Dear Internets, you know her from taking on the terrorists in Paragon City. Now she serves as Ayarane Project’s War Correspondent. Next on the parade of podcast personalities… Action Cat!

“Terrorists beware! Action Cat comes for YOU!”
Though her primary role is to report on the War on Terror, old habits die hard, and she still carries a (magically-concealed) assault rifle. You know, just in case.

Of course, she needs a cameraman, and who better to capture it all than Lakitu? He’s joined the HD age and traded in his old film camcorder for a high-definition DV model. And in a pinch, his cloud can expand to hold more passengers. Action Cat herself is packing a bluetooth earpiece… though despite what it looks like, the ear part of it is just for decoration, since they obviously haven’t made a version for catgirls yet. However, because the flapping became an issue with the sound recording, she decided to ditch the cape.

Action Cat makes a fairly disturbing discovery early into her assignment– those terrorists are, in fact, bulldogs! Rogue bulldogs pretending to be members of Al-Qaeda. Nobody suspects bulldogs, of course, because everyone is so entranced by their smooshed, vacant faces and such, but we at Ayarane Project know better.

We continue running with the crazy notion of the yet-to-be-named Ayarane Project podcast by introducinng the characters. Surely many of you are already familiar with Action Cat (whose AP podcast incarnation will be based on the Action Cat that appears in City of Heroes) so I’ll bring her out in a later post.

For now, meet Prinny Arnold, who unlike Action Cat is not fixed to a particular segment, but I imagine will often interject in WTF, California? segments.

“Come with me if you want to live, dood!”
Rather than simply pull Grand Theft Conan and stick a photoshopped Governator in the Conveniently Placed Viewscreen, I thought it would be funnier to turn him into a Prinny. He’s a red Prinny with Governor Schwarzenegger’s hair and the squinty eyes, and also wears a tie… just because. Though he still has the AHNOLD voice… like any other Prinny he adds “dood” at the end of sentences.

Instead of the usual machetes that all Prinnies carry, he dual-wields Prinny-sized machine guns, and carries Bob-Ombs instead of the normal bombs that Prinnies normally carry. Sometimes he’ll even wear sunglasses just to look badass. He also likes ice cream.

He cannot use the Pringer Beam ability, but has a fitting replacement– a Terminator head that fires eyebeams!

Prinny Arnold likes California so naturally he’d be a little miffed if people hate on it for whatever reason (being broke, having weird weather, the Proposition 8 controversy, etc.). Unfortunately, attempts to intervene in defense of his favorite state tend to backfire… literally– something tends to happen that results in him exploding (because, you know, Prinnies explode when thrown, and unlike the Hero Prinny’s scarf, that Governor’s Tie doesn’t protect him from exploding), like falling off the desk, or banging his head on the desk in frustration. Fortunately for him, exploding resets his term limits, enabling him to remain in office forever.

Being a Prinny in this “universe,” of course, obviously implies that he died as a human. Now how did THAT happen? o.O Perhaps some kind of freak accident? *shrug*

…dood.

So, this whole podcast thing has been nagging at me all day. And when something has that kind of effect on me, and it actually seems feasible, it’s probably a hint that it may actually be worth pursuing. See: Pundit Games, Ragnarok TWILIGHT, the Across wiki…

It would definitely be a much more productive use of my time– it might not actually rake in monies but that’s not even a factor unless by some freak cosmic belch… no, let’s just not even go there. Anywho! I’ve needed something to get me back into some kind of daily routine, given that transportation issues have forced me to nix volunteer service. It would force me to draw a hell of a lot more often, that’s for sure. Maybe not the same kind of animation that my old Chaffey overlords speculated upon during my time there, but this would still be considered sequential. (If anything, a Yoshi podcast would be more like FLCL’s “Manga Mode” that it twice played with.)

Subtitle: PORTFOLIO FODDER!

…on that same note: all that nonsense like the above that is a result of my imagination that would be better played out in video would BECOME REAL. (Scary? Awesome? BOTH?)

