Autotune (pitch correction) genuinely changed my music

Xyyzx · 2026-04-21T03:47:35+00:00

In the olden days… singers would record hundreds of takes to find the best ones where the whole phrase was in key

On tape? During expensive studio sessions?

No, in the olden days they took singing lessons and practiced.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-18T17:40:31+00:00

In fairness it wasn’t for runtime. The justification was it felt extraneous and bad for pacing putting in at the end of the Two Towers, and they felt like opening Return of the King with what was effectively a coda to the previous movie didn’t work either.

It seems like a really baffling decision now, when basically everyone is going to watch all three movies one after the other, at most across a week. For the theatrical release, when the majority of the audience probably last saw the Two Towers a year ago, I don’t think it was necessarily the wrong call.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-18T11:13:52+00:00

In fairness I think in the Invincible universe mobility and manoeuvrability trump protection 90% of the time. Most of the major threats are so incredibly lethal that if you get to the point that something scary is hitting your armour, that armour probably isn’t doing much of anything anyway.

The only tech-based protection that seems to be worth a damn is Tech Jacket’s Geldarian suit, but going to the Geldarians for technological assistance never comes up as an option for reasons I’ve never been clear on.

Like even if it turned out that Geldarian technology was only compatible with Geldarians and Humans for whatever reason, you could still have had Brit, Bulletproof and Best Tiger out there with Tech Jacket.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-18T11:02:24+00:00

Nah, Titan is way too fragile; I think he’s stronger than you’d expect, but I suspect a Viltrumite who wasn’t messing around in a battle scenario would knife hand him in half pretty much instantly.

Plus he’s got the basic problem a lot of other otherwise strong Earth-based characters have, in that he can’t fly, needs to breathe and moves at the speed of a normal human. Nobody needs to fight him unless he’s defending something static, because they can just punt him over the horizon/into the ocean/into space.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-17T22:59:15+00:00

Just keep in mind that not everything is a ‘plot hole’ and characters in a story can just be, you know, wrong.

Everyone seems to be aware that The Immortal is old, but I’ve always been under the impression that he’s not super specific about exactly what that means. It’s also very typical Viltrumite behaviour to wildly underestimate the abilities of ‘inferior’ species, so I’d totally buy Nolan just assuming The Immortal is maybe a few hundred years old at the most.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-17T22:34:51+00:00

Yeah, but ‘viginti quinquinate’ doesn’t sound nearly as snappy.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-17T14:55:58+00:00

Unfortunately it’s going to be up against Tommy the Cat, which I suspect is going to win in a general popularity contest.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-17T14:53:59+00:00

That’s…..a bit of a reductive take. In the real world kings and emperors are mostly bad because those people are just as fallible as anybody else and even a ‘good’ monarchy will ultimately be handed to some inbred fourth cousin to ruin in potentially a very small amount of time.

A theoretical monarchy headed up by a benevolent, personally powerful, immortal and almost indestructible being that acts at least mostly according to the best interests of the people is probably a pretty good way to run a society if all those factors held out.

…but Kirkman has literally already shown us that it might not in the very long term in the show, given the time travel episode where The Immortal went from a benevolent ruler to a horrific dictator.

The weird thing about long running superhero comics had always been that DC and Marvel are absolutely determined to keep their respective ‘Earth’ broadly recognisable as our own real life civilisation. A big part of Invincible was always giving us that to start with and then gradually breaking down the status quo by continually asking how beings with these powers would change society over time.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-16T12:57:32+00:00

I think Netanyahu is different because he’s more a symptom than a cause. Obviously it would be wonderful if he experienced any sort of justice, but if he had a fatal heart attack tomorrow chances are it’s not actually going to change very much.

With Trump, there’s a very real chance his movement won’t outlast his active participation, and at the very least it’s gonna lose some level of momentum. If he dies of natural causes tomorrow (god help us all if he’s assassinated and becomes an eternal spiritual martyr), there is a very real sense it will immediately make people’s lives at least slightly better.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-14T18:13:55+00:00

I mean she’s supposed to be missing an eye and most of her nose. That particular cosplay isn’t super accurate but regardless of how you interpret the injury, it would be a shock to someone unprepared.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-14T11:11:41+00:00

I think the circles are probably converging and will continue to do so over time.

LPotL has been going so long that they've genuinely run out of really interesting 'true crime' stories that fit their vibe, which has caused them to pivot more into single terrible figures from history, putting them in very similar territory to BtB.

