What Is Planned For The Week Of June 14

Looking ahead for this upcoming week over at twitch.tv/fredcasden, I'm trying to figure some things out as what the line up is going to be. Of course some things are already locked it based on major games that are either weekly features or part of the current tour.

June 14: Sunday Night Overwatch (PC)

- More than likely this feature normal quick place / role queue matches, as the Anniversary event has already ending earlier this week. So there isn't any pressure to get wins or to run something like Uprising over and over again.

June 15 & 16: Mass Effect Andromeda

- Monday and Tuesday will be completely focused of Mass Effect Andromeda, with roaming around Eos being the major priority on Monday, doing what quests I am able to before returning to the Nexus. That may carry over into Tuesday, it really depends on how much better I can with playing ME:A with a controller as opposed to a mouse and keyboard in order to deal with the Kett.

June 17: Gears of War

-Wednesday night the plan is to tackle more of Gears of War with Iceman, picking up somewhere in Act II. If Iceman can't make it, then I'll probably do some random gaming, maybe Power Rangers Battle for the Grid's story mode, or other console things

June 18: Star Trek Online

- Thursday of course is dedicated to Star Trek Online, and picking up with things on New Romulus for our Cardassian Captain in the Klingon Defense Force. More than likely this will be a lot of ground stuff as it does take quite a bit of time to get from part of the map to the other.

June 19: Trials of Mana or WWE 2K20
- So as of the time of this writing, on June 12, I figure I should be able to finish Trials of Mana, but of course, things could go horribly wrong with an expected difficulty spike. If I don't finish Trials of Mana tonight then it will be finished next Friday. If I do finish Trials of Mana tonight, then next Friday we'll start going through the story stuff for WWE 2K20

June 20: Twitch Sings

- Saturdays are of course always for singing, no real plan other than continuing to do songs on expert, complete duets and open seeds. The usual literal song with lack of dance.

Of course this is subject to change but this is a general idea of what I have planned for this upcoming week.

Be Like Kor, But Don't Be Like Doctor Beverly Crusher

I saw this meme going around on Twitter based on the Deep Space Nine episode Blood Oath, where Kor calls Daz 'Curzon' when he's in a holding cell and is exited to see an old friend, and is corrected by Dax who says their first name is now Jadiza. The reason for this is that Dax is a Trill, an alien race that has a symbiotic existence, a humanoid host carrying a slug that has centuries of living experience. When a host dies, the symbiont is transferred to the next qualified person to its host, regardless of it being male or female. There is an entire process to determine if someone is qualified to be a host for the symbiont, but for the most part it is pretty straight forward.

The Trill do have a 'policy' that when the symbiont gets a new host, all ties to its previous life are cut, so Dax would not have gone out of their way to tell Kor who they are now. Hell the only reason Commander Benjamin Sisko knows about Dax in the series pilot the Emissary is because he and Dax are both assigned to Deep Space Nine and Dax while they were Curzon was Sisko's mentor. With that said, Kor knows that Dax is a Trill, he hasn't seen Dax in who knows how long, and when Dax tells him the new first name, Kor just goes with it because again he's exited to meet an old friend once again.

So with all that on the table, being a Star Trek fan and really into a lot of the details, it made me think some people were really trying hard to connect a few moments from that episode to Pride month.It kind of works if you don't know the actual backstory of how how the Trill go about their business. So yeah, Be like Kor because of his instance acceptance of Dax's new host.

And this is where we talk about Doctor Beverly Crusher from Star Trek The Next Generation and the episode 'The Host', the first time The Trill as a species is introduced. You see in this episode, Beverly is having a secret fling with Ambassador Odan, and she doesn't know that he's a Trill until after he is injured on a shuttle flight to mediate a situation between two potentially warring sides. Beverly finds this out when Odan is dying on the operating table and is told that the body is just a shell and that Odan himself is the symbiont within it which needs to survive. The symbiont is placed inside Commander William Riker to provide it a temporary host, and this causes some drama for the negotiations but for Beverly who struggles a bit with the fact that the essence of who Odan was is now in Riker.

There is some drama about Riker's body rejecting the symbiont placing both he and Odan in peril, but in the end everything works out and the new host for Odan is a woman. Odan, in their new permanent host for the foreseeable future, is more than willing to continue to continue the relationship because they do deeply love the good Doctor... but Beverly takes issue with the fact that the Trill basically have no preference for gender orientation because the hosts can be either male or female and she basically can't handle that. Odan fully understand this, but for crying out loud, Beverly shoots Odan down hard. Yes in the context of the show, there is no way the relationship was going to go beyond this one episode, but Beverly was more than willing to work things out in her mind when Odan was in Riker's body for a time, but when she sees the new host, the good Doctor is basically makes up her mind that it isn't going to work for her. Sure Beverly says she'll still love Odan but what are the odds she actually kept in touch with them, as is often the case with relationships in Star Trek that involve a 'guest characters', out of sight, out of mind.