I’m leaning towards yes on this obviously half-baked (but becoming less-so) idea at this point but I should probably chew on the concept a little more before I make my final decision. Again, I’ve a few things I’d need to take care of first before I can even begin rigging the graphics– for one thing, I need to get a better-quality bluetooth adapter since this $3 little thing I got from DealExtreme is… well, it works in that it’ll talk to my phone no problem, but my headset? Fail. Thankfully, the good adapters have price-dropped even further since I got the Kensington last year (which mother has ninja’d for her phone, hence my picking up that cheapo adapter a few weeks ago). Hell, if I preorder New SMB Wii through Amazon instead of Gamestop, I could just tack on the bluetooth adapter…

There’s also the current Ramen in progress– the two bromides, Oasis, and Pundit Games Episode 5. And the Halloween Ramen. So that needs to be done, too. Presumably I’d need to devote November to rigging all the base graphics (the set, my avatar, segment title cards).

Now, onto this whole podcast nonsense itself. Let’s get the practical things out of the way before we get to the hardcore silliness of playing at being an internet pundit (well, more than I already do in just text alone).

- Frequency: weekly seems like a good place to start with– gives me a bit of lead time to write and arrange things and rig extra graphics and what-have-you (oh, and record the audio part of it) AND keep the topics fairly current.
- Distribution: Youtube! I’ve a Director-grade account and I’m one of those who registered in 2006, and those two together exempt me from the 10-minute cap on uploads. Of course, Ayarane Project has a crapton of server space (that supposedly increases daily, if HostRocket isn’t BSing me) so I could hold the original videos up there and be a TRUE podcaster with the whole “HAY GUYS LOAD UP THIS HERE RSS AND SET PHASERS TO AUTO-LOOT!” thing.
– As a secondary consideration, I could make a separate Wordpress installation just for this podcast, but… why? It’s simply a matter of a slight layout alteration on the AP hub (sticky post with a YouTube embed, and another RSS widget on the sidebar). Easy enough.

I will, of course, need a set. The nice thing about opting to draw this stuff rather than webcam it is that my set can look like ANYTHING I WANT. To this end, I went and scribbled some stuff… *dig dig dig*

No respectable internet pundit is complete without a badass desk and mug. Dinah (in laptop form), of course, is prominently featured, as is the tablet. (Dude, this is ME we’re talking about. I gotta have the tablet.)

Random, sassy taking off of glasses! That’s sure to turn some heads.

Of course, as an internet pundit, I must also have a Conveniently-Placed Viewscreen(tm) for my segment title graphics. (This poses another question: when I mention real people, do I go with the usual practice of photoshopping their mugshots onto some relevant-yet-nondescript background, or do I go for glory and draw them, preferably doing something silly? Example: President Obama making his classic XD face)

In which I am stupidly amused at the topic in question!

In which I get my slacker on. Hot.

Now enter… the PUNDIT SIDEBAR, where talking points and other such textual nonsense gets put in, and also SLIGHT CLOSEUP so I can bark at you and waggle my finger and otherwise express righteous indignation… or sass… or something.

In which I am not amused at the sidebar.

Not shown but considered: a fake studio audience! Either populated by characters from Across lore… or I could take a page from Azumanga and fill it with nondescript silhouettes. Or Prinnies. XD

Next… the content itself. This is actually the easier part. I am an oddball with some pretty out-there interests (disaster movies, voice actor twitter, underrated RPGs to name a few), not to mention that, after all, this is the perfect outlet aside from Instant Ramen Sketchbook to let the horror of Yoshi’s Imagination flow freely. Let’s hammer out some segments ideas.

- Yoshi on the News: The weirder, the better. Just don’t expect much in terms of sports. That said… a “fish out of water” thing in which I try (and fail miserably) to make sense of sports could be amusing, too.
- O RLY?: Probably specific to weird news. YA RLY for the bizarre stuff that ACTUALLY HAPPENED, and NOT RLY for the obvious BS… and IDK LOL for the stuff that really gets your brain in a knot.
- You Just Got Aeth’d: When things go wrong, they go REALLY wrong. Like, potentially universe-ending. Why do I get the feeling this will mostly involve weather? :P
- WTF, California?: Let’s face it: as much as we love to pick on the southern states (and also Utah… and more recently, Alaska), California can be pretty freaking WEIRD. I mean, we have a freaking Governator! But the weird does not end with politics, oh no… we have some pretty effed-up weather, too. In fact, sometimes the weather can even outdo the politics in WTF.
- They’d Never Get Away With That In School Today: In which I reminisce about the things that happened in school that would never, EVER fly today, either because they are now potential lawsuit fodder, or got cast aside in favor of other things (like the lengths teachers and administrators would go to in order to satisfy No Child Left Behind), or were horrible to begin with and justifiably got thrown out.
- Badasses and Boneheads: Nearly every pundit has some variation of this– Keith Olbermann has Best Persons/Worst Persons, Bill O’Reilly has Pinheads and Patriots, Ed Schultz has Psycho Talk… it goes on. Therefore, I have to get in on this.
- The War on Terror with Action Cat: First off, I would like to thank the Anonymous out there who made the original Action Cat macro, which was the inspiration for the Action Cat character in my collection. (If you come forward and identify yourself, you will most definitely get at the very least a plug and my eternal adoration… and free Gourmet Ramen forever) Anywho, Action Cat defeats the terrorists, and would be my War Correspondent, and this segment would surely lampoon the whole concept of the WAR ON TERROR. Of course, the real terrorists are not Al-Qaeda, but… BULLDOGS. Smoosh-faced, loud, obnoxious bulldogs! Surely, this would degrade into showing pictures and videos of cute kittens, and video proving the existence of the Nefarious Bulldog Agenda.
- Favorite but Underrated: Because a lot of things I like are, sadly, greatly overlooked or written off as “meh” by the general public. This is why you should give them a second chance!
- If (Game) Had Twitter: I’d considered doing a Ramen series of “If FF4 had Twitter” but this could be expanded to include other games, too. Also I blame this on the hilarity of reading voice actor Twitter. However, if you think about it… Tales kinda started this– Symphonia had a “Synopsis” feature, but Abyss and Legendia turned it into a freaking blog-within-a-game thing. Why NOT take it further and speculate about what would happen if Twitter existed in-universe? XD
- Yuri Moment: This is a must-have. I tell you… that Mr. Lowenthal is the gift who keeps on giving. For me, his being everywhere is very much a good thing, and the lulz he provides isn’t limited to the voice acting stuff– his Twitter is hilarious (especially when taken out of context, and also when he live-tweets from bizarre locations) and the Youtubes of his con appearances bring the lulz (Haseo cosplay… MUDKIPS!). This is an excuse for me to fangirl without looking like an obvious freak. (Well, more than I already am.) Speaking of which, even though I really shouldn’t be spending anymore money, I ought to preorder his book…
- Cookie Crumbs: Likely an “end of the show” segment. Something insignificant, or forgotten by everyone, or what-have-you.

Other candidates could pop up, too. But this was what I could come up with right now, and some could get rotated in and out as needed.

As for my soundtrack… I’ma get back to you on that. All I know is that I’ll surely have to pull some Grand Theft Everything.

And finally…

…I need a freaking name for this podcast!

I tossed around some candidates last post, but I’m sure there are others. Currently, the list is as follows:

- Happy Hour with Yoshi Ayarane
- From the Desk of Your Overlord
- The Ramen Factor
- Tales from the Cookie Couch
- The Tenth Circle of Yoshi’s Imagination

Suggestions are very much welcome. I don’t have a particular favorite at the moment, but that could change…

I’ma go sleep on this… literally. HOPEFULLY when I wake up I’m not hit by an “ohgod this podcast idea is made of FAIL” moment, because as intimidating as all that might be, it does look like something worthwhile. ^_^;

Weird dream time. (ftr, last thing I ate was angel hair pasta w/ garlic bread)

Apparently I had a video podcast. Except instead of actual video of me, it was more like a bunch of CG stills of me behind a desk, with RANDOM COSPLAY. It was kinda like Rachel Maddow with a heavy Azumanga/Lucky Star slant. Also there was a Twitter Ticker at the bottom.

Could this be done in real life? Possibly… however, right now I’m having issues getting the audio part of my bluetooth to cooperate (probably because I got a cheap-ass adapter) and I have a bunch of existing Ramen to clear out first before I can even think about drawing up the base stills. I stll and will always hate the sound of my own voice, but apparently most of the internets find it tolerable or even cute, so I guess that wouldn’t be an issue. If anything, this would be a use for my YouTube channel (since I have apparently misplaced my GameBridge and can’t finish the .hack phase battle captures until I get my HD capture box in December). :P

Not to mention, what the hell would I even call this thing? Happy Hour with Yoshi Ayarane? From the Desk of Your Overlord? The Ramen Factor? or something equally ridiculous…