that I stream that often).
One issue with this arrangement, of course, is that while Samantha in the game clearly likes men, I do not (I like girls (I love my wife)). And frankly, as a streamer I'm also a lazy actor who doesn't put in much more effort than slapping an avatar on my face, so even when I'm playing Samantha I'm not interested in putting up a men-liking act for the sake of "being true to the character."
So, at this point there was/is a slight disconnect between Samantha-Arantes-the-character-I-wrote-for-a-videogame-who-likes-boys, and Samantha-Arantes-the-character-I-PNGTube-as-who-says-"I love my wife" (in reference to my IRL wife (who is perfectly fine with this arrangement (I don't know if I've actually said that on stream))). While I don't intend on fully reconciling the two depictions (game-Samantha will always like hot guys), several facets of myself have been percolating over to her.
Thus, at this point I would say Samantha-the-game-character likes girls (in addition to the boys I don't like), and so she fulfills the "is" part of your question. Now, as far as the "does" part of your question, that would be a matter of a couple rewrites and (more crucially) actually finishing her goshdarned game.
I hope this makes sense.
Next up we have what was probably the most difficult question for me to answer, because it involves me being open about my musical tastes, and the fact that I don't really listen to specific bands, popular or otherwise. I could probably have a more varied and healthy relationship with music, but I hope the picks I made illustrate that I at least have some form of taste.
otie asked:
Top 5 post 2010 songs?
Ooooh, this is a tough one --- sorry for taking so long to answer this.
I feel a lot of sheepishness sharing my musical tastes, if only because I don't listen to much "real" music (defined as being some arbitrary cultural distance away from VGM), but after taking the time to assemble this list I feel like I don't have to apologize for my picks.
Please enjoy this unordered and undefinitive list (with some YouTube links that hopefully will hopefully remain active for ages to come):
The 2010s were a very good decades for fans of FM synthesis. From the SOUNDSHOCK FM FUNK albums starting in 2011, to the proliferation of Deflemask-wielding YouTuber remixers, it feels like things have progressed to the point where there are dozens of artists nowadays with a better handle on the Mega Drive's sound hardware than any composer back in the system's heyday. If I wanted to be boring I could easily fill this entire list with FM songs.
This particular song feels like I'm degaussing my ears. Good stuff.
It took the SNES-heads a bit longer, but they eventually managed to justify their chiptunes as a legitimate and lively form. Some really pleasant bossa nova/jazz fusion vibes here.
Oh hey, it another chiptune, and also another song that I like to use to degauss my brain, this time for the Famicom Disk System.
This captures the zeitgeist of the modern age of culture --- the past being dissected, reassembled, reanimated, repackaged, repeated, and resold ad nauseum louder and louder so as to drown out the threat of ascendant fascism (I listen to this to drown out the threat of ascendant fascism). A mash-up to end all mash-ups. It's like being hit by a procession of increasingly large freight trains and being unable to die.
Sa'eed by Infected Mushroom was going to take this spot, but that came out in 2009, so have the best normal battle theme from a JRPG instead because I can't think of anything else right now. Please understand.
This last letter comes to us courtesy of the guestbook sometimes known as Samantha Arantes Bulletin System (I may choose to appropriate that name at some point in the future for a small forum instead). Regardless, this mystery person seems very cool:
Y. Poshi says:
And there you have it! Thanks for reading all these questions and answers (or at least skipping to the end here). If you so please, you can ask another question to keep this spaceship rolling (so we can maintain artificial gravity, you see).