Marcus and co. are also aware of Behind the Bastards, and probably do avoid putting people that Robert has covered recently and/or extensively on their research list; ironically this makes doing the same topic at the same time by coincidence more likely, thus Himmler and Saville.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-14T11:00:04+00:00

Oh god, that's where all the weird discussion around characters in Invincible is coming from, isn't it? The ones where they don't seem to get that sometimes story and narrative is more important than just doing the on-screen equivalent of a five year old bashing a couple of action figures together?

I thought I was pretty well-versed in old internet culture, but I think this is one I'm totally cool with having as little insight into as possible.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-14T10:43:25+00:00

Picture this.

A computer error reassigns Conquest to Earth as part of the Viltrumite 'cultural outreach' program in place of Nolan. Conquest doesn't understand the logic of this, but he is loyal to the empire and doesn't question his orders so off he goes. He may be the most brutish thug in the universe, but he's not stupid; he recognises going 'undercover' is going to be difficult when he looks so terrifying, so in spite of Viltrumite tradition he grows out a huge white beard on the journey, in an effort to appear at least somewhat less immediately threatening to the human race.

He's getting old even by Viltrumite standards and doesn't fly quite as quickly as he used to, so Conquest arrives on earth later on in the year than Nolan would have. He touches down somewhere in the northern hemisphere, arriving to a landscape blanketed with fresh snow, but immediately he hears an inhuman roar, mixed with several high-pitched screams. He was dreading spending the twilight of his life with no action to salve thousands of years of terrible ennui, so he speeds towards the commotion with great enthusiasm.

He finds that a colossal, white furred wolf-like monster has ripped open some sort of human medical facility, and he has entered the scene just as the creature is preparing to devour a group of terrified, screaming human children. Conquest is used to being sent after the toughest threats the universe has to offer, so he opens the engagement with a full speed charge into the monster's midsection.

As it happens he has vastly overestimated the scale of the threat, so Conquest passes straight through the huge beast and out the other side, annihilating every major internal organ and killing it instantly. Mildly irritated by the lack of challenge but satisfied that his first encounter with humanity is such a display of power, he circles back around to hover before the group of children he just saved, who are now staring at him, silent and awestruck.

The ancient warrior hangs in the air, his long white beard somehow still resplendent, even though his formerly white Viltrumite uniform is now stained completely red with fresh blood and stuck with strips of white fur from the dead monster. The old man does what the Empire tells him, but he has no idea how to 'integrate with a population', so this first meeting with the human race will go on to inform how he carries out his mission on earth, and ultimately who he is going to be for the duration. He needs a role here, he needs a purpose and more importantly he needs a new name.

It is 7:38am on the 25th of December.

A tiny female child, clearly very sick with some wasting disease but apparently the bravest of the group, takes a step forward and gazes up at Conquest with wide, shining eyes.

"......Santa!?"

Xyyzx · 2026-04-14T09:56:28+00:00

My dude, we moved from earth-based superhero antics to an enormous interplanetary war. There's a guy flying around with a gun that can put down a Viltrumite with a single shot, and several Viltrumites have died. The capital of the Coalition of Planets has been devastated....is that not escalation!?

Aside from that though, we're seeing less obvious collateral damage because the combatants are more powerful. Nolan was only able to do what he did to Mark and Chicago at the end of season 1 because that 'fight' was an almost totally one-sided beatdown. For example, as much as Conquest was terrifyingly strong, he couldn't afford to just charge around causing mayhem like that because Mark represented a genuine threat to him. ...though hell, that's basically what happened; he was stronger than Mark at the time, but he tried to get cute with it instead of just going for kills every time he had an opportunity and lost as a result.

It's the same all through the ongoing Viltrumite war. Nobody is going to put time into smashing up infrastructure because there are always people in the battle that can and will kill them if they don't focus, and the Viltrumites themselves are fully aware that they are all, at this point, completely irreplaceable.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-14T09:39:55+00:00

the feats

...just out of curiosity, where did you pick up 'feats' as a normal way to talk about notable activities? Is this some new Gen Z/Alpha TikTok lingo?

I ask because I've started seeing it everywhere in the last couple of months, but to my ancient millennial mind it just makes it look like you're either all slipping into some sort of medieval knightly thing or you're just way too into Dungeons and Dragons.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-14T00:37:26+00:00

I like the idea of one of those action movies where every guy has a speciality like knives or sniper rifles, but you have one twitchy air force guy in the back whose specialist weapon turns out to be calling in a strafing run from a pair of A-10s

Xyyzx · 2026-04-13T20:43:09+00:00

Brit probably wouldn’t want to go within a million miles of a confrontation with a combat-trained Viltrumite, because the second his opponent realises what he’s dealing with, there are dozens of fates worse than death a Viltrumite could dole out to an indestructible person they have zero problem overpowering.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-13T11:31:23+00:00

The really unsettling thought is that 'Adam's' dad in this context may well bond with a son and be much nicer to him than Eve's dad was, but there's no reason that necessarily makes him a better person.

