Survive Or Die (Then Do It All Over Again)

The last couple of posts were quite substantial so I guess it'll be okay if I scrabble up a grab-bag today, even though it's not Friday. If not, tough. It's going to have to be. That's all I've got.

Will The (Dire) Wolf Survive?

(Maybe. Next Question.)

Here's an odd one. Who knew Dire Wolves were real? Well, I did but I'd forgotten, so it was a bit of a surprise when I read they were coming back. 

The NME, which bizarrely enough is where I saw the news, seems to have jumped on it because of the Game of Thrones connection. The headline blares "Dire wolves from ‘Game Of Thrones’ have been brought back from extinction", which does seem to suggest a lack of journalistic rigor in a number of directions. The claim is dubious and anyway it's not like George invented the creatures, after all, or even that he has a unique claim on them from his fiction.

The author of the piece, Max Pilley, does attempt to justify the assignation by saying the long-lost species "re-entered the popular imagination in recent times thanks to George R.R. Martin selecting the animals as the sigil for the Stark family in his epic fantasy series", which is fair enough except that it ignores the previous few decades, when dire wolves were being stuffed into pretty much every generic fantasy epic and every D&D-inspired role-playing game out there. They're about as over-used a trope as dragons or orcs.

Speaking of orcs, for an orc chieftain, a dire wolf has to be the canine equivalent of a blood-dripping skull daubed in blood on your shield, doesn't it? You pretty much have to turn up to clan gathering mounted on the back of a Dire Wolf or who's going to take you seriously?

I couldn't begin to count the number of Dire Wolves I've killed in a whole bunch of MMORPGs, where they're generally encountered about one step on from the Holy Trinity of starter animals, bears, boars and regular wolves. Name recognition meant I was initially quite excited to hear the extinct species was being revived through the magiscience of genetic engineering but the scientific reality, as usual, turns out to be less thrilling than the headlines. 

On deeper examination, it turns out the extremely cute, fluffy puppies aren't true Dire Wolves at all but mere hybrids, the result of a combination of "DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull" and "20 edits of the genetic code of the gray wolf, the species’ closest living relative".

The resultant embryos were then brought to term by "domestic dog mothers", as reported by the BBC, whose journalistic standards are, of necessity as well as by tradition, considerably more rigorous than those of the New Musical Express. The resultant animals aren't purebred dire wolves, more like genetically modified grey wolves with white fur and larger skulls.

And much greater marketing potential, of course. Let's not forget that.

Still, I look forward to seeing what the mad scientists do with the Tasmanian tiger, the next extinct superstar animal on their short but highly evocative list, which includes mastodons and dodos. If they're taking suggestions, I've always wanted to see a Giant Sloth, a creature from the past that features surprisingly rarely in fantasy but which always seemed to turn up in the dinosaur books I read as a child: "As tall as a giraffe and much heavier than a Grizzly Bear". That'd give even a dire wolf pause, I should think, although it might look a tad less impressive on a shield. 

Will The Survival Game Survive? 

(Are You Kidding Me? Next Question.)

Two new survival titles caught my eye this week. I realize I don't need any more but they're hard to resist. They're like the M&Ms of the online gaming world; they look so deliciously different in all their different colors, even though you know they all taste exactly the same. And you just can't stop yourself grabbing another handful.

These two come in similar shades of cute. The first, already available on Steam, is called Squirreled Away and I'm guessing that tells you just about everything you need to know about it but if not, here's the trailer.

There's a free demo, which I'm downloading as I type this, so there may be a whole post about the game here one day. I suspect the demo will be about as much as I need (Or can take.) of being a squirrel so if there is it'll likely be the only one.

The other game looks like it might have longer legs (Than a squirrel? Not difficult...) but it's not coming until 2026. It's called Tomo Endless Blue, which sounds like something you'd see on a paint chart or possibly in the 2pm slot on the opening Friday of a minor music festival. Depending which source you believe it's either a "survival MMO" or "a Monster-Taming ARPG set in a Voxel Open World."

Whatever it is, it's probably going to have Nintendo's lawyers checking their precedents. Given Palworld's problems, presumably the developers, Onibi, will at least have the wit to steer clear of anything round, hand-held and throwable.

Then again, maybe not... 

Will My Patience Survive

(Too Late! Next Question.)

Speaking of festivals, I never did get around to listening to the eighty or so acts on the Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Contest long-list. Too late now. 

I did, however, waste half an hour of my life listening to the official playlist, showcasing the submitted song from each of the eight finalists. It was grim.

The only ones I could say I liked - and "like" would be pushing it - would be Sarah Meth's Steps and Westside Cowboy's I've Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Love. The other half-dozen I either barely noticed or actively disliked.

Luckily, there's no Glastonbury next year so I'm saved the embarrassment of claiming this is the last time I'll bother with the ETC, knowing, even as I say it, that I won't be able to resist at least taking a look at the damn thing.

Will My Channel Survive?

(Hell If I Know. No More Questions.)

Finally, and since we're on the subject of music anyway, here's something I very much do like. I came upon it in a mildly curious way that might be worth reporting. 

One of the many pieces of advice I took on board when setting up my new YouTube channel was that you should never just start one from scratch and immediately begin uploading. Do that and YT's algorithm will assume you're a bot and ignore you.

What you're supposed to do is use the channel like a normal person for a while so it builds up a viewing history that makes the algorithm feel loved and wanted. Consequently, these last few weeks I've all but ignored the channel I've been using for well over a decade in favor of the one I made last month.

To get things started, I subscribed to a few channels I already follow. Both of my channels belong to the same Google account but it seems YouTube doesn't care about that. It doesn't make any "helpful" observations like "You already follow this channel" when you add one you've been following for years, anyway. It just does as it's told, which makes a nice change.

Because they were the first I thought of, I added Lana del Rey, Polly Scattergood and Sunday (1994), all of which, it has to be said, bear some superficial similarities. This had an immediate and intriguing effect on the kind of recommendations I was getting.

Instead of the usual mish-mash (Itself admittedly far better-targeted now than it was a year or two ago.) I found myself being pointed almost exclusively towards very new uploads by solo, female artists or female-fronted bands, all of them in broadly alt-pop range of sub-genres. Quite a few of them looked worth investigating so I clicked through several and that seemed to start a kind of snowball effect with more being offered up for my attention all the time. 

From the many possibilities I've heard quite a few I've liked but so far only one I've liked enough to add to my subs, the oddly named R. Missing, who immediately leapfrogged the competition by the simple expedient of including the keyword "Pony" in the title of one of her songs.

Pony Yeah - R. Missing

More incontrovertible evidence for my theory that any song or band with a name that includes the word "Pony" is more likely than not  to be worth your time and attention. At this point, I don't even think it's a theory any more; it's clearly a proven fact.

I listened to a lot more of R. Missing's enigmatic electronica and I liked all I heard. This, I think, is the best of them but that's just as well. When you discover a  new artist, you always want their current work to be their best. It suggests there's more great work to come. If all the best stuff was from four years ago, it wouldn't inspire much confidence in what's coming next, would it?

I'm sure she'll be turning up in future posts. As for my own, new channel, none of the advice on how to get noticed seems to have made the least difference. But that's material for another post and another day.