It really is eye-opening going back and seeing that, and realizing Beverly Crusher is completely anti-trans and ends up being a bit racist on top of it because of how the Trill exist. It's really fucking surreal.

So with that said, Don't be Like Doctor Beverly Crusher

New Artwork Commissioned To DarkWolf Creative

DaemonsWolf once again delivers with awesome art pieces for my Twitch Channel. The plan is to use this in the intro video seen at the start of every stream. Hopefully will have that put together by Saturday.

And if you're looking to get some artwork done, visit: https://www.darkwolfcreative.com/

Don't Complain About Poll Results If You Refuse To Take Part

While most know me for broadcasting nightly over on Twitch (twitch.tv/fredcasden) that is not all I do, as my day job is in the realm of a Market Research Interviewer. In that role, it is my job to interview people for various different types of projects, it could be something like customer service about a business, giving feedback on area hospitals, or getting thoughts on issues pertaining to politics. It is that last one which is the topic of this particular rant.

Now I know most people hate getting telephone calls to do a survey, because depending on which side of the political spectrum you consider yourself to be, sometimes the questions can come across as being slanted. Can surveys be a little long, they vary in length, but typically they end up being about 20 minutes, and I know, there are things one would rather do than answer questions for even that length of time, particularly if there are statements being made for or against people in or running for a particular office.

However, when you factor in that number of polls results that published on major news websites, universities and are featured on news channels such as Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN... and on top of that we at this time have President who either bragging or complaining about the results of polls, depending on what the results are which carries over to the average citizens that either support or oppose him, it seems that taking part in political polls is carrying more weight now than it did a few years.

Which brings me to the 'title' of my rant here, and I'm not just saying because of my current profession, I'm saying it as an American who sees the poll results, and I actually wonder how many people are complaining about the results were asked to participate but did not, regardless of their party affiliation. Or how many responses were thrown out because someone did not like the line of questioning when there answer choices that reflect exactly that. You see, to ensure that the polls you see on your favorite news site or news channel are fair, that they are representative of how you think or feel, taking part in when invited too helps... and it cuts down on disputing the results.

Plus more often than not, doing a political poll gives you an idea of what both sides are saying, and if you haven't even thought about an upcoming election, it's way to get some information to give you some consideration over the major players are on the ballot. Yes, I do run into those folks who say they are just going straight Republican or Democrat, but considering most polls are also looking to see how people react to current events or issues, or to see how they view the typical political mudslinging that happens in general elections.

So with all that said, don't complain the next time your see the results for a poll when you could've taken part!

Freeform Rant: The DMCA Drama on Twitch

This week, many of my fellow Twitch Streamers have been hit with DMCA take-down orders as it relates to clips containing licensed music, and from my point of view, it's just the latest in a series of on-going legal wrangling from the Music Industry to 'protect the recording artists and record labels'. Is it their right to make such demands, why yes, yes it is, they own the copyright on the music... and from my point of view as a Twitch Streamer, I often look at those channels that do nothing but act like glorified radio stations or night club DJ's, playing nothing but licensed music as being a novelty act that was just asking for trouble... and they are probably the ones being hit the hardest by this.

From my point of view, this is nothing new, as some may know I did have a YouTube Channel that was called Fred Casden's Basement, where I did full on reviews that featured content in the realm of Fair Use, such as using screen captures of shows or scans of comic books I was discussing, among other things to try and spice up my content. When my channel grew to where it could be monetized to get some income on my work, that's when I started to have a few issues, such as CBS taking ownership of a review I did for their awful MacGyver reboot because I used a few screen shots from that weeks episode to make my point, and when I started to port Twitch broadcasts to that channel, I noticed that the Warner Music Group was really protective over certain songs that appeared in Saints Row The Third and Saints Row IV. Now in the case of the issues with CBS, since I was doing a review I could of challenged it based on 'Fair Use' because I was making a critical point, but the issue with WMG was a little more complicated.

The music industry, in my lifetime at least, has been really anal about protecting itself against piracy thanks to the events surrounding Napster, and the combinations of the recording artists and the record labels have been doing everything they can to keep as much control over their songs as possible. While the Film and Video Game industry has certainly moved with the times, the former more reluctantly than the later, the Music industry has only taking the smallest of steps forward to expanding use of licensed music, begrudgingly loosing how it appears on streamers channels on YouTube, Mixer, and Twitch if its in the context of a video game... it's why most people tend to turn off in-game music for things like the Grand Theft Auto series because it's such a headache.

As the copyright holders, any record label, for example the Warner Music Group, can demand something be removed, and Twitch has the platform in question here, much like YouTube has to comply with that request. In fact any video game publisher can do the same, however that's not exactly smart business considering the amount of virtually free advertising they get from people who stream video games. Some may argue that Twitch should look out for its streamers, however YouTube already set the president on just being the service provider when it came to such issues back, so Twitch is just following the path laid out.

I don't blame the hire ups at Twitch, they are a business and they are providing a service for people to use. Could they have handled it better, probably, but at the same time, the music industry for the most part is just like Donal Trump, it makes threats that could be bad for everyone if it doesn't get its way. So the question is what do people do if they aren't gamers and want to play music on their channels... well one, if you are musician, create your own content, don't do covers or perform licensed songs, do your own thing. If you're wanna-be DJ, well mix your own beats, create your own tracks that aren't licensed to a record lable. If you are gamer, don't have Spotify, iTunes or Amazon music playing tracks as you stream. The issue of in-game music is still a thing, but if its a game with a ton of license music like a Saints Row or a Grand Theft Auto, probably best not to use the in-game tunes, you might want to either lower the volume to where can barely be heard or just turn the in-game music off.

Of course that's just my opinion.

The Story Of The Bunny - How Twitch Sings Lead To Me Having A Mascot

So you may have noticed that a white-fur bunny puppet wearing a faded Phillies jersey has basically become the mascot of not just my Twitch channel (twitch.tv/fredcasden) but also my Twitter (twitter.com/fredcasden) and the story of how that came about is all because of Twitch Sings and remembering how the former host of The Late Late Show, TV's Craig Ferguson often did musical numbers with puppets for occasional cold opens. So I figured I'd use some old-school stuff animals I still had from when I was a baby (a blue bunny and a brown squirrel) to spice things up with them randomly appearing from time to time on duets, but framing things properly to make sure my hands weren't seen proved to be a problem

So in September of 2019, I went on Amazon and started looking for a puppet, and settled on a long-sleeved White Rabbit puppet, primarily because it meant that my left forearm would be covered and the full body of the rabbit could be seen. In addition, my pinky and thumbs could move its arms while my other three fingers would move the head. Now I'm not sure which stream exactly the bunny debuted on, but the first duet it was featured on was with BreakEvenx3 on California Dreamin' on September 10, 2019

Nothing fancy, just the bunny moving to the music and general doing its own thing as I sang and completed the duet in question. One thing I quickly discovered is that just having the bunny being just all fur really wasn't cool looking, and I took a Phillies Jersey off of an old Philly Phanatic plush I had since the 90s, and placed it on the puppet. The jersey may have yellowed with age, but it provided a nice contrast in cases if the Twitch Sings chroma key proved to be difficult to tweak on any given night (which is more often than not a real pain in the ass, but that's a difficult topic all together). The bunny first rocked the Phillies Jersey on September 11, 2019 as I completed a duet with MarvelMaven performing I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honeybunch)

But the real test was of course letting the bunny take center stage, letting him sing... but there was a problem. I haven't figured out a voice for him yet, sure I could do a few silly voices when ready dialog in games that had no voice acting involved, but those were more like place holder things until I could figure out something. So on September 27, which is the the first time the bunny is the 'star' is when he performs with BluVelvet on Ballroom Blitz, the voice is just my own.

Needless to say, that wasn't going to last long and so I started looking into the different voice filters, the next day (September 28 for those keeping track), I used the Supernatural filter for the Bunny... and on a duet of Walk with BlueHwyaden... the Bunny's voice for the next several months was established.

Now for the most part, the bunny doing duets was done off-stream, because I use OBS to stream, which means a live audience would only hear my actual voice instead of the filtered one in Twitch Sings. It didn't bother me to much for several reasons, the biggest being the fact that I have a couch instead of a chair, which means getting down to the floor to where I can see the lyrics and project my voice to the mic was always a pain in the ass. Now of course, the bunny would become a bigger part of my channel, as I commissioned a set of emotes to be made by Daemonsw0lf  (https://www.darkwolfcreative.com/) in November of 2020, with some more added in the following months

But eventually, on March 21 2020 I finally figured out the Bunny's voice on that night's live stream, a Mickey Mouse inspired voice, which meant going forward from time to time I could use the bunny on stream to complete a duet. The first duet to feature this voice was with Kalenal on the song Sleeping Sun

And that basically is the story of the bunny. The funny thing is though I never really given him a name, as he's often called Philly because of the Phillies Jersey.

"Stronger Than Them' Theme

Another piece of music I had commissioned over on Fiverr. The artist is Slashfield and can be found at https://www.fiverr.com/slashfield

Fred Casden Logo Designed By Raza3580: https://www.fiverr.com/raza3580

All Other Artwork Designed By Daemonswolf: https://www.darkwolfcreative.com