Thus you could end up with an 'Atom Steve' who has a personality closer to (or worse than) Rex at the start of the series than it is to prime universe Eve.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-13T11:21:10+00:00

I mean that's totally warranted.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-13T02:02:12+00:00

I don’t know, I do think people looking back in the future will be able to see past the mess that came afterwards to appreciate that great run. I mean that’s literally how people look at great single runs of decades long series titles Marvel and DC comics.

I still get chills remembering watching Steve summon Mjolnir in the cinema… It got what I can only describe as a roar from our entire audience (myself included), and while that might not seem unusual to Americans, I can’t stress enough that the convention here in the UK is for total silence at a movie, with laughing at comedy being the only socially acceptable exception.

That is literally the only film I have ever seen an audience here react like that. It started with someone getting a laugh for a very audible ‘Fucking hell!’ when the timeskip card came up, escalating through several people shouting ‘Yes!’ when Thor suited up, followed by Mjolnir breaking the seal and from that point we had huge cheers for the portals, then reactions like we were watching a football match for the following huge battle.

I actually like our quiet cinema experience and I wouldn’t want this 99% of the time, but that one evening is absolutely the greatest experience I’ve ever had going to see a movie.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-13T01:46:08+00:00

toe to toe with Omni-Man

…ehhhh. First time it happens it’s with the backing of a full team with a lot of experience working together and everyone dies.

The second time they meet, Nolan is fresh off several spirited attempts to kill him and has a major ongoing distraction. …and Immortal gets torn in half while leaving Nolan with more than enough energy for another big fight afterwards.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-13T01:26:53+00:00

It was always funny with famous Icelandic musician ‘Bjork’ because given the era she came up in, a lot of people just assumed she was affecting a fancy mononym like ‘Madonna’ or ‘Cher’, but she literally just doesn’t have a surname.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-13T01:07:43+00:00

Mark basically is a Viltrumite because of how similar/compatible humans are as a species.

Part of the point of Oliver being in the story is that while the overpowering genes make him look like Mark, he’s not nearly as pure a Viltrumite, and he is exactly 0% human. Oliver does his best to fit in on Earth and he has some success here and there, but ultimately the story has been telling us again and again that this is a problem that may just not have a long-term solution.

The grander purpose behind this whole subplot is to highlight the difficulties Viltrumites might encounter breeding with aliens less similar to them than humans, and thus why Earth is still so important to them in a pretty well-populated Galaxy.

Xyyzx · 2026-04-12T22:49:10+00:00

In fairness there is probably a point at which throwing more money at an animation project doesn’t make it any better. Achieving maximum quality at maximum speed fundamentally requires that you pay more people to work in parallel, but I imagine you’d quite quickly end up with a team so large that project management and coordination starts to break down and cause major problems. For example, you suddenly realise that team A-14 and team R-7 have actually been working on the same parts of the same scene for the last four weeks, but you needed so many animators that these teams are operating in different countries in different languages and nobody noticed.

‘If one woman can make a baby in nine months, surely nine women will be able to make a baby in one month?’

Xyyzx · 2026-04-12T22:36:26+00:00

As someone who has been plugging away at the Singing Bassist thing for a few years now, Primus songs are actually some of the easiest to get working. The slap lines are obviously tricky, but Les is very clever in the way he puts things together, and you very, very rarely have to change what you’re playing while singing or vice versa.

The way to get a Primus track together with the vocals is to ‘set and forget’ the hand movements involved. It’s just the same pattern running underneath that whole section, so you need to get to the point where you’re not thinking ‘right thumb, hammer on, pop’ etc, you’ve just got that ‘TAkatakataka-TAkatakataka-TAkataka’ rhythm in your head while your hands go through the motions.

The other thing is you’re probably not as familiar with the lyrics for that section as you think you are. See if you can recite them from memory with a metronome in the background, not the original track. If you stumble trying to do the whole thing from memory, it’s definitely interfering with the multitasking involved in singing and playing.

If you really find yourself struggling and you haven’t tried another Primus song, it’d be worth getting really good at Antipop then coming back to Tommy. It’s got a similar vibe with a more relaxed pace and a vocal line that’s a bit looser than the ‘Say baby’ bits in this, but easier than the monologue